Rutger Bregman got on my radar after some of his recent remarks at Davos at the World Economic Forum. His willingness to speak truth to the faces of the powerful is refreshing and inspiring. His comment about tax avoidance at Davos, that he feels like he was “at a firefighter’s conference and no one was allowed to speak about water”. Perhaps it’s just because I’m personally feeling inspired, and therefore inspired to look, but I feel that we are seeing a new crop of international leftists arising who are not merely “resisting”. Resistance in and of itself, particularly in the era of Trump is ultimately a sterile act. It merely attempts to stem the bleeding, without being able to move far, far past our current traumatized state into the areas of healing, growth and regeneration. I’ve been written about Permaculture, an ecological movement which ultimately arose out of a frustration with the resistance oriented environmentalism of the 1970s and early 80s. Permaculture posits a pragmatic and positive micro-economic solution: regenerative agriculture and self-sustainability, a permanent human culture. But of course we should be able to think about the larger picture as well, and here we come to the role of the state.
Rutger Bregman is embracing this challenge, the challenge to think positively about the future in an active sense. What can we do to solve some of the problems we are faced with? What is the role of the state? Is it possible to bring about a more just, sustainable and humane society? The answer in short, is that Bregman posits that a better future is in fact possible. I have only begun to explore his work so won’t attempt to summarize his ideas, but from the talks that I’ve seen, I very much appreciate the direction of his thinking. Importantly, he is not alone in this type of active, positive thinking. My favorite American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also pushing forward a bold new direction with her recently launched Green New Deal resolution in the US Congress. The fatalistic hand-waving and shrugging that the left has been engaged in in recent years must end. There is a better world possible but it must be actively imagined and fought for. No billionaire philanthropic scheme will bring it about, no passive technological progress will cause it to happen. Power must be wrested once more from the hands of the billionaire ruling class and placed back in the hands of democratic movements. The first step in that process is to imagine and believe that it is possible.
