What would persuade voters round the world into a sense of moderation?
Those who read the Daily Paradox will know that I have, for some time now, said that it may take a world war to do so. Like you, I hope and pray not. If you ask people whether they think we need a greater degree of calm sense, less violence and more reasonable rhetoric they will agree with you. If you follow up by asking how they themselves can contribute to that they will likely say they don’t know or they are powerless to make it happen.
NOMPROB (not my problem) is the political version of NIMBY (not in my backyard).
We are individually small fry in a world of nearly ten billion. One ten billionth of a say in how the world is run doesn’t seem much. And only once every five years or so at that! If you believe your vote at the ballot box is the only say you have in the future of the planet you may reckon that you are disenfranchised. And if you think that, you are deluding yourself. You have – well, most of us have – free speech, access to our politicians, the ability to say politely what we like in the media and a chance to debate our views with our friends.
Never before in the history of humankind have there been so many places where your opinion is heard. You already use them to express your views on cats, insects to eat and which football team is worth supporting. You can also use them to say you want peace. Every time you do so your words echo round the world and every politician, democratic or authoritarian, listens to them. Why? Because they only keep their jobs if they do so. Trump would be less aggressive if most of the people who support him were asking for more peaceful political behaviour.
It’s not demanding. All you have to do is to write, once a day, on Tik Tok, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram or any of the other internet media, that you want your politicians to work for peace, not war. If you are clever you can write something that attracts a lot of attention and it will become viral and make you famous. Just writing a simple message will also do perfectly well. Simple messages often have the greatest effect.
Why does it seem to be our responsibility to make this relatively little effort? Our lifetime is what it is, long or short. That is the selfish view of it. More interesting is the fact that we are part of a continuing experiment in which humanity has developed to be the most interesting and sophisticated creature on earth. That development is now reaching a new achievement level as we learn to recreate ourselves and shape what a human will be, in any way we like.
Whatever our beliefs about the origin of creation, the ball is now demonstrably in the court of the living. If we can define happiness correctly we can create it on earth. The human team is already a winning one, now it has the chance to be a more decent and rational one.
So when does the election take place that allows us to vote for how we want the world to work? Every single day, actually. And every hour of every day, too. All we have to do is to give one small slice of our time daily to make our wish for peace known.
Will it work? Oh, yes, it will work. Ten billion statements a day publicly and politely demanding peace would transform politics.
And that would change our world.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Will you make that tiny effort to promote humanity to a new level of success? If so – or even if not – please do tell us at [email protected].
Every single vote every single day counts more than you can imagine.
16 July 2024
