Creators, destroyers and an important election

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2024 (336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By the time you read this, the American elections will be over, and most of the votes counted. Some of the winners and losers will be apparent today, while others await the inevitable recounting of close races.

Or at least that is how elections are supposed to work, according to the rule of law, and under the U.S. Constitution. It is a sign of troubled times that we have to wonder whether the outcome of a free and fair election will be accepted by the losing candidate for the 47^th President of the United States.

As the rest of the world awaits the inevitable drama of the electoral college process, and fears a potential replay of what happened the last time, I am not impressed by what unfortunately passes for American democracy these days.

In many ways, the rhetoric of choice has played a dominant role in this election. But if you are unemployed, or poor, or sick — if you are the wrong colour, or you have no education, or you have a criminal record — your so-called choices remain in the realm of rhetoric. They are not real.

Choice, after all, is the product of privilege. Too many people feel trapped in situations where they have no real choices, just varying shades of the same inevitable option. When that feeling extends across generations, when it gets embedded in a segment of the population over a long period of time, then escaping that burden is very difficult. Hope or possibility are routinely crushed by obstacles and despair.

Whether or not American democracy will survive into the second quarter of this century remains to be seen. In some ways, the Harris/Walz campaign nailed the dilemma that people face, not only in America, but in other less dramatic democracies around the world:

Is a better future possible by changing the current system through evolution, one person at a time, or is the only way forward through a revolution that destroys whatever — and whoever — stands in our way?

Does the current system have within it the seeds of hope, the seeds of change, the seeds of empathy, that make a better future possible for people who, right now, feel trapped and unable to choose that future for themselves?

If it doesn’t, if we are only going from bad to worse — at the hands of those whose money and position have enabled them to claim and hold the reins of power — then we need to tear down the current system and start again, right now, while we still have the chance.

In his 1999 book, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, ecotheologian Thomas Berry reflected on the growing polarity in global culture between developers and ecologists. He saw a dichotomy between these two kinds of people, with the developers placing the needs (and wants) of the human above any other values, even if it meant the devastation of the Earth itself. So, he challenged the idea of sustainable development, arguing what we need instead is a sustainable way of living, for everyone, if we want a better future than the one that otherwise certainly lies ahead.

Twenty-five years further into our trajectory toward planetary disaster, I would sharpen that polarity into a difference between creators and destroyers.

There are people whose life, work and attitudes create something better than what they inherited; people who live with, rather than against, the Earth and its creatures. They create, striving against the inevitable entropy in human and ecological systems that otherwise leads those systems to decay or disintegrate. They are the weavers of relationships among people and places, who choose to repair and strengthen the fabric of all of our lives, now and into the future.

Then there are people who, through a misguided sense of their own importance, or knowledge, or skill, think they can cut down those trees, or excavate that mountain, or flood that field, to remake the world in the image of what they think it should be, and especially for the benefit of people like themselves. We just need one more pipeline, one more factory, one more building, and then the world will be a better place.

More than party labels that glibly brand us left, right, or confused, this polarity between creators and destroyers is driving election cycles in the U.S. and elsewhere. What muddies the water, however, is that every expression of democratic government includes a mixture of both.

There are unconscious creators, who don’t realize they are creating something or why, just as there are kindly destroyers, who celebrate the destruction of a forest because the land will be used for affordable housing.

Whoever and wherever we are, we all make choices, even only small ones, every day. However trapped we feel — however trapped we are — we can still choose to make things better for the people around us, for the Earth and all of its children, today and tomorrow.

Or not.

Peter Denton tries to create from his home in rural Manitoba.