That’s just a start – add to them yourself by simply using your imagination about what kind of world you would like to wake up to. How will these things ever come to pass? I have no idea – except that unless we think about them, imagine them, and talk about them amongst ourselves it is an absolute certainty that we will never achieve any of them. It is a question of choosing between despair over the historical accident of Stephen Harper and hope rooted in what we know in our hearts to be possible.
In the end it is all about reclaiming the commons – robbed from us by the one per cent and the perverse ideology of neo-liberalism. Maybe we could begin with a small step in that direction – by reinstating Sunday closing. I know, there are lots of objections (its initial roots in Christianity being one) but imagine there actually being a day when you couldn’t buy more stuff. We could bring back an ancient commons tradition: talking to each other.
Murray Dobbin is a guest senior contributing editor for rabble.ca, and has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for 40 years. He writes rabble’s bi-weekly State of the Nation column, which is also found at The Tyee. He is the curator of rabble’s Reinventing democracy, reclaiming the commons series.
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