Surviving in the Era of Populism

Can’t fathom where the last decade went. True, some of its ravages have left their mark on this poor body of mine, but in other ways, things have been moving so fast and so far that the universe has become virtually unrecognizable from the one we knew at the beginning of the decade.

         Of course, the dominant motif has been the spread of this vast network of interconnectedness that links most of humanity together. I am talking here about the digital connections in which, we are told, 3.5 billion of us are engaged these days, treating each other and everyone who has access, to the tedium that defines our lives.

         But lest we forget, our digital inter-connectedness can never match the biological connectedness that links us, as humans, manifested in the indivisibility of the DNA sequences that weave us all together. To emphasize the point, although the number of genes coding for human characteristics and features has been downsized from the 100,000 that was calculated at the opening stages of the new genetics era to between 24,000 and 25,000 now, there is still a huge potential for variation that transcends family, group and region and exposes the emptiness of those who would divide us. And here we include non-essential attributes like skin colour, hair texture, body shape, physiognomy. It’s rather like being in a car lot where you’re looking at buying yourself a nice new motor. On that lot you see an array of vehicles, stretching from horizon to horizon: Different shapes, different sizes, colours, different marque, and indeed different models, some only slightly differing from the other. But all have four wheels (When did you last see a three-wheeler? Whenever one of these appears these days, it does so mainly for comic relief), a steering wheel, gear shift, accelerator and brake pedals, and the array of instruments on a dashboard. The motor under the hood, however, is the same: It could be internal combustion or, nowadays, electric. But they are still the engine that moves the whole thing along.

         The point I am making is that all those variations do not detract from the essence of ‘carness’, if I could coin a word. By the same token, human beings, on our car-lot of humanity, are essentially the same under the hood, despite or because of the 25000 genes that we each embody.  And, prick any of us, we bleed the same red blood. But it has become fashionable, in some quarters, to somehow, deny this reality by attempting to drive a wedge between communities and groups for only one sordid purpose, capturing power. From the streets of London to America’s heartland, and from the domes of the Kremlin to places along the languid waters of the Danube, and from the hovels of New Delhi to the dragons rising in China, and from the unfortunate Rohingyas on to Brazil’s burning Amazon,  “strong” men (and women, sadly) have wrested control from the hands of social democrats who, until recently, have been trying to make the world a better place. But by the end of the decade, things have taken a decidedly bad turn. True, the Robert Mugabes and Hosni Mubaraks, the Gadafis, the Tunisian Ben Alis, and The Gambian Yahyah Jammeh have been swept away. But the optimism that followed these ejections have not fulfilled their promise.

         Instead, there are important countries in which people are incited to hate each other to a level that has become totally toxic orchestrated by a President of the United States, for example, who, it seems, believes that wholesale disruption is the brilliant approach to refashioning world order. Even his domestic policies reverberate negatively around the world, and his so-called foreign policy directly threatens world peace. All we can do is hold our breath and hope that we can survive to exhale in the purer air of broad and sunlit uplands.

         So, despite the early signs, let us not despair but instead, wish ourselves survival in 2020.

Tell Fren Tru