Staring Over The Edge Into The Darkness And It's A Familiar Sight

When the world stops making sense, we instinctively look for the simple solutions. Someone to blame, an easy way out or a strong leader who will "fix it". But what is the price for the quick fix?

I wrote an article the other day exploring how we might make sense of the U.S. elections and their candidates through the lens of vertical development. 48 hours later we have a result. In my bubble - of whose size, edges and limitations I’m more aware than ever - many are grieving. I too feel deep sadness and worry. I wonder what kind of world we are heading into. I wonder if we as a species are ready to grasp the magnitude of the existential threats facing us - from climate change to war and global chaos through the breakdown of international institutions. Institutions that, themselves, have been born out of bloody chaos whose lessons, two generations later, we mostly seem to have forgotten.

I also wonder if enough of us, in the self-development, leadership and learning-focused, progressively inclined, LinkedIn-engaged bubble are truly aware of how many of our fellow humans on this planet are now struggling with acute day-to-day needs and concerns about paying rent or putting food on the table and how those concerns are shaping their views and choices. I wonder if we are grasping the reality of hundreds of millions of people who are now voting for authoritarian leaders all around the world in a bid to gain protection from the threat of ‘the other’ - be they immigrants, established institutions, globalisation, technological changes, cultural shifts - the threat of a world that seems to be moving too fast and moving against them.

I wonder if we can truly understand the cry for help that some 80 million people in the U.S. have loudly and clearly expressed in choosing a leader who embodies the antithesis of universal human values and principles, but who was incredibly effective in channelling and giving a voice (and a purpose) to the collective rage and self-protective fear. A cry echoed by so many others around the world who feel abandoned by their leaders and institutions. It is easy to feel anger at the way they are using their vote to reject the establishment and open the door to authoritarianism. It is easy to feel dismayed at their seeming wilful blindness to the huge peril they are beckoning and legitimising.

But perhaps, to better understand the pain of feeling disenfranchised, as well as the peril of fixing that pain through welcoming the promise of ‘deliverance’ through authoritarianism, it’s worth tapping into what it feels like to experience both.

I was born in Romania in the early 80s and spent the first years of my life in one of the harshest dictatorships in the world until a momentous day in December 1989 when that regime fell and opened up a new world. The roots of the Communist dictatorship had been planted more than 40 years before, after WWII, when Romanians, disgusted by inequalities and injustices of the previous constitutional monarchy and bourgeois system, and heavily influenced by the post-war geo-political forces dividing Europe between Russa and the West, voted for the promise of a system where the disenfranchised working class could finally get its due and the greedy elites would finally be punished.

By the time I came around, that promise had turned into one of the most horrifyingly repressive political regimes in the region. Millions of people had been killed - many of them intellectual elites of the country - and private property had virtually been abolished. Individual rights and freedoms as we understand them in democratic countries did not exist.

The country’s leaders wanted the population to grow at all cost, to fuel ambitions of a larger workforce and more economic power, so women were first encouraged and later forced to have children. Four or five kids was considered ideal. Contraception was not available and abortion had been strictly forbidden for over 20 years. Maternity leave was 6 weeks, after which women were forced to return to work. Millions of children were raised by grandparents, often in different parts of the country from where their parents were forced to work.

Countless women had died in horrific ways (or been jailed) for trying to have illegal abortions. Women were subjected to routine compulsory medical check-ups (often in the very factories or institutions where they worked) in an effort to discover and record early pregnancies. Countless mothers had to live with the excruciating guilt of having more children than they had wished for and knowing they could not adequately provide for them.

A whole generation of children was born and lived with the trauma of knowing they had never been wanted. This generation has been called “The Decree Babies” - because they would never have been born if a decree in the 60s had not denied their mothers control over their own bodies. These people lived with both survivor’s guilt and the never healing wound of abandonment. Hundreds of thousands of children born with disabilities were abandoned by families who could not care for them and locked in horrific ‘orphanages’ which became front page news and sparked global outrage in the early 90s, once borders were open and the Western world finally got a glimpse of the horrors of egalitarianism turned into totalitarianism.

I grew up in a country where food was scarce and essential goods like oil, eggs, meat or flour were rationed, so nobody would get more than their allotted share. People would spend hours in line, before dawn, to get their essentials from shops that otherwise were empty. Corruption was (and still is, 30 years later) rampant, inequality ubiquitous and the State still is not only perceived, but often actively acts as an enemy of the people - seeking to exploit them, rather than serve them. Back then, the State would decide where you could live, work or how much money you could make. Private businesses were non existent - so everybody, in every sector, worked for the State.

