The pace of what is happening in the world right now is astonishing, almost frightening, and probably alienating for many.
I turn on the television news, and the pictures of crowds in conflict with security forces could be in Caracas, Portland, Minneapolis, Tehran or somewhere else that has erupted in the course of an evening.
The threats and pace of abuse from Trump are deliberately disabling the senses: the intention is to numb us as recipients of news until shock ceases to be a reaction, and for some, this is clearly working.
The sense of bewilderment in a world that is clearly going mad is real.
The guilty desire that the violence might be contained elsewhere and, by chance, leave us unaffected to continue our lives, even if they are diminished by the sense of increased risk, is, I think, apparent to many.
The cry that "someone should do something" is very obviously going unheard as our so-called leaders sit like nodding dogs once did on the back parcel shelves of cars, offering their consent without comment to whatever abuse next happens in the world.
Frustration rather rapidly turns to resignation. "What can we do?" is the obvious question to ask when law enforcement officers in the States can with apparent impunity shoot those they take a dislike to in the face, and then be granted support by the Federal administration on the pretext that the person they killed was not just the "f**cking bitch" the perpetrator described them as but a "left wing terroist" as the Vice President called them - both without a shred of evidence, of course.
The question is the right one. What can we do in the case of such hideous violence and the very obvious lies being peddled to supposedly justify it?
The options are, as whenever we face a situation requiring a decision, fourfold:
- Ignore it
- Walk away from it
- Reframe it
- Respond by taking action
There are never more options than that.
On this occasion, many will be tempted to ignore what is happening. That is how fascists get to power. It is the response on which they are relying, given they know few have the option of walking away from them: the whole point of fascism is to deny that chance.
Some will reframe this. There are, in essence, two ways of doing so. You embrace the fascist way of thinking when you never imagined you would. Or you can realise that this form of politics is not the peripheral kind that touches on your life, but lets you get on with much of it apparently unhindered, at least on the surface of your existence. This is the form of politics that threatens your very being. That is the form of reframing that then requires a response.
The type of response matters, and the form that will work best for most is passive (by which I mean non-violent) civil disobedience. This is:
- A refusal to accept that what is happening is right.
- Not accepting the demand made to, for example, "other" those who are the chosen victims of abuse.
- Remaining aware of the abuse and refusing to normalise it.
- Finding means of support for mutual protection, not least of mental health, when the assault on all that we thought true and of value becomes acute.
- Continuing to imagine that a better world is possible, whatever the evidence to the contrary, and to work for it in any way we can.
The point to remember here comes from Viktor Frankl: he argued, based on his personal experience of Nazi prison camps, that people can endure almost any hardship if they can find meaning in it, but they can collapse even in materially adequate conditions if life becomes purposeless.
Meaning is not, then, a luxury; it is a requirement. It is the psychological foundation of resilience, moral agency, and hope. And that is what this form of response to the crises we now face requires. In the face of oppression, the threat of which is growing, we have to maintain our own meaning, or we cannot survive. This is the politics of care in adversity.
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Agree wholeheartedly. In Anna Bocca’s book club last night people were discussing whether capitalism has destroyed spiritual meaning in life. I think the neoliberal trope of ‘There Is No Alternative’ is one of the ways in which people have been demoralised into feeling or thinking that their intentions and their actions not only don’t have meaning in any particular instance, but that they fundamentally ‘cannot’ have meaning in any instance at all. Coupled with a deliberately obfuscating cloud of algebra around political economy designed to make everyone feel too stupid to have an opinion.
I wake up every morning and wonder what new atrocity has befallen the world, or a group of individuals, a nation state or a person, quite frankly I’m petrified, I wonder if I’m next, will I see the end of our democratic society, or a nuclear war or a fascist incursion into our country. What to do about the Trump fascist regime, the Starmer authoritarian society, big business influence? Where do I start, when does it finish? Climate exhaustion, Palestinians wiped from the face of the earth, rational society breakdown, hope is there any? Well writing this down has kind of begun the process, but talking or writing is not enough and I know few enough activists I would care to be involved with, but as they say, needs must as the devil drives and dear Lord he is going at breakneck speed.
So its time to be involved. Come on Murphy, time for you to lead and stop talking about it.
There’s an old adage that a problem is merely a solution in disguise. This is really just a prompt to start by identifying the nature of the problem. Yesterday in posts I tried to do this by saying human beings are an on-going evolutionary form of two essential drivers of life in the universe – caring for self and caring for others.
