Opinion: Tear Down This Wall
Who said, "Tear down this wall?" It hardly matters. All that matters is the people who actually did it - people like you and I.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in an ex-Eastern Bloc country, it’s that the Iron Curtain didn’t fall just because of what any one leader said or did. It also fell because the majority of people didn't want it anymore, and refused to let it stand in their way. I think there is a lesson to be learned there for all would-be activists, but especially those who are frustrated with their government's inaction on climate change.
Not that many English speaking visitors to Berlin realise this, but quite a few people who lived in the GDR believed that the Wall was a necessary defence against the capitalist, militarised West. That was what their leaders led them to believe. Nowadays, we are so used to thinking of the Wall as a fence that kept people in, we forget that for many people on the eastern side of it, it was seen as a fence that was keeping danger out.
In truth, the Wall was more a psychic defence that prevented the people of East Germany realising that they were doing badly, compared to their Western neighbours. With a wall standing between "us" and "them", a blackout on media and newspapers from the west, the lies about the GDR's relative greatness were easier to believe. What East Germans couldn't see or hear about the West, they couldn't yearn for. But the Wall didn't cease to exist when it was destroyed, because the mentality that enabled it to last that long remained ingrained in some people's beliefs and behavioiurs.
In Berlin, when someone acts in a way that is self limiting and repressive, it's said that they have a "Wall in their minds". But it's not just an East German phenomenon. Whenever I talk to Western visitors from abroad, I find that many of them have a Wall in their minds, as well. They support stuff that is undeniably self-destructive - whether it be fracking, austerity, union busting, or even a plentiful supply of guns at Walmart - because they've had it beaten into them that these things are necessary to sustain the "greatness" of their nations. If they could see clearly outside their filter bubbles, they'd realise that many other nations are doing great without these things. Which is why the bad seeds in their society work overtime to make sure they never look.
If you went back in time and asked the citizens of the GDR what the Wall was there for, they would have told you that it was keeping all kinds of unseen threats at bay. If many believed that lie it was because, at the end of the day, it made a lot more sense than the truth: that the regime was failing, and its architects were willing to sacrifice everybody else's health and welfare to delude them that everything is going to be ok.
The Western world has the same sort of relationship to free market capitalism, in my view. Most Westerners have been told their whole lives that this system is there to protect them from starvation, poverty, insanity, shitty television, limited breakfast cereal options... and what not. Most of them know that the system isn't perfect. Maybe it's even a kind of shitty deal for them, but they are willing to put up with it. Not because they like it, but because they honestly believe that whatever lies outside of the system is way, way worse. Tribal wars, plagues, famines, fundamentalist regimes are some of the baddies that feel certain would pounce on them if this system was to collapse. Or so they have been repeatedly told by teachers, parents, newspapers, priests and NCIS. But enough lists, I think you get the point!.
Free market capitalism is the Wall that nearly everyone on this planet has had implanted In The Mind.
To anyone who steps outside of this system, though, it starts to look more like a stifling fortress, held together by fear, suffering and death. The arms industry, for example, that props it up. People fleeing wars caused by these arms starve and drown waiting to be let in. Police tolerate fascists and even terrorists in their ranks. The list (yes, another one) goes on. Free market capitalism is the Eastern Block of modern times, working against the people even as it claims to be working for them. And our blind faith in its claims is the only thing keeping this destructive norm intact.
In truth, the Wall was more a psychic defence that prevented the people of East Germany realising that they were doing badly, compared to their Western neighbours. With a wall standing between "us" and "them", a blackout on media and newspapers from the west, the lies about the GDR's relative greatness were easier to believe. What East Germans couldn't see or hear about the West, they couldn't yearn for. But the Wall didn't cease to exist when it was destroyed, because the mentality that enabled it to last that long remained ingrained in some people's beliefs and behavioiurs.
In Berlin, when someone acts in a way that is self limiting and repressive, it's said that they have a "Wall in their minds". But it's not just an East German phenomenon. Whenever I talk to Western visitors from abroad, I find that many of them have a Wall in their minds, as well. They support stuff that is undeniably self-destructive - whether it be fracking, austerity, union busting, or even a plentiful supply of guns at Walmart - because they've had it beaten into them that these things are necessary to sustain the "greatness" of their nations. If they could see clearly outside their filter bubbles, they'd realise that many other nations are doing great without these things. Which is why the bad seeds in their society work overtime to make sure they never look.
If you went back in time and asked the citizens of the GDR what the Wall was there for, they would have told you that it was keeping all kinds of unseen threats at bay. If many believed that lie it was because, at the end of the day, it made a lot more sense than the truth: that the regime was failing, and its architects were willing to sacrifice everybody else's health and welfare to delude them that everything is going to be ok.
The Western world has the same sort of relationship to free market capitalism, in my view. Most Westerners have been told their whole lives that this system is there to protect them from starvation, poverty, insanity, shitty television, limited breakfast cereal options... and what not. Most of them know that the system isn't perfect. Maybe it's even a kind of shitty deal for them, but they are willing to put up with it. Not because they like it, but because they honestly believe that whatever lies outside of the system is way, way worse. Tribal wars, plagues, famines, fundamentalist regimes are some of the baddies that feel certain would pounce on them if this system was to collapse. Or so they have been repeatedly told by teachers, parents, newspapers, priests and NCIS. But enough lists, I think you get the point!.
Free market capitalism is the Wall that nearly everyone on this planet has had implanted In The Mind.
To anyone who steps outside of this system, though, it starts to look more like a stifling fortress, held together by fear, suffering and death. The arms industry, for example, that props it up. People fleeing wars caused by these arms starve and drown waiting to be let in. Police tolerate fascists and even terrorists in their ranks. The list (yes, another one) goes on. Free market capitalism is the Eastern Block of modern times, working against the people even as it claims to be working for them. And our blind faith in its claims is the only thing keeping this destructive norm intact.
Later, the Stasi headquarters were stormed and files spanning decades were revealed, showing how much pointless torture and suffering was inflicted in the name of sustaining that Wall. I think that was the moment when most East Germans realised that the Wall was protecting something other than the common good. Something cold and inhuman. That's not to say that nothing good came of the GDR's social experiment, but the best parts came from everyday people, like you and I. The worst parts came from a small hardcore of narcissists and sadists who, unsurprisingly, were among the most ardent supporters of the Wall.
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| "Buy less, think more" is one solution to climate change but it requires action, too. |
Right now, the public is witnessing something similar re: free market capitalism's handling of the climate crisis. Companies like Enron have been shown to have produced, and then buried, hard evidence of climate change as long ago as the 1970s. Governments like that of the U.S.A., argue that humans have no right to a liveable planet, if it gets in the way of its industry's profits. Every new revelation like this is a crack in the Wall that people thought was defending them from chaos and uncertainty. Through the gap, they can see more and more clearly that its architects might actually be what's causing all the chaos.
The GDR had Western radio and TV, we have the Internet. Better ccess to information is now showing us all how quickly climate change is accelerating; it shows us wildfires that the authorities try to hide so they can focus obsessively on their profits. It's chilling to realise just whom we have locked ourselves in with, behind this free market capitalist Wall... but it doesn't have to stay in place, does it? A critical mass just has to decide that the world outside the confines of the system is better than the world within it is... or at the very least, that we should be allowed to try it for ourselves and see.
The crises that the system is creating will keep on happening for as long as we allow them to. When enough people start to see beyond the barrier of lies, all the political might in the world won’t be able to stop them trying to 'tear down this wall' that divides us, and prevents real progress ever being made.
- Last Updated 2019
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