Stance

Sometimes in the midst of chaos, it can be useful to think about the place you want to be in.

It’s not a means of escape from the present situation, but the formation of a compass - a North Star to shift perspective and to orient in the dark towards something approaching light on the horizon.

There’s no point, however, saying you want to head North if you don’t also point your feet in that direction.

There’s no point if that first step, and the ones to follow on the road are held off, delayed, with vague promises of getting there “when it’s the right time.”

Trust me, ten years could go by in that mode, and one day you could look up to find you haven’t moved.

I’m of the firm opinion that decisive policy for the next election needs to start being signalled now. So much has been dismantled, dismissed, discounted, that after a potential leadership change the mahi to rebuild after crisis is going to have to start on day one.

I’m of the firm opinion that the values that we say we have are the points of the compass - backed up by the tangible steps we take in their direction.

I strongly believe your stance on public health is also your stance on equity. It is your stance on climate change. It’s your stance on violence. It is your stance on privilege. It is your stance on whether the cost of living is a crisis or a consequence of inequitable wealth distribution. It is your stance on whether erosion of norms is a political opportunity to stand just to the left of, or whether that lost ground must be kept safe, protected, restored.

These things are linked, woven, and in many ways indistinguishable from each other.

A party that says it cares about the environment on one hand cannot fail to care about the impact of pandemics on people with the other - they are two sides of the same coin.

A party that says no one can do anything is a party that has lost its way, because if no one can do anything there’s no one to hold accountable for doing nothing - and the place you stand in remains the same.

When our response is not based on mitigating risk for others but on self-preservation, that’s the first step into the mire.

Maybe it’s a small concession, at first. A thing you look the other way on, a refusal to help, a shrug, a numbing of an instinctive reach for connection.

Training yourself not to feel takes time. Sometimes the mire comes inch by inch, and talking point by talking point.

Until one day you become the kind of party that people write articles about, saying there’s no point in shaming them, because they don’t feel shame.

There’s no point in asking for transformation, because they can’t or won’t see the stars to find true north.

I am currently reading a book called Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit.

In it, she talks about hope as an opportunity, as a point on the compass.

“Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”

- Rebecca Solnit

There is room on the map for transformational change, as we contemplate the future. There is room for thinking that exists beyond our current reality of values that we talk about but don’t pursue.

There is room for a different kind of politics, a different kind of world - and to follow those who are taking the first steps towards that place.

“Hope is not about what we expect. It is an embrace of the essential unknowability of the world, of the breaks with the present, the surprises. Or perhaps studying the record more carefully leads us to expect miracles - not when and where we expect them, but to expect to be astonished, to expect that we don't know. And this is grounds to act.”

- Rebecca Solnit