Highlight of 2010

One of the highlights of 2010 for me was an unusual billboard I kept passing in Fitzroy in Melbourne’s inner north during the federal election campaign. The sign had a picture of the then Greens candidate for the seat of Melbourne, Adam Bandt, with the slogan, “I’ll stand up for refugees”.

From my packed tram amid the sullen throng of people on their way to work, my eyes would search for this billboard each morning, like a curious yet reassuring symbol. 

Something about that slogan, “I’ll stand up for refugees” was different. There was no apparent appeal to the self-interest of the voter; rather the candidate was asking people to vote for him because he was going to help someone else.

Electoral politics is almost entirely about self-interest. Whether it’s the economy, education, health, crime, transport or rural issues, politicians assume the average person is interested only in what is good for them and their family. Even environmental issues with altruistic motives are often cloaked in self-interest: a minister announces the preservation of a forest from logging so that it may be “enjoyed by current and future generations”.

Though the fulfilment of personal needs and desires is important, there is a range of human qualities neglected by mainstream politics: the need for community, the ability to reach out to others, the capacity to sacrifice for the welfare of other people and the planet as a whole.      

At heart, our culture and economic system are geared for self-gratification and the fulfilment of the individual through consumption. Economics is about generating unlimited growth based on the assumption that humans are motivated by greed and fear. Buttressed by the global advertising industry, which creates an endless stream of artificial wants and desires, the picture of what it means to be human has been narrowed. People are reduced to being ever-open mouths in vast and complex networks of markets to be mined for profit.

Politics is essentially about oiling the system of self-interest; which is why that poster in Fitzroy seemed to mark a departure, a statement of an emerging sense of different interests and possibilities. Commentators say the rise in support for the Greens is a sign of a “post-materialist” consciousness among inner-urban residents, a shifting of priorities towards community, strong action on the environment, and social justice.

The established political elites deride the emerging political consciousness as the product of “affluent trendies” who can afford to be post-materialist because they are wealthy, young and secure in employment. In a simplistic equation, people who prioritise such issues as the rights of asylum seekers are said to do so only because they no longer need to worry about the basic economic, health and education concerns that preoccupy the rest of the population.

There are deeper truths at work. A post-materialist cultural shift has been brewing since the late 1960s, when social movements led by young people attacked Western society’s sterile obsession with the economy and conservative social norms. Many of the ideas and new ways of living that were advocated then by minorities of social activists and their supporters, on issues like anti-militarism, social and sexual freedom, the rights of women and environmental protection were eventually incorporated partially or wholly into the broader society.

The continuation of that post-materialist trend seems now to be maturing and gathering momentum in new guises relevant to the 21^st century. One of the key features is the abandonment of self-interest as the sole motivation for human action. The interconnectedness of all life on Earth has never been more apparent nor the need to act collectively to protect and nurture it more urgent. Yet nations are still structured around outworn priorities which promote disconnection and disunity; the squabbling and inaction by governments at the various global climate change conferences are a telling example.

It’s clear that groups of people across the world are breaking the shackles of materialism, thinking and acting in ways that expand human experience from “what is good for me” to “what is good for us” and “what is good for all life”. That’s the animating shift in Australia behind climate action and transition-town groups and the strong interest in environmental sustainability and social justice in many inner-urban communities.

The success of this profound shift in consciousness will not be measured by the number of Greens MPs elected to parliament, though in parliamentary politics the Greens represent the shift most clearly. Its success will come over time when humanity broadly accepts and integrates its far-reaching implications and emerges out of the woods of narrow self-interest.  

By that time Adam Bandt’s confidently smiling face on a poster in Fitzroy will have been long forgotten, but his sentiment of connection and compassion will be closely woven into the social fabric.