I’m having trouble containing my excitement over here. This right now is the moment that Good Guys start coming back. For too long now we’ve been in the opposition, having to battle against the negative connotations the conservatives have attached to the term ‘liberal’. For too long they have basked in the glory of their manufactured fear, a world view that is based on division and combat rather than unity and cooperation. Today marks a turning of the tide in this battle.
I’ve copped a lot of flack in the past for arguing the cause of social evolution from a Darwinian perspective. Now this is where I need to be careful. A lot of people hear the phrase ‘Social Darwinism’ and think I’m making the same argument as Hitler – the idea that if one race is fitter than another, then they have the prima facie right to dominate them. But that’s obviously not what I mean. I’m talking about survival of the fittest, and my point is that a philosophy of co-operation and unity and intelligence etc, is a fitter ideology, (i.e. will more effectively bring us to our goals of progress and general happiness), than competition/aggression/greed etc. That’s why I’m so confident.
Admittedly I haven’t always made the best case, but this I feel is a vindication of my points. The up swelling of hope that we’re seeing in America right now, the disillusionment with the conservatives, the call for change, and the man who looks set to deliver it, all point towards a whole new phase of human development. The coming together of humanity, a chance to actually work together to achieve more than we have ever dreamed of. It is a natural evolution of ideas, based on Darwin’s ubiquitous principles of natural selection. This is the direction that we are moving in, because it is in our interest to move in that direction. This is what I’ve been saying for the past few years, and in light of the Bush Administration’s legacy, I’ll admit I’ve even started to have doubts myself. Then along comes this glorious man from Chicago, articulate and powerful, with a message of hope and change, oozing charisma and intelligence and humour. He talks about ending not just the war, but the mindset that got us into war in the first place. Here is someone who understands the beauty of life, and he has given us a reason to believe again.
I’m over simplifying of course. A moment such as this clearly brings out the lyrical rhetorician in me. Wars will still be going on when Obama wins in November. Terrorists will no doubt still be blowing people up, and Obama himself is still conservative by Australian liberal standards. But this is the beginning of something truly fantastic. This man is exactly what we need. And here at Music Feeds we feel an affinity with the ideals of co-operation and unity that he is espousing. He’s on our side.
My flatmate doesn’t understand why I get so worked up about the American election – I don’t get how he’s not. This shit is crucial. Since pretty much forever, the world has been ruled by ignorant, arrogant, incompetent, materialistic, self-obsessed war mongers, with not a shred of compassion between them. America is but the last in a long line of world powers to rule this way. And we have almost accepted it as inevitable – we’ve gotten to the point where we just shrug our shoulders and say ‘well, that’s the way it is’. For years I’ve been trying to argue that that’s not the way it is at all, that we have the power of choice, that we can fight against the powers of evil. No one really listened, and if they did they were too high to be able to do anything about it anyway.
But the thousands of people at Obama’s rallies know what I mean. Here we have a leader who can take us to the next level. That’s why I’m excited, and that’s why I’m not going to apologise for being excited. This is a monumental moment in history, one myself and billions of other people have been hoping and working for for a long time, and it has finally arrived.
The conservative fear mongers can fuck off now. They’ve had their turn, and they’ve come dangerously close to destroying the whole planet and everything on it. If we want to survive, if we want to prosper, if we want to continue our evolution, we need a fundamental realignment of values. We have the potential to revolutionise the world – we have more surplus wealth than anyone at any point in history has ever seen, and with it we have the power to heal the wounds of the past and make the most far fetched plans for the future a reality.
We need to look at everyone in the world the way they really are – intimately intertwined and co-dependent. As a unified organism if you will. And with this perspective we will found a new ideology of compassion, and with that new ideology we will save ourselves. It’s our only choice – it’s that or die.
We have been moving in this direction for the past 50 years, and we have had to fight every step of the way. Kennedy got assassinated and you could easily say the same thing about Clinton (and to a lesser extent Gore), such has been the ferociousness of the right’s thrashing and gnashing. Any mention of compassionate government policy gets labelled as ‘communist’ and instantly discarded. We are made to feel guilty for caring. They have fought so hard to keep us wallowing in our mediocrity, they have taken us into war after war for reasons which at the very least can be called suspicious. They have promoted the philosophies of greed and aggression and ignorance. Rampant and unchecked consumerism/materialism is in danger of swallowing us whole, a pre-emptive foreign policy is in danger of killing us all, and our schools and universities languish down the bottom of the list of priorities.
Please excuse the poetic licence I’ve obviously taken in this column. I know I’m kind of rambling. Take this stream of over enthusiastic consciousness with a grain of salt. But mark my words. The damage that the Right has done to our individual and collective consciousness, or just our general well-being and quality of life, is abhorrent. Mothers have lost their children and visa versa in the name of these arseholes pursuing their misguided ambitions. Their effect can not be underestimated, and we cannot let them get away with everything by just turning our backs. These people need to be held accountable for their actions, and they will be, in the democratic elections in November. That is when the people will say ‘You know what? The left has been right all along.’
Even then I flinch – I hate the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’. They’re just words, sounds, syllables that attempt to encompass entire political philosophies, and in doing so run into all the difficulties you’d expect. This is about what works and what doesn’t. What is in our interest, what, ultimately, will bring us happiness. The conservatives have been telling us it’s through focusing on defence and military spending. Seeing the world as your potential enemy, waiting to fuck you over the first chance they get. Not just the Arabic terrorists, but your neighbours and countrymen. We need bigger locks, and we need to live in perpetual fear – and that’s how they stay in power. But the simple fact of the matter is- they’re wrong. The same way the church was wrong about geocentricity – no matter how hard they fight to repress the truth to hold on to their precious position of power, the truth will eventually prevail, always. Cooperation is so much more effective than competition, a smile is more powerful than a fist. Intelligence shall trump ignorance. And today we took a monumental step in that direction. The Good Guys are coming back, and I’m fucking psyched.
