The eve of extinction

Solidarity is what brings people together and makes their actions effective. It was the name (Solidarnosc) chosen by the movement that opposed the Soviet proxy government in Poland from 1980 to 1989. And throughout history it has been the rallying call for all popular oppositions to oppression. All rulers know that when people get together in sufficient numbers and with a common goal, they are unstoppable. That is why popular gatherings are limited, controlled or simply banned. Sometimes churches, temples or mosques are the last resort, which gives a particular, often unfavourable twist to basically secular protests. Police or military regimes and totalitarian states repress severely any organisation they have not initiated, and keep a close watch on those they have. More liberal systems prefer to divide society into majority and minority, with these two parts in constant opposition. Neoliberalism has taken the division a step further, down to the individual, where everyone must compete with everyone and just a tiny few are champions.

Solidarity belongs to the past. In a time when big industrial sites assembled thousands of workers, when neighbourhoods were made up of people who had grown up together, when national pride was still a unifying force, when trade unions still had the power of numbers. In today’s fragmented world, solidarity means little more than giving money or time to one’s favourite charity. Humanity has been mesmerised by the tinsel of stardom. Celebrity is commercial. It sells either its own brand name or someone else’s. Glamour and wealth are made to seem extremely desirable, and the continuous stream of images makes everyone feel they are partaking. The public identifies and wants to wear the same clothes, have the same accessories, drive the same cars, drink the same alcohol, etc.

Solidarity differs from empathy, in that it can be argued and rationalised. It is more than a sentiment. It is an intent shared with others, a common perspective that needs a common action to be achieved. Solidarity is about unity of purpose, known and understood by all concerned. When it exists, it is a powerful force for change, possibly the only one. Its demise has left societies open to the cult of competition. A place where individuals are isolated and their achievements depend more on chance, at birth or later, than on their personal commitment, a place where wealth is the proof of success and poverty of failure, and where many must fail for a few to succeed. It is an increasingly desolate world where no one cares about anyone but themselves and about anything but their own possessions.

Solidarity has gone, blown away by egocentricity and the unrelenting dominion of profit capitalism. Children are taught from the earliest age that they must compete, and that there is no room for weaklings and failures. They are brought up in a sophisticated savagery where might is right and wealth is health, in a state of barbarity where the poor and downtrodden are kept out of sight and mind, an invisible mass of millions and billions that can be kept off-screen and totally ignored. But planet Earth is a whole in which everything is interconnected and interdependent, and where there are no autonomous beings. The power of money denies this evidence, now more than ever before. And this denial is preparing a climatic, organic and economic catastrophe, with no possibility of changing course. This could be the eve of extinction.