A total lack of hubris

Subject: A total lack of hubris.





Does it take a Gandhi or a Mandela to unite a nation to find a higher purpose and were they born to the circumstances of their respective countries. What was it which made them both iconic, their lack of hubris, that feeling for the common man or their lack of a Harvard business degree.

Both were men of humility, Gandhi with his spinning wheel Mandela with his number 8 jersey when South Africa won the rugby World Cup. Both endured hardship and ridicule from the ruling elite, both suffered the ignominy of being seen second class because of their colour and their origins. The sins of their oppressors were set aside after they had triumphed and malice was missing from their agenda when in power.

But surely it must in the making of their actions, their thoughts at the start of their individual journeys not the recognition at the end of it. Was it they thought small not big they built their humanity from the grains within that humanity in other words it wasn’t a project to aim at but an experience to be within. When Mandela decided to side with his brethren against the might of the Apartheid government his actions, even the bombings in Durban were made poignant by the iniquity of those in power, their blindness to the harm being done to ordinary people. Similarly Gandhis non violent protests and his disinclination to seek reparations, only social justice through the court system made each man remembered as a hero both within the society they represented but in others across the globe. This awareness of the intricacy of society made up of its component parts and how each part was equally valuable had to be protected.

We have come a long way from the humanitarian brotherhood of Gandhi and Mandela to the cruel symbolism of Kwarteng and Truss who’s ideological interpretation of economics makes them prepared to cast huge shoals of their fellow men and women into untold penury to see if ideology works. How do they sleep at night knowing mothers and their children will undoubtably suffer needlessly because of their actions. We know the ills and the errors of Putin (Ukraine) and before him Johnson (Brexit) helped hasten the economic demise in this country but to embark on a right wing stimulatory punt into the dark is perverse. Our country is ill equipped, not only with an inadequately trained workforce but also which a mindset in management equally ill equipped to venture out and change old habits when it comes to risk taking and investment. For decades local investment has been totally inadequate. Whole swathes of our infrastructure has been bought up by foreign capital to the point we have made ourselves vulnerable if investment returns dip as I’m sure they will during the coming recession/depression. Our borrowing profile will require us to go cap in hand to the IMF to act as guarantor otherwise we become a banana republic trying to secure funds on the volatile short term markets. Scary times ahead and all predicated on an egoistic analysis of our strength and not enough attention taken of our weakness’s by people who have too much power through our system of governance and the “first past the post” electoral system.

In the current Parliament there are simply no checks and balances, no way to prevent the assumption of extreme measures to govern. With such a large majority the rest of Parliament is made irrelevant and can’t hope to represent the views of at least 50% of households in the country and even the other 50% must be aghast at what the government are now proposing. Economics is one thing but rights and justice through our courts are also under fire from the zealots. Freedom to protest without arrest and even the hallowed tenants such as the inviolability of the  green belt are trashed by a nodding dog majority. Concept such as protection from the development of land for energy extraction if that extraction provokes reasonable protest based on analysis. Perhaps limiting the drilling to the large county estates of the wealthy might give pause but that’s like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas’s.