Heroes Not Zombies

Is this a green leaf or a red one? If the colours represent two parties or choices in most modern democracies you’d have to say the greens won and the reds lost.

That kind of thinking does my head in! It produces everything from a tyranny of the biggest minority over all the other minorities to deepening divisions and resentment.

I understand that in a game, football, or tennis, for example, one team or player will score the most, be declared the winner and all the other contestants have to come to terms with their loser status. But that’s no way to run a society or a country.

Every population contains a diversity of individuals with different, probably evolving, or changing views and beliefs about everything. Democracy, if I understand the idea correctly, is a system designed to build consensus and promote social cohesion. But the current varieties of it don’t seem to work that way.

From first past the post voting, to us or them political groupings, to for or against votes where “winner takes all”, all of these practices deny the reality of complexity and diversity.

Does “we won” so “you” have to “shut up”, “suck it up”, or “move on” ever build understanding, improve relationships or build communities of people who want to work together? I don’t think so.

We need a better way to live together if we want to get off this divisive one track road to hatred, anger and resentment.

In politics, as in life, nothing is ever “finished”, “done” or “settled”. We need to be able to adapt, to make different choices as the world changes rather than digging deeper trenches and building bigger tribal walls.

I love this image of the green and red leaf, and I love it in this moment of its transition which speaks to me of Life, of dynamic cycles and seasons of change and difference. More than anything, in response to the question of its colour, I resort to “and not or”. It’s green AND red.

Would it be so hard to create a democratic system based on that reality? One that works for all of us, not just a minority?