Is this the world you want?

August 22nd, 2016

Switchfoot’s album Fading West has been the soundtrack of our family’s summer. Its soaring anthems and meaningful lyrics made it the perfect accompaniment on our recent road trip through California, Oregon, and Washington. I have heard it emanating from my children's bedrooms, and I have found myself humming its melodies on numerous occasions.

One of my favorite songs on the album contains these lines:

Is this the world you want?

You're making it, everyday you're alive.

It’s a pretty powerful rebuttal to those of us who are dissatisfied and angry.  The idea that each of us, in tiny, miniscule ways, is daily contributing to the world in which we live is both sobering and empowering.   I thought about this in the context of the upcoming election.  When we complain about the landscape and atmosphere in this country leading up to the November general election, we are perhaps being disingenuous, for we are the landscape and atmosphere. When we complain about those in government, we forget that we participated in the process that elected them in the first place.   

The song goes on, “You start to look like what you believe,” and I think that can apply to our political situation, too.  We are worried about extremism and we descry the vitriol spewing from both sides of the political divide.  Yet, again, I think we are being dishonest with ourselves.  It seems to me that politicians are merely a reflection of who we are.  Politicians, it would appear, respond to people, especially the people who are most likely to vote for them. The most successful, for better or for worse, are able to tap deep into those people’s frustrations and reflect their anger back to them, creating a cycle of reciprocity in which each party - voter and politician - simply reflects the same feelings back and forth in an increasingly emotional manner.  Voters feel emotionally validated and politicians feel they have made a connection.

I find it rather ironic that we wonder why our country is so divided since we continually elect people who would seek to divide rather than unite. How do we have the gall to call for unity when we regularly elect people who prey on division?  Ultimately, we get the leaders we deserve, for they take their lead from us.  And just a quick glance at our desperate desires to grab our gated, picket-fenced, armed and alarmed slice of the American Dream reveals that these divisions are not only of our own making but of our own volition.

I recently read Julian Barnes’ excellent novel Arthur and George, about the lives of the author Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes; and George Edalji, the son of Indian immigrants, who is falsely accused of a crime. In the story it becomes clear that institutional racism in the police force, the community, and the judiciary is a strong motive behind Edalji’s suspicion, arrest, and eventual conviction for a crime he did not commit. What fascinated me by the story, was George's insistence that, despite his appalling treatment, the society in which he lived (late 19th Century Britain) was not racist and that people did not in fact see him differently.  George believed in a society that didn’t yet exist, but it would eventually.  This gives me hope, for, mistaken and naive as George is in the novel, it reminds me that our institutions are the very last things to change.

Why does this give me hope? Well, if our institutions - government, the police, even the church - are the last things to change, then is logical that we should be the first ones to change. It tells me that the job of changing the world has been placed firmly in our hands, not the hands of our politicians and other leaders.

The song’s chorus then goes even further:

You change the world, every day you’re alive.

My daughter says that this song makes her both happy and sad and I can see why.  When Switchfoot ask us if this is the world we want, the implication is that not only do our actions determine the world in which we live but they also change the world in which others live.  The way we drive our cars, our interactions with strangers, our carbon footprint, the values we instill in our children, all of these things are changing the world for all of us.  We don’t need a Delorean or a time machine to change the future: we’re doing it already - for ourselves and others.

So the next time we complain about society maybe we should be asking ourselves what we are doing to change it, and reflecting on what have we already done to change it.

If we take Switchfoot’s maxim as essentially true, Gandhi's famous quote about us being the change we want to see in the world is, then, somewhat misleading, for we are already changing the world.  When you think that every action you take has the ability to change your life and someone else's life, then it is perhaps not too much of a stretch to believe that we are making the world that we want and if we don't like it we have no one to blame but ourselves.