Bruce Bisset: Standing up to the challenge

The true measure of "wellbeing" is to educate and care for a populace to be strong enough to accept reality and meet the challenge of the future. Photo/File

We must think globally, act locally and stop saying 'it's not my fault'.
Denial often works in subtle and roundabout ways, but there is no denying it is already a major force in global politics and in the way we live our lives.

Some denials are obvious: climate change, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss and species extinction are commonly denied currency amongst those who naively believe the mass of mankind has little or no impact on nature.

Others are fantastical: the Earth is flat, the moon landings were faked, chemtrails are mass-dosing us with pharmaceuticals, the world's elite are really reptilian aliens in human form; conspiracy theories people choose to believe because such "reality" somehow makes more sense to them.

In short, denialists are those who wish for and come to believe things to be other than they are, despite all evidence. The wilfully ignorant and the ignorantly wilful.

Both outlooks essentially adopt the premise that they and people of their acquaintance are blameless for the state of the world; and if it's not me, I can't be held guilty.

No, it's them, it's their fault – whoever "they" are.

Then there are the denials that take that supposition and shout it as their mainstay. The rise of populist and nationalist movements worldwide is a very visible example.

This week's European Union elections showed how strong that recidivistic retreat toward tribalism and clannishness is becoming, with far-right nationalist parties winning more seats than any others in the UK, France, Italy and Hungary.

True, the "centrists" led by "sensible" governance proponents like Germany's Angela Merkel still hold the most EU seats and will likely continue to govern, though they now need a wider coalition grouping with either the neoliberal ALDE party or the Greens to do so.

However, individual countries such as Hungary which have already elected nationalist leaders threaten to at best disrupt, at worse disband, the 50-year-old EU experiment. And Brexit, deal or no deal, will provide more ammunition to that end.

Yes, the Greens also increased their representation, and in providing a counter-weight to the far-right showed more people are also prepared to vote for the bigger global picture.

But my point is that, following the likes of Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and lately reinforced in Australia, overall the trend is for denial.

For how else do you characterise the inward-looking drive to hunker down into national, tribal, and clan groups who view any "outsiders" with suspicion? It's fuelled by the mistaken belief that "we" will be all right if we hold to our own and rebuff everything else.

This is in stark contrast to the previous ruling trend of globalisation, which helped drive the formation of the EU and in an idealised form saw the United Nations becoming a quasi- if not actual world government.

Unfortunately the corporations ambushed and corrupted the globalisation concept for their own selfish ends, and then flayed the UN for attempting to stand up to them, with the result that model has been irrevocably undermined.

Bruce Bisset

But from a humanist or for that matter green perspective, our only hope is to think globally, and then act locally with all the world in mind.

The true measure of "wellbeing" is to educate and care for a populace to be strong enough to accept reality and meet the challenge of the future with hope and a will to change – a positive progression, not a defeatist retreat.

Perhaps by the time you read this New Zealand will have taken a significant step in that direction. And if we are out of step to the rest of the world in doing so, then more kudos to us.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.