It’s People That Have to Change Not Systems

Apparently and according to Mr. Brand in the New Statesman, it was Billy Connolly who said ‘Don’t vote it encourages them’ and that ‘anyone who wants to be a politician should be banned from being one’. Funny, I thought it was me that said those things and I have been saying those things since my early 20’s. I guess Billy Connolly and I would get along. Of course, I am being facetious. Anything I say is irrelevant as I don’t have an audience like Messrs. Connolly and Brand. But say it I must anyway for the sake of my own sanity. So I will.

Something stinks around here. It’s the system. It doesn’t matter if the system is a parliamentary democracy, a representative democracy or a centrally planned economy. The fact is they all stink. Funnily enough, on paper and theoretically, every single one of these systems would work and work very well if it wasn’t for one neglected and overlooked thing. People. Yes – people.

Let’s be honest. Most people aren’t really living are they? They are like water droplets in an ocean jostled and sploshed around depending on which way the wind is blowing, what state the Moon is in and under tidal influences. Most of us don’t actually think – we respond. We follow the crowd, keep up with the Jones’s, we want what we are told we should want and we get indignant, angry and even downright murderous when we are told by a man that God objects to certain behaviors (I say ‘man’ as unfortunately it invariably is a man – we so need the feminine back in our religious systems).

Yes, if you want to change the system then we need first to change ourselves. We need people to be conscious and live in mindful awareness. We need people to question, discuss and work for a common ideal. We need people to understand that in fact, they really don’t have the expertise in many instances to understand an issue. We need people to be gracious, charitable and kind. I will tell you this. Unless we change people, any revolution, any change of the current system will involve bloodshed. It will be about hate. We have seen this before throughout history and arising out of all of this change and bloodshed and hate will arise a new group of controllers and manipulators. In fact, these ‘new leaders’ may even be working for the very same people we thought we were ridding ourselves of in the first place.

I read Brand’s article in the New Statesman. Its nicely written and he almost gets it but his penchant for a socialist solution betrays him and in the end nullifies his argument altogether for what he is arguing for isn’t revolution at all but a change back to something that already failed. Yes, he talks about connections and so on – all nice words but fundamentally he argues for a return to a system that failed and will fail again. He doesn’t look to change the paradigm but to switch polarity in the same paradigm. I applaud him for getting the discussion underway but this is not the solution.

The answer is to change how people behave and think. How that is achieved is, I fear is beyond me, for I need to continue work on myself and my flaws and weaknesses.

Yesterday, a friend posted an article on Facebook about how in Paris cafe’s people buy extra coffees or meals. Others, who have no money can come in and receive one of these coffees. This is an example of how we will change the current paradigm. But this is where the human bit comes in. You can well imagine that in Paris there are cafe owners who will pocket the cash without honoring the agreement and yet others who won’t allow ‘filthy smelly homeless folk’ in their cafes anyway. Its all about people people – it really is. It’s not about systems.