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After months of carnage, and moral courage clearly lacking in most of the world’s leaders, the hope generated by the simple act of resistance and protest has lifted the world’s collective spirit – among people of goodwill, that is. Students have claimed the space and speak truth to power; by their action and activism they have given new focus to the greatest moral challenge of our time.
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Humanity has been ‘under test’ for the decades since we declared “Never again!” when the leaders of the time, people of courage and insight, drew up the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
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The question after WWII was: have we learned the lessons of the world wars? Would we, unthinkingly, allow ourselves to continue the ‘same old same old’ ways of living? Would we go on ignoring the suffering of others, with greed and separatism taken for granted and basically built into the economic and political system?
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Now, about 80 years since then, the world has reached an equal level of crisis.
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Benjamin Creme’s Master wrote in 2006: “Steadily, humanity moves forward to its Great Decision. Unbeknown to all but a few, men are being tested as never before in their long history on Earth.
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Men now face the choice: to see the world as One and share, and know security and blessed Peace and happiness, or to witness the end of life on Earth.” (Benjamin Creme’s Master, from ‘Maitreya’s priorities’)
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A quarter of a century into the new millennium and on the eve of the Masters’ conclave in 2025, we must, by taking action, choose for life and cooperation. If we want the glorious future that has been held out to us as being within our grasp we must live as if everything counts – because it does. What we do and how we are matters to the Whole. Now more than ever. As Benjamin Creme’s Master wrote in an article called ‘The Great Decision’: “Maitreya’s energy of love is impersonal; it stimulates everyone, those who long for peace and right relations, and those who love greed and competition, risking thereby a final war and total self-destruction. Thus the importance of the choice faced now by all.”
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We are witness to the privatization of murder, wholesale slaughter for profit. Bullets and bombs make money but the calls for peace and the demonstrations against war crimes are deemed illegal, resulting in harassment, arrests and public censorship. Well-known commentators are banned from speaking, taken off air, refused broadcast time. We might wonder why the authorities are so afraid of public protest? Why is the state so nervous of independent thought and free speech? Champions of democracy and equality like Dennis Kucinich, Chris Hedges, Yanis Varoufakis, Mehdi Hassan and Jeffrey Sachs, among others, are removed from media channels and banned from speaking. These are the well-known names; students and anonymous protestors around the world face the wrath of the authorities. But it is their voices that might restore our sense of our own humanity. Their actions might just tip the balance in our favour again. Their determination to stand for justice and freedom of expression may help to restore our belief in human nature and be the timid beginnings of a better, chastened civilization. We might consider joining or supporting this effort in whatever way we can.
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There’s a wry Berthold Brecht line that basically means that the government has lost faith in the populace – so it had better elect a new populace: “Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government’s confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be simpler if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?” Do the elites – the 1% of vested interests behind governments – fear the loss of wealth and power? Surely this shouldn’t be formulated as a question. The answer to this rhetorical question could be the impulse needed to spur us into action on behalf of truth and democracy.
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