In political terms for human beings they can be seen as Libertarian and Communitarian drivers which though necessary are often in conflict. I went on to argue that once we recognise this is going on in human behaviour it becomes possible to understand we need to constantly work at balancing them. The way we’ve done this is to evolve the Rule of Law. I used the following Google AI explanation to stress the importance of this:-
“Rule of Law means everyone, including the government, is subject to clear, publicly known, and equally enforced laws, ensuring power is limited and rights protected, while Rule by Law uses law as a tool for the state to control citizens, with rulers often above the law, making it arbitrary and serving power rather than justice. The core difference is accountability: under the rule of law, the law constrains rulers; under rule by law, rulers use law as a weapon against the governed, lacking true legal limits.”
Once we acknowledge that it’s important to distinguish between Rule of Law and its opposite Rule by Law and always seek to implement the former by laws, rules, even attitude, in many aspects of human life then we put ourselves in the camp of unifiers. Once you start to see yourself as a unifier of the two types of caring you’ll also see you need to organise yourself and other like-minded thinkers politically under a party description and give it a name – for example, the Unity Party would be one such apposite description of what you stand for.
Noted.
And thanks for being thought provoking.
Thanks. I would add that once you accept that a central issue for human beings is reconciling the two necessary but potentially opposing human drives of self and other caring then it becomes obvious that the political doctrines of communism or fascism don’t hack it in achieving well-being for all. Neither for that matter does any political party in between which adopts aspects of undemocratic totalitarianism. Starmer is an obvious example and it looks very much like his potential undoing.
Agreed
Marxism fails for this reason: its intolertance is what makes it unacceptable.
A very crucial distinction indeed Schofield.
Apparently the residents of Minneapolis are behaving as you suggest is the right way, and joining in overlapping groups to avoid ICE and protect group members by solidarity. I’ve only read this on Facebook, in long posts, and I so hope it’s true.
On Netflix there is a really interesting documentary called ‘Join or Die’.
It is about the work of an American academic called Robert Putnam who wrote a book called ‘Bowling Alone’ and the decline of associations and clubs in the U.S.
He saw these clubs and associations (even unions) as social capital. Putnam is not the first American to have an appreciation of ‘social capital’ – L J Hanifa (1916), Jane Jacobs (urban studies guru) and the sociologist James Coleman, Glenn Loury (1974) and his work on racial inequality all recognised it.
One of the functions of the architecture of ‘social capital’ is that it enables people’s behaviour to be seen and ‘policed’ by others. Maybe the word ‘policed’ is too strong, but essentially groups ‘regulate’ behaviours, encourage (generalised) reciprocity in kind in the form of behaviours and ideas, promoted tolerance and co-operation through social networks. these social networks in the U.S. – from churches, bowling clubs, mosques and synagogues are all in trouble.
Documentaries like this prove that the U.S. is not just an exclusively Reaganite/Randian kingdom – that there are dissenting voices – and that is a relief and a cause for hope. And – yes – associations can be used to reinforce the bad – the gun and anti-abortion lobby in the U.S. and hunting lobby in the UK for example.
But the social capital concept and its ability to regulate behaviour is the big take away for me here. It says that when people and even groups become isolated, the risk is that what they are up to is simply unseen and not open to challenge or involvement. But also in isolating themselves, those isolating lose their inhibition for frankly, bad behaviour toward others
This social capital idea has huge implications for regenerating politics – combatting cosy sofa politics and lobbying by vested interests, even the Privy Council – all of this needs more social capital added to it – it could be a major fulcrum from which to get the politics of care launched too. Re-socialising politics – re-connecting democracy. And it comes from America – apparently.
I agree that this is vital: it is in these associations that a great deal of value happens. They could be transformational.
Richard, thanks for expressing our current situation so clearly. I’m an old Greenham Common woman, 6 arrests, kicked and beaten many times by “lawkeepers”. We won, though. Even got name checked by Gorbachev, who said we inspired him. Also by Thatcher- the “Greenham Factor”, etc. My phone was tapped, etc, the usual stuff designed to frighten. It didn’t work. We knew it was vital to be completely non violent and remained so through years of provocation. We never stopped singing. We lived in tents and benders on the ground, harassed by locals, evicted constantly, but we had a purpose. We knew we were on the side of right. I lost friends who couldn’t/wouldn’t engage or help through fear. I’m seeing the same again now. My message is simple- non violent, repeated community action works. Seems like America is remembering its civil rights history and it’s both heartbreaking and inspiring to see. When you take part in something bigger than yourself, the fear melts. Take heart, remember the Bridge at Selma, MLK, etc- peaceful action is powerful and joyous. Rest in peace, Renee Good. We have a huge candle lit here for her, at the base is a piece of the Greenham fence, liberated by my trusty bolt cutters. We will not surrender. Thanks for re- inspiring me today. Onwards! Clare Higgins.
