Taking Responsibility for 21st Century Politics

(Originally published on Medium.com)

It is said that we are given the world we live in and we give this world to the next generations.

This is true.

We earn the right to be, to live however we wish by the very fact of our existence — regardless of the impacts on others, on our environment, on our future, on the futures of others.

We may follow in our predecessors’ footsteps and do as they did, making the same mistakes along the way.

We may observe our predecessors’ actions and choose to do nothing; or we may choose merely to complain, to live enmeshed in apathy.

We may fight our predecessors openly, demanding that they correct all that we see and believe is wrong in what they did and continue to do.

Or…

We may learn. Learn from our predecessors. Learn from our contemporaries. Learn from our own lives, from our own mistakes, from our own ideas and intuitions and feelings.

We may choose the lives we wish.

We may take responsibility wherever we wish and shirk it whenever we wish.

But consequences exist, and we cannot easily shirk consequences.

So I ask, in this day and age of politics, when we dislike our government, when we dislike the media, when we disapprove of so many parts of those directing and affecting our lives:

Will we sit back and do nothing but complain?

Will we sit back and do nothing but observe?

Will we sit back and wait for someone else to do something?

Will we sit back and demand that someone correct themselves?

Or will we listen actively?

Observe openly, with an aim to find an answer, a solution — and to act upon that answer, share that answer, share that solution and act on that solution?

For: What is an answer if kept to oneself? What is a solution never implemented? What is an action never made?

It is dead. It is death. It is continuation of the same.

It is sheer and utter irresponsibility, by the very definition of that word — for there is no response.

We who see must act. Not as our predecessors have acted, except for those whom we revere, whom we deem wise and who were effective in their aims.

We must act as our hearts and minds deem true — and in no lesser fashion.

There is no other way; and we cannot demand that someone else take responsibility for what we refuse.

So: Let us, who would take responsibility for the world as it exists, who despise the current modes of behavior of modern politicians, let us learn from them and act differently, according to our beliefs, according to our knowledge. Let us be the difference. Let us stand up and try and try and try to manage and find a better way.

Who all will take responsibility, and take accountability for the mistakes we make along the way? Who will let go of our pride and accept the burden of the past?

For it will not change unless we do.

Photo ©2017 MLM