Yesterday America elected Donald Trump President. Brexit, now this, next year Marine Le Pen. The rhetoric of Farage and Trump has allowed visceral rage, racism and fear to burst the bounds of public debate. People are once more being divided openly between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Education, context and parental boundaries have faded.
The 70 years since the Second World War have been progressively more easy for the rich countries of the world. Schools and families have relaxed their vigilance over understanding and respect for every human being. For too long all of us have fought only feebly against ignorance and the dilution of awareness of who we are and where we come from, so that lives are lived in a thin crust of daily soundbites and thoughtless responses. Beneath is roiling appetite, addictive satiety, forgetfulness surging around a core of cooling iron – a planet dying, humanity suffocating itself in plastic cotton wool and bilious excretions.
So we have to go again.