“Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowering.”
With this quote from the book A Way of Being Free by the Nigerian poet and novelist, Ben Okri, George Monbiot opens his most recent book: Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. In his book, Monbiot, the British journalist and columnist for The Guardian newspaper, searches for a new story to re-engage people in politics in a positive way. In many countries, populist politicians have succeeded in turning rage into political power. That rage is fed by a toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism. It is a story that destroys common purpose and is on track to demolish a lot of the progress that has been achieved in the past decades. “You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one”, writes Monbiot.
Monbiot, who spent much of career as an environmental and political activist writer, is not arguing for change: “I believe we do not have to change human nature; we have to reveal it.” Political ideologies seem to convey that humans are inherently selfish and greedy. It is the nature of the beast and we just have to live with it, is the message. Monbiot points to the science that shows that we are nothing of the kind. Studies across a wide range of the social sciences show that while we all have a bit of selfishness and greediness, these are not the dominant characteristics of human beings. “We are primarily kind towards others”, he says. That applies to society in general—not just toward the people we know and are related to. “If you go into the streets, you will see people opening doors for somebody else, helping someone, who is frailer than they are, with luggage, there are endless examples.” The altruism is genuine. People who give money to a homeless person, are not expecting to get that money back. And a volunteer who contributes to charity is not expecting that initiative to support them. Monbiot: “Human beings express this altruism to a far greater extent than any other species.”
In reality, only a tiny percentage—perhaps one percent—of the population is capable of and responsible for doing truly bad things. But as most minds are tuned to danger—a fact that is happily exploited by the media—the exceptional, terrible stories dominate the news. People begin to think that there are bad people around every corner. Monbiot illustrates the distortion referring to the two terrorists who killed 12 journalists in Paris in January 2015. The terrible story dominated the news for days. “People tend to forget that more than three million people took to the streets of France in protest saying with their candles lit: ‘We will not stand for these attacks on our fellow humans’. Around the world, millions more, who did not even speak French did the same. Standing together is one of the most fundamental notions of our humanity.”
That core of the human story needs to be rediscovered. “We have been tremendously misled”, says Monbiot, “the idea of being alone has been romanticized”. Advertisements show people alone in their cars on mountain roads with ocean views or in a chair on a faraway beautiful beach with no other people around them. The underlying message is always the same: the highest state of human being is to be the lone ranger, the self-made man or woman. “Consumerism is an effort to break away from everybody else and identify yourself through the things you buy. It stimulates compulsive and ultimately destructive behavior”, Monbiot says, “I have met so many people who believed they could just do everything by themselves and who ended up broken and lost, because actually, in everything we do we need other people.”
We need a community which gives us the confidence and the strength to try and give our best. “I want people to feel empowered and to make the choices that are best for them, like: Maybe I will try and be a concert violinist after all?,” suggests Monbiot. Without positive feedback, without an encouraging community, without support, very few people are able to realize their dreams, and as a result society shines and inspires less. The antidote to the ‘atomization’ of consumerism is not the collectivism of a herd of sheep; it is the notion that empowered individualism flows from a coherent and supportive society.
Again, science supports Monbiot’s perspective. Studies show that one of the greatest human needs is a sense that we belong to something. Hannah Arendt, the German-American philosopher, argued that fascism is a response to atomization. Fascism can blossom when the social fabric of a society has been ripped apart and when people no longer feel respected, acknowledged and loved by their community. These are the feelings that were exploited by Donald Trump in the United States and by Brexit in the United Kingdom. Like fascism, Trump and Brexit offered an alternative, angry community. People march to the same music, hold the same flags, and listen to the same slogans. Monbiot: “The alternative to an inclusive and generous community is not no community. Humans cannot manage without community. The alternative is a different, dark and sometimes very cruel community.”
To turn the tide, Monbiot proposes to build a new “politics of belonging”. That movement starts with simple community events. Monbiot gives the example of the rising popularity of ‘pay-as-you-feel’ cafes and dinners where people can come together without money being an obstacle to participate. People from all walks of life meet. Such meetings can be the beginning of more, what Monbiot calls, “thick networking”: shared childcare, shared repairing of things, community gardening, playing music together, et cetera. “Joining a ‘pay-as-you-feel’ dinner is a political act”, says Monbiot, “You are saying: I am not a lone ranger anymore. Humans are a social species and we prove it.”
