I was almost expelled from boarding school when I was 16. I broke into the apartment of one of the teachers who stayed on campus. He had confiscated a video I’d rented (long story) and had promised that he would give it back to me on Saturday morning. I knocked on his door after breakfast on Saturday, and I was pissed when he wasn’t home. I could see the video in its box through the window of his flat. It was on his dining room table, on the other side of his front door. It didn’t take much to open and climb through the window and to retrieve what I saw as rightfully mine. I walked away and I didn’t think what I had done was all that serious.
Two hours later Mr. O’Brien, the teacher whose apartment I’d broken into, storms into the come TV, come recreation, come rising damp and airborne-mould room and without saying a word, turns the TV off, and takes the video from the VHS video player. The movie I’d rented was The Rocketeer, and I remember it being mildly shit.
Mr. O’Brien is seething, quivering with anger. He can’t look at me. Instead, he looks straight ahead at the bubbling paint on the wall at the end of the room as he speaks. He tells me the House Master wants to see me in his office in half-an-hour.
Forty-five minutes later, I’m being told that I am being expelled, and that my parents will be notified to come and collect me. As I said, I was almost expelled. The House Master sent me away and proceeded to call my parents with the news. I think he woke them up to tell them. Because, in the end the detail that saved me from expulsion was the fact that my mum and dad lived in Uruguay, and they couldn’t collect me for at least another six weeks. So, I was caned instead and disqualified from being considered for any leadership position at the school.
I tell you this story for context.
I have issues with authority
Since I can remember, I have struggled to accept that people, based on trivial factors such as age, gender, their social standing or their level of education have the authority to tell others what they can and can’t do with their lives. And I’ve always felt uncomfortable that we accept people in authority so easily. That we so rarely question the systems that constrain us, and that we allow others to coerce us into leading limited, almost predetermined lives.
When we’re born, we are forced to enter an ambiguous social contract. There’s no piece of paper given to us at birth (or any age for that matter) laying out what our obligations are towards our fellow citizens or our institutions. It is never explained to people that by being born we’re expected to behave in a certain way and if we don’t adhere to these expectations government bodies have the right to punish us in ways we’d never have agreed to had we been given a choice.
Instead of things being explained to us, our parents are compelled by the state to send us to schools so we can be taught how to conform to meet society’s expectations. And while we learn to conform and are taught obedience, we, as children, have no legal or political recourse to change government policy or to influence the broader system. It’s only once we’re 18 – after our education is complete that we are allowed to vote. And let’s be honest, voting doesn’t grant us much power to change things.
What states want us to believe
We are taught to believe that our state institutions create every opportunity for us to lead good lives. Patriotism forms part of this. It is imperative that we believe we are the ‘lucky’ nation. That we have it better than most. If we believe that this is as good as it can be, then there is no reason to question the decisions made by those in authority. Or to question the system that put those people in positions of authority.
Furthermore, we are led to think that the coercive arms of government (the army and the police) are there to keep us safe from others who wish to do us harm, be they present in our society, or from foreign lands. And, in return, we are expected to comply with the state laws and social norms as they are taught, legislated, and enforced. Because it’s the laws and norms of our countries that keep us safe. And for those who don’t adhere to these laws and norms, they are painted threats to the rest of us, labelled criminals and our governments have the authority to imprison these people and depending on where they’re born, turn them into slaves or end their lives.
And the system remains untouchable
We rarely consider the system that enables the institutions that run our lives and keeps politicians in power. The systems by which we are governed have become invisible. Our focus, especially in the west, has fallen on governments and elected officials. We never question the form of government we live under.
Consider democracy. It’s held up as the best system of government (mostly by democratic countries), which all other non-democratic countries should aspire to or emulate. The democratic system has become a religion that the west has tried to introduce to countries around the world under the veil of ‘liberation.’ And in the process, democracy has become a holy cow that we don’t question. We rarely, if ever question the form of government under which we live, instead it’s the elected officials, or the election process itself that hold our attention, and attract our indignation. And anyone who dare say that democracy is bad or broken is labelled a socialist, fascist or communist.
“democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”
Winston Churchill
But we know something isn’t quite right
We don’t speak about it, probably because it is difficult to express how we feel, but we all sense that something isn’t quite right. We have never distrusted our democratically elected leaders or our government institutions or our economic systems as much as we do now. In fact, we trust them so little that most of us have stopped listening altogether. And we’re in a cycle where elections come and go, fresh faces appear on our screens, but nothing really changes, and the things we’re worried about are never addressed.
Think about it, addressing climate change has a large global impetus behind it. People want our leaders and our economies to devote more in doing something about this problem. And yet, states and leaders are moving so slowly on the issue that many of us, me included, now feel like we’ve passed the point where we will be able to stop many of the most dire climate change outcomes from happening.
