The age of the educated ignorant ostrich
Last night I went to bed with Trump already on the winning
seat of yet another undemocratic electoral process in the USA, and this morning
I woke up to the confirmation of the obvious. In the same way Brexit should not
have been a surprise to anyone closely informed and connected to the real
world, neither should have been the outcome of this “election”.
What really shocks me though, and once again, is the sheer
amount of comments, articles, posts and exclamations of disbelief of supposedly
the educated, the informed, the switched ones amongst us.
What really shocks me is to know I am surrounded by people,
friends, acquaintances, colleagues, from supposedly self-proclaimed polished,
cultured, even erudite backgrounds who were genuinely stunned by these results.
What really shocks me is to see the violence of free insults
flying around from supposedly more sophisticated individuals, accusing the
voters who actually bothered to take action because they are desperate for
change, of ignorance, of un-education, of bigotry.
What really shocks me is that still, after Brexit and now
the Trump election, we are refusing to see the obvious failure of a system to
the masses, we are refusing to look at our neighbourhoods, our schools, our
hospitals, our job centres, because that would be too inopportune, too
unfortunate, too problematic.
What really shocks me is that we continue to fail to take
responsibility for our actions, our inactions, our societies, and rather choose
to accuse those at the bottom, the real victims of this cruel system, instead
of those who created it.
What really shocks me is that despite all of this, tonight
and in the coming days, months, until the next election in the western world,
we will continue to act like educated but very ignorant ostriches, refusing to
see the obviously inconvenient truth that is our western world today.
What really shocks me, as Einstein once put it, is that we
accept insanity is doing the same thing over and over again whilst expecting a
different result, yet we categorically refuse to accept we need to change
ourselves.
So let’s stop insulting the British and the Americans who
voted, let’s take responsibility for our daily choices and let’s start doing
something different if that’s what we really want.
