The World in the Mirror of Power
Elites, and the politicians who are to some extent under their sway, shape the lives of eight billion people in today’s world; they are also responsible for a significant share of the suffering those people endure. By elites I mean the narrow circles that draw their power not from elections but from ownership, and that control the flow of capital, energy resources, the means of production and the channels of information. Sometimes they do this through border wars, sometimes through displays of power, and sometimes by invoking various disputes as justification. The human order and the order of the world are shaped by power itself and the effects it creates.
In developed countries, institutional systems protect broad sections of society to a certain extent, but that protection is not enough. In developing countries it is weaker and more fragile. In the least developed countries, pain and deprivation can be seen in all their starkness. There are not three separate worlds; only three depths of the same order.
“In whose world, then, is this pain, this deprivation, being lived? Or does the world belong to someone other than the ones we imagine?”
The Polished Face of Civilisation and the Inner Void
Strangely, in the age we inhabit, humanity appears both more advanced and more tormented than ever. While some material indicators improve — child mortality falls, literacy rises — the indicators that measure how people feel move in the opposite direction. That is the heart of the matter. The outward face of civilised humanity has been polished; the inward face has been left to ache in a painful emotional void. What must be understood is the intellectual underside of this strange theatre. That inner emptiness is no accident; the order itself produces it.
Yet the world does not belong to elites or to the politicians who are partly under their sway. The world, nature and the gifts of the earth ought to be the common inheritance of humankind, yet today they have become privileges beyond reach. This is also a revealing mirror of the point capitalism has reached. The distribution of income is profoundly unequal; the gulf has grown too wide to conceal. For peace, love, understanding, morality and justice are not ornaments of the economy but its foundation; when the foundation cracks, every figure above it has been measured wrongly.
“At this very point, the mirror shows us not only the outer face but the emptiness within.”
We Are Also in the Mirror
What is happening is this: on the one hand, a person is left economically impoverished; on the other, that same person is subjected to the endlessly alluring pressure to “buy”. The human being is left suspended and divided between the visible face of abundance and the reality of deprivation.
And this is where the mirror becomes hardest to face. They are not the only ones in it. We too are among the eight billion: we who buy despite the pressure, choose not to see, wait our turn and do not raise our voices. The mirror leaves no one outside; it also shows the one who looks into it. Saying this does not absolve the elites — their share is great — but neither does it make our share invisible.
On this face suspended in the mirror, personal and social problems appear in all their nakedness. At the social level, anxiety, turmoil and unrest; within families, disintegration; within the individual, psychological trauma and depression are all reflected back at us. It is here that deep and structural problems, feeding one another, begin to emerge. They in turn produce new vicious circles.
For the reasons described above, the fractured image in the mirror also makes moral problems visible. In dogmatic societies, attempts are made to overcome moral problems through religion; yet these attempts often fall short and may even evolve into the exploitation of religion and political dogmatism.
To cover the moral void, rulers tighten the laws. When the balance of justice is disturbed, harsher laws may be deemed necessary; but that does not settle the matter. Merely increasing punishment cannot work while the underlying problems remain untouched. The real problem — the problem of morality and justice — then stands exposed. The mirror reveals the blind spots of civilised humanity. It is like a short trailer showing how civilised a person may appear while remaining far from civilisation.
Life goes on amid all these problems. The sun rises; the sun sets.
Time moves forward; politicians and elites continue to look away from the problems.
And the vicious circle grows deeper.
Education as the Beginning of a Way Out
“Is there a way out of this vicious circle? There is; but first we must have the courage to admit what is before us.”
If we must begin somewhere, this is where we must begin: we must urgently acknowledge that a new age of knowledge has begun and rebuild education from the ground up. Today’s schools are still preparing people for jobs that machines are taking from human hands with every passing day. A system that measures memorisation, rewards obedience and treats thought as a waste of time produces people with neither the knowledge to question the distribution of income, nor the philosophy to distinguish morality from coercion, nor the awareness to see the source of their own anxiety. Income policies, justice reforms, policies to protect nature — all are necessary; yet unless we educate people capable of demanding, debating and carrying them forward, all will remain on paper. Education is the precondition for every other solution, not because it comes first on a list, but because it makes the others possible.
We must remember that peace, love, understanding, morality and justice are not ornaments of the economy but its foundations. If the foundation is flawed, everything built upon it will sooner or later decay.
If we want to change the face in the mirror, we must first educate the person capable of looking into that mirror.