On Society

As a spiritual thinker I have a different take on what it means to be human, let alone what it means to live and interact together, and I have been toying with giving that thinking an airing to see what happens. Let’s start here.

What is society?

There are many ways to look at this word, but I want to strip it down to the basics and remove it from anything that has rules associated that may or may not be correct. Here goes:

Society is each one of us

Very basic I know, but together what we do or do not do, say or don’t say, believe in or don’t believe in, constructs the world around us. It may seem reasonable due to centuries old learning to carry a number of prejudices in your heart, from whose is the best god, to which genders are right, which gender has supremacy, and which colour or nationality rules the world. It’s all nonsense.

In the west we hear all the time that we rule the world, we simply don’t. America is not the leader of the free world, we are all democracies and we lead ourselves only. We hear that we all think the same thing, are against the same people, and have the same prejudices. It physically hurts that the people of Gaza, the Lebanon, and so on think we don’t care because we’re white and western.

In fact we’re not white we’re multicultural. The majority of the British care a great deal about the children of this world and other innocents. My grandparents generation lived through two world wars, my parents lived through one. So my generation at least – the 60s – are well aware of the costs of war. We may not have experienced the horror but we’ve known people who have. Whose stories were real. When we see other countries torn apart we can empathise.

Our governments may decide to support certain nations, but if they asked us things would change and rapidly. We have a great deal of sympathy when anyone is hurt for any reason, but I know that our government is doing things that a large number of us don’t agree with. It’s heart breaking and infuriating. Democracy allows you a moment of power for 30 seconds every five years or so. Apart from that it’s tolerate and shut up.

If you read this never think that the majority of the English feel they’re any better than anyone, even if you’re Scots, Welsh, or Irish. That’s a gentle smile at old barriers on our tiny island. We don’t, we don’t think about these things. We are generally rather boring, tied to our working lives, have a few hours in the evening and weekend with family, friends, or maybe the book or TV, then we do it all again. That’s if we’re not frantically cleaning the house and shopping for food.

The vast majority are not wealthy, our systems are a mess, our NHS is breaking from the inside, our water is polluted, people can’t afford to feed pets anymore let alone take them to a vet, and yet we are still better off than many countries and we know and appreciate that.

I just want to bust the idea wide open that what we think we know is often wrong

I am absolutely certain that in truth I know very little about your country, and probably only a bit more about the truth of my own. But if we started to talk, to share, to ask, could we between us take the power back from the powers and be a force to create a better society for everyone, everywhere? One with no bombs, no guns, no terrorism, and no war. No poverty, no famine, no floods, and plenty of international help when the climate strikes back.

I think we could if we just talked. But to do this we need to address our own societies and our power to change them.

You can blame the politicians, but in fact it’s us. They don’t run through streets with Zombie Knives, the public do. They don’t tend to rape, abuse, torture, steal, cheat, we do. They don’t often avoid tax like the wealthy might, but not all the wealthy of course.

Our politicians are far from perfect as our current, new, top team seem hell bent on proving, but they don’t do the really bad stuff that tears our society apart. They don’t tend to be prejudiced because they need every vote and to serve every area of society.

Yes the powers need to clean their act up, but so do we. First we have to stop blaming them for everything. Try to please 67 million people at once and you will fail. Raise taxes and you will be voted out. We don’t want to pay more tax but we do want more money spent on our services. There is no way that can work and we should know that. However, the flip side is that governments waste too much. So if they deal with that, then maybe we won’t mind being more helpful.

It is a two-way street, and we’re in the other lane.

I wonder how this theme will go? We will find out. I promise to keep Clarence and Mildred going to alleviate the tedium.

Deb xx

But is it right to find thinking about our societies and our role within them tedious? Now there’s an interesting question. As you may imagine, I think we need to think, whether we want to or not, if we want a better world.