GOVERNANCE - HOW DO WE ADDRESS SYSTEMIC CRISES WHOSE EFFECTS AFFECT US DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY?

GOVERNANCE - HOW DO WE ADDRESS SYSTEMIC CRISES WHOSE EFFECTS AFFECT US DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY?

In my formative years with English language not being my mother tongue I would often hear the term GOVERNMENT harped about in the news both on radio and television as well as amongst adults as they deliberated on current affairs. " Government has done this and government is saying that" On and on the discussions would go, so my young self got the impression that Government was this big, strong, powerful, living and breathing  individual who could decree and declare things as he pleased to his subjects.
Thanks to education and growing up I began to appreciate as the years went by up to this day that there is no such individual but rather Government is a system by which a nation, state or community is regulated, controlled and run generally.

Having grasped the concept of government looking at how things work between citizens and their respective governments and how crises are presented and resolved between the two, one then assesses this set-up and how best it can effectively work for all the  stakeholders and deliver the desired results.
For the sake of this discussion let us agree to use the terms "government" and "the state" interchangeably.
So the the state is inanimate, in order to function it has legal persona status just as a company or other body corporate meaning it can sue and be sued, it therefore operates through human proxies in various capacities who hold particular offices but are NOT the offices they hold in their natural and personal beings. These proxies "wear" their titles and can therefore take them off like one takes off a jacket, at the end of the day no one really can be held entirely accountable and responsible for sins of the state except for their part in assisting the state to sin or letting it sin under their watch, essentially the state or government is literally untouchable as far as human feeling, emotion and personal justice is concerned because there is no such individual. Nobody will ever come across a selfie or profile picture of government, never! but there certainly are plenty of them showing the faces of proxies who represent the state and governments in their various capacities.
Having put the above into perspective one then asks; How effective is it to express our grievances,frustrations and challenges to the state as if it were a living, moving and breathing individual? It is common among human beings in resolving crises and stand offs to appeal to the opposite party's emotions whether in a positive or negative manner because it is always highly likely that a response or reaction  will be drawn out without fail. An example of such a scenario is ransom, where one party is held to ransom by another in order to force a desired response. Whichever way a ransom and hostage situation turns out, the bottom line is that a direct reaction and response is always guaranteed because it is people's feelings and emotions at play.

However it is a different case when it comes to dealing with the state, no matter how grave a situation may get government can "stand up" and say " we do not negotiate with people who hold us to ransom" because government has no feelings, no emotions whatsoever as much as its proxies are human beings. So vandalizing state or public institutional property will never yield the same results or appeal to the emotions and feelings as is the case between human being and human being.
However, the unfortunate reality is that the sins of the state on the other hand can and do have effects that strike directly and personally on the emotions and circumstances  of the citizenry. Very sad indeed yet so true.
One therefore comes to realise that since the state has no emotions to appeal to, it follows that taking measures that appeal to the emotions against the state will be ineffective but leave all of us worse off because as the state is constituted even those who may feel aggrieved by the state are literally its
stakeholders since they vote and pay taxes to it. The damage we cause in our fury and effort to draw out the resolution we desire will inevitably be parked at our doors to repair directly and indirectly. So who wins? Nobody, not even the state because the state is ghostlike.
So what is the solution? Since the citizens face systemic problems and crises, it may be better to address them with systemic measures. Yes measures that act directly on the system with full ability to yield the desired results directly as well. Demanding results from the stare "here and now" can only achieve so much but lawfully and legitimately getting into the system with the same impetus used to hold the state to ransom and getting as many numbers of individuals into the system who share the same vision, values and mission will definitely make an impact and register results.
How so? It starts by accepting that "here and now" is not always practical and sustainable in the long run. The next step is to ensure that those that are able even under the prevailing circumstances rise through not losing sight of the bigger picture and get into the system with the aim of being in the thick of things where decisions are made and become proxies of the state and government themselves, that puts the movement in a better position to articulate the strategy and address the very grievances that would up to this point still be unresolved because they are systemic. It must be noted however that this approach is one of selflessness and sacrifice of present limited gratification because the results are only yielded in the long term and yielded in full. The full benefits and fruits may only be reaped by a later group of citizens when these results become the system of the day. It may not sound ideal but it stands a better chance of sustainable success than the "here and now" mentality, concomitant vandalism and assignment of blame.

Be the change that you want to see! Cliché right? May be but it's true. To give a real life example of how this works; I am reminded of a prominent black entrepreneur in South Africa who for a long time had presented grievances and frustrations about the system and government. In fact at one point a business publication cited him as being angry with the government. Anger is an emotion right? and we have already seen that government is not capable of emotional things by its nature. Fortunately this gentleman realised this and decided to take a systemic approach to resolving systemic problems.  He is now a powerful figure in South African local government, in fact he is the Mayor of a big Metro! He planned his way and got into the system. The message he'd always tried to put across to the system can now be articulated and implemented by the system because he is now a proxy of the system and it is incumbent upon him to execute well and deliver the results without losing sight of the very reason he got into the system because many have gotten into the system and have been swallowed by it instead. This man is a good example of how this option of a solution can be implemented.
Imagine a whole movement gradually getting in through lawful and legitimate means, not only one individual but big numbers of its members into the various arms and organs of the system fully aware of the work at hand, together they form the critical mass for the agenda to be driven and executed all the way to the delivery of that which they have always aspired.

This is just the author's two cents of thought of a more practical approach of resolving crises and stand offs between government and any group of its citizenry like the higher learning students in South Africa pushing for free education "here and now" or all of the citizenry for that matter!

THE GOLDEN WORD FOUNTAIN - (TGWF)