Russell Brand helped edit the latest issue of New Statesman. He leads off the magazine with an epic rant that is worth reading in its entirety. If you need some motivation, watch this 10 minute clip of him. Essentially, Brand is calling for a revolution.
It would be easy to dismiss Brand as a slightly lunatic comedian who lives a very comfortable life. But I think that would be a mistake. Aside from having a wonderful way with words, I find that Brand gives expression to a sentiment that seems very much pent up among a lot of people: the existing system has failed and is beyond repair. The net result of that is either apathy or violence. Or flipping back and forth between the two.
Brand is not really offering a coherent alternative vision. While that is a big open question, it doesn’t really invalidate his basic point about the pressures that are building up and why that is happening. And I sure wish that more people were speaking as frankly as he is about it as our politicians do seem to be largely in denial.
A big chunk of Brand’s critique is based on the assessment that we do in fact have the capabilities today to take care of our basic needs. This is a point I have made several times on Continuations — just look for my posts on abundance. What that means is that we should be focusing on such pressing matters as income inequality and the environment instead. And we should be tending to our spiritual health. Having watched a few minutes of an episode of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills this morning while exercising I couldn’t agree more.
Here is a wonderful quote (among many that could be pulled) from Brand’s piece:
Fear and desire are the twin engines of human survival but with most of our basic needs met these instincts are being engaged to imprison us in an obsolete fragment of our consciousness. Our materialistic consumer culture relentlessly stimulates our desire. Our media ceaselessly engages our fear […]
That pretty much nails it. Go read the whole thing. It’s worth it. And I will come back to writing more about abundance and with that Basic Income Guarantee as the basis for a possible alternative structure for society.
