The Age of "Mini" Revolutions
In the last post the subject was raised whether average citizens in the affluent West, and in Canada itself, were actually exercised enough to stage a revolution within civil society powerful enough to press the political class into dealing effectively with our greatest challenges – climate change, unemployment/underemployment, gender pay equity, etc. We can’t know the answer to that until it actually happens, but we do witness numerous groups of active citizens fighting for this cause or that and it is clear that their message is pertinent and their commitment unquestioned.
Such gatherings of activist citizens and organizations most often fail to meet with the success they had hoped for, mostly due to government intransigenceor citizen apathy, and it can be disheartening.
Yet another possibility needs to be raised and discussed: the affluent West has many mini-revolutions sparked by interest groups but no one great revolution capable of moving society forward in history. In a phrase: we are stuck and that history is passing us by. For many, it appears impossible to energize general society to the level required to get concrete action on files that really matter. Put in the language used in the last post, if our societies have become stationary in what was supposed to be the path to progress, can the special interest and identity groups actually bring about the change they seek when they can’t get the majority of Canadians to join them in the effort?
It’s a necessary question to ask because, in truth, it is what we have. Thomas Jefferson believed that citizens were actually happier when fighting to win their rights rather than merely protecting them. There is historic precedence for this, even in Canada, where the memories of World War Two and the collective effort of Canadians following that conflict to build a better life for themselves and their kids have not yet fully faded from memory.
Was Jefferson right? Is part of our general malaise, our season of discontent, more prevalent because we have lost the will to fight for society and not just to protect our individual interests? If citizens express difficulty in believing in their institutions, their communities, or even in one another, what then are those things things bigger than themselves that can call them to collective action? Studies remind us that poor often fail to vote or organize because they don’t trust the systems anymore. Could that also be true of the middle-class? Might it be that we aren’t coming together in a velvet revolution because we actually don’t believe the system cares about us? Do we even care enough at all?
This lies at the root of the populism waves spreading across the globe. But most of those protest movement don’t carry the majority of the citizens along with them. They are special interests seeking justice or perhaps even just the opportunity to vent and get angry – all this while the majority of the citizenry never getting involved in the fight for change.
If all this is true - what Adam Smith alluded to when writing that once a capitalist society becomes static and no longer can muster the collective energy to alter their fate - then what are we to make of ourselves. Is this best we can do is merely a number of well-intentioned “mini” revolutions but nothing where all that comes together? It actually seems that this might be the case and, if it is, history is in the process of ignoring us.
Researchers remind us that when the human brain doesn’t learn through direct interaction with the challenges of life itself then it loses its ability to overcome, to adapt and move forward along the evolutionary road. It instead concentrates on its own narrow world – the place of the self above all else – and can no longer be roused to greater exploits with others.
Those of us living in countries with glorious and adventurous histories like France, Britain, Canada and the United States have fulfilled much of Jefferson’s vision for an enlightened humanity, a collective citizenry. But we are now mired in our own inabilities to lift ourselves to change our fate, to become hungry again, to bend the powers of the wealthy elite and the governing powers to the greatest aspirations of our humanity. What happens when the tools of revolution, such as technology, are used only for our own comforts?
Some will respond to these thoughts by pointing to this group or that association working hard to create change and they are right to do so. It’s just that the rest of us – the great majority – aren’t. Mini-revolutions surround us, frequently isolated from themselves, but still our great challenges remain.
My entire adult life, like those of millions of others, has been lived out in words of promise and of human potential. But I now stand at the gateway of a new era where people no longer have the compunction to gather, to dream, or even to vote in significant enough numbers to grasp that future they still believe in. In the process of sidestepping history, we have given away our privileged position to keep the evolution of the human species moving forward. This is serious stuff calling for serious citizens to join together and pick up the mantle. We continue to wait for that moment.