My attempt at blogging about politics - this could make no sense, forgive me - I'm new at this stuff.
Ever since the run up to the recent election, I've been trying to improve my knowledge on politics, mainly UK politics, I felt embarrassed that I couldn't hold a proper conversation about something that I've learned is so important to each and every one of us, and the future of absolutely everyone and everything.
I have always been interested in philosophy, I was never religious but I wanted to understand 'the meaning of life' or whatever, I wanted to stop myself from being scared of death, to get the most out of life. I remember when I was young sitting at the dinner table chatting to my family and suddenly realising that I was actually dying at that point, saying something like "so we're all getting closer to death every second" and being so stunned and scared by this prospect. I discovered that's why a lot of people follow religion, they need faith in something to have a purpose, to feel safe and secure and to have a reason to be good, and to have hope when things go wrong. Often people go off the rails if they don't see any point or meaning. I couldn't grasp the concept of God, or as I was taught it at least - the Creator. I was always more drawn to the Big Bang theory, evolution, science - although at school I was useless at science. I read the book, 'The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time', I actually posted about it on my blog back in 2010. I was comfortable with the idea of dying and my energy being absorbed into the universe, as the boy in the book puts it:
"What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now..."
I listened to some of Alan Watts' lectures, and read some Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, D.H. Lawrence... I suppose they would be bohemian types - some of their work influenced my perspective on life, all before I learned much about politics. So I had a base if you like, I began to feel like we are all part of something much bigger than our human society, yet that rules us all. We are alive in our consciousness for a short while, it's a great blessing in itself, yet so many people go through so much pain, it's so depressing. I believe that ideally those of us who are privileged really ought to share our good fortune with less fortunate beings, and encourage them to be more engaged, we should all be able to enjoy the ride.
Previously I had never voted. I'd never really been interested in politics, I felt completely disconnected and uninterested. My early realisations were:
1. I didn't fully agree with any of the parties' manifestos; I was under the assumption that no matter which party were in charge of running the country, there would always be groups of people in society who felt mistreated, there is no way everyone could agree and be happy.
2. There are so many aspects to it; we hear about it so often - the party currently in power having to fix the damage from previous years. We very rarely know the truth of who's to blame, and our opinions can often be distorted by those we should be able to trust, giving biased accounts of happenings.
3. The only possible saving grace would be to have a diverse government who collectively understand and have compassion for the lives and needs of all people, the planet, and everything else. Educated leaders who each had a unique perspective, coming from differing backgrounds. Then I thought, but that is why there is such mayhem in government, because many of these MP's have different views yet don't have the capacity to try to understand things from an alternative perspective or the ability to compromise fairly. It takes them so long to come to any agreement on important issues, it seems to take years to change broken systems.
4. A statement I heard quite often that I wanted to learn more about before jumping on the bandwagon: "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"
Dara and I would chat about these things, both being liberals and not really knowing which party we should support.
Other than conversing with people, Youtube has been my main source of educating myself, firstly watching people such as Akala, the Artist Taxi Driver, Russel Brand, Frankie Boyle, Stewart Lee. All seemingly angry with the government, certainly opposing the Convervative manifesto. Listening to their views, I felt drawn to the left. I couldn't quite get my head around the injustice and lack of compassion for people lower down in society, under the current system. Particularly the unbalance of government spending - how can these people on one end be getting paid way more than they could possibly need to live comfortably even when in most cases they have been born into money, sure they may have worked hard but more often than not it was because their parents could afford the best education, therefore giving them that platform. While on the opposite end, less privileged people who may not have been given many opportunities, have had many battles to face throughout their lives, even those with disabilities, are all seemingly being categorised as scroungers and unable to access even the bare minimum financial support from their government, leading them into lives of destitute rather than prosperity. It seems as though if you are born into a middle to upper class family you are likely to live a life of prosperity, wealth and success, whereas if you're born into a lower working class or poor family, you are highly unlikely to escape that category. It doesn't seem right that your life can be planned in that way before you're even born.
