Everywhere you turn, whether print, electronic or web media, someone is reporting or commenting on underperformance; in education, public sector, business, industry, finance, politics, in fact every sphere of our existence. Such thoughts and vox pop contributions are now the norm of 21st Century society and the 24/7 media age. They are imbued with an aura, an attitude of blame – it’s all the fault of some other person, community, system, authority, political party, government, custom, culture, even law.
Is this where democracy has taken us? Not just that we all have the right to views and to make them known (even as I’m doing here), which we do. But that in taking that right (of expression), we forego the capacity to see and acknowledge our complicity in the society we have created? Behind the blame and excuses lies an apparent belief that “I’m not able to do … whatever I’m supposed to… because you are doing something to obstruct me in doing it”.
What about my own autonomy, that other right of freedom to choose? To choose to do the best I can with my little patch of sky (or blue marble under that sky)? My own integrity to know therefore and to say that “I have a part in this and my part will help make the rest work”. As one tiny cog in the wheel, which if it sees itself as a wedge risks stalling the whole machinery.
Think of the various health, equality, education, employment, religious, responsibility (social/corporate/political) conundrums we are faced with. Then top them all with the ultimate social paradox that we have contrived – the power that we give (away) to those we believe to be of power, the politicians and leaders in our communities. What is it with humans that we think others may know us better than we know ourselves and therefore give them the right to choose for us?
It then proves stranger still when, having given away the right to choose, and politicians and leaders dictate our existence, we descend into that blame game and all collude to wallow in our ever-present human condition.
Irony of ironies, and this is why humankind is so wonderful, there exists even in that condition, the capacity to choose to be different.
Integrity hasn’t become obsolete but it has kept a low profile recently while selfish democracy, based on selfish rights, rights that have no cognition of their co-dependence with others’ rights, has had its day. A resurgence is set to happen, surely? The relentless dramas, whether natural or human-made, that are besieging us barely a decade into the new century, do threaten and paralyse us. They also hold the potential to release the humanity and integrity our race possesses by sheer dint of having a ‘superior’ intellect. So called.
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