We have seemingly had elections and politicians for
aeons. We have had definitions for politician ever since Samuel Johnson’s
first edition of Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755.
In that first edition the second definition Johnson gave for politician was
‘A man of artifice; one of deep contrivance.’ Many would argue that the
definition still adheres.
With antecedents in the Roman Republic and in England
in the 13th century, it is only since the 17th century
that electoral democracy began to become the standard form of government throughout
the western world. Just two and a half centuries.
During these last two and a half centuries where has electoral
(aka representative) democracy (and its attendant politicians) got us? Much of
the research into politics has shown that political representation greatly
favours affluent sectors of society to the detriment of the population as a
whole. Hardly representative. When one looks at the make up of politicians who
do become elected, in most cases world-wide they are from the wealthy elite.
Very few are those we would meet whilst out walking the dog or pushing a baby
in a pram. (Although we will find them queuing up to pat the dog or kiss the
baby come election time.)
Furthermore, with politicians at the helm over the
past two and a half centuries the world has become a lot messier.
Environmentally it is in a mess. Socially and culturally, it is in a mess.
Individually too, we are in a mess. Politicians do not appear to have the
willingness to tackle much of this, and some even exacerbate the mess.
Yet, we continue to vote for politicians, we continue
to vote for a flawed system. Whitmore, we continue to listen to them. We
continue to allow politicians to speak on our behalf, notwithstanding that most
do nothing of the sort.
So, who could we listen to instead?
The avant-garde filmmaker and poet Jonas Merkas once
quipped that, ‘In the very end civilisations perish because they listen to
their politicians and not their poets.’ Maybe he is correct.
Another artist, the science fiction author Ursula K.
La Guin enlarged upon Merkas’ remark. The author of the very popular Earthsea
fantasy series emphatically suggested that;
‘I think hard times are coming,
when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how
we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive
technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for
hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the
realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the
difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.’
Merkas
and La Guin could be onto something.
It may
be as simple as William Blake reminding us of our connection to the cosmos: ‘To
see a world in a grain of sand/ And heaven in a wild flower/ Hold infinity in
the palm of your hand/ And eternity in an hour.’
Perhaps
it is the Bard’s love sonnet that begins with, ‘Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate;/ Rough winds do shake
the darling buds of May,/ And summers lease hath all too short a date.’
Or Mary
Oliver suggesting advising a quietude of mind: ‘Every day I see or I hear/ something
that more or less/ kills me with delight.’
These
and dozens of other poems and poets have us asking the simple question, as Mary
Oliver does; ‘There’s only one question/ how to love this world.’
I doubt
that this is a question politicians ask very often.
I hear
them answer it very rarely. If at all.
I think
I’ll go find a book of poetry to read while the Australian elections are on.
