Total cataclysm or a necessary awakening : Brexit and other coming deceptions
If Brexit goes through it may not jeopardize everything about the trade and labour relations that have made a united Europe the largest political body within the G20, but it has given a loud signal that many desire to recenter priorities and problems to be solved at home. The matter that is troubling is that Brexit is an electroshock to our world order. What is at stake now is a worldview we have defended since Nazi Germany was defeated. Not since the tragic events of september 11 2001 and the unfortunate foreign policy jugement that followed has the West witnessed such a profound attack to its well source of global moral high-ground. With the spectre of a Trump presidency and a geopolitically weakened Europe, major powers like Russia and China, that have until now been under the shadow of Uncle Sam and the Old Continent, will drive their self-interested agendas forward in ways likely to disrupt the stage of international peace and development brokers at a time where we need consensus to deliver on SDGs, COP21 and soon Habitat3 agendas.
The genesis of this tragic affair is clearly and simply an unhappy electorate, squeezed middle class and alienated working class riddled with fears of further economic adversity and the inability to handle the migrant crisis. That is not to be joked about but most of the people who are voting for this change are being manipulated by megalomaniac demagogues applying populist rhetoric to all the far left and far right corners of the world. This is certainly not helping solve our leadership crisis which has seen the rise of second rate characters serving the legacy of incumbent political families in oh-too many nations. Trump will feel right at home now because there is a deficit of good and inspiring folks who make it into the power elites. They are sons of dictators, shady businessmen, crooked generals, religious autocrats, and so on. How are the well intentioned nations like Canada with a friendly face like Trudeau or the scandic bloc of cute army-less countries going to weigh up against the seriously belligerant and nasty club of kleptocrats I wonder.
The bitter irony of Brexit is that it will likely hurt the leavers most as Britain stops being ‘Great’ on the diplomatic scene and has no strong figure in the Labour or Conservative party respected by other peers of the free world. Widening income inequalities and slow growth that leavers worry about may just be exacerbated by Brexit. Allowing the populists to rule will not solve this. We need entrepeneurial nations, vibrant cities, culturally diverse communities, and ambitious leaders to flourish, not egotistical men surfing on electoral anger to take us back into the 1930s. For sure we can complain about the often uninspiring feats of Hollande and Merkel, mock the farce of more than a decade of Berlusconi, but does little England have much better to offer in the nationalist personas of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn? Even those who may have been frustrated with Obama will struggle to find such fantastic humanistic qualities in any other contender for office of a major power.
It feels like a total retreat of sensible decision making. A vail of darkness has the over-confident optimists in a pickle. We have even come to disrespect a capable and experienced leader like Hillary Clinton, who albeit her perhaps significant flaws offers quite a lot of savvy in representing progressive ideals — and that means a lot to the whole world, not just America. It may not be the rebirth of the American dream but if we kill that one too with Trump after the suicide of the European dream, what have we got left? Is there a dream out there our youth can fight for and rally behind? Is it not utterly absurd that it is the old guard and the outcasts who have possibly just vetoed the future our youth deserves trying to build momentum and unity against the odds of our own planetary extinction from Climate Change, genetically modified life, nuclear proliferation and sentient AI? What about the exciting possibilities in technology, the blossoming of a smart citizen spirit empowered by real sharing economies, ubiquitous collaboration platforms and genderless, raceless and ageless mindsets? Are we just scrapping this and letting a cohort of silly senile men rule and claim authority in the name of destroying the establishment? Are they not just a worse form of global nomenclatura with absolutely no vision and only the power to crush everyone who disagrees mildly with them if they start to infiltrate or bypass the stabilizing effect of institutions like the UN, WTO and other ailing meta-governmental bureaucracies?
All in all it looks to me as if we cannot afford what is going on. Anonymous and other hacker societies can challenge the falseness and corruption of the big boys but in fine they cannot replace their legitimacy. If we come to accept the world order shaping from the reaction to Brexit we are all weaker in the face of adversity, from local wars to global pandemics to ethical decisions regarding our relation to machines and genetics which are arguably bigger long term questions to answer than who will lead us to deeper ruin in the next 5 years. It is not a time for mediocre leadership. On the contrary it is an epoch with challenges so profound and changes so exponential that history will judge this coming decade either as a total cataclysm or an awakening - a new and necessary enlightenment. We need to strike while the iron is hot and provide defendable data in favor of creating the international frameworks and political leadership which will save the day. We are paying for half a century of media brainwashing having left behind too large of a population of the West. It is time to re-educate people on what is paramount and how certain benefits we have enjoyed can only be preserved and shared further within our nations and with other nations if we stick together and find greater endeavours to unite us rather than let pettiness divide us. Yes we need to distribute wealth and re-engineer welfare. Yes we need to stop being over-run by bureaucracies like Brussels. But we should not forget that divorces like Brexit fuel the wrong intentions and stop inspiring the actions we most want to see happen. The world system needs some relationship counseling not a savage divorce creating opportunities for the lesser instincts of some to dominate the global play.
Writing from TEDsummit, Thomas Ermacora is an urbanist, technologist and futurist, author of Recoded City : Co-creating Urban Futures for Routledge 2016. Founder and director of London based Clear Village regeneration agency, Limewharf cultural innovation hub, Machines Room impact Fablab and impresario of the Maker Mile, he is a LEAD fellow of Clinton Global Initiative, founding partner of the MIT Fabcity Initiative and advisor to the World Economic Forum ‘Shaping the future of Urban Development & Services’ Initiative. @termacora
