Over the past week, several memes grabbed my attention as they have made me rethink and helped me to put into context our local dysfunctional disorderly politics. Although they refer to the global context of nation states, physical warfare, the presidency representing “the inner soul of the people”, and civilisation’s race to the bottom, the spirit of their messages very much applies to our local political parties, our political adversarial discourse, our leadership representing “the inner soul of the people”, and our society’s race to the bottom.
For those of you who do not get my drift, and for those of you who are in denial and do not believe we have a political cancer in our midst that is threatening to destroy the bonds of unity, trust, solidarity and vitality in our communities, I provide four painful exhibits of the works of political acitivitists that are condoned and enabled by the politicians in office and in opposition. If we have to resort to belittling the other in order to big-up our political selves, then we have lost our moral and spiritual compasses and will fail in our collective endeavours of community and nation building!!
It is only when we are no longer in denial that we have a problem, that a diagnosis can be made, and a treatment plan can be formulated on the way forward.
What I endeavour to do is to shine the light on some of the deepest shadows that have made me weep for our nation this week, and that have served as symptoms and signs of our disorderly dysfunctional national politics.
In subsequent posts, I will be going into more detail into the collective unconscious of our people and to engage one and all in a form of psycho-social cultural national therapy so that we can regain our moral and spiritual bearings back, so that our political parties are no longer seen as “gangs of bandits” fighting each other for power, so that our political heroes are the ones who prevent this type of political adversarial discourse and attacks on each other and innocent people (including our state scholars), so that our leadership styles represent the best of the “inner soul of our people”, so that our societies and communities are built on the solid foundations of morality, wisdom and compassion.
Please be forewarned that this process is going to be very painful and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, but if we are to overcome our denial of the political cancer in our midst and our loss of political innocence, we need to go through the five stages of grieving which include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance before we are able to reform our political machinations and the quality of our political discourse and help co-create in solidarity a more coherent and rational dispensation for our leaders and the people they have been elected by or appointed to serve.
