What Comes Next?

This could be a rambling brain dump, but I got caught up in a discussion on post democracy scenarios last night, and the brain won’t leave it alone.

So, assuming that what has happened in the UK and the US, in what is being framed as the post-truth era, is going to spread across the self-declared democratic countries of the world – what comes next?

History would tell us that, when a vacuum emerges, it has been filled by an autocracy of one form or other, and usually not an overly empathetic one. At best, one section of society prospers at the expense of the rest; at worst, everyone suffers except the power wielding élite.

And they tend to be put into power by those that were most disenfranchised, and who subsequently gain nothing, but end up as fuel for the ensuing régime.

Disruption, isolationist policies, anti-other propaganda  has a free reign. The international agreements that held the EU, NATO, The Commonwealth together, break down and fade into local, regional, tribal sectarianism and self-preservation or aggrandisement.

The arbitrary lines drawn and imposed on the map of the world by those powerful nations on the powerless will disappear, leaving borders to once again be decided by struggle rather than consensus.

There would be natural alliances, and eventually more pragmatic relationships will develop, evolving again into regional groupings, and over time back to where we are now.

Or …..

Assuming, for the moment, that those that have been the gun fodder of the reactionary destructionists will not become the violent armies of the disillusioned when they are let down, yet again; who will fill the void?

Is this perhaps the time that the other side of the argument – the inclusive, the compassionate, the empathetic, the cooperative – emerge as an alternative approach. Whilst I am not convinced that humanity can totally move beyond its self-serving nature, there is, along with the poisonous negative, a surge of a different view, a better perspective.

It is a disparate patchwork of views, of alternatives, of concepts of non-confrontation, and that in itself may be the reason it will never prevail beyond a hopefulness. But maybe ….

One ray of light is also the engine of the disruption. The positivity that emerged in the Arab Spring, short-lived as it was, and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc were aided by the unstoppable movement of ideas on the web. It has also led to the dishonesty as an element of Brexit and Trump’s election.

But, if it can be maintained as an arena for real truth and alternative cooperation, and not turned to the use of the vacuum-fillers, then perhaps the gentle majority can emerge from the dismantling that is coming.

I am happy if this is dismissed as hippy-shit day dreaming, because at least it means that I aspire towards good. I am sad because history is clear that past vacuums have been filled by negative rather than positive forces.

I look at the young and I hope. I look at the power brokers and I shiver.