Many thanks for your inspiration, and example, Clare.
Inspiring history Clare. But apparently for the first time since the Greenham missiles were banished, we now once again have US nuclear weapons back on our soil.
It’s nothing new though. As Frank Zappa and the Mothers sang in 1966:
Well I’m about to get sick
From watchin’ my TV
Been checkin’ out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it’s gonna change, my friends
Is anybody’s guess
So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Vietnam was grim…
[…] Cross-posted from Richard Murphy’s blog […]
Following PSR’s comments about the documentary ‘Join or Die’ on Netflix, I watched it last night. So very good and thought-provoking and looked at through the lens of my own experience, I see the truth of it. Puttnam suggested that an effective way to reduce crime in a neighbourhood might not be to increase policing but simply to know the first names of ten of your neighbours and to speak to them. And once you know them a little you do more for each other – the domestic politics of care?
I know a lot of mmy neighbours.
And the post people.
And some delivery drivers.
And many baristas.
I tak to people.
It helps.
Richard, I think there is a deeper structural shift beneath what you describe — something that explains the fear, the disorientation and the sense that the world is slipping out of its old shape.
It feels as if we are living through the end of an era. The economic model that has dominated the West for forty years has reached the limits of what it can extract. Neoliberalism has taken wages, housing, public services, social capital and community resilience as far as they can go. There is nothing left to strip‑mine, and people can sense the exhaustion of the system even if they cannot always articulate it. That alone creates anxiety.
But unlike the last major transition in the 1970s, this one is unfolding in a world saturated with social media. Every shock is amplified, accelerated and algorithmically magnified. People are not just frightened; they are overwhelmed. The human nervous system was never designed to absorb a rolling global crisis in real time. The result is a population that feels permanently destabilised.
Into that vacuum, the opportunists moved first. They thrive in chaos, insecurity and grievance. They understand how to weaponise fear and how to exploit the collapse of shared reality. They seized the initiative while those who believe in care, solidarity and democratic norms were still assuming the old rules applied. The benevolent forces have been caught behind the curve, still speaking the language of institutions and civility while the terrain has shifted to meaning, identity and psychological security.
Add to this the insecurity created by rapid technological change — especially AI — and you have a society where people feel materially poorer, socially abandoned and existentially unsure of their place in the world. I live in one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries on earth, and yet my area has been left in managed decline for a quarter of a century. That is not a personal misfortune; it is a systemic indictment.
So yes, meaning matters. Care matters. Non‑violent resistance matters. But we also need to name the scale of the transition we are living through. Without understanding that the old settlement is collapsing, we risk mistaking symptoms for causes. Your call for meaning is essential — but it must sit alongside a clear-eyed recognition that we are navigating the breakdown of an entire political‑economic order.
Accepted
It’s fascinating and informative to read the responses here. Much to absorb, and informed analysis of our current situation is always helpful and thought provoking. However, for me, the rock bottom reality has never changed, which is that sustained, non violent peaceful protest has always been a crucial factor in practically achieving real change. Current research confirms that the tipping point for real political / societal change is just 3.5 percent of a population engaged in prolonged, nonviolent action, and that non violent protest is twice as likely as violent protest to bring about change. MLK knew that it works, which is the whole point. I’m hearing quite a lot of defeatism lately, which for me is the real enemy. I learned three invaluable truths early on when I started putting my body in front of police/army. The first was to never comply in advance. The second was to never react to being punched, kicked, etc, because if I had, I would immediately have become like my attacker. The third was realising I wasn’t alone, that the frightened stranger sitting next to me was a part of me, indivisible. We quoted the last verse of “ The Masque Of Anarchy” a lot, and it still inspires me to action.
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many- they are few.
Thanks, PB Shelley. Despair is compliance, and it isn’t helpful. Be one of the 3.5 percent instead. America is beginning to wake up and mobilize, and it’s very good at it. Iranians are not complying. It’s heartening and inspiring. Hold fast! Clare H.