Liberating Philosophical Activism
I have been troubled lately by a deeply personal struggle to compose a new thought piece about the human condition in which serious public discourse is enervating. A writer has to write to be taken seriously after all. Silence is not an option. And the state of the world is hardly a new topic for me.
Inspiration is hardly the problem. There is never a shortage of issues bubbling up that need to be tackled from a range of alternate viewpoints. I have been as busy as usual, but my routine has remained much the same. Nor can I claim the lack of an opening, given the inordinate number of hours I now spend at my desk compared to my pre-pandemic life on airplanes when travelling from one assignment to the next.
The feeling that I know precisely what I want to say, but cannot find the most perfect words to describe it, is frustrating. An unfamiliarity with the position I wanted to take, initially justifiable perhaps, rapidly becoming an unacceptable pretext for inactivity.
But then the mists began to clear. Gently at first, like the dawn on an autumn morning, I recognized the fact it was not actually the words that were eluding me. It was more the constant darkness of my conclusions - a relentlessly melancholic ostinato that thrust its way into the foreground each time I tried to take a different tack - that was the cause of my anxiety. Bad news makes the headlines each day, but it is not the best way to grab the attention over a lengthy period. Sooner or later the persistent wallowing in grief must give way to acceptance and a valid transition to something far more hopeful.
I have often been censured for taking too pessimistic a view of society - its governance, current trajectory, and seemingly abiding fascination with money, games, gadgets and celebrities. On numerous occasions since 1984 - when I started writing seriously about current events and human evolution - well-meaning friends and colleagues have urged me to tone down my views. Try to be more optimistic, they would say. Tell us about possible solutions, rather than incessantly harping on the same old problems.
They were concerned that my readers would regard my views as so radically gloomy, such an extreme departure from the prevailing narrative, that they would automatically deny or dismiss my arguments positing the existential nature of the many issues facing us. You do yourself no favours they said – commonly failing to recognize that their own most enduring fears were concealed within the precision of my text. Conceding the legitimacy of my arguments, they nevertheless yearned for assurances and answers I was simply unable to provide.
Blistering critiques of our present circumstances are highly unpopular and politically incorrect. They are also an imperative. If we can identify the truth, discussing it openly and without undue prejudice, we will also moderate whatever fears keep us grounded in denial. When evidence is disguised, or lies and propaganda told in its stead, we are duty bound to stand up and say so - whatever the personal consequences. Just as only artists can hold up a candid mirror to society, and the ennui of poets warn us of what only they can discern, writers like myself have a duty to flood the stage with a light that pierces the darkness of ignorance and denial.
We must proclaim truths confidently, knowing that while dissent is uncomfortable – or even prohibited in some countries, especially when it is perceived to be disruptive to certain factions in society or their arbitrary rules - acquiescence is far, far worse. It is an abdication of what it means to be human.
In an era of intensifying authoritarianism, speaking the truth is an act of defiance. It is no fluke that a common desire of elites worldwide, to build on societal obedience by sowing the seeds for widespread lethargy, sedating the community with entertaining diversions while exhorting us to be more productive, is promulgated by governments intent on diverting citizens from a present they would prefer us to gloss over and a future for which they have no empathy or comprehension.
Philosophical activism of the type I seek to identify and master is subversive. It strives to uncover old truths in order to construct new beliefs, to escape identity politics, and to revitalize public discourse. Ironically, this is the primary reason some of my essays, along with those of other progressive thinkers, are so often disparaged as little more than anarchy in another guise, intent on resurrecting failed socialist experiments, or simply speaking out of turn and consequently thrown into the salon of the banned.
Such views seem to be widely held by those who must be held responsible for getting us into the situation we find ourselves today. Unfortunately this self-referential faction lacks any radical notions for enhancing global well-being and prosperity - seemingly content to leave us mired in the limbo of industrial economism we have pursued with such enthusiasm over the course of the past sixty years or so.
Irrespective of whether one is observing democracies, oligarchies, or anything in between those extremes, people who feel sociopathically entitled to exercise power over everyone else, inevitably regard those who harbour different beliefs, challenge their precious orthodoxies, encourage inclusive views, imagine new possibilities and question present belief systems and practices, as insolent - if not downright threatening!
Much of the time they give the impression of wanting to constrain egalitarianism - considering the right to ask tough questions in order to find viable solutions to our most vexing issues with disdain and as an affront to their own integrity or capability.
But if we cannot learn to be different, and to live with divergence in the coherence of the family of sapiens, if we constantly abstain from asking the truly daunting questions, if we are silenced because of the colour of our skin or the beliefs we hold dear, if our prevailing impulse continues to focus on money and conflict, and if the majority of the community is excluded from expressing opinions that differ from politically correct officialdom, it will become much more difficult for us to break free from habits and practices that are no longer of any value to humanity.
At a time when communities around the world are awaking to the need for hope and optimism in the context of recycled policy failures from governments, existential crises, and outrageously inhumane, ultimately non-viable, totalitarian interference by the state in the lives of ordinary people, sustained critiques of the status quo are a virtuous and revolutionary act.