In the spring of 1989 I was taken, together with my kindergarden friends, to the side of our town’s main boulevard to take part in a parade welcoming the official visit of our country’s leader - the feared dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. We all had to wear white and were given flags to wave, along thousands of other children from all educational institutions in our community. It seemed a parade of joy - celebrating our country’s leader whose picture adorned the walls of our school and whom we had been taught to recite poems in honour of. I still remember getting home from that parade and not understanding why my parents didn’t seem nearly as excited or happy as I felt. I had no idea then that they were despising him in secret, nor did we, kids, know that adults never spoke of their discontent in front of us because they feared what we might share outside the home. Those were times when people would get arrested or killed for criticising the regime and when relatives or friends would report dissent to the authorities in hope of getting benefits - like a better job or more access to better food.

In December 1989, not even 6 months after this ‘love fest’ - waving flags and singing patriotic songs - I sat with my parents in front of the TV and watched, in horror and fascination, the live execution of the Dictator by an armed squad, after a trial in which he and his wife were found guilty of treason and crimes against the people and sentenced to death. It looked like any action movie I would later watch, except that it was real. I cannot begin to imagine how adults believed that was an ok spectacle for a child to watch, and yet I can also understand why nobody thought it was inappropriate. People could finally spill their rage, their pent-up pain and fury after decades of repression and the Dictator was only the first target of that rage.

When the Berlin Wall fell, that was not some abstract historical moment, but a crossroads that made a light-and-day difference in the lives of tens of millions of people. I still remember stepping into my first ‘supermarket’ (in hindsight, hardly bigger than a corner grocery store in a developed country). Back in the 90s, I was in awe that you could look around and see shelves full of food and you could actually choose between different types of bread or sweets! Still, to this day, I am overwhelmed by choice whenever I go shopping and carry a sense of guilt for enjoying this seemingly decadent abundance that so many other people around the world cannot even dream of.

I grew up in a new-born society which received democracy and embraced capitalism in the same way a toddler might receive a beautiful glass snow globe, only to throw it to the ground to see what would happen. The collective Opportunist stage of consciousness fuelled rampant corruption - everything was up for grabs - and an ethos of ‘each is out for themselves’ that had been present in the previous dictatorial era but was fully unleashed once the guardrails of fear and repression were removed. Many people did not have an internal ethical compass because there had been no context for one to emerge. People were so starved for freedom that they took it with both arms and abused it in every possible way.

The new democratic political state was still populated with many of the same people from the old apparatus. Laws were passed to favour some, but not others. Most politicians sought office not to serve, but to put themselves in a position to gain access to the public resources, which they systematically used and abused for personal gain. Nepotism in public institutions ran rampant (and still does to this day).

And yet, we had free elections and free speech and slowly a new society was born, one that has made great progress and yet has not been able to heal the deep wounds of the past.

Just like the life-long development of a human can be hindered by childhood trauma, equally the development of a society can be stymied by collective trauma. And trauma is what my people have experienced for 40 years before they were told: “You’re now free! Go make a life for yourself!”. It has taken 30 years to see a younger generation reach maturity, many of whom have outgrown the consciousness of their elders and when they did, many chose to leave the country.

Romania has staggering emigration - the country ranks 17th in the world in the number of people who have left and built a life elsewhere and is one of the top few whose citizens have emigrated en masse in the absence of war or another major cataclysm. Romania’s population has shrunk by more than a third in the last 30 years despite the country progressing tremendously, building its economy, becoming part of the EU and NATO - all considered massive achievements and steps forward towards the dream of a more stable future where democracy, prosperity and stability seemed guaranteed.

Many people have left in search of a better life, fleeing poverty and a systemic lack of opportunity (fuelled by low education and ongoing huge income inequality). They became part of a migrant wave that has put other receiving countries on edge. They sacrificed their lives, choosing the hardest, often most thankless and least well paid jobs in their adopted countries, and sending their hard earned money to raise the children they left behind, growing up far away from their parents, just like previous generations under communism had done (but for different reasons). All in hope their kids would have a better life at home than they could.

Many others left because they were educated, professionally self-sufficient and could choose where they wanted to live their lives, together with their families. They left not because their lives were bad, but because they had spent years reflecting, healing the wounds of the past and building a values system that favoured equity over inequality, service over abuse, compassion over aggression, inclusivity over discrimination, collaboration versus competition, responsibility over recklessness and interdependence over self-centeredness. Their internal compass no longer matched the territory.

These people - millions of them - a whole generation of which I am also part of, consciously chose to leave behind comfortable lives because they came to a point where they could no longer bear to live in a system whose embodied values were antithetical to their own.

