30th Anniversary Special Report
IMAGINATION AND CHANGE: BEYOND THE POLITICS OF THE POSSIBLE
Increasing numbers of people in Canada and around the world believe that prevailing political and economic systems work to the disadvantage of the majority on the globe, and threaten the planet itself. The biosphere and human life are at risk, and the conviction that this must change is widespread, and growing.
But to achieve the fundamental shift that is required on a global level to recover the planet, and our humanity, requires more than will. It requires a change of mind and ways of being, led by values of health, creativity and love for life, guided by an ethics of international reciprocity, care and community.
Inter Pares' experience is that this ethos is growing in the world, creating movements of common cause, locally and globally. Everywhere we work we see core human values of care, generosity and mutuality promoted by a diverse range of citizens working together to defend the rights and lives of those besieged, oppressed and impoverished. It is precisely such actions that Inter Pares supports on four continents.
The experiences and relationships we have developed in our work over thirty years have deepened our sense of the increasing urgency people feel. This urgency naturally focuses on the dangers and misery that people confront every day. But equally, and perhaps most importantly, it emphasizes the tremendous opportunities that exist, and that people do not want to see lost - opportunities for meaningful collective interventions to transform the effects of social, political and economic upheavals, and contribute to justice, peace, authentic democracy and longterm social development.
The people who will bring about the global changes that are necessary will be ourselves, individual citizens and citizens in groups or associations acting in our own name in our own communities, and as advocates with our own governments. The driving force of this transition will be people's own imagination and aspirations, based on knowledge and wisdom about how to bring about change in ways that conserve what is most precious to them, while improving the conditions of their lives and their opportunities for the future.
This imperative is not controversial. It has become the mantra of almost every institution engaged in the dilemmas of global development, peace and security. The controversy is not so much about what is necessary, as about what is "realistic" - that is, what is possible.
Each of us, and all of us acting together, are the ones who will decide what is possible.
But what is possible is not determined by some external truth or natural law. In a sense, virtually all futures we can imagine are possible. What is politically possible - what actually happens, and what could happen if we dared - will be determined in large part by those of us with the conviction and capacity to make personal choices to transform our own behavior and lives, and the power to act politically to transform the world around us. In very real terms, each of us, and all of us acting together, are the ones who will decide what is possible.
We decide what is possible when we choose how to describe the world, and what descriptions to embrace. We decide what is possible when we choose what to make visible and what to obscure. We decide what is possible when we choose which dreams we will allow to fade, and which to make real.
One element of the possible is inescapable. If we truly aspire to radical possibilities, we will have to be willing to embrace these possibilities, and live radically. To change things fundamentally, some things are going to have to fundamentally change, and the first of these is how power is structured and used, and in whose interest. And to change the world fundamentally means starting where the problems begin - which is not only in the fields and villages and marginal urban communities of the Global South, but also in the political and corporate centres of global power in the transnational north and south. That is, in our own places and lives.
The quest for human dignity and global justice implies an openness to exploring living options that already exist - and those we can only yet imagine - and the active pursuit of other ways of being and doing. Inter Pares' priority is to promote genuine self-determination, the authentic participation of people in creating solutions to the conditions of our lives, and sharing generously the resources to make these efforts permanent and sustainable.
This means not merely charity, although charity is required; nor global social solidarity, although that too is critical. The future that is possible will be based and built on profound common cause to change the world in the interest of all humans, and the planet itself.
Inter Pares supports the capacity of citizens to develop and articulate their own analysis and programs in specific concrete situations, and to participate in processes of citizen-based policy formulation to influence government in establishing social and economic priorities. For Inter Pares, this means building relationships that combine direct support for locally-conceived actions to eradicate poverty and change the conditions of people's lives, while reinforcing and collaborating with these actions through international policy advocacy, including advocacy with our own government concerning Canada's own domestic and foreign policy.
The future that is possible will be based and built on profound common cause to change the world in the interest of all humans, and the planet itself.
As we pass into our fourth decade of action for global peace, economic justice and human rights, Inter Pares' commitment is to work with others to recuperate knowledge and build strategies for developing and conserving creative, vibrant, inclusive, caring and dynamic societies. It is the task of nurturing international mutual support and social solidarity, of promoting values of social responsibility and reciprocity, of supporting and mobilizing citizenship in the interests of people, their communities, and the planet itself.
Another world is in the making. Day by day our world is being changed to nurture and protect human health and prosperity through the direct participation of people collaborating in our own places to envision better ways, and mobilizing to bring our propositions forward to make radical dreams a political imperative and a transformative possibility.
| Reviewed April 28, 2005 |  |
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