Since the results of Brexit have come through with 51.9% of the UK voting to leave the EU, I feel that the terra firm upon which I stood so recently is rapidly disintegrating beneath me. I am on unstable territory.
My frame of reference. The place I call home. The axis against which I based my choices on where in the world to live has irrevocably tipped over. For good. And I know I am not the only one to feel this way.
In the months leading up to the Brexit referendum, the sensationalist scare tactics used by both the Remain and Leave parties left me cold. However I was in no doubt that I would vote in. To leave the EU, an alliance which I regard as having immeasurably more benefits than disadvantages for the world at large, seemed to be sheer stupidity.
When the polls called it a neck and neck race, I think most did not really believe we would ever leave the EU. Or maybe that was just me. With my head in the sand. In a state of denial.
After all, why would a UK citizen vote for insularity over cosmopolitanism. Competition over alliance. Borders up rather than bridges built. Why would someone think it is stronger to stand alone rather than together?
Why?
Nationalism is a dangerous tool to wield in a world which needs to work together. Our generation is a global one and the technological access we have cuts down borders of geography, distance and time. None of us are isolated from one another if we choose not to be and if we have the access to technology. It is political artifice to create a golden vision of insularity and sell it as strength.
It is a lie.
Which is common enough in politics but this lie is one that British citizens will be suffering the consequences of for generations to come.
And me. All the reasons I love living in London are to be tested. The feeling of being a part of the world at large. The freedom of access. The inclusivity, diversity, dynamism and integration are all under threat. It may not be all doom and gloom but at a visceral level, this just feels wrong.
As John Donne wrote in fricken 1624:
My frame of reference. The place I call home. The axis against which I based my choices on where in the world to live has irrevocably tipped over. For good. And I know I am not the only one to feel this way.
In the months leading up to the Brexit referendum, the sensationalist scare tactics used by both the Remain and Leave parties left me cold. However I was in no doubt that I would vote in. To leave the EU, an alliance which I regard as having immeasurably more benefits than disadvantages for the world at large, seemed to be sheer stupidity.
When the polls called it a neck and neck race, I think most did not really believe we would ever leave the EU. Or maybe that was just me. With my head in the sand. In a state of denial.
After all, why would a UK citizen vote for insularity over cosmopolitanism. Competition over alliance. Borders up rather than bridges built. Why would someone think it is stronger to stand alone rather than together?
Why?
Nationalism is a dangerous tool to wield in a world which needs to work together. Our generation is a global one and the technological access we have cuts down borders of geography, distance and time. None of us are isolated from one another if we choose not to be and if we have the access to technology. It is political artifice to create a golden vision of insularity and sell it as strength.
It is a lie.
Which is common enough in politics but this lie is one that British citizens will be suffering the consequences of for generations to come.
And me. All the reasons I love living in London are to be tested. The feeling of being a part of the world at large. The freedom of access. The inclusivity, diversity, dynamism and integration are all under threat. It may not be all doom and gloom but at a visceral level, this just feels wrong.
As John Donne wrote in fricken 1624:
No man [sic] is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee
Will we ever learn?
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