“We’re on the cusp of something special,” said one of the men on the TV.
It’s mysterious. It’s alluring. It leaves just enough to the imagination. Actually, it leaves everything to the imagination. John Key’s repeated election promise during the third leader’s debate on Wednesday night suggests a rosy future, a new era of prosperity and joy, where all dogs can buy takeaways at the hairdresser’s in Foxton. Who wouldn’t want to believe in that?
By contrast, David Cunliffe’s stance on child poverty was impassioned, but had the misfortune to point to some fundamentally uncomfortable truths; we currently kind of suck at looking after each other and sharing. It’s not pretty, or easy, to look societal failures in the face.
We hit this same paradox when we try and talk about climate change, or any of the myriad of violences we’re collectively inflicting on the more-than-human world. Isn’t it more ‘positive’ to ignore all this bad news? How much reality can we really be expected to put up with?
If you care about the ocean, or the health of rivers, or the land, or creatures, or people, or Life in general, you’ve probably been labelled all “doom and gloom” at least once in your life. Maybe you’re banned from talking about pandas at Christmas, or your friends have said “please, no more bad news!”
But who are the real doom and gloomers? I reckon that those who have so little faith in solutions that they can’t even bear to look at or discuss the problems, are the real authors of doom and gloom. The ones who charge ahead with business as usual, nothing to see here folks, back to work, just keep on keepin’ on. The plan is to continue with the plan.
To be able to examine a crisis, to enquire deeply into a problem, to dream and build solutions - to me these are not signs of doom and gloom. Being willing to talk about a problem means that at some level you have faith that it can be solved. You have hope. This is just as true for a relationship with another human as it is for our societal relationship with Earth.
We talk about these things, these scary things, these challenging things, not (hopefully) because we want everyone around us to be unhappy. We talk about them because we believe in something better, something healthier, and we believe in our collective power to make it happen. No problem was ever solved by pretending it didn’t exist.
The positive visions that inspire me aren’t the ones that pretend everything’s perfect. They’re the ones that care enough to look at the truth straight on, look at the messes and the hurts and the obstacles, and still believe in people, and believe in their ability to help build something better. It might have tears on its face, but THAT is real positivity. That kind of honest vision isn’t always easy - it takes the capacity to feel, and the humility to acknowledge when we’ve stuffed up. Unfortunately politics rewards neither.
And sometimes it’s hard work, feeling. Sometimes it seems like the only solution is to become a bit numb. But ultimately we’ll only create that “something special” when we can be fully open to what’s going on right now, and that means being honest about what’s not working. We know our approach to reducing emissions isn’t working. We know that the structures and customs and rules and myths that we’ve put in place are largely failing our ecosystems, and ourselves even. We’re in the Anthropocene and the age of ecocide. Do we have enough imagination and hope left to look these realities squarely in the face, feel the pain and still, still believe in something better?
I’m supposed to tell you that everything will be ok, that it will all be fine. There is plenty to make that convincing: human ingenuity, global climate movements gathering momentum, disruptive energy technologies, the crumbling of old power structures. But I don’t know for sure that it will all be fine. The reason looking at reality straight on is scary is that it’s uncertain what will happen.
Surely anything worth doing, anything really worth doing, is worth it no matter what happens. We can’t say that we’re going to succeed in realising a new story where we’re less abusive towards the world and each other, but we can say we’ll try. That’s optimism with some guts to it.
And that’s the real solution to doom and gloom, not an elusive promise of progress, that relies on tomorrow’s promises to distract us from the dysfunction of today.
Can anyone really claim we are on the cusp of something special when all we’re being promised is more of the same? No vision, no solutions, no need for action? Holding onto the status quo with white knuckles will not reward us or comfort us, it only shows a total lack of faith in our potential. When you hear politicians say that we should hold firm, I dare you to defy their lack of belief in what we’re really capable of.
This blog is part of the #election2014 series. The series discusses New Zealand politics and the policies and, sometimes, lack of them, of our political parties. We hope that it provokes a bit of debate.
Greenpeace is non-party political. We do not align ourselves with any political party and are committed to the principle of political independence. To maintain our independence, we don’t accept money from governments, corporations or political parties.