Changing Tides

Is this the Awakening?

A growing wave of protests now dubbed the “Occupy Movement” is sweeping across the globe on a ticket of change. Peaceful for the most part, thousands of demonstrators in nearly a thousand cities around the world have embraced its rallying call, from London, Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, to Kuala Lumpur, and cities across North America,   even Mongolia.

Made up of young and old, poor and (relatively) rich, environmentalists, labor union members, activists, members of the academe and representatives from all sectors of civil society, the existing global revolution is essentially leaderless. Some condemn it as an aimless, pointless, disorganized mass of lazy no-gooders in need of jobs. Others call it a genuine response to the overwhelming troubles of our times, as well as a testament to human solidarity and cooperation. The New York City protestors have been sitting in – and sleeping in, in a self-sustaining community of tents, shared food and public discourse – at Zuccotti Park since September. While it is tempting to draw similarities with the hippie revolution of the ‘70s, this time it is a little different.

It all started from an unlikely source, the “Arab Spring” that gushed forth last year from a region of the world home to some of the world’s most conservative societies, run by the most oppressive regimes in history. It began in Tunisia and Egypt, and has since spread through the rest of the Middle East. The rallies we witness today are the same cries for economic equity and political justice, of a less violent sort. Democracy is reverberating from East to West, as America dreams a new dream.

Some of the causes behind the Movement are obvious, others, less so. First on the list is widespread frustration on the financial crisis, rising income inequality, political inaction, basically the system in general. The scattered Occupy movements unite under the banner of “99 percent vs. one percent.”

Over three billion people, nearly half of the world, live on less than $ 2.50 a day, according to the World Bank – about the equivalent of a single Starbucks Grande Mocha Frappuccino or half the price of a pair of Havaianas slippers. 1.4 billion live in extreme poverty. Of that number, nearly a billion do not have enough to eat, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and one out of every four children in developing countries is underweight, according to UNICEF.

In addition, the poorest 40 percent of the global population owns only five percent of the world’s wealth, while the richest two percent own half of the world’s assets, and the richest 10 percent consume more than half of the planet’s resources. To put all that in perspective, think of a ravenous soccer-playing brother who leaves the rest of his ten siblings with a bit of crust and an ounce of cheese from what used to be a family size pizza. Talk about sharing after a hard day of practice.

The statistics – some recorded toward the start of the global financial crisis – are grim, and the reign of sheer greed can only lead to further frustration for the many,  fear and paranoia by the few, future instability, even outright conflict.  In the long run, it could spell the end of civilization and the human race itself, as the destruction of human lives walks hand in hand with the rest of the planet.

Whether indirect (e.g. chronic poverty, inequality) or intentional (e.g. genocide, slavery), barriers have sprung up to ensure that the growing needs of a vast majority of humanity stay far from met.  While the rich and powerful rapidly modernize, reap all the benefits of mass consumption, and channel capital, natural resources and social benefits from the masses, the rest have yet to keep pace with the technology and standards of living of the First World and the upper classes in their countries. While the latter put up sky scrapers and bail out their banks with billions of dollars of potential aid, the perennial issues of corruption, ecological devastation, gaping inequality and endemic poverty continue to rear their ugly heads among the lower and Third. Despite alleged economic growth, wealth has failed to “trickle down”.

Global crises form fertile ground for authentic, lasting change are about to take root. The challenges ahead pressure us all to ensure that resources are handled sustainably, distributed fairly, and released from the hands of the few.   Injustice essentially boils down to the fact that we can afford to spend on guns and McMansions, and send a few men to the moon, yet fail to feed the millions down below. In a world of material abundance (but one apparently suffering from severe ethical, moral and spiritual loss) and technologically advanced enough to meet the needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, this sorry state of affairs is both tragic and inexcusable.

On a more positive note, there is another factor fuelling the revolution. Globalization, once considered by some as mostly a tool for multinational corporations to  gain maximum profit from the world market is beginning to backfire, as national borders crumble before an emergent powerful civil society made up of activists,  humanitarian groups, aid agencies, other NGO’s and ordinary people. New ideas spread in an instant as advances in communications technology and social networking have made it possible to form a truly global community with similar goals, born out of the realization that we are all in this together.

But while that sentiment has solidified into a concrete call for change worldwide, it has yet to reach Philippine shores on the level of People Power.  In New York and elsewhere, protestors are comfortably shielded from the worst of poverty. That the revolutionary spirit is largely dead in a country where poverty stares us straight in the face the moment we step out the door of our homes is somewhat disappointing. Lasallians have never been famous for going against the status quo – we usually abdicate that privilege to the Oblation runners, but at what better time than this to join a worldwide movement for change?

It is up to those in power to give some of it up to those without. We used to call that democracy, but now it is dismissed as impractical, a pipe-dream, hopeless idealism. A complacent public, clueless of its own power spells the end of Democracy. A generation that believes it has no future is one that has ensured its own doom.

We are all part of a system flawed from the inside-out, wrought by centuries of conflict, colonization and corruption, that blaming any single actor – be it the president or “human nature” itself – is pointless, for we are all to blame… the failure to see that the lowly beggar and the bereaved Muslim widow in Mindanao are our own flesh and blood, and the failure to realize that whatever we do, no matter how small, sends out ripples of change.

The movements we witness are but the birth pangs of a new era. Humanity is gradually adjusting to the fact that we depend on one another for survival, and that each individual is an integral, vital part of the greater whole. The same needs, fears, desires and hopes that tie us together on the same planet outweigh whatever selfish, self-centred interests set us apart.

A more just, peaceful and sustainable world demands a collective paradigm shift from a system that pins its survival on an all-or-nothing (“a  war of all against all”) approach at life: where having more than another is the very reason for being, where what you own is what you are,  where profit, competition and self-interest dominate social relations, where commercialism, consumerism and materialism infest every nook and cranny of modern culture… toward a society that values quality and sustainability over quantity and short-term gains; where every man, woman and child is worth infinitely more than a mere statistic, and compassion extends  beyond our own species to embrace the planet as a whole.

Let hate, greed, division and despair give way to selflessness, compassion, cooperation and hope.

Egalite, Liberte… pour la paix