As elections approach worldwide, do you, like me, feel that so-called civilisation is in need of some new tactics in the face of continued conflict, contraction and communication breakdown?
You know me, hopefully, as something of a cheerful soul, with a generally positive view of life. But we all have our soul- and sanity-searching moments, and I doubt I am alone in being a little more reflective and concerned about humanity at this volatile point in our collective history.
Whilst I broadly support farmers worldwide and most definitely in Portugal, who are understandably peeved by the increasingly challenging conditions, I am concerned about disruption to our food supply chain.
Whilst I am pro-peace and hope that our children might grow up without enduring the horrors of war, I am alarmed by those who claim to be bringing an end to violence on too many fronts, that have been raging for far too long.
Whilst I hope to live in a society resourced and run well enough to offer the sick help, children a sound education and the poor the most basic comfort, here too I see systems that once just about worked, now collapsing irretrievably and unable to fulfil their original mission.
By most measures, and of course relatively better off than many across the world, I see an awkward and unaddressed trend of decay across our European nations that will not be healed or made more efficient by the same means that caused their currently impaired and lame state.
Imminent elections will, I suspect, only bring further political heat, and little societal light, as old ideas stand in the way of new systems that might improve the collective lot. It’s not that we are ideologically lacking and devoid of good ideas, it’s that ideology has roundly failed us as a wholesale solution, with its stagnant and petrified obsessions.
To me, our ‘Covid crossroads’ was pivotal and catalytic in this decline. This is where we took a sharp and dramatic turn for the worse. Where the ‘new normal’ we thought one day might return, remixed and reassuring, never re-appeared. Any notion of normality is now tiny in the rear-view mirror, and at right angles to this new never-to-be-normal-again.
The road on which we now find ourselves is bumpy, dark and taking us rapidly into deeper realms of uncertainty.
All that said, and forgive me if I have saddened you, I can’t think of a better place to be uncertain and concerned than here in Portugal. Whether you are facing these new (or as some say ‘end’) times as a Pollyanna, pragmatist or prepper, I am now going to tell you why you are very lucky to be here.
Russian social commentator Konstantin Kisin recently said: “The way you know society is messed up is how massive the gap is between what people will say in public and what they’ll tell you privately.”
With that in mind, I hope you can forgive my dark, publicly-declared candour here, and in return I will attempt to offer you hope …
Whilst the global trend I suspect is toward more ‘messed up’, I put it to you that, by some serendipitous quirk of history and culture, Portugal can snatch social victory from the jaws of international defeat. And it can do so by remembering and embracing its great communitarian, collaborative and conflict-resolving qualities and capabilities. For fulfilment in a flaky future, I suggest you get with that programme, coded as it is in Portuguese DNA and society.
Portugal knows how to grow food and grow people. It knows how to connect and communicate at local level. And it does these things in a way that is alive and ready to be enjoyed, not learned from a history or self-help book, as a forgotten or neglected social relic.
When, now, some speak of going ‘off-grid’, I urge you to join Portugal’s ‘good grid’ – a living, breathing social fabric into which your life and very being can be woven. Start growing food like some of your old Portuguese neighbours can and know how to do. Get involved in a local project or association. Connect, collaborate and be a new kind of capitalist, a social capitalist.
Where a mad world urges you to think global, pondering dismal matters over which you have little control or influence, I say act local. Think local, act local. Concern and anguish for the biggest and most egregious issues of our time will, however worthy or demanding of your attention, only dim your light and dissipate your energy.
Get on the good grid. Take responsibility for your own health and wellbeing. Reignite and celebrate the love of those closest to you. Let that spark burst into a flame of goodness into the next concentric ring of life in your local community. Stop thinking about life, start doing life, right where it matters – on your doorstep, in your street or within your apartment block.
Get on the good grid. Because going off-grid and isolating yourself in this country is an insult to its hospitality and a denial of the opportunity to play your part. This is not a ‘bullets and beans’ culture that sees separation and ammunition as a solution to social tension. Here, connection is the right response to conflict, discourse is the right response to discord. Become an asset to your community, not a weirdo living on the edge of it.
“We all know what’s going to happen, we just don’t know when,” said an anonymous sage. Empires rise and fall on the macro level, but life goes on and is made in the micro, where we – for better or worse – have our lives.
And even if, once you’ve created a good grid around yourself, the world doesn’t change one bit, you’ll still have made some deep bonds, created better food security, and fostered a greater sense of wellbeing, freedom and independence than many are currently giving up amid creeping, globalised totalitarianism.
And what could possibly be wrong with that?
Carl Munson is host of the Good Morning Portugal! show every weekday on YouTube and creator of www.learnaboutportugal.com, where you can learn something new about Portugal every day!
