In 1987, the Brundtland Report (“Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development”) introduced three principles of environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
* Meet present needs without compromising the capacity of future generations to meet their own.
* Integrate economic growth with environmental stewardship.
* Address interconnected crises like poverty, pollution, and resource depletion.
Today, add to the list:
** Confront the decline of representative democracy, create institutional reforms to ensure the well-being of a free people in coming generations.
This is not new stuff. Natural science, ethics, history, sociology, psychology, political science. Every intellectual domain on the planet has acknowledged the looming tipping point.
Imagine the power of a few wealthy-elite who can sweep it all aside for their own short-term benefit. Imagine the psychological conditioning of citizens who allow them, even defend them.
Structurally our representative democracy no longer exists. In nearly every policy decision where citizen and wealthy disagree, the decision and advantage and benefit goes to the wealthy.
A 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page (“Testing Theories of American Politics“) found that the impact on policy of the average citizen was miniscule, statistically insignificant. Corporate interests and wealthy elite, on the other hand, show a substantial independent impact on policy-making.
This is not sustainable democracy. This is autocracy morphing quickly into authoritarianism.
No matter what you think your politics are, left and right do not matter. The sharp blade is entitled wealth versus free citizens. Extractive capitalism does not benefit the citizen. It benefits the wealthy and citizens pay the cost.
Everywhere we look we witness the disquieting consequence of the inherited wealth of vacuous underachievers.
At 18 years I joined mass protests against the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon. Protests for civil rights, an end to racial discrimination, equity for women. Protests for clean air and water. To keep corporate parasites from defiling essential elements of life.
Today I am 72 years old. In my age, I have become irrelevant to the normal workings of commerce, an unexpected blessing. This is my second age of dissent. My time to speak, to let my voice be heard.
True freedom is the agency to participate fully in the systems that govern our lives. It is the ability to walk the dog, raise a family, and find joy within a society that we help shape, rather than one we merely inhabit.
There are options. There are possibilities. But these possibilities are no longer probabilities.
There is much to love in life. Homes, families. Music and writing and art and community. Hot black coffee on rainy mornings.
Being a truly free people is high on that list.