The same can be said for war. Almost everyone on the planet doesn’t believe war should ever be the answer, while our leaders tirelessly commit us to armed conflicts against one another. And there are myriad other issues. Here’s a list that keep me awake at night:
- Oil drilling and coal mining – fucking stop it
- The fact that there aren’t more independent bodies investigating government corruption
- Our wealthiest companies and citizens not paying tax
- Deregulation of our financial systems – it’s like we’ve completely forgotten the GFC
- Addressing inequality in a meaningful way
- Addressing discrimination in all its guises
- Regulating social media misinformation and the algorithms that enable this
Nothing changes because we do nothing
The reason our governments do so little is because they get away with doing so little. We taught our elected officials that we will allow them to get away with hollow gestures and toothless policies. And the worst that might happen to them is they’ll sit in opposition for a few year. And if that falls through, they get some cushy job lobbying their old government colleagues on behalf of a private sector institution. They can’t really lose. As far as I can tell, politicians are less likely to be punished by the electorate if they do the bare minimum. The real risk is actually introducing real and large reform policies.
Meanwhile, we have been conditioned to believe that there is nothing we can do to change the system. One of the most common questions people ask when they want to support a social cause is, ‘but what can I do?’ This is because we haven’t been taught how to protest to enact change. We no longer remember the power that ongoing civil disobedience holds. Instead, we protest to simply show our disgruntlement as opposed to enacting change. It is more about voicing our frustrations and getting it ‘out of our system’ than expecting reform. That is why we see protests happen over the course of a couple of weeks, usually on a Saturday or Sunday. While, protests that deliver change last months and require almost daily commitment and sacrifice.
And in the west, we have been given every distraction and comfort in the world to stop us from getting off our arses and fighting for what we believe should change. During the week we work, to contribute to society and to make a living. And in the evenings and over the weekends we are entertained or rather, distracted. We have TVs, mobile phones, sport, games, friends, recreational areas, cinemas, restaurants, and every imaginable product available for us to buy to keep us occupied. These things all hinders us from standing up and causing a big enough ruckus for our politicians to sit up and say, ‘oh shit.’
Being governed and what it implies
Despite what many say, western democracy borrows a lot of its underlying values from Judaeo-Christian principles. The world’s most famous democratic document, the Magna Carta, was a product of a group of deeply religious men. The democratic principles that all people are equal, that no one is above the law, that guilt should be established through due process, these are all ideas that can be traced back to Judeo-Christian doctrines.
However, there is a particular religious doctrine that, to this day, has broad and almost dogmatic acceptance. And in my opinion is the underlying belief that makes it difficult for us to imagine different ways in which we might want to look at being governed.
The belief that humans are fallen beings and therefore fundamentally flawed.
In the bible, when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree (the Original Sin) and were expelled from the garden of Eden we are said to have gone from being sinless to being depraved. And, although most people no longer believe in original sin or the story of Adam and Eve, we still believe that human nature is malicious or damaged in some way.
We believe that humans are intrinsically greedy, prone to violence, and untrustworthy. It is this belief that makes us look to others to lead us, to protect us from one another, and from our own dark natures. We look to government, judiciary, the military, and the police to maintain order. Because if they weren’t there, we’re certain that the world would spiral into barbarism. That unspeakable violence would be unleashed on the world, and that the strong would kill the weak.
Politicians constantly remind us that they, along with the police, are needed to maintain order and civility. And it is because we believe this to be true that we give them the power to punish us, to coerce us and control much of what we do with a tacit threat of violence. Because that is what the police and the military are, coercive forces designed to protect state authority from internal and external threats.
Pollyanna and anarchism
When I was a kid I watched the movie Pollyanna and there’s a line in the movie that’s stayed with me. I’m paraphrasing here, but Pollyanna said something like; ‘if you look for the bad in people, you’ll find it.’ And it’s true. People live up or down to the expectations others place on them. If we think we’re damaged at our core, then it would be difficult for us to trust that our neighbours would do what is right or fair. And by not trusting other people or our ourselves we don’t allow humanity to become the best version of itself.
But what if we have this wrong? What if we aren’t flawed, fallen, sinful or malicious? What if we looked to one another and expected only kindness and grace, how might our society look then?
I always found it interesting that we believed anarchists (people who seeks absolute freedom and reject any form of government) were people seeking to bring about disorder and chaos. However, true anarchy, the absence of government, to me makes anarchists the people who genuinely believe that humanity isn’t damaged, but instead, that we are capable goodness and generosity.
And that’s the point all this waffle is trying to make. If we were able to move beyond the dogma that humans are inherently bad, then maybe we would have the courage to question our political systems, without fearing that we might lose everything if we experimented with different ways of being governed.
In my first year at university, in my political philosophy class we had a prescribed book; ‘Should we consent to be governed?’ I recommend the book; it is short and interesting. However, I recommend we regularly ask ourselves the question on the cover of the book, should we consent to be governed? Because at the end of the day, the systems, the government, all of it exists and runs because we allow it to. We consent to it. And we have the power to stop consenting. To break our social contracts. And maybe if we trusted the goodness in our natures we would be brave enough to seek other solutions, other ways to live and be governed.
It is time we started looking for the good in ourselves.