From ‘thick networking’ community events, Monbiot points the way to participatory democracy which he sees as a crucial element to strengthen representative democracy. Participatory democracy means that people can truly contribute to their communities beyond exercising their right to vote. In his book, Monbiot describes Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, as a leading center of participatory democracy. Any citizen can put forward an idea for the improvement of the city and then other citizens can vote on that idea. If the idea gets enough votes, the plan goes to the formal council with elected politicians who make an informed determination whether to implement it. The movement has changed the physical face of Reykjavik in recent years turning it into a more enjoyable place to live. But, with two thirds of the inhabitants of Reykjavik participating, the even more important outcome is that people’s faith in democracy has been strengthened. Monbiot: “People are experiencing that participating can actually change things”.
The next step of participatory democracy was pioneered in Porto Alegre, the capital of the Southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. In 1989, Porto Alegre launched a ‘civilian budget’ giving residents the opportunity to exercise influence on (part of) the city’s budget. The most important tasks of the government are listed on the tax forms. The taxpayer can then mark to which categories how much of their money should go. One chooses more for education. Another chooses to improve infrastructure or health care. In this way the citizen budget reflects the priorities of the local population. And that has positive consequences. In developing countries, for example, a clear link has been established between places with a civilian budget and lower child mortality, and better water and sanitation quality. These outcomes are a direct result of citizens choosing to invest more in health care and infrastructure. In fact, the experiment shows something that most political scientists consider impossible: citizens arguing—even demonstrating—for having their taxes raised! The rationale is simple: people realize that money spent together goes much further than money spent alone.
The initiative of Porto Alegre has been replicated in 1500 places in more than 40 countries. Monbiot notes another effect of the movement: the disappearance of mafias and corruption. “Mafias survive because they provide services that the state fails to provide. They offer a sort of social network. When you fill that service gap again, there is no place and no need for the mafia anymore”, he says.
Closer to home, Monbiot sees the same success of participatory democracy in the first presidential campaign that Bernie Sanders launched in 2015. When he started, only three percent of Americans knew who he was. He had no money and he did not want to take money from wealthy donors. Without money, you cannot hire staff and you cannot build a campaign. Sanders and a few close collaborators decided to try to work with volunteers. First, they gave them small jobs, but they quickly discovered that when it comes to volunteering people want big and meaningful tasks. And it worked. The campaign realized that four or five volunteers could replace one paid staff member. Next, the Sanders team decided to let first generation of volunteers train the second generation, et cetera. That worked too and it dramatically increased and speeded up the outreach (see excerpt from Monbiot’s book on page 16).
At the end of the primaries, the Sanders campaign had run 100,000 meetings and spoken directly with 75 million people and captured 46 percent of the delegates. With a few more weeks, the campaign would have been able to reach every accessible adult in the United States and Sanders might very well have been the Democrat presidential candidate in 2016 instead of Hillary Clinton. “It is very hard to see how Donald Trump could have stood up against the momentum that Sanders had built. He had the people behind him,” says Monbiot. “Few politicians realize that it is the movement from the ground up that creates politics. Political community organizing can transform the life of a nation.”
Monbiot describes the phenomenon of the Sanders campaign as ‘big organizing’. Big organizing contrasts with the ‘small organizing’ of most political campaigns in the United States that are focused on raising a lot of money from a few wealthy donors. ‘Thick networking’, ‘participatory democracy’ and ‘big organizing’ are the chapters in Monbiot’s story of a ‘politics of belonging’. It is the story that has the potential to overcome “the great tide of consumerism” and to replace the current story of competition that is breaking down society. As Monbiot’s book shows, it is a story that is happening: from the Brazilians in Porto Alegre and the community dinners in London to the inhabitants of Reykjavik and the political movement of Bernie Sanders. Monbiot concludes: “We have the capacity, and the psychological characteristics to overwhelm the negativity and to stand together to make a far better world than the one we currently inhabit.” [JK]
