[REVOLUTION FOR A BORN –AGAIN WORLD]
“So the real question is not whether but what manner of revolution is coming.
Will it be of the uncontrollable, ideological…….or will it take the form of a non-violent but nonetheless rapid and profound shift in the way a more consciously interdependent world works?
An awful lot rests on how the pandemic’s shockwaves and after-effects are directed and shaped.
…….Amid epidemic uncertainty, two things are clear.”
“First, the virus is universal and ubiquitous – a threat to all humankind.
Second, its impacts are deeply unequal, decisively determined by social class, race, ethnicity, income, nutrition, education, living conditions and geographical location as well as by gender and age.
It follows that the large, unjust societal inequalities found both within and between wealthy and developing countries and ruthlessly exposed by the virus are just as powerfully insurrectionary in nature today as when Aristotle first pondered them or when Marie-Antoinette told starving peasants to eat cake.”
“…….A revolutionary agenda for the post-pandemic world also includes meaningful steps to address poverty and the north-south wealth gap, more urgent approaches to linked climate, energy, water and mass extinction crises and, for example, the adoption of so-called doughnut economics that measures prosperity by counting shared social, health and environmental benefits, not GDP growth.
It may seem like pie in the sky.
But so too did the idea of millions working from home, and halting road and air travel, until it happened almost overnight.
Whether recognised as such or not, this is a revolutionary manifesto that, if it is pursued – as a growing body of opinion believes it must be – will demand the utter transformation of current political behaviour and organisation.”
SIMON TISDALL.
*****NBA COMMENT.
In his series of paintings entitled COSMOS, the polymath George Afedzi- Hughes uses predatory birds and humans as tropes for commenting on social inequalities and imbalances.
He goes further by trying to unpick the relationship between sports, commercialism and social organisation.
In Colonial Heritage, all the players appear mutilated or dismembered- the colonizer and the colonized. Thus the futility of the colonial enterprise/project is laid bare.
Yet again the dehumanizing result of violence on all parties is reinforced.
Currently, with monuments toppling at multiple sites and most likely more to follow; the second painting lends itself to layers of meaning possibly reinforced by the chequered pattern, the predator bird, the dollar sign and a striking head.
Which of these items is the monument or is it the conglomeration?
The random numbers and letters reinforce the sense of confusion and thus perhaps the need for a reboot…the need for a born-again world.