It's a hot year for democracy
As an artist, a musician, a cultural activist, I probably should not engage in political expressions. But with all that is going on, I thought I would wade into these waters, at least in some philosophical, general terms.
Music is for everyone, regardless of the way they think, and I am happy that my music is heard and listened to by many different kinds of people around the world and on all sides of the left and the right (whatever that may be in different countries). I don't make music for any one kind of person, and my entire life I have arduously worked on bringing more people to the wondrous world of music from different walks of life.
I have always felt strongly that music was one of the most powerful unifying forces in a world where division and strife rule. Music is a kind of religion, which is a word whose latin origin means "to connect". Music, to me, is a great connective force field that can shatter barriers between people of different origins and belief systems around something greater than all of us.
Living as a musician, seeing the positive impact of music on people's lives, and doing what I can to create conditions for peace and togetherness, it pains me to observe a world that seems to be tearing apart at the seams. The distance between the left and the right appears greater than ever in many countries, and people seem less and less willing to find workable compromises that can suite a majority of people in a country. Political and social discourse are losing in civility, and verbal as well as actual physical violence seem to be on the rise.
Upcoming elections in the United States, which will in one way or another pave the way for radically opposing consequences not just in the USA but around the world, as well as the most recent European Parliament elections along with those in the United Kingdom and France, are showing that citizens of our Western world's strongest democracies are not accepting the system as it has functioned in the past. Regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum, it seems to me evident that a majority of people wish for some major changes, a paradigm shift in the way that our democracies operate, in order to better serve the needs of their citizens in this unstable time of rapid changes.
Without weighing in on my personal political opinions, I do wish to encourage all of us, perhaps because I am a musician, to think in broader terms about the direction toward which we wish to go. Most importantly, just as I love to perform for all humans, regardless of their backgrounds and political opinions, I believe very strongly that we cannot allow ourselves to forget that our societies will always be constituted of a wide multiplicity of people with different ideas about the world. We must recognize that we are bound to have to share our cities, our regions, our countries and our world with people that we may not agree with on many things.
To that end, we must recognize the vital importance that is keeping the peace, and finding enough common ground to preserve the fabric of our societies. There will always be some places and some ways in which we can express more of our deeply felt political opinions and live by them in more targeted communities if we wish to do so. There will always be fights for various laws that suit one group more than another, and that, in a strong democratic system, is fair game. But I do not see how veering too far in one direction or another can be good for anyone, if it risks the very foundations upon which our democracies were built.
Focusing on the common good, on upholding civil peace, and on finding constructive ways to update our political systems seem to me to be the most important things to work toward at a time of great risk to our societies.
We can all go into a concert and enjoy the same music, whether we are religious, not religious, liberal or conservative, black or white. We must think of our societies the same way: when we are all together in the public space, we must be able to enjoy it the same way as anyone else. And in our private spaces, we should be free to live according to our cultural, religious, or political views as long as we don't infringe on anyone else's freedoms.
In the original latin meaning, a "republic" refers to the matters related to public affairs, in other words, the things that make living together possible. Democracy is about finding common ground, and not going into any hard extreme at the expense of a minority. Otherwise, an imbalanced democracy becomes another kind of tyranny under a new name. We cannot forget that, unless we are ready to abandon our centuries-old experiment in democracy.
What do you think?