Sodium Haze has been very quiet of late. I have been pondering how (and if) to proceed.
As a minor aggregator of independent articles and news I am subscribed to many social media feeds and blogs. Recently I have become very aware of the impact that has on my health – primarily my spiritual health.
I cannot continue to passively view the ceaseless hatred and anger being directed towards a few pantomime villains that are in government – neither do I wish to participate. I can’t carry on because it depresses my spirit and leaves me feeling bereft of hope – and I don’t want to carry on because its stupid in very many ways.
If our bloody human history tells us anything, it is that hatred and anger are dynamics that feed on themselves – in the end, after all the horror and the fighting of war and conflict exhausts us – we have to search for reconciliation, trust and love.
There are of course some damaged people that can never be reached in this way – but the vast majority of our species is seeking a just peaceful ordinary life and it is this moral majority that holds ultimate power in the world – when enough of us choose to prioritise human values, nothing can stand in our way.
It is with this in mind that I have come to see the blind fury of Facebook and the blogosphere towards this tory government as a trap and an obstacle to progress – the truth is, a hate filled climate suits those who rely on it to stay in power.
There is a reason why cynical manipulators in the media and politics set those with jobs against those without, why we demonise Muslims, are told to fear immigrants and even shamefully abuse the disabled and the sick for their misfortune. While everyone is running around hating and fearing everyone else, no climate of moral certainty can exist – we are confused and fragmented, we cannot imagine a better future much less demand it.
The political climate in the UK (and elsewhere) has been dumbed down and pumped full of crass tub-thumping – we are told this is the only way to ‘win’ the game of democracy these days, but in reality we all lose.
Too many of the supporters of the main political parties treat politics like a football match – with sets of fans who hate eachother for reasons most have forgotten or that have very little connection with the reality of what any of the teams are doing. This hatred is encouraged and fanned by the mainstream media because it precludes meaningful political debate and secures blind loyalty to people who wear the colours of political conviction but lack any moral centre.
Thus the overall climate in the UK is one of mutual suspicion, loathing and contempt – there is simply no space to examine what we might have in common or more importantly the truth – all that matters is that our team wins and that the other lot loses, so we can have our justified vengeance and enjoy a victors swagger.
What supporters of all political ‘teams’ in the UK need to realise is that we have two common enemies who work tirelessly against our interest – corporate power and the cult of neoliberal economics.
I will not go on to list the sins and abuses of corporate power – how they have captured democracy, the media and threaten our very future as a species – that has been done elsewhere and few in the muddy trenches of British political life are minded to listen anyway.
What I do want to say is that if we are ever to roll back the insidious and creeping dominance of corporate power into our lives we will need more than outraged posts on Facebook putting pictures of Iain Duncan Smith in a noose etc.
In truth the modern day politician is as much a puppet in the rotten prosecution of politics as we are. Its true they can grab money, a degree of fame and some small power – but it is the corporate media that defines the boundaries of permissible debate and decides for the most part who wins and who loses.
It is the corporate media – wholly owned and paid for by an elite oligarchy that has the real power. The endless tide of commercial advertising sets out the limits of our dreams and fans insatiable desires. A captured news media then seeks to frame all debate within the narrowest of permissible spectrums.
I fear they have succeeded in creating a culture in which the finest values of our shared human aspiration and nature have been put in the dustbin, unwanted, ‘unworkable’ and irrelevant.
So if you really do despise the Tories (and I detest them as much as anyone) then we must realise that our anger must bring out the best in us – not the worst. Hatred and anger that just swirls endlessly around on social media is a wicked indulgence when it becomes an end in itself – all the more pathetic because the objects of our hate don’t care, in fact they provoke it deliberately, revel in it and count on it.
If we are to truly challenge the darkness that seems to deepen daily then we must lift our own horizons and the standard of our language and aspirations. Defeating the Tories must not be our goal – the advancement of future generations must be our dream, what gives our lives meaning and hope.
We must not get drawn into arguments that rely on numbers and GDP – we must not allow the shallow values of consumerism and neoliberalism to define who we are and what we crave.
Let us instead assert our finest values, the best of our humanity – and apply them to every situation we encounter. Lets share a positive vision for the kind of world we want to live in and insist that human values – not economic values – define our future.
Always remember that the politicians are but figureheads in the main – the corporate media is our real enemy and we must make every effort to drag political debate out of the Westminster bubble, out of the gutter and towards what we aspire to – not what billionaire media moguls want us to aspire to.
It won’t be easy – but arguments grounded in moral conviction and a positive vision for the future are very powerful things. It is articles like these that Sodium Haze will choose to host in future.
As OXFAM recently pointed out, governments are responsible for the enormous gap between rich and poor because they have chosen to serve corporate power at the expense of the people who have elected them. Another gift to the rich has been power which is being used to manage governments and markets to their benefit. The government also has responsibility for creating the hate you describe by making honest working people pay for the financial mess the banks have created through cruel forms of austerity that not only rescues the rich but actually makes them richer. Our taxes are supposed to be used to make our lives better through social services. They also have responsibility for the hate you describe and for the hatred others feel towards us by going into wars, selling more and more killing machines and spreading fear of desperate refugees such wars create. I think the electorate has a right to monitor it’s government’s actions and to take non-violent action when justified.
I agree entirely with your analysis – but to respond to venal behaviour with hatred is to play the game their way. Democracy lends legitimacy to corporate power – but it is very vulnerable to a determined moral backlash. We must transcend the hatred if we are ever to improve anything.
Absolutely right. Hatred might blow off steam but it gets us nowhere. We need new policies and we need to know how to get them across to the majority of the country.
No Tory government has ever been elected by the rich – they’re just aren’t enough of them. They depend on the deluded poor. And they have an effective machinery to delude them.
You were so close. When you figure out that Tories and Blairites actually value a lot of the same things as you, and that the Left has no monopoly on virtue, then you might realise there’s no point defining yourself by how much you ‘detest’ other people. Which I note you still do, even in this article. But then, if the Left doesn’t have that – what does it have?
It’s not easy. Either the reading all the bile and avoidable death and destruction, or the not hating people.
I have to take long breaks from both public social media and news on general. It’s heartbreaking to see the devastation that people will inflict or allow to be inflicted upon others. I’m often appalled by my fellow man.
And from that frustration it’s hard to not get angry. It’s hard to not want to wish that those who preach for death and destruction have the same. But yes, it needs to be done. In the same way that bad science, dodgy statistics etc should have no place in our campaign, we need to have a higher standard. Not in a pompous way, simply in a way that we’ll investigate the truth and make reasoned decisions based on that.