Alternative Editorial: Going to peace

“Peace”, by Jacob Lawrence (1956)

Are you easily scared? Are you the first person who, in a moment of crisis, says 'this could end very badly?' Maybe you don't recognise that moment as a fearful one, but a flash of insight into the dire reality of a situation out of control?

For the past ten years - maybe more, depending on your sensitivity - there have been a series of catastrophic scenarios of this kind competing for our attention. The most pernicious and slow-burn has been our growing clarity about the climate crisis. Once seen as an unprecedented but only slowly encroaching problem to do with holes in the ozone layer, global warming is now approaching its point of no return. While we have already lost 8 percent of animal species, the human species is now firmly in the firing line too.

But there have been other, shorter and sharper potential catastrophes presenting themselves. As we turned from the final days of the 20thC into the first of the 21st, we were alerted by governments the world over that there was a serious possibility of complete digital failure, as the clock struck midnight. This was known as the Y2K Millennium Bug:

The term Y2K had become shorthand for a problem stemming from the clash of the upcoming Year 2000 and the two-digit year format utilised by early coders to minimise use of computer memory, then an expensive commodity. If computers interpreted the “00” in 2000 as 1900, this could mean headaches ranging from wildly erroneous mortgage calculations to, some speculated, large-scale blackouts and infrastructure damage...Amid the uncertainty, some Americans stocked up on food, water and guns in anticipation of a computer-induced apocalypse.

Up to $100billion was spent in advance of the New Year in the US alone, but nerves were frayed right into the final hours of January 1st 2000 around the globe. Who reading this remembers their own response? How do we prepare for a truly unknown reality?

As we write, we acknowledge that in some parts of the world within a certain level of discourse, there’s a belief that the outbreak of war in the Middle East puts us in imminent danger of World War III, with the accompanying possibility of nuclear annihilation. Some of these harbingers are historians and diplomats who have inordinate amounts of knowledge about the dynamics of the region. Those of us reduced to reading about their fears are helpless in our ignorance and lack of agency. Yet we know we will be catastrophically effected, should they prove true.

How do we meet this moment? How can we process the information on offer and move into any kind of appropriate action? Doing nothing is not a neutral option: it’s a collusion with the reality unfolding. At the same time, protesting on the streets has increasingly unclear outcomes. Where there is unity among the crowds gathering, it is possible to register a clear alternative viewpoint to the government in charge. However when a public urgency is met by several different, even clashing viewpoints, it takes the onus of response away from those in power and hands it back to those marching. 

Suella Braverman’s tactic of labelling the huge demonstrations calling for a cease-fire in Gaza  ‘hate marches’ had a dual effect: it problematised peace and attracted extremists of all kinds. Amplified by the UK’s best selling paper, The Daily Mail, hate became an attractor of its own, actively generating more of the same - what might be called a politics of hate. It may have been surprising to many (it was to us) that enough politicians and news media could recognise and call out such behaviour to cause her dismissal from the front bench . 

As we write, all of the above describe discourses of fear invading our public space, in the form of news headlines and social media exploring infinite numbers of analyses—including conspiracy theories. Mostly they leave us in tharn, that evocative term for rabbits caught in the headlights. The stress is toxic to our bodies and causes tension in our relationships: anxiety dominates our conversations, causing depression on a society wide scale. 

Floods, heatwaves, terrorist activists - or governments - pandemics, a sudden risk of homelessness: it’s a lot to contain. Young people in particular find it hard to set goals in life when there is so much existential risk and no real agency. Everything we know and love seems to be at risk of permanent change for the worse.

Meantime it can be argued - as we have been doing for almost seven years and through approximately 2500 blogs - that we are in the midst of a reality-altering revolution right now and have been for over thirty years. With relatively little objection, we have seen a surge in worldwide radical participation and daily, ordinary and extraordinary ground-breaking creativity. Our world has not just threatened to change, but actually transformed itself in ways the WWII generation could never have imagined. 

Once we only received the information that those with authority over us wanted us to have. Today, anyone with access to the internet can find whatever information they want. Whether that is a blue-print for a piece of agricultural machinery or a singing lesson for free - or indeed, plans for weaponry or biological warfare. People with idiosyncratic hobbies can find each other through a simple hashtag - as can extremists - while the permaculture movement grew exponentially. Children continue to be schooled for the basics, but the vast majority of their education - emotional, spiritual, practical, relational - comes from the. Web. One person, acting within the algorithms, can change the direction of an industry or groups of nations. 

Because of the vast range of inquiries that people bring to their searches, on the internet we are constantly surrounded by reflections that link together how we are feeling, what we are doing and yearning for.  In addition social media has become a world of play and experimentation, including therapeutic insight on how to fail better each time. More recently the meta capabilities of the few - the ability to observe, remark and posit theories of change without the requirement to be right  -  have become the banter of the many. TikTok as a medium is the generator of a new global message of infinite possibility through new forms of value. 

Of course the downsides of the internet are rife and energetically articulated. But maybe we should pay more attention to the upsides so that we have somewhere to invest those energies currently frustrated and controlled by fear. Not the simply generic miracle of new technology available to the masses - which can go off in any direction, good or bad. But specifically, the technology now available which allows humanity to self-organise around the ‘good society’ and a ‘flourishing future’ - the goals our current power structures can’t deliver on from the top down, however much they aspire to targets like a “wellbeing economy”.

But first we have to disengage ourselves from the expectation - manufactured through spectacle  - of our dying socio-economic-political system going up in flames. We are no longer in the powerless position that our parents’ generation of citizens were when the government took us into two World Wars without permission. 

When a Home Secretary tells us we can’t take to the streets, we know how to talk to each other through the myriad of platforms and show up in our multiple stands and diverse forms of agency. In so doing we signal to citizens globally, also gathering in streets and squares everywhere, that we have moved on from the world where catastrophe is inevitable. 

But maybe more importantly, every action we take today - in real time or virtually - that begins to manifest the ecological civilisation we see emerging through our global personal, community or planetary interconnection, is a step away from fear and powerlessness. The move we take today, within the context we choose, to make the impact we want - these are decisions we can adopt for ourselves.

To sustain that capacity, we have to take care of our minds, bodies and spirits to challenge existential angst. Talk to someone new to defy polarisation. Choose what you consume to change the energy system. Write a poem or give in to doodling to conjure up the awe of a future unfolding … All this adds up - communally, fractally, universally - to a way of being fully alive in a world that itself can live.

Let’s actively develop the conditions and environments in which we can confidently say, today, “I’m not going to war, I’m going to peace.”