Bruce Bisset: A colour change for the future

Seems to me it is time for a paradigm shift in the way we view and apply our political processes - and to re-educate ourselves as to what it really means to vote for any given party or policy.

It is no longer enough to stand up for the rights of the working class or to look to make hay with the owning class; the concepts of "left" and "right", as valid as they may still appear, are not only out-dated but dangerously counter-productive in today's reality.

Nor do we any longer have the luxury of choosing - if choice it is - any particular system purely for that system's sake: socialism, capitalism, communism, democracy, in themselves will not produce a sustainable future for the race.

We must acknowledge that we are all - rich, poor, committed, indifferent - stuck together on this one endangered world, and the battle that must be fought is not about loyalty or status or philosophy; it is about survival.

See, there are only two possible colours to the future: green or black. And only one of those makes any sense.

But currently we are colour-blind. We talk about and support various shades of red or blue, of purple, brown, yellow and tangerine, imagining that somehow one of these other colours can become foremost and saviour.

Yet each intermediate colour is just that - and, being intermediate, is in essence merely one or other shade of grey.

And grey is a half-tone of black.

Green is not the new black; it is (in effect) its antithesis, the light that is all colours together.

This is what so many of those entrenched in the familiarity of the old colours fail to appreciate.

They give people who support green ready old-school labels - left-wing, anarchist, hippy - when those labels are mostly so inaccurate they fail even to insult.

Sure, there are hippies and communists and every other "leftie" variation in the green movement - just as there are capitalists and conservatives and every other "Tory" variation too.

Blue-greens and red-greens and don't-identify-me-as-green greens. It takes all sorts.

As it must. Because to be green is to imagine humankind has a sustainable future - and to commit and work towards that.

To be any other colour is to court suicide. It's life or death. Simple as that.

Even so, it is easier to deny a truth than to admit it. Fear drives us in strange ways, such that even the fear of death can be subsumed under a fear of change, particularly when people presume they are being asked to alter their beliefs.

But you don't have to change your belief system - you just have to change the way it works. The way you look at it; the way you manifest it.

The longest journey starts with the smallest step - and everyone can take at least one stride.

Too, despite the global techno-village, it is still possible to cocoon yourself and imagine the threats of human-induced apocalypse are conspiracies by one or other of the old fading colours.

If it really is too much to expect of yourself to see clear and bravely, then at least do your best to stand aside - and let the future take the course it must.

It may not be your choice - but then, the future belongs not to you but to your children.

Various election post-mortem commentaries brought me to share these thoughts. Because (for example) if Labour is to rise to the ascendancy again, it should not be merely by choosing some new face and taking advantage of National's natural decline - they must go green.

As must we all. That includes finding ways to engage the one million people (one third of the electorate) who did not vote - creative ways perhaps beyond the present system's boundaries - else we risk disenchantment birthing an apathy that delivers us to black by default.

Ultimately the choice is not about wants or needs, it is about being able to sustain.

Ask not how green is my country - ask how can I green my country. If we all hold and work with that thought, we will have begun. To choose green over black. Life over death. A viable future for the planet - including humanity.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.