Alternative Editorial: Up For It
Last week we made a bold statement of intent. In the age of mass waking-up of every conceivable kind, The Alternative UK holds the space for a new politics of the people. While that may sound like a cliché to some – after all, people power has been evoked for decades – at A/UK, we see within it a very new, emergent idea of what ‘the people’ means.
Before we share our thoughts here, maybe take a moment to ask yourself - what image do you get in your head when you think about ‘the people’? Do you imagine crowds of people out there somewhere? Are they anonymous and even unknowable to you? Do you get feelings of anxiety or something warmer – compassion, maybe? A desire to help and support those you know have been left out of the benefits and advances of modern society?
Or maybe you feel an instinctual sense of belonging, as in we the people, or my people? And with that, a sense of excitement at the idea that the tools and practices of rising up are so free and available? When you see a new movement grab the headlines – Sun Rise Youth of Hong Kong or Extinction Rebellion for example – do you think, “Finally! Is the cavalry coming?”
This is not a test: those are just polarised caricatures of two ends of the spectrum. No doubt most of us experience a bit of both of those descriptions – after all, we are in the midst of a revolution of connectivity and we are all finding our feet. What is a friend, what is a follower, where is my tribe?
What is consistently worrying however, is that our mainstream news carries too many suggestions that the people are an unmanageable, unpredictable crowd that needs to be kept at arms-length. (This is of course a fear expressed throughout the historical record.) They are to be controlled or at least constantly nudged into predictable behaviour.
Because… what? If left to their own devices, they will ruin everything? It’s painful to reflect that no-one could have done a worse job than bring the planet to the point of extinction as our current regimes have done.
Even where there is plenty of love and care for the people, the mainstream will carry the narrative that they or we the majority are powerless. And of course there is plenty of truth in this. Within a concept of UK democracy where the people are only required to vote every five years, it may feel powerless.
Particularly if that vote hands over every decision about our socio-political-economic future to, what is still in the UK, one of two acutely competing parties. As soon as the results are announced, roughly half the population feels it’s game over for another five years. Even those that chose the winning party have no more role to play.
Yet, where does that leave us in relation to our daily lives? When only 2% of the people join political parties it may be true to say that not many concern themselves with this idea of power. That they are content to let politicians make the big decisions about public life. They are more attentive to their personal and social lives where they are free to make the decisions that affect them directly.
But is that true? What kind of freedom is that, when the cultures and structures of the land you live in are stuck in an old hierarchy of wealth? When those that were landowners in previous centuries are still running everything, skewing capital in their own favour? With little or no regard for the health of the planet we depend upon, or the majority of its inhabitants?
Are we blissfully free of responsibility, when the very possibility of human extinction hangs in the balance over the next ten years? When, as David Attenborough so movingly describes it, we have the chance to save ourselves but are given no avenue to make that choice?
When The Alternative UK political platform was initiated in March 2017, we took on the task of pointing at the innumerable solutions to our multiple crises out there that don’t get covered by the mainstream media. This steady flow of content and perspectives offers quite a different story about our potential for survival at every level.
To some that may sound naïve because, after all, none of these solutions can make a difference on their own – they have to be smartly integrated into a bigger and wider system of solutions that work together to make a difference. It’s like all the ingredients of a cake not tasting that good, until they are correctly blended and given the right conditions to rise together.
For that reason the second function of A/UK has been to join the dots between these solutions to show the slowly emerging building blocks of system change. This is not yet wholly visible. Collectively, we are somewhat like the blind men and the elephant: trying to describe something huge, by means of exchanging a variety of perspectives. What we have understood, so far at least, is that understanding the complex needs of human beings is directly connected to the way we act upon the planet.
When we see ourselves as parts of a machine, simply fulfilling tasks to deliver material needs, we treat the planet as if it would, too, function predictably. Why shouldn’t the earth keep providing for our needs as consistently as a car, if maintained periodically, continues to transport us? But we know now that humans have complex emotional and psychological needs that, when ignored, cause all sorts of eruptions in society. In the same way, our ignorance of the complex needs of a living planet have caused its slow – now rapidly accelerating - destruction.
But shouldn’t our shared knowledge of all this more recent understanding - of how and why we are in the state we’re in - make all the difference to the outcomes for people and planet? After all, haven’t we been in a revolution of information and access to tools for personal, social and planetary for over twenty years now – since the birth of the world wide web?
Sure, in the 60s when we had a popular renaissance of human potential, we had much less powerful and pervasive means of organising ourselves effectively. But isn’t every one of us capable, today, of playing a significant part in pulling together—changing our collective behaviour to put right the mistakes of the past? Well, not yet. Most of us are still, relatively, caught up in the trance of late capitalism, believing that we can buy (or techno-fix) our way out of this problem.
Key to the unfolding of this potential is a concept of the people as waking up to a new era of individual and shared agency. Rather than a forceful revolution that ‘takes down’ previous authorities with nothing to replace them, this moment offers the acceleration of our own natural development as citizens. The people no longer need to depend upon smaller groups of career politicians to set the agenda from on high. We are ready to take part in decision making – to use our own intelligence to feed a more complex system of governance.
Citizen Action Networks are moving into visibility as a response to this kind of readiness. For the most part they are tentative and gradual precisely because they are based on trust-centered tools and practices – they can’t be hurried. However, once a series of CANs are fully formed, others will be able to see better how the pieces hang together, flexibly and fluidly. And how a rich, evolving tech system of deliberation and decision making will serve the people well, in all their diversity of culture and different forms of agency.
Can you see what is emerging here? Are you ready to support, participate or co-create what we see? Not only the beginning of a whole new way of being powerful, and political, in the 21st century? But also as the best bet of harnessing our collective energies to step up to the crises we face?
If so, get ready to join us next week as we pull away from the past and move into a new era of people power.