For over a decade I have been writing and blogging about the weaknesses in our state structures, the need to reform and the rough and tumble of politics generally. The underlying core of Western society, its ambitions and aspirations remained constant. We were so pleased with the way we were, that we even sought to impose our ways on others. This led to a remarkable string of failed states and ungoverned spaces.
Social media is now awash with opinion about every facet of political, personal, family and emotional life. Brexit, Covid and Climate Change are between them delivering hammer blows to the attitudes, structures and norms of everything that went before. Yet behind the priorities of how, where, when, for whom and how much, there is a new dawn breaking. It is one of remarkable self-realisation and empowerment. It is this.
You are not your job, or your car, or your home. You are not your new kitchen, nor your social status. You, your happiness and your sense of place in the universe has nothing to do with any of these things. It is not about faith, or religion, or belonging to something.
It is about the unique miracle of the whole you as a person, an individual part of a great interdependent tapestry of conscious life, the future of all of which now depends on the priorities we apply to life now. And as we search for the best choices over issues about which a few months ago we knew little to nothing, we must accept one fundamental truth. There are millions of questions challenging the onward progress of life, but before you can help find the answers, you must first find yourself. Because the future is one not about having. It is about being.
It is also a future about having less and sharing more. Of less new and more used. Because vast recourses will be needed to mitigate climate change and become carbon neutral, creating new industries and more enlightened values. There will have to be less, a lot less, greed and fairer rewards for the millions whose daily efforts keep the state, upon which we all depend for the essentials of life, running smoothly. This will require a huge increase in investment to correct years of cuts and neglect.
In the end we will need a new appreciation of the purpose and value of the state, as the institution of civilisation which enables us collectively to survive and prosper. With it will come a new and enlightened state of mind. With that will come the understanding that the only way the individual can be truly free, is for each to work together for the common good of all.