David Cameron is always saying "we stand for working people" in other words "we don't stand for scroungers", but they are not tackling the issue of 'benefit scrounging' in the right way. So many people are being forced into that category and not given any support. It seems to be so categorical, there isn't enough focus on rehabilitation. People need to be more engaged, encouraged and given better resources to lead a more positive and productive lifestyle. It seems to be so much about money, we need more compassion and education to spend the money in the right way. You can't just tell people that they need to change their lifestyle and turn their worlds upside down in the aim that they will one day find a balance and not need government help. People need real support, access to opportunities to give something back and be engaged with society.
Rehabilitation is a word that I find myself using quite often. I believe that we are all born pure, sure we may have certain traits built into us, but we can all grow into something good, given that we can access to the right opportunities and resources. Likewise we are all capable of being bad, if we are drawn down those paths. We come to many crossroads in our lives where we can go off track, things can go terribly wrong, we can be lead into unhealthy, soul destroying situations. But I firmly believe that with the right resources, compassion, time and love - we can all overcome these troubles and be rehabilitated to our original form but with wisdom gained by learning from our experiences. Often we hear people saying 'find God', I believe this translates into finding peace and love within ourselves, reconfiguring our lives.
I recently went to Budapest, I learned more about Communism while I was there. More recently I watched a Socialism debate at Oxford University, called 'Does Socialism work'. My two favourite speakers were Jeremy Corbyn on the 'yes' side and Daniel Hannan on the 'no' side. It was a very interesting debate. Daniel argues that fascism emerges from socialism, which leads to communism, referring to the failing communist regimes we've seen in the past, similar to what I had learned about in Hungary. Jeremy talks about the principles of a communal health service and those socialist concepts, the evils of free market capitalism, access to decent housing and decent education for everyone. Daniel talks about the desire for material improvement being fundamental in human nature. Jeremy talks about eliminating poverty and injustice while Daniel believes that the 6 billion people in this world who can't afford the cars and dishwashers, WILL be raised to a higher standard of living in the future when free exchange, specialisation and comparative advantage run their course. It's difficult to take either side because you can see where they are both coming from. Two very passionate and intelligent speakers. We need to keep both sides in mind and try to meet somewhere in the middle, compromise reflects democracy. Perhaps Daniel is right that more and more people will be raised to a higher standard of living in the future, but Jeremy is right in that action needs to be taken NOW to help these people in poverty and suffering injustice.
Is this really how it is?
Is this the morbid alternative?
Ultimately there will never be complete fairness and equality in our species, as Daniel Hannan says: "Socialism and capitalism are matrices, they are economic systems within which people can be generous or greedy, they can be selfish or altruistic."
Capitalism is really run by cartels and corporations but ultimately that's always going to be the case. In history we've seen that communism was run by criminals and greed ridden businesses too and civilians ended up much worse. We need to find a way to distribute money more fairly without exploiting anybody. We need to find a way to reduce greed and the desire for fast and destructive development. We need to show Capitalist leaders how people are being failed by their system, and work hard to introduce innovative ways of engaging these failed people with society, encouraging an egalitarian system where everyone is given the compassion and financial support that they need, no more and no less.
I felt a lot more against, or rather - unable to understand the Conservatives before listening to Daniel Hannan. Many people I know voted Conservative, a large portion of the population voted them in, they must have had their reasons to do so, it's unproductive to simply ignore that fact. My first thoughts still apply, except I know have a better understanding of the statement "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". I still don't feel as though I would support either the Conservatives or Labour, however I now feel that no matter who's in power, we will still have battles to face, these need to be fought within communities, we need to focus our energy on making small changes. Creating a different world by these many small operations. We will always have to work hard as individuals and within our communities to create a positive impact on the world in whatever way possible depending on the resources available to us.
We have a voice now more than ever; with the powers of social media, the widespread media attention on petitions that normal people set-up to make changes in the world via platforms such as change.org, easier access to alternative news sources such as Private Eye, Huffington Post, Youtube, bloggers. More and more young people are becoming engaged with politics. If we continue to educate ourselves and others, avoiding stirring up anger by only displaying our biased views, keeping conversations open by looking at things from different perspectives, developing our knowledge and sparking interest in other people, rather than constantly battling against the system, we can actually create a positive impact on society. We can shape the future. Let's not settle on just complaining about what we think is wrong with the world, lets also seek possible solutions and promote them.
On a less serious note:
“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.”
