Dreaming of a better world

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

IN A TIME of unprecedented crisis, unlike any other in human history, we ricochet between anger, anxiety, celebration, and joy. This year, our most needed emotion is hope.

Hope counters apathy. Apathy is a turning inward to social media scrolling, entertainment, and consumerism as escape. It is an individualistic approach to advancement and success that gives up on unconditional collective responsibility for a greater, more peaceful, and equitable good. It is a disconnected sense of powerlessness and lack of care about the conditions that surround us even while they close in. It is a fearful narrowing of life to what feels safe or, worse, pretence that the earth isn’t burning, and our nation isn’t collapsing while we continue with either business as usual, the din of the fete or entreaty to God.

Hope is enemy to all these: apathy, individualism, feelings of powerlessness, fear.

If we refuse to give up on the possibility of a better nation and world, if we continue to see this future as a necessity, we will choose decisions that hold it sacred, understanding that this is our most fundamental shared ethical ground which needs protection and nurturing in a deeply threatening time. We have given up this ground far too much. There is still time to turn back now.

We have given up decision-making to the wealthy and powerful. Globally, it has meant that the fossil-dependent companies, which for decades have known about their role in advancing climate catastrophe, have chosen shareholder profits over the fate of billions of people. Do not believe that any will make difficult decisions to save the planet’s masses.

One look at corporate lobbying at climate change meetings will tell you why states are dragging their feet on decisions which should have been made long ago. Pay attention to agreement to mine the deep oceans by the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, which is being heavily lobbied by corporate mining interests.

We can and must revolt against their power over us, their selfish agendas, and their death-politics for ecosystems. This is not a time for distractions for which we and other species will pay with our very lives. Our supposed dominion as humans requires us to practise deep and present guardianship.

We have given up peace for war as a technology for securing resources, accruing obscene wealth, and flexing military muscle. Whatever our diplomatic relations, in our hemisphere, the US remains the greatest force of global instability, whether in terms of its production of military weapons as a war economy or in its immoral funding of atrocities against Palestinians or NATO’s aggression and in its militarising of Chinese and Russian borders.

Now is not the time to be inattentive to global and ecological politics, and authoritarian men at the helm. Solidarity with those ordinary people, migrants, Indigenous and social justice movements challenging the swing to right-wing extremism requires us to be informed. Find a way to so organise your TikTok algorithm to get news about change-makers. Fire bun Meta and Elon Musk. It matters with whom we are allies.

If you are reading these words, hearing any news, you cannot say you did not know nor that there was nothing that we could have done together. We must find meaningful connection in taking responsibility for what is ours. History will not absolve us for vanity and greed, for championing how many billionaires there are instead of how many billions have improved access to water, food, shelter, schooling, decent livelihood, and rights.

Now more than ever before, our politics must be global. There are choices to make. We cannot keep hurtling ahead living dangerously and destructively. How each of us can contribute is already clear because what is unjust, wasted, inept, poisonous, devastating, and corrupt are always right before our eyes.

One hopes that we could shift global consciousness overnight, throw smooth-talking or hate-mongering or excuse-making or propaganda-mouthing or nation-impoverishing or genocide-backing bastards out of power, storm global meetings and lock out transnational corporate lobbyists, and opt for gentle, caring, collaborative, and inclusive leadership that takes our custodial role seriously. In these dark times, this is the dream.

Yet, there is much good news if we look beyond mainstream media. Everywhere, scientists, teenagers, lawyers, activists, farmers, teachers, and inventors are creating the alternatives we need, just as musicians and artists are reminding us that we are beautiful and worthy. A different world is being made. Declare war for that world and all it needs. Make hopefulness our first strike against defeat.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 548

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