Some - the braver ones - have chosen to stay and continue working to change the country from within. They are the rare politicians who run for office because they truly want to make a difference, the passionate teachers who bring their whole heart into the classroom or bravely put themselves in service of the most disadvantaged communities, the activists who take up huge pay cuts to work in the not-for-profit space where their talents can serve the community or the business leaders who care for their teams and value purpose over profit. They are the ones who have not given up hope that by growing themselves and looking out for each other they can create a better country for all.

They are the ones who are striving to heal Romania. They are also the ones who refuse to give up on the promise of democracy, as imperfect and messy as it may be. In the meantime, my birth country is also experiencing the trend of anger against the system. Those disenfranchised by the wild capitalist ride and disillusioned with the political class have started to doubt the promise of democracy. More and more hope that a providential leader will rise who will deliver them from having to figure out life in an injust world where some are given more opportunity than others by a broken system. Increasingly people are refusing to vote, as they believe their vote doesn’t matter, or they are using their vote to reward those who promise they ‘can fix it’, if only given absolute power.

My parents have dutifully voted in every election throughout my life because they never took their vote for granted and they vividly remember a time when casting a ballot was not an option. While I’ve lived most of my life in a democracy - first the juvenile one at home and later a much more mature one in my adoptive country - I will never take it for granted.

When I moved to Australia, I realised how people who have never lived in anything other than a democracy don’t have the same visceral understanding of what not being free can truly feel like, nor of how valuable their legitimate vote can be. I remember a friend who prided in not being interested in politics and decried compulsory voting in Australia as an imposition, when I thought it was the most amazing thing - to have to use your voice and choose your country’s path! Compulsory voting was one imposition I could definitely live with.

I’ve also discovered that people who have never experienced rampant corruption or a society driven by deeply opportunistic motivations at every level can sometimes be mesmerised by the promise of ‘freedom’ understood as an absence of rules and constraints, if that promise comes with the hope of a more prosperous life for you and your own in the short run. Things like taking shortcuts to avoid paying taxes.

Having lived in a place where I knew my tax money was often used to line the pockets of corrupt politicians, I was grateful to pay taxes in a country where I could see roads and public spaces being built with my money. I became a stickler for the rules - to the chargrin of some of my friends. Not having experienced what it feels like to have to bribe officials for basic public services, they didn’t seem to understand why I’d be so happy parting with my hard-won money in legal ways. I am not sure if they realise how amazing it is to go apply for a drivers licence and be met with a smiling public clerk who goes above and beyond to solve your issue and expects nothing in return because he is paid fairly, from public money, for his work and really seems to care about doing a good job.

I’ve also learnt that even the most functional democracies are plagued with painful and complex problems. I’m a migrant in a country where more than a third of the population is born overseas. Housing is among the most expensive in the world. Inflation has been squeezing families and despite its relative prosperity compared to other nations, income inequality is as painful in Australia as in many other western countries. And when people feel that their immediate safety and wellbeing are threatened, it’s easy to forget the higher values, aspirations and guardrails that make our way of life possible in the first place.

Watching what has been unfolding in the U.S. I’ve wondered if this reach for authoritarian leaders, however corrupt and devoid of character they may be, is not a knee-jerk reaction from not having to face into pain. The pain of accepting that the woes of our lives do not have easy fixes. That democratic systems are by nature slow to change. That basic rights and freedoms are human constructs. They can be easily taken for granted and much more easily lost than maintained over the long run.

But to me, a child of history, the alternative is inconceivable. The alternative to democracy, human rights and commonly held values - is darkness. And in the darkness there is another kind of pain. One that you cannot know until you live it.

I still remember my father saying: “I wondered, when you were born, if we were ever going to live a day when you would be free. To travel, to study what you want, to choose your place and your way of life. I wondered if I would die before ever experiencing that.”

Gutting our broken system and looking for the easy fix is not the answer. I surely don’t know what the answer is and I’m inclined to think there is not one we could all agree on. What I do know is that looking inwards, facing our pain, acknowledging that we are tired, overwhelmed, out of our depth, that we often feel powerless in face of forces bigger than any of us, using our voice, reaching out, learning from eachother, seeking to be more, rather than less Human - all matter. Treating our freedoms and rights as gifts instead of burdens while seeking to understand the realities of those very different from and perhaps less fortunate than us, might also be starting points towards writing a different story.

I am sad and I am grieving. I believe we are heading into a time of darkness from which, hopefully, we might learn something new about the light. I hope we hold each-other’s hand as we fumble through. I also hope, as Kamala Harris said in her concession speech today - that in that darkness we finally manage to see the stars.

Here’s a song that soothed my soul today. Hope it lights a little light in yours.

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