By Scott Harris
of Between The Lines
As 2011 draws to a close, we've all been inundated with an endless number of blogs and articles assessing events of the past year -- and predictions for the year ahead.
In that vein, I've been thinking about the significance of 2011, with an eye on the fascination of many with Dec. 21, 2012, the date when the Mayan civilization's "Long Count" calendar comes to the end of a 5,126-year era.
Of course, many of the dozens of books written on the subject attempt to profit by sowing fear, with dark predictions that the end of the Mayan calendar will coincide with catastrophic natural disasters, possibly destroying humankind and the earth.
Apart from the over-hyped fear-mongering, most likely calculated to sell books and movies, the Dec. 21st date is interpreted by other more sober-minded folks as simply the end of an era in earth's history. They put forward the hope that 2012 will mark a change in human consciousness necessary to re-balance our technology and civilization in order to save our species and the planet from our current, certain trajectory toward ecological suicide.
Whatever the interpretation about the Mayan calendar, I take hope from the fact that the multiple uprisings occurring in 2011 against Western-supported dictators in the Middle East and North Africa, resistance to harsh austerity measures in Europe and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. and across the globe challenging the "by the rich for the rich" status quo, offer concrete evidence that human beings acting in concert with one another can still change the course of our collective future.
Human history is replete with movements large and small that changed the world, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. But the fact that people acting together can effect change, counters the epidemic fatalistic notion that we are all helpless cogs in an insane machine that is headed toward the edge of a final cliff.
In the realm of politics and economics, we were told by Francis Fukuyama, author of the 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man," that the fall of Soviet Communism signaled "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
This view was echoed by many on the right including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who coined the acronym, "TINA," which stood for "There is No Alternative” (to neo-liberal capitalist dogma).
As much of the world continues to suffer the consequences of the latest and deepest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, it's obvious that humankind has not yet reached Fukuyama’s imagined end of ideological evolution. People across the globe are clamoring for new forms of political and economic organization that won't sacrifice the interests of the majority 99 percent to preserve the status of the elite 1 percent.
While the old Cold War paradigms are in tatters, it's interesting to note that a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in April 2010 found "young people are more positive about 'socialism' – and more negative about 'capitalism' – than are older Americans. Among those younger than 30, identical percentages react positively to 'socialism' and 'capitalism' (43 percent each)." While this, and similar survey results on this topic may not speak to any eagerness for off-the-shelf solutions from a bygone era, it does indicate a refreshing openness to reconsider ideas once forbidden and systematically demonized over many decades.
As the new year dawns, my hope is that 2012 will witness a second stage of the global revolutions already underway, that go beyond simply identifying the destructive course humankind is obviously headed, but rather focus serious attention on the hard work of making real the slogan made popular at the World Social Forum, "Another World is Possible," an irrepressible rejoinder to the brittle thinking of Fukuyama and Thatcher.
The World Social Forum, born in Brazil in 2001, is an obvious vehicle for new and older social justice movements to gather and accelerate the momentum of the revolutionary moment that sprang to life in 2011. There, work can continue with renewed purpose on refining a decade of conceptualizing practical alternatives to vertical politics and economics benefiting the 1 percent.
The World Social Forum Charter maintains that civil society groups that gather annually at the Forum, "are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Mankind and between it and the Earth."
That's a conviction I would like to believe the ancient Mayan people would find appropriate to mark the end of their civilization's calendar, and the beginning of a new and hopeful chapter in human history.
Scott Harris is executive producer of Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine, a weekly, syndicated public affairs program. http://btlonline.org email: betweenthelines@snet.net
