The Macro vs. Micro

When I first started this blog, It’s main purpose was simple: a cathartic means to channel my frustrations with the state of the UK, and world more broadly, into text. Indeed, and to this end, I think pieces such as these are important.

Often times, we delve into the granular of issues as a means to try and dig down to solve them: to find their roots and their natural solutions by extension, I know I do so on this blog. This is something that is exceptionally important to do for anyone with an interest in politics or, in truth, the way their life is legislatively determined. Be it a trip to the hospital, a journey to school, or the long walk to the food bank, the personal is always political.

The micro detail in which we move from activity to activity in our personal lives is representative of the often necessarily bureaucratic manor in which legislation (and political thought and ideas) come to rise. The modern world is intoxicating and overwhelming, placing things on a manageable plain often grants a sense a reassurance and manageability to the vast deluge of planet Earth and the 21st century.

As such, it can perhaps be difficult to remind ourselves of the macro: the space to step back and look is a luxury that we increasingly don’t have time for. And yet, both in the personal and political, it is vital.

Stepping back expands the frame of perspective and reveals the obscured. In the political, this can uncover some uncomfortable truths of society: homelessness, poverty, the prevalence of food banks, and the lonely elderly widow.

The purpose, for me, in stepping back is not to wallow in despair at the granular issues that everyone else may have (to do so seems maudlin and overwhelming) but rather as means to remind myself why I am involved in politics in the first place: to make a difference for the better.

To this end, I believe for all of us that the macro effects the micro of our personal spheres more than we often want to allow for. We want to live by each other’s happiness not each other’s misery.

I fear that often times, and this may seem obvious but is worth emphasising, the political sphere is so overtly preoccupied with the micro that the dessert surrounding the grain is forgotten. The careers of politicians as front page news allow us to harbour grievances against an individual rather than the system and its mechanisms that allowed them into public office in the first place.

Truly, their self-interest is mere folly as far as the lives of everyone else is concerned: their decisions are what count, their micro effects the macro of society.

To this end, given the issues that are so clearly evident across society, across our public services, across our political system and the granular detail of them that sucks us in can often be equally regarded as pure folly unless we step back once in a while. To solve the issues plaguing us takes more than systematic tweaks: it requires overhaul on a wide scale.

But all too often people cannot wait for overhaul, concerns and plights are pressing, so what to do? I believe the first step is to at the very least understand the problems we all face, starting with the personal and mapping out to society as a whole. Only then can we start to properly address the issues that face us.

The road is a long one, but one that is worth fighting for. As I mentioned, we want to live by each other’s happiness not by each other’s misery and to do so does not mean shutting down our personal, necessarily granular lives, but understanding and appreciating the world outside: stepping back and opening our eyes as a collective once in a while.

That’s why I love politics: it’s capacity for good is vast so long as the way is not lost. Right now, it is. It needn’t be and, going forward, I hope it won’t remain as such. It cannot afford to.

I don't know if any of that was remotely coherent but anyway!