By John Bunzl
Every so often some person or movement catches the public imagination by articulating our deep-felt frustrations with what’s wrong with the world; like the Occupy movement during the global financial crisis. Just recently in the UK, the popular out-spoken ‘naughty boy’ of British TV and radio, Russell Brand, became the latest to play this role.
Invited to edit an issue of the political magazine, The New Statesman, Brand used the opportunity to offer his version of revolution: “I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. … I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance…” . Brand is not alone. Increasingly, many of us—perhaps many Kosmos readers included—feel politics to be incapable of addressing the problems we face, especially global problems like climate change.
But there’s a crucial difference between a healthy dis-identification from the political system and an unhealthy dissociation from it. The paradox faced by those who don’t vote—that is, those in deep dissociation—is that you cannot change the system unless you engage in some way with the system. Refuse to vote and you effectively leave yourself too distant from the system you’re trying to change! Like the now almost-forgotten Occupy movement, you end up occupying nothing more than a temporary media soundbite.
This brings up the question of our worldview: the ways in which we understand the world. To me, transformation is not about being against any thing or any person. To be against is, after all, just the same old competitive, “either-or” thinking. For the problems we face do not arise from what already exists, but from what must yet emerge. The need, then, is to move to a transcendent mode of “both-and” thinking in which we bring about the emergence of what is still missing from capitalism and globalization. If they’re to function justly and sustainably what’s needed are global regulations, taxes and transnational re-distributions of wealth, suitably graduated and differentiated to suit individual national needs and capabilities. A global market, in short, needs global governance. This new thinking, then, means giving up blaming corporations, bankers and politicians because, in the present situation, they’re caught in a system that makes it difficult for them to alter their behavior. In accepting that fact, we realize that we must take responsibility ourselves. Like it or not, politicians cannot solve global problems on their own.
How, then, can we re-engage with politics but at a higher, transcendent level; and, what’s more, at a global level? How do we engage with our failing political system without falling victim to it? The answer, to my mind, is not to stop voting but to turn the system to our advantage by using our votes in a completely new way. That is, by organizing ourselves as a growing transnational block of voters who tell politicians that in all future elections we’ll be voting not for a particular
politician or party, but for ANY politician or party that implements our participatory global agenda.
This might sound simple, even naive, but it’s actually revolutionary and powerful. Because, with many seats and even entire national elections often hanging on fine margins, a growing block prepared to vote in this way could make an enormous impact. What’s more, it already is. The Simpol (Simultaneous Policy) campaign founded in 2000 succeeded at the last UK general election in getting 200 candidates from all the main political parties to sign up to its global justice agenda; an agenda designed not by politicians but democratically by citizens. Of those 200 candidates, 25 are now sitting in Parliament. In some finely contested electoral areas, all the main competing candidates signed up to the campaign. Because, once one candidate signed, the others had little choice but to follow. So whichever candidate
won the seat, Simpol won! In addition, the campaign is making progress in other countries, including Canada, Germany and elsewhere. Simpol, then, offers a new way for we, citizens, to use our votes in a powerful and transformative way that drives politicians, parties and governments towards global cooperation. It offers us a way to make ourselves genuine world citizens.
In the U.S. the number of individual supporters is growing but a coordinated campaign is yet to emerge. I hope it will soon. An early hopeful sign is that in 2012 Ken Wilber, founder of Integral Theory, joined Simpol’s Advisory Board. “The central idea of Simpol,” he said, “is very powerful; that is, the notion of how to link votes in one country with votes in
another – how to link political action in one country with action in another. This is really fascinating and very hopeful. In my opinion this is the crucial issue for the 21st Century.” Simpol, he later added, is “a 2nd-tier political practice that makes a great deal of sense, and is certainly worth backing.” If you’d given up on voting, or didn’t see much point in it, I hope you’ll back it too.