An age of chaos

I have been bat­tling to square the cir­cle for a year now. The in­san­ity that was Brexit de­pressed me so deeply, and this was sub­se­quently com­pounded by the coro­na­tion of Trump. What was going on?

Some­thing had to give, and it has. Fol­low­ing a seis­mic gen­eral elec­tion my old coun­try now tin­kers on the thresh­old of mon­u­men­tal, shud­der­ing changes, as in­deed does Cat­alo­nia.

No bad thing (I tell my fears), for all or­ders that have fi­nally come to the end of tol­er­ance will in­evitably fall. It is the wave sig­nal de­clin­ing and ris­ing across the line of life since time im­memo­r­ial. There is no cre­ation with­out chaos and we should not be afraid.

Yet cycli­cal ages of such far-reach­ing un­cer­tainty can paral­yse with fear of change, mak­ing one hold to the habits of the fa­mil­iar, how­ever bro­ken that order may be. Vested in­ter­ests sink their heels, throw stones.

Are you fol­low­ing the UK drama?

The pro­found ills and alarm­ing po­lar­iza­tion within the deeply dis-United King­dom, cur­rently an ex­tra­or­di­nary, com­pelling and dis­tress­ing fish bowl boil­ing with post-Brexit and now post-elec­tion un­cer­tain­ties, ex­pose many truths the wider world should heed.

From the self-harm that was the grossly ill-in­formed, un­worldly Brexit vote that stirred pu­trid mud from the bot­tom of the pond, we now are wit­ness­ing a na­tion wrestling with its con­science while try­ing not to drown. If that sounds wholly dis­as­trous it is not. Far from it.

The young peo­ple have found their voice, al­beit through a long bro­ken first-past-the-post vot­ing sys­tem. More and more peo­ple have had enough of the de­ceits, sound-bites and es­tab­lish­ment’s con­tempt. The grip of media barons with vested in­ter­ests is weak­en­ing as so­cial media surges. More women than ever are seek­ing elec­tion, and po­lit­i­cal multi-cul­tur­al­ism can flower so beau­ti­fully in the face of ugly jin­go­ism. From de­spair about my coun­try I have now found so many rea­sons to hope.

I re­sist think­ing in terms of po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances. I just know what I want. Namely… that from this chaotic time of evo­lu­tion we glob­ally, re­lent­lessly strive for peace, nur­ture com­mu­nity as well as self-re­liance through egal­i­tar­ian eco­nom­ics and grass­roots democ­racy; that we face up to the deep eco­log­i­cal and men­tal harm of suf­fo­cat­ing eco­nomic ob­ses­sions with pos­ses­sions and mat­ters su­per­fi­cial, that dis­con­nect us from real ful­fil­ments and cross-gen­er­a­tional life-sup­port of fam­ily and all-in­clu­sive com­mu­nity; that we un­der­stand the grav­ity of our role as guardians of our pre­cious, pre­car­i­ous planet and end the nu­clear and fos­sil fuel in­san­i­ties. Liv­ing here in the Pri­o­rat com­mu­nity has re­in­forced all of this.

I re­peat, the old order will re­sist, of course they will, with all their might, both here in Iberia and on the lit­tle is­land I come from, in equally fraught Amer­ica and around the world. But deep thought democ­racy and the will of the peo­ple must and will pre­vail, blessed as we all are with in an in­stinc­tive sense of com­mu­nity, de­cency and fair­ness.

May it do so peace­fully and in­clu­sively.

And if, like me, you are old enough to have had lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­er­cise the de­mo­c­ra­tic right, I hope you can de­bate and en­gage with the younger gen­er­a­tion to con­sider their needs and as­pi­ra­tions .