Every Friday I have lunch with a few fellow Queenstown fella’s – we call it boys lunch, we sit around for a couple of hours, eat a good meal and solve the problems of the world. You’d think that with a moniker like boys lunch the discussion would revolve around rugby, tits and ass – but I guess we aren’t the usual sort of boys. Politics is the chat de-jour and it’s election season – everywhere. There’s the one that everyone knows about – in the good old U, S and A. but don’t forget that in both Canada and New Zealand are about to hit the poles and elect or maybe re-elect a Prime Minister. The interesting discussion often revolves around the concept that although these elections are in different parts of the world, the issues that are at the heart are the same. As we eat and talk we shake our heads like old men unable to comprehend why the world doesn’t see it our way. It shouldn’t be this hard, but why is it?
When you look at the issues – the environment, the economy, health care, and education – you’d think we’d all want the same thing. At least our Friday lunch group is in agreement – but maybe that’s because we are all a bunch of artsy-fartsy-fucking-liberals. Label me if you want – that’s a label I’ll take any day. Much to my amazement, there are many out there that don’t share this point of view. Some think we should all fend for ourselves – that the environment can take care of itself and climate change is a fraud. Social safety nets are for the weak and the chaff that doesn’t cut it should be scattered to the wind. Only the strong survive and the weak of the heard get picked off by the lions of poverty, hopelessness and war.
How is this idea even possible? How is it that we can look at our fellow man with such disconnection that we’d even fathom such moral atrocities. The more I’ve travelled the more I’ve come to realize that people from around the world are not the vastly different cultures we’ve be bred to think. We all have the same base ambitions – we want a place to live, a safe environment for our families, food to eat, clean water to drink and the opportunity to be happy. Why is it that in western culture we have the ambition to get away from those base needs and swim into the murky waters that are governed by monetary ambition and greed? I’m not indorsing the notion of communism, nor the ideal of socialism – what I am hopeful for is a global re-emergence of a sense of family. A family that looks at everyone as a brother, a sister or a cousin. In the world today what we do locally has an impact across the globe – we have power, like never before. As a society we have the ability to take the power back, just by making choices – we can drink fair trade coffee and change the lived of African workers. We can eat free-range eggs and change the way chickens are raised – Jamie Oliver, a fucking-celebrity-chef is changing the way the UK eats chicken, just by showing how battery farms work on his TV show. We can eat organic vegetables and drive the prices down to the point where they are affordable to all. There is squandered power in our numbers.
We need to seriously look at what we are doing to this planet and collectively start to give a shit. Granted we’ve come a long, long way. Even looking back to the pre-Inconvenient Truth era and there is an ocean of improvement. People are thinking about issues like recycling, alternative energy and climate change. We need to look at these issues in terms of how they can benefit our economy – not hinder it. By putting money into research and development alternative energy technology can be found and a solution to climate change can be gleamed and profit can be the result too. We’ve done so much to get the momentum changed and get the ball rolling. We can’t let it stop now – it’s to the point where if we keep the pressure on, we can win this fight.
There is no denying that the global economy is getting the shit kicked out of it. I won’t dare make light of that – innocent, everyday folks are going to lose money. Except for the everyday folks who are CEO’s of major corporations – they’ll be fine. In fact if the right-wing parties are elected in said elections, these well-off citizens could see a healthy lowering of their taxes. The National Party in New Zealand (the official opposition at the moment, and looking poised to win this election) is promising to lower taxes across the board. Hey, who doesn’t want to pay less tax? The problem is that the government is pretty much running just above water at the moment – meaning that to lower taxes, social programs will have to be cut. Perhaps it’s the Canadian socialist in me – but I’d rather pay a little more tax and have things like, oh I don’t know – a hospital, a school, how about a nicely paved road. I think all that is worth twenty bucks a week.
The biggest choice we can make is in the voting booth. Canada that means you tomorrow – America next month and NZ a couple days before. We can change the system – we can take the power away from the fat-cats who turn their backs on the environment, the middle class and the next generation. I believe in the ties that bind us together, the band of brotherhood of decency that we all share. I believe that we won’t leave people behind not just in far off corners of the globe but from the streets in our own cities. We can choose to make more money and leave the less fortunate behind – or we can choose to change the system to a mechanism that cares. A system that doesn’t fast-track the road to war and refuse to fight for the environment.
Of course, like my Friday boys lunch – I could very well be preaching to the choir. You could all agree with me, nod your head and move on – but that’s not good enough, not any more. Today you have a homework assignment. We all have friends that don’t necessarily share our political points of view; we need to talk to these people – tell them our points of view, tell them what matters to us in the world today. We need to convince them that this isn’t a lost cause, that the environment, the poor and the disenfranchised are worth saving. We can draw a line in the sand and say no more, not on my watch. Hope will guide us through, hope in what our countries can become, because without hope, we have nothing worth fighting or voting for.
