It's easy to get lost in modern politics. In a climate riddled with bigotry, violence, and infighting, a way forward can seem far out of reach. Wars, pollution, starvation, climate change - everything stacks and stacks on one another, with every bit of theory read validating and extending upon the conclusion long since reached by millions of oppressed individuals. It seems hopeless, it seems intimidating as hell - it seems endless.
In our campaigns for a better world, in our campaigns for truth, it's easy to lose sight of what we're fighting for. We spend so much time criticizing and berating all the faults with our world, seeing all the cracks in the pavement. We spend our time exposing society's injustices, our institutions' inherent prejudices, the harm that comes from nations - when does it end, if there is even an end?
In doing this, we make a fatal mistake. This isn't a mistake with our theory. This isn't a mistake with our praxis. This isn't even a mistake with how we interact with one another.
This is a mistake with how we treat ourselves.
We focus so much on the harm that the world around us causes, that we miss the forest for the trees - the world is, as a whole, dismissed as wrought with injustices and harm. None of this is incorrect, but this doesn't mean that this focus isn't ricocheting toward us. I've spoken to many socialists who have talked about how hopeless everything seems, about how everything feels as if its progressively chipping away at their well being, leaving nothing but a cynical husk of themselves, shrouded in a defeatism that severely damages their mental health.
I even experience this myself.
The heart of this mistake comes from our lack of focus on two things: our wonderful world, and the future we'll create.
To focus on our wonderful world is to recognize the beauty in life. It's to recognize the amazing natural world we live in - to stop and breathe. To stand in the woodlands, taking in the calming fresh air as we welcome the lush, green forests, behind them layered a vast blue sky, dotted with clouds. It's to appreciate the wildlife, and the amazing ecosystems around us, functioning in harmony with one another.
It's to appreciate each other, and our relationships to one another.
"I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do. They're really saying 'I love you.'" -Louis Armstrong
This quote from Louis Armstrong - and in fact, his entire song 'What A Wonderful World," encapsulates what I'm trying to say. There's much to appreciate in the world, to love in one another. The wholesome care of Bob Ross and Fred Rogers, the strength of Helen Keller and Malala Yousafzai, and most importantly, those we personally know and care about. Our friends, our family, our partners - everyone we know is intrinsically valuable to us in a unique way to that person. This is something we should cherish, as part of our wonderful world.
To focus on our future is to recognize the world that we'll create upon capitalism's destruction - a world with the ability to follow whatever path you choose, to not be limited by material constraints but by the limits of your imagination, to be able to truly cooperate with others as opposed to conflict with them. A world with gender roles abolished is a world where anyone may dress as they please, act how they desire, and to truly embody themselves. A world with abolition of the concept of race is a world truly representing unity, truly representing being brought together. A world with queer rights allows us to love who we please, to be able to further express ourselves how we desire. A world with ableism abolished is a world where neurodivergency and physical disabilities are recognized as not something to be stigmatized, but to be celebrated.
Our future, the world we'll create, is one of love.
And is love not what the left is truly about?
If we're to forge our ideal future, we need to recognize the beauty in the world - to recognize our love for each other, and to allow us to love ourselves. We're all on a massive rock, hurdling through space at thousands of miles an hour - this is something that we should allow to unite us to pave a road forward. To quote Carl Sagan,
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
...
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
