Towards the Noise

ARE CANADIANS STILL A BIG PICTURE PEOPLE? To answer that properly we would have to drill down to where our greatest aspirations reside. And when we do that we discover some hope. At least generally, citizens across the country still affirm their beliefs that they desire their country to practice a peaceful influence in the world, to be more tolerant, to eliminate child poverty, to become a more environmentally sustainable place, to respect our veterans, and to always be ready to lead in innovation and change.And yet we’ve reached the stage in our national life where we no longer trust our leaders at all levels – political or corporate – to guarantee that we can, in fact, retain these values we believe in. To then say it will have to be up to us as citizens to manage environmental reform, healthcare, poverty reduction, post-secondary education levels, and research, might sound fitting, but no modern and complex society can be managed from such an individualistic template. We require systems change, lots of it, and for that we require organizations as vast and as value-driven as our dreams. This is where citizens can be most effective, as advocates for their children, their future, and their country. And if they are going to raise their voice and press the issues, then many of them are going to have to turn around and head back to the problems.When Michelle Obama was announced to speak at Oberlin College (Ohio), some groused that they wished it had been her husband instead. They quickly ate their words. From her opening sentence the First Lady owned the podium, the platform, and the audience. Refusing to mince her words, she encouraged the new graduates to refrain from making excuses for inaction and to get involved in the most pressing issues of their generation.She outwardly acknowledged the gridlock and partisanship that characterized the politics of the day and acknowledging that they might wish to, “recreate what you had here in Oberlin – to find a community of like-minded folks and work with them on causes you care about, and just tune out all the noise.” The problem is, naturally enough, that the big issues mentioned above are what almost all of us believe in, and we can make change unless we ground ourselves in that commonality.And so Michelle Obama honed in on their aspirations:

“But today I want you to do just the opposite. I want to suggest that … you need to run to, and not away, from the noise. I want to urge you to actively seek out the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find. Because so often, throughout our history, those have been the places where progress really happens – the places where minds are changed, lives transformed, where our great story unfolds … This is how democracy operates. It is loud and messy, and it’s not particularly warm and fuzzy.”

That’s just the problem though, isn’t it? We want the warm and fuzzy, but can’t get it in today’s politics because of the meanness of it all, and so we seek the comfort of the like-minded. But policy can never change if we merely have our own camp meetings. Think of Tommy Douglas and his willingness to enter the lion’s den of politics, to partner with those he often disagreed with, and come out of it all with a shared program for national healthcare.In her speech, Michelle Obama talked of how Martin Luther King Jr., not wanting to be a politician himself, nevertheless went to state capitals and to Washington D. C. to seek the justice he required. Yet he refused to go alone, bringing people from various communities, many of whom were suspicious of one another, to make a collective appeal. Talk about messy – they endured stones, bottles, firehoses, taunts, police brutality, and even death, all for the sake of a dream. Yet the sheer numbers of those citizens who showed up were enough to overcome the gridlock and inaction that so characterized previous governments.We might be fed up with politics, and we might despair of ever truly changing the political structure itself, but rather than waiting for that to happen, or merely voting for the next big thing, we must come together and do so in sufficient numbers to truly bring the change we seek. In order to effectively run towards the noise we first have to make our own collective sound of anguish, hope, and resolve to change our own world and the politics that is keeping us from it. The enemy isn’t politics, for it is the only medium from which we can enact the reform and renaissance we seek. Our true foe is our unwillingness to come together as communities into one community, as voice into one voice, and as parts of a nation into one nation. Time to bring out the megaphone and start walking towards the fire.