Embarrassingly banal blog post (not that it has ever stopped me before).
We don’t have a language or imagery of democracy. If you do a word association, people will come up with “parliament, or government”. If you ask them for an image, it will be the Whitehouse, Palace (!) of Westminster, or Parliament House. Maybe at a push some politicians shouting at each other in the chamber.
But it won’t be a community group handing out leaflets on a Saturday morning. Or a consultative process in a town hall. Or…
And of course, it’s no better when we talk of “social movements” – you might get Martin Luther King giving his ‘I have a dream’ speech, but not much beyond.
So, our vocabularies and imaginations are massively atrophied. And those who benefit from that are very very happy. And in the absence of vocabularies and imageries, it’s impossible, afaik, to ‘recruit’ people to the long long slog.
And why WOULD you get involved in the long long slog, when there is net zero chance of success, or longevity.
New question you should ask yourself, when you go to a meeting “what are the chances that this group will still be here in a year’s time?” Or, if it’s a meeting organised by some long-lasting (Trot or liberal, probably) group “What are the chances that this group will be holding a meeting or have done anything substantive on this issue in a year’s time?” (i.e. they’ll have moved on to whatever seems sexier for recruitment purposes.).
Why bother? Nobody is trying to learn anything, or do anything different. Everyone’s chasing personal validation, promotion, a buzz, relief from the hell that is living on a planet being actively murdered by people who think and talk like us, who are “pragmatic”. Everybody’s marking time, or deluding themselves. So it goes.
Also, if you’re an academic, have a read of this. It’s rather good on the gap between the image academics have of themselves versus the grubby reality (rather like Australians and the ‘larrikin’ myth).
marchudson.net 
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