The existential threat of climate change and how the world deals with it will cast a shadow over every year including 2023. But for 2023 there is the additional shadow of the Ukraine war and Putin’s war crimes and nuclear war threats. Of course, the biggest improvement for 2023 will be the end to that war as soon as possible.
However, like every year, 2023 is a year of opportunity. While difficult challenges exist, is it perhaps the case that every individual has the chance to decide how to make their life better and go for it? For whatever reasons and wherever fault may lie, living standards may fall or at least stagnate for many people: but they cannot always be expected to rise, or never reduce. Taking the rough with the smooth and bouncing back against adversity is perhaps a normal life pattern. There are challenging circumstances to be dealt with, but also good things to be found, or perhaps created, in 2023.
What might you like to see happening more or happening less this year? A small Sherbhert wish list follows.
LOOK FORWARD MORE NOT BACK
Even though nothing can be done to change the past, do we not spend an inordinate amount of time harking backwards? History and past events which shape individual lives are of enormous interest. Aside from personal memories which enrich and influence a person’s life, perhaps the greatest value is that there is everything to learn from the past, whether good behaviour or, perhaps most important, lessons from mistakes to make the future better. Recent years have seen the rise of intense concern with blame for what are now portrayed as misdeeds, judging history by the current fashionable standards or latest crusade. Is there not a developing dangerous trend to re-evaluate history, to represent it and wrap it differently, even to question whether certain events occurred at all? For example, rather than obsessing with the undoubted evils of slavery which transported African people Westward hundreds of years ago, and then reparations, would that energy be better spent in challenging modern-day trafficking and slavery which is rife, not just in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, but also Europe? Might the Church of England be better advised applying their £100 million fund, earmarked to atone for the “sins of the past,” to improving life today and tomorrow?
Is it not one almighty assumption to assume that the world would be a better place if there had been no Western driven slavery. Or if there had been no colonisation by the French, Spanish Portuguese and British? It is impossible to know what an alternative world may have looked like. Yet, there is increasing energy spent on claims of reparations where endless argument with little solid basis may consume time, money and resources.
Likewise, arguments rage as to who historically caused climate change? And so, who is to blame? Should those who discovered and spread the industrial revolution be brought to account? Should perceived damage be offset by benefits? Is the point of such debates really to get the Western world to fund carbon reduction around the world of developing countries (i.e., poorer) but excluding China? It does not matter. Because the only countries which can, and so have to, fund reduction of climate change are the richer countries, in which include China. Unless that occurs, there will be no global solution.
At the individual level, how much anxiety and depression are caused by focus on past perceived misfortune. How often do you hear people say, “If only…had not happened?” Negative focus on what might have been if the past had been different, is a rampant disease. Looking back is attractive it seems because it is known, crafting for the future is harder because its unknown.
Would the world benefit from less destructive concern, bemoaning and debating about the past and blame, and more constructive focus on the future and how to improve behaviours and good decision-making?
MORE LONG-TERM LEADERSHIP
Big issues need courageous and long-term decision making.
Historic decisions and actions have of course shaped the current state of affairs at any one time. Arguably short-term decisions to fix or at least plaster over immediate problems, perhaps normally to please popular demand and so for political self-interest, have been the order of the day at the expense of big picture long-term thinking and action. This is particularly true in, and is perhaps a weakness of democracies, where voters arguably, but not necessarily, are more interested in today than say 20 years’ time. Whereas in the autocratic regimes, such as Russia and China, long term strategies, which may see the current population suffer, can be implemented without popular revolt, through repression, disinformation, fear and other draconian tools. Some may applaud benign dictatorships, ignoring at their peril that history shows that benign can be temporary and quickly be replaced by malevolent.
Without real long term decision focus and consistent strategy, for example, climate change will not be controlled. Nor will infrastructure be built. Nor will education improve. The lack of long-term courage in leadership is arguably a major cause of the energy crisis today, such as the indecision on nuclear power around the world, and the war in Ukraine through convenient blindness to the obvious malevolence of, and appeasing not standing up to, Putin. It is perhaps the inability and unwillingness to confront the long term, or lack of courage to do so, which means that in the UK the undoubtedly flawed and failing structure of the NHS cannot be addressed. Eventually the realisation that the NHS is not sacrosanct but that it will inevitably bankrupt the country will invigorate change, with far greater pain having been suffered than if truth were addressed today.
For long term decisions to be respected and so adopted, there needs to be listening respectfully and open debate, and also dissent. Fortunately, because we have freedom of thought and speech and freedom of the individual, long term interest, for the benefit of future generations, can still prevail.
Would it be good to see in 2023 some learning from historic mistakes and so more long-term discussion and decision making with acceptance that there may be short term pain as a result?
IS EQUALITY A REAL GOAL?
Does equality really matter? On 19 December 2022 the football pundit, Gary Neville, was reported to comment in relation to the current UK worker strikes “In our country we’ve got to look at workers’ rights” and where football goes it must pick up on those rights “because people have got to be equal and treated equal”. Whether or not he should stick to football, as the Prime Minister reportedly suggested, is one thing. Another is that his comment illustrates an important common attitude, which is to glibly cite the need for people to be equal to justify an opinion.