Rise. Life is in motion. I'm stuck in line.
When you look at the issues – the environment, the economy, health care, and education – you’d think we’d all want the same thing. At least our Friday lunch group is in agreement – but maybe that’s because we are all a bunch of artsy-fartsy-fucking-liberals. Label me if you want – that’s a label I’ll take any day. Much to my amazement, there are many out there that don’t share this point of view. Some think we should all fend for ourselves – that the environment can take care of itself and climate change is a fraud. Social safety nets are for the weak and the chaff that doesn’t cut it should be scattered to the wind. Only the strong survive and the weak of the heard get picked off by the lions of poverty, hopelessness and war.
How is this idea even possible? How is it that we can look at our fellow man with such disconnection that we’d even fathom such moral atrocities. The more I’ve travelled the more I’ve come to realize that people from around the world are not the vastly different cultures we’ve be bred to think. We all have the same base ambitions – we want a place to live, a safe environment for our families, food to eat, clean water to drink and the opportunity to be happy. Why is it that in western culture we have the ambition to get away from those base needs and swim into the murky waters that are governed by monetary ambition and greed? I’m not indorsing the notion of communism, nor the ideal of socialism – what I am hopeful for is a global re-emergence of a sense of family. A family that looks at everyone as a brother, a sister or a cousin. In the world today what we do locally has an impact across the globe – we have power, like never before. As a society we have the ability to take the power back, just by making choices – we can drink fair trade coffee and change the lived of African workers. We can eat free-range eggs and change the way chickens are raised – Jamie Oliver, a fucking-celebrity-chef is changing the way the UK eats chicken, just by showing how battery farms work on his TV show. We can eat organic vegetables and drive the prices down to the point where they are affordable to all. There is squandered power in our numbers.
We need to seriously look at what we are doing to this planet and collectively start to give a shit. Granted we’ve come a long, long way. Even looking back to the pre-Inconvenient Truth era and there is an ocean of improvement. People are thinking about issues like recycling, alternative energy and climate change. We need to look at these issues in terms of how they can benefit our economy – not hinder it. By putting money into research and development alternative energy technology can be found and a solution to climate change can be gleamed and profit can be the result too. We’ve done so much to get the momentum changed and get the ball rolling. We can’t let it stop now – it’s to the point where if we keep the pressure on, we can win this fight.
There is no denying that the global economy is getting the shit kicked out of it. I won’t dare make light of that – innocent, everyday folks are going to lose money. Except for the everyday folks who are CEO’s of major corporations – they’ll be fine. In fact if the right-wing parties are elected in said elections, these well-off citizens could see a healthy lowering of their taxes. The National Party in New Zealand (the official opposition at the moment, and looking poised to win this election) is promising to lower taxes across the board. Hey, who doesn’t want to pay less tax? The problem is that the government is pretty much running just above water at the moment – meaning that to lower taxes, social programs will have to be cut. Perhaps it’s the Canadian socialist in me – but I’d rather pay a little more tax and have things like, oh I don’t know – a hospital, a school, how about a nicely paved road. I think all that is worth twenty bucks a week.
The biggest choice we can make is in the voting booth. Canada that means you tomorrow – America next month and NZ a couple days before. We can change the system – we can take the power away from the fat-cats who turn their backs on the environment, the middle class and the next generation. I believe in the ties that bind us together, the band of brotherhood of decency that we all share. I believe that we won’t leave people behind not just in far off corners of the globe but from the streets in our own cities. We can choose to make more money and leave the less fortunate behind – or we can choose to change the system to a mechanism that cares. A system that doesn’t fast-track the road to war and refuse to fight for the environment.
Of course, like my Friday boys lunch – I could very well be preaching to the choir. You could all agree with me, nod your head and move on – but that’s not good enough, not any more. Today you have a homework assignment. We all have friends that don’t necessarily share our political points of view; we need to talk to these people – tell them our points of view, tell them what matters to us in the world today. We need to convince them that this isn’t a lost cause, that the environment, the poor and the disenfranchised are worth saving. We can draw a line in the sand and say no more, not on my watch. Hope will guide us through, hope in what our countries can become, because without hope, we have nothing worth fighting or voting for.
Rise. Life is in motion. I'm stuck in line.
Rise. You can't be neutral on a moving train.
And if hope could grow from dirt like me. It can be done.
Won't let the light escape from me.
Won't let the light escape from me.
Won't let the darkness swallow me.
This is our chance to make a difference – I for one am not going to sit back and let opportunity pass me by.
Scott Kennedy
October 13, 2008
This is our chance to make a difference – I for one am not going to sit back and let opportunity pass me by.
Scott Kennedy
October 13, 2008
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