Of creative and colourful thinking.

I have been recently exposed to groups that call for openness and plurality while being increasingly defensive and intolerant. My conclusion has always been that we, as a society, need to be kinder and wiser in our expectations, reactions and attitudes. We need the begin having the rainbow thinking mindset.

I concur with those who take the stand that politics must not be reduced to a robot-like automatic agreement with the party line. I still believe that it is time local politics become elevated beyond reality TV and social media politics to the level of ideas, research and the involvement of civil society.

Yet making something an issue is a complicated matter. Activism and battles for civil rights are misled when they are only centred on one set of issue. The awe of politics is that most issues are interrelated. We start to witness exciting things when we begin to see different political affairs as related. 

So, alongside civil rights, when will we make the crucial debate in the public sphere or democratic transparency an issue, for example? When shall we examine the strains of a religion which preaches love while some of its representatives practice hate? We also ask, when shall we, the people, demand a more suitable and less rude form of political language?

When shall we understand that having our democratic representatives engaging in ethically dodgy behaviour disqualifies them from continuing in their role? Politics should not be a matter of dates and names, in the same way, that democracy is not just a matter of procedures and elections. Rainbow thinking comes to play.