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31 December 2012

A manifesto for the New Year: forget labels, and fix the problems

Alex Andreou's message for 2013.

By Alex Andreou

It is that time of year again, when I sit down like Scrooge, doing the books. I am not counting money – precious little of that about. I am trying to reconcile the balances of my life. Trying to tally the columns of generosity, kindness and creativity with those of self-absorption, bitchiness and cruelty. I find myself in deficit again; maybe next year I’ll break even.

2012 has been an angry year. And when I try to narrow down the “why”, I find at the heart of my anger a frustration at the lack of discussion. A whole year of standing in front of a dark tunnel, shouting “anybody there?” and getting distorted echoes in return – or so it feels.

The need to widen discourse, to go beyond Labour or Tory or Pro-gun or Feminist or Eurosceptic, is pressing. Fundamental structures are crumbling around us and we’re arguing about the decor. “We need to find a way of looking after each other,” I said. “I take it that means you’re statist,” came back the obligatory, instantaneous Twitter response.

A lad in China sold one of his kidneys for an iPad. A young girl in Pakistan was shot for arguing she should be allowed an education. A classful of children in the US were murdered with an assault rifle. We gather around herbal tea and stick meaningless labels on each other, learned 20 years ago in a politics lesson, to which we were only half paying attention.

What do we need? What would make our life and the lives of those around us better? These are the questions we never ask. These are the questions we should always be asking.

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We begin instead from cosmotheories, either discredited or superceded by clearer thinking in the last few decades. Do I define myself as a Socialist? Then I should stand against X. Do I subscribe to neoliberalism? I must never concede that the market may have screwed up. Am I a feminist? I will never admit to needing Y (no pun intended).

We have a paucity of black and white language attempting to describe a world gloriously full of colour. We start from the box in which we have chosen to live and define everything outwards. After all, The Apprentice, X Factor, Dragons’ Den, Masterchef – I could go on – have taught us that people divide brightly into brilliant successes and hilarious failures. We choose to ignore our own, verifiable, personal experience which shows us that every day is full of small battles, bitter successes and failures packed with future wisdom.

The tabloids have become skillful illustrators of fear and suspicion. What’s that? An unemployed man refused a job because he didn’t want to get up at 8am? I knew it! My deep-seated fear now has a URL reference.

What do we need? What would make our life and the lives of those around us better? These are the questions we never ask. These are the questions we should always be asking. We lack the language to discuss them. We lack the openness to find the answers. We choose to centre the debate on whether Conservatism with a dollop of compassion or Socialism with a fixation on low taxes is the answer. When we know – we fucking know – neither is.

On Christmas Eve thousands of people gathered in the centre of Athens. In the midst of the worst financial crisis to ever envelop the country, they donated generously – food, clothes, toys, appliances; many had been sitting in a storage room or a garage or a loft, unopened. Were they socialists, liberals, anarchists, statists, bigots, monetarists, part of The Left, The Right, The Centre? Who cares? They saw a problem and tried to fix it.

What do we need? What would make our life and the lives of those around us better? These are the questions we never ask. These are the questions we should always be asking. Otherwise we are increasingly condemned to take to the streets in anger, shouting “WHAT DO WE WANT? We have no idea. WHEN DO WE WANT IT? Hopefully some time in 2013.”

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