Guest post by Graeme Maxton
The
desire for collective action remains strong
What happens when you
bring a group of young political activists together?
You might be
surprised.
Over the last five
days, in a sleepy part of Switzerland, we brought together members
of the Occupy Movement, the Pirate Party and some of the biggest
political NGOs for the first time, ever. We also invited some edgy
film makers, alternative-thinking academics, popular online
journalists and controversial bloggers to sit in. The odd banker
was asked to take part too. And also a radical feminist from
Ukraine, famous for grabbing the headlines topless.
All those who came to
the meeting had two things in common. There were all in their 20s
or 30s. And they were all passionate about wanting to change the
world.
The conference was the
culmination of months of work by my colleagues and was the first
of its kind. The 60 attendees had been selected after we received
a deluge of applications from all over the world.
We had representatives
from more than 40 countries – not only the mainstream countries of
America, Germany and Japan but also from Namibia, Iran and
Bolivia, countries less used to being given an equal voice when it
comes to driving the international agenda. We had green party
politicians from Australia, environmental lobbyists from China and
animators with something radical to say from Venezuela.
We started by inviting
Holocaust survivors, climate change scientists, economists,
politicians, writers and religious thinkers to give us their
perspectives on the world and its future. Then we asked the
attendees to spend three days working together. We asked them to
think about the world. We asked them to discuss the future of
humanity, and our relationship with nature. We asked them to
consider the purpose of our societies. We asked them to look at
what our priorities should be over the next 30 years. And we asked
them to think about what is right and wrong. We also asked: does
the next generation have any rights and where do our obligations
to them lie?
What we got in return
was unleashed passion and anger in equal measure, from a group
that no longer believes in the traditional political process,
because they simply don't think it works. People who said
economics had got it wrong. That it should focus on people and not
just growth. That we need to think about the long term, not just
next week. They talked about a finance sector that was out of
control, which only served its own needs. Some called for
revolution.
They were worried by
two trends more than any others. They were concerned about the
accelerating pace of climate change and they fretted about the
expected rise in poverty, almost everywhere. Both could be fixed
they thought, and easily. It was politicians who were standing in
the way, as well as the greedy, those “who keep buying stuff they
don't need with money they don't have”, they said.
When 60 political
activists come together, what do they want to do? Well, for one
thing, they want to redefine the word 'education'. It should not
just be about teaching children at school and university. It
should also be about learning sustainable values and the social
skills to make good decisions. It should be about teaching
entrepreneurship and about developing the next generation of
leaders who can take the right long term decisions.
Humanity as a
parasite
They were also
concerned about the media, which they thought was manipulative and
often dishonest. It was not informing people as it should, and it
was not connecting with these people in particular. There was also
a concern that many of our problems are global, but that almost no
one was thinking globally. Climate change should be an issue for
the UN security council, they said. Not just that. Those who abuse
the planet, or cause it harm, should be charged with violating
everyone else's human rights. There should even be a principle of
climate justice; those who create environmental problems for
others should be made to face criminal charges. They felt that
while it is not in our nature to be destructive, to ruin our home,
humankind is behaving like a parasite too often. Our society has
become like a weed, they said.
They wanted change.
They wanted to change our values. They wanted to change our
education systems. They wanted to change our economic and
political systems. They wanted to change our relationship with
nature. They wanted to hold the greedy to account.
More than anything
they wanted to be heard. And they felt that no almost one was
listening.
At least, in that,
they were wrong.
