While conventional wisdom dictates that blog posts should be short and pithy, I am going to challenge it by posting something in excess of 700 words as I outline why I think Stephen Harper and his dark politics are injurious to the Canadian psyche. Although many of my comments can equally apply to politicians of other stripes, it is essentially the philosophical foundation for my aversion to the Prime Minister; I hope you will stay with me.
What does contemporary government leadership have in common with one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, Hamlet, whose chief villain, yielding to his lust for power, kills his brother in order to seize the throne of Denmark? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
To appreciate its relevance, we have to understand that Shakespeare's contemporaries saw an order to the universe they called “The Great Chain of Being” in which each realm, be it divine, human, animal, or mineral, had a hierarchy. (Remnants of that notion remain today as we, for example, refer to the lion as the ‘king' of the jungle; reason has priority over emotion, the eagle is considered the head of the avian world, etc.) In human affairs, the King was regarded as God’s representative in human society and so was responsible for the spiritual and material well-being of the people. If the King was good, the nation prospered; if bad, the country suffered.
Because Hamlet deals with a ruler, Claudius, who achieves his royal ambitions through murder, he is deemed to have violated the natural order and is therefore not God's rightful representative. As the story unfolds, this usurper is responsible for a moral corruption that affects many, thereby seriously undermining the spiritual health of Denmark. Characters lose their better natures, surrendering to betrayal, suspicion, hatred, and vengeance in place of fidelity, trust, love and forgiveness.
So how is this tale of moral decay and destruction relevant to us? Can it help to explain some of the political and moral dysfunction plaguing Western society today? Well, even though we no longer see political power as coming from above, i.e., from God, but rather from below, i.e., the people, (at least in a democracy), it is difficult to accept the notion that government is merely a reflection of the people, that we only get the representation we deserve through the electoral process. In truth, how many of us purposely vote to install people defined by ineptitude, dishonesty, corruption, contempt, and cronyism? Yet these elements characterize so many governments today, including our own.
I submit that the aspect of the Great Chain of Being so pertinent today is the infectiously destructive nature of bad leadership. By this I mean much more than the obvious consequences of being led by those unfit to govern: abuses of basic freedoms, manipulation of truth, withholding of information to which we are entitled, abrogation of due process, catering to special interests, etc. Much more insidious, and something Shakespeare clearly demonstrates in Hamlet, is the toll exacted upon the nation’s spiritual health or character. Indeed, that play's central metaphor is an unseen yet highly contagious and destructive disease.
I believe it to be an apt metaphor for our times.If we consider, for example, the widespread cynicism and disengagement gripping people today, we are witnessing the effects of bad leadership. When people are manipulated by the politics of fear, division, suspicion and exclusion, they become victims of diseased leadership. When people refuse to vote because they don’t feel it will make any difference, when they ascribe self-interest and greed as the main motivations of people seeking elected office, when they evince little or no surprise at the flouting of constitutional laws by their elected representatives, they not only have fallen prey to a spiritual or moral malaise, they are in fact facilitating its spread, something I suspect our political leadership is not in the least bit concerned about; after all, the more disengagement and disaffection there is amongst the voters, the easier it is for politicians to continue on their self-aggrandizing and pernicious paths.
So is there a solution, a cure for this disease? How does a nation recover its soul? Democracy being a messy process, there is no simple answer, but I sincerely believe that the search for one must begin with as many people as possible turning out on Election Day. At a time when people in other parts of the world are willing to fight and die for democracy, that seems like little enough to ask of citizens. And it may ultimately help restore health to the body politic.
