principles & politics

I am stealing the wise words of this impressive young warrior friend. 

On good days I take in our cityscape - its natural dips and rises, its mix of high rise buildings and tiny houses, its trees, streets and people, its cultures and politics - and my heart is filled to bursting with love and gratitude.

On bad days I take in our cityscape - its natural dips and rises, its mix of high rise buildings and tiny houses, its trees, streets and people, its cultures and politics - and my heart feels crushed by anger and frustration.

overflowing slum

Any city will do this to its residents on any day - but all city leaders owe it to their citizens to ensure there is more good than bad in our lives. Sadly, the world over, our leaders are failing to deliver - the outcome is our quality of life is now at risk. 

Whatever nature is it certainly has a volatile tendency. As the literary critic Terry Eagleton has argued, this instability is a central feature of what we call culture:

Culture is a functionally variable term, in the sense that what may be cultural in one context may not be so in another. 

Drinking alcohol is a cultural affair, but it would cease to be so if it was the only way of quenching an intolerable thirst. Survivors of an air crash in some remote terrain who break open the drinks locker are not having a party. 

You may wear a head-dress in Qatar as a badge of your cultural identity, but also to avoid getting sunstroke.

Eagleton is very right to point out that cultural practices often toe the line between natural and unnatural, although he does not make the corollary argument - which I am making, that nature itself usually fails to be registered as natural.  

It is not that there is no such thing as nature - psychology, physics, geology, chemistry, biology etc. all point towards the definitive existence of something outside of culture, to the existence of a natural world. 

Rather, what I would like to focus on is our persistent tendency to misunderstand what is truly meant by the natural - or rather, that nature frequently expresses itself in a decisively cultural sense. 

The same problem of what we consider to be natural can be transposed onto the sociological level with the question of intergroup mixing - i.e. the mixing of ethnic or culturally distinct groups of people. 

From a nationalistic viewpoint, the mixing of social and cultural groups is inherently unnatural - it corrupts the independent development of a particular identity and interrupts the natural development of a specie. 

From an evolutionary perspective, on the other hand, intergroup mixing produced for a broad genetic exchange that allowed us to adapt to natural constraints. In other words, from this perspective the same process of intergroup mixing is deeply natural. 

Back to our leaders failing to deliver and putting us all at risk. 

Whether in our personal relationships or dynamics, in worker and employer collaborations, or resident and government oversight - the role human nature takes in the dance of give and take has become abusive and destructive. 

Between the haves and the have nots, very likely whoever calls the shots is the one with the greater advantage. In a world that increasingly tilts toward transactional gain, consideration and compassion are qualities that are quickly eclipsed and overpowered. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres is worryingly correct when, during a 2024 meeting of Pacific Island leaders, he suggested that the scale of the ecological crisis was “unimaginable”. 

It is not only unimaginable in that we cannot know the future consequences of the climate catastrophe. It is also that we ultimately fail to recognize or imagine this natural threat without altering and diluting it. 

The power of the people is required to ensure that the people in power do not ever resort to abuse or destruction. These times truly test our resolve.