Will an election change everything?
An election is coming, and for many, it is seen as the most crucial election of all time. Yes, they say this every time, and like the boy calling wolf, it often is ignored to the peril of many.
But, this time, truly, we are at a critical crossroads. There is an oncoming tsunami of climate disasters coming on one side, and our present and future plagues on the other. We have marginalized people seeking equality and justice, and those who vehemently deny (or blithely ignore) that it’s an issue.
There is the ever-present threat of nuclear destabilization, and millions more of dislocated refugees arriving soon.
I think, however, we are at present distracted by this enormous election.
Many are hanging all their hopes upon it. I think this is unwise.
Some people see new leaders as heroes to solve our many woes, but we need to look past the election, and even the results, to see the people behind this gigantic contest we have made out to be so life and death.
It is not an exaggeration to say that many people see 2020 as the year that we choose the door to doom, or the door to a land of “Re-set.”
With or without an election, there is us
If we as a species, allow more than two degrees, Celsius, of warming on our planet, then it is not hyperbole to say many lives will be lost. For the future of all life on Earth, all living beings in a biosphere dependent upon balance, are threatened to varying degrees of impact.
Even if all the conservative, or pro-polluting business politicians win, they would still have to address the daily grind of these realities. Ever increasing mobs of discontented people would grow. Ever increasing pressure for change would continue to emerge and demand representation.
Denial is a pretty big river, harder to ignore every day, but eight billion people in crisis is a river of humanity that can’t be ignored for long.
Hurricane season is here. Wildfires, and heatwaves in the hottest drought regions have begun.
Then there is our new age of pandemic. Certainly, COVID-19 is not the last one. Even if we were to suddenly cease and desist all our risky and questionable food ways from trafficked bats to over-crowded, clustered cows, we would not entirely be free of the many related viral and bacterial waves of pandemics ahead of us.
It is important, then, to prepare for how the electoral outcomes will see us treating one another, at a time when so many other emergencies are also here.
There will be some people who feel they lost the election. There will be others who say that the elections were “stolen.”
We can all take a deep breath when the election is over
In my lifetime, I have never seen the world in such a divided, and blighted, time.
Maybe by the end of November 2020, a kind of truce can begin. But this also depends, first, upon the will of the people being truly reflected and revealed, and second, that those who hold power concede that democracy has prevailed, and no “rigging” or any other sketchiness rears its ugly head.
Maybe in November, we can count on people being thoroughly, and utterly exhausted. Maybe the high flame of heated hate, and strident discord will fade a bit.
Family members at one another’s throat, can serenely break bread together at Thanksgiving.
We can all take a deep breath.
But the world will hardly be at peace if all projections of the climate emergency crisis prove correct and run head long into civil unrest, mass migration, and now, plagues that move at the speed of international travel.
Even if we can reconcile enough to work hand in harmonious hand, will it be enough? I don’t know. But I think it is critical that we try to reach one another, our hearts and minds must be determined to find our shaky, but common ground.
Will you embrace the family of humanity?
We should be beginning to come up with ways on how to help one another through the trauma of a lost election. One side will win. One side will lose. All the rest of what follows will display whether we are reconciling family, or that we are fools, hell bent on mutual destruction.
If all efforts, for example, to remain cooperative and collaborative with international efforts to mitigate climate disasters through the Paris Climate Agreement fail, we have even harder work ahead of us that requires mutual trust.
Rebuilding trust may prove more challenging than rebuilding our cities.
Perhaps some people think that enlisting a climate denier, or conspiracy theorist, to mend our bad habits, is unrealistic. Yet, we must try our best to unite.
We have to listen to people explain their concerns, their experienced injustices, and their proposed solutions. We have to be open to dissenting thoughts and feelings, and always guide one another back toward cooperation.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that a wide and growing divide between us will make everything that much worse.
Let’s say the worse possible outcome for your “team” happens.
Rage, and engage all the uproar if you must, but afterwards, we all have to integrate. We have to embrace both the winning, and the losing “side.” We have to acknowledge that we are one team now. We don’t have to agree with each and every idea, but we all, do have to listen, exchange, and encourage our best expertise, insights, and applications of trial and error.
In other words, we can no longer afford “sides.” It’s one world reset, or one world, lost.
Seeing through blind spots, seeing one another as human
When some lose and some win, there will be heartache and trauma. We can make that worse by gloating, or grousing. Or we can make it better by recognizing people need us to be mature.
Bridging an ever-widening gulf between those who believe we can make a difference and those who don’t, sounds impossible.
When we say “They will never change!” we are looking at others through our own blind spots and limitations.
But think of how freeing and full of light we could all be if we said: “I am open. Show me.”
We have to make adjustments then to what “making a difference” means. If it means equity in housing, or clean water availability, or taxing pollution instead of income, or parity of wages, or doubled up efforts for mass education, or the many things no one has yet tried, we must be open.
All nations will require mind-mining, brain-storming, and mutual encouragement. Inequality, of course, has to go. It could go easily, or it could go the hard way.
Whether it is class based, color, or gender based, we need equality. We need everybody strong, willing, and onboard to make a difference.
Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement has been framed as an effort to protect jobs. There has long been a false dichotomy taught that says you must choose between jobs in a thriving economy or a clean, and habitable environment. Like “them versus us” this is a false binary.
Creating a Green New Deal ensures jobs. We may have to call it something else. But, we need new jobs in agriculture, infrastructure, retro-fitting buildings, and whole cities, and new transport and food systems to be efficient and clean. We will need millions of workers, healthcare planning for the pandemic age, conservation workers, the services required for disasters, mass migration, civil unrest, and more.
We appear to be a foolish, and short-sighted species when we see each other only as obstacles. When the chips fall as they may in November, think hard about what kind of nation, people and world we will be creating — whatever the results may be.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You.
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Photo credit: Christyl Rivers