Aspiration

'Aspiration' seems to be the latest buzz word. I heard it being thrown at us Greens repeatedly during the recent election hustings, suggesting that we want to limit people's aspirations and stop people being successful. Now the Labour Party or rather Ed Millibrand is being criticised for apparently ignoring the aspirations of 'Middle England' in favour of overly concentrating on the poor and dispossessed. Of course neither of these charges are true but reflect the trend towards polarising the arguments and turning serious discussion and reflection into sound bytes. I'm sure that as Greens and, in standing alongside and in defence of beleaguered Ed, that we aren't against people having individual aspirations to make something of themselves and contributing through their passion and creativity to the national good.
Clearly, we all need aspirations, things we want to achieve in order to get us out of bed in the morning. But it's the balance between personal, family and group aspiration and the Common Good of all people and our planet that needs addressing. If by aspiration we mean pursuing individual greed and hedonistic lifestyles at the expense of other people, environment and social justice then this is a problem. We, our species, seven billion of us, are using too much, taking too much and ruining too much of our one home planet. Collectively, we, most urgently need to find ways of sharing more equally earth's limited resources and, whichever way we look at this, this means that we need to turn our individual aspirations more towards seeking the common good. To 'privatise' our individual lives to such an extent that we only see our own need and in the process closing our minds and hearts to the suffering and injustices being experienced daily by 'others' will never lead to a better society. Yet, that is what seems to be the current direction of travel. Surely we are far more than consumers, clients and customers? We, our planet and all life is more than a commodity, utility?
So, my view, is that we need to strengthen our vision of what a more inclusive and compassionate society could, and indeed should, start to look like. We all have basic needs to be met and within these needs let us not neglect that we need to feel loved, cared for and that we need to feel our lives have meaning and purpose beyond simply existing. Gut instinct and our intuition surely points us towards something better for our lives together?
We Greens have a vision today, a banner to hold high, a dream to be realised - so let's learn new ways to share this vision, ways to overcome our divisions, our excessive egos, extending our collective aspirations beyond simply winning election or seeking power, towards the realisation of a better, less fraught, and equitable commonwealth. Our recent Manifesto started with the word 'imagine' - a good starting point for our aspirations together!