I received an interesting mail after my blog on the process of change yesterday. It included this line:
My view is that despair is a luxury we cannot indulge in.
It's a succinct rebuff to hand-wringing. The logic was that those who believe they have the capacity to create change should get on with it and stop conceding ground to the right by continually suggesting that the right have created all the best narratives.
To put it another way, if we have a story to tell it's time to tell it.
I am strongly inclined to agree.
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I certainly don’t go with hand wringing. The right are good at coming up with nice “sound bytes” which fall apart with any decent analysis. In my view there is no contest; the right wing view of the world falls apart with any rigorous analysis.
It could be that too much “book learning” does the left a disservice as many people don’t think rationally. I would recommend Daniel Kahneman book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (the irony of recommending more reading is not lost on me).
I simply don’t understand the right wing authoritarian brain and the key is how to overcome “invincible ignorance”
I’m nit sure
The left gave slogans ‘Power to the People’ is better than ‘Taking back control’ barring one thing and that’s its abstraction. The right make it personal. They left gave to stop talking at people
But I’d share the book recommendation
Last weekend I spoke to a seventeen year old boy begging in the street, hoping to raise enough for the next night’s hostel accommodation. He was grubby, sitting in a sleeping bag and the extent of his daily ambition was to raise £30 to secure a roof over his head for one more night. There is no support available and no way for him to change his circumstances. As the mother of two teenagers I found myself close to tears – in another world he could have been my son. And I was simply powerless to help change his life.
Coincidentally I came across this :-
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/24/scottish-homelessness-charity-social-bite-village-low-cost-eco-homes-edinburgh
Inspirational, local and getting to the heart of the problem. I donated. I hope we all will.
Sorry not related to this blog but a very interesting analysis of what is going wrong in the US. Might make a good blog post?
http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/distributional-national-accounts/
I think it became quite a good book….
Despair?
Where?
I just do not see it in this blog at all.
All I see is anger – cogent, rational anger.
And as John Lydon said “Anger is an energy”. Yes?
Indeed
Is this a call to action? If so, however I can, I am in… story telling, defining a new narrative, is what I love to do.
No it’s not a call to action – the action is already happening and Richard is providing most of it in this blog but there others being busy elsewhere – the Tax Justice Network etc., – there is a long list.
It’s just that I do not see this blog as place of despair – more like a place to face up to the challenges created by poor management of the country by very poor politicians under the influence of money.
And just as we might use the gravity of a planet to slingshot us into space, a blog like this can energise our own journeys towards a better future.
I for one am inspired – I just need to find an outlet for it. So my journey continues but it would not have started but for Richard and others.
…………….oh – and even if at the end of my life I have been unable to improve the world I live in, at least I walked on it with my eyes wide open and passed on what I have seen to others who may improve it yet.
I’m not sure that despair is the central issue with this hand-wringing.
There is, I would suggest, a fatalist tendency among some (many) to regard themselves as mere observers and their observations are usually pessimistic as a matter of preference. They will have a view on the way things are or where things are heading but they do not see themselves as participants. They have a view but they don’t have a stance.
This view, or perspective, is not generally born of decision but an unthinking passive assumption and it is self-reinforcing. If people assume themselves to be disempowered they become so by virtue of that assumption if nothing else.
In more extreme cases some will predict the vote but not vote. They will criticise internet commentary but not comment where they can. In a way, neo-liberalism has had a role in this. No one specifically voted for for any of those “free trade” treaties or most of the privatisations, certainly not the way they were implemented. The pro-corporate, pro-market agenda was not the result of a grassroots movement but a consensus among policy elites. Knowing that, at some level, reinforces a sense of disempowerment.
Its no excuse though. The fatalist attitude confuses cause and effect as well as perception and reality. To begin with we don’t expect power to be benign (if it is that’s a bonus – or a blessing) and being aware of an injustice is reason to oppose it not accept it. Ultimately all witnesses are involved and to some extent we make our own weather.
In conclusion I offer 2 quotes for consideration (although I don’t entirely recommend their authors):
Famously:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
Edmund Burke
And, more controversially:
“Power is not a material possession that can be given, it is the ability to act. Power must be taken, it is never given.”
William Powell
Agreed
PSR – Don’t despair! I refer you to Bob Edwards’ practical suggestion of ‘Trim-Tabbing’ in the earlier blog “The tipping point for real change may be closer than we think”. (http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/12/16/the-tipping-point-for-real-change-may-be-closer-than-we-think/#comment-771114).
P.S. Where are all these wonderful right-wing “narratives”? It seems that I’ve missed those somehow.
I must pay more attention.