Leaving aside Egalitarianism philosophy, in common sense terms, people will never be and can never be equal in almost any respect: each person is unique in make-up, in the talents possessed, in parentage and upbringing and in life circumstances. For example, also, there will never be equality in education or health care, two common areas where equality is frequently cited as a core essential. One of many reasons is that even if people all have reasonable access to a hospital or school, as the standard and abilities of doctors and teachers of course varies so much, so will treatment and teaching. Focussing on equality is misleading. Better perhaps to look at reasonable opportunity for all, aspiring to high standards whatever the subject, not obsessing whether one person is more advantaged than another and not aiming to remove all differences. Perhaps one area where equality can be aspired to reasonably is equality before the law, though again never achievable as law like all things is administered by fallible human beings.
In 2023 would it be good to see less concern with unattainable equality, and more with spreading fairness and quality?
THE STATE AS LAST NOT FIRST RESORT
Some maintain that reliance on the State in the UK to insure everybody’s risks in life during the pandemic has created or embedded a tendency for many people to hold the State responsible for all misfortune or at least require the State to fix all problems. This in turn weakens individuals and their sense of responsibility for their own lives. Would it be good in 2023 to hear less focus on the State as the cause of all malaise, which it obviously is not, and less demand for the State to provide resolution of problems? Resilience and overcoming adversity, not bowing to it, has long been a UK trait. Would it be good also if, in the face of adversity, the default position is that it is for the individual, families and communities together to minimise the effects of misfortune and shoulder burden, taking personal responsibility?
CAN PEOPLE MAKE THEMSEVES MORE PRODUCTIVE?
There is almost universal acceptance that the solution to economic stagnation or decline is growth and improved productivity. Again, so often the expectation is that the State must provide that, normally with a demand for more funding from taxpayers who cannot afford it. But all the State can do is provide a framework and incentives for those who work to be more productive themselves, whether in all businesses and endeavours, public services, manufacturing or private service provision. Good management can bring greater productivity, and so it is for people in those positions to improve performance. Whether or not Government provides the right framework, is it not within the gift of every worker to find a way individually to be more useful and productive, through personal commitment and effort? Do not many of us waste so much time and energy on unnecessary worry about, and doing, trivial tasks which are unimportant? Is a route to improved prosperity greater awareness of our strengths and weaknesses, doing more things of real value and importance. Would improving focus on important tasks and doing them efficiently improve productivity at the individual and institutional level and with less focus on wrangling about trivial differences of opinion?
FAREWELL TO EGO
2022 has seen much worry and commentary on the perils of social media communication, such as the manipulation of users by Facebook and its competitors, pandering to and feeding wants, creating addiction to the cultures being communicated and devices themselves. Most prominent at the end of the year was concern with the mental damage to teenagers obsessed with appearance and themselves.
Earlier in 2022 the connection was made between the degrading of girls and women in social media pornography and so the disrespect and abusive behaviour by boys and young men to females. A considerable amount of social media usage is narcissistic, about the ego, the “me”. The need and sometimes obsession to self-photograph and share the scene with friends or even the world merely reinforces selfish focus. Of course, social media has valuable purposes too. However, is it telling that China imposes restrictions on usage of devices on young people outside specific times and for limited periods? Would it not be good if devices were used less for promotion of the self, reflecting the creation of an empty culture of self-obsession and narcissism? The battle with the corruption caused by social media giants should perhaps be a major feature of 2023.
MORE UNITED DEMOCRACY, LESS AUTOCRACY
The war on Ukraine by the modern Hitler, Putin, has not only created a reassessment of how to view future world politics, but it has brought a realisation among democracies, not just Western countries, that they need to be more united to face the threat that autocratic regimes represent to free societies. Russia’s complete hostility and repugnant disregard for human values have alienated it from free countries, but not yet a number of nations where rule is more dictatorial. China openly seeks to weaken the West, to supplant democracies, and become the dominant world force, buying its way into influence across Africa, South America and elsewhere. The brainwashing, the genocidal tendency, disdain for facts, for the truth, and the attitude that “the end justifies the means”, with a strategy to create division and mistrust, are signs of the dangers represented by despotic rulers. Some appreciation of these realities is leading to a more realistic approach among democracies, reducing reliance on other inimical countries, but with the effect that some protectionism and a reduction in a global approach is apparent.
Is there any doubt that it is democratic free nations which are more likely to foster peace and prosperity most widely? More unity of purpose and combined action on their part perhaps is not just desirable but a necessity in 2023.
EXISTENTIAL THREATS
So many improvements are desirable in 2023. Less condemning, less cancelling, less denouncing and insulting, less blaming and less complaining would all be desirable in 2023. So too would more nurturing of freedoms, more understanding of others’ beliefs and cultures, more respectful debate and dissent, more straight talking and more accountability and responsibility for self.
The existential threat of climate change and the need for global concerted action and fulfilment of promises to change behaviour in use of carbon must be confronted every year perhaps, with greater urgency as the clock ticks on. Now there is the resurrected threat of nuclear confrontation due to the Ukrainian war, a possible war over Taiwan, and the threat of terrorisation by autocratic states such as North Korea and Iran. Stabilising those risks must surely be the highest priorities, with ending the Ukraine war perhaps at the immediate top. Unlike some events such as natural disasters and even deadly pandemics, these threats are all so clearly within the power of human beings to defeat. It is but a matter of national and global will, to do the right thing.
