The Below and the Above

I generally prefer to write my articles in the quiet of the night. I realise that writing is a way of recording history. I am also aware that writing is much more difficult than speaking. I believe that humanity's greatest discovery was not fire, but writing. If writing had not been discovered, how would we record history, how would we bear witness, how would we pass on the accumulated knowledge of the past to ourselves and future generations? We know that some of the words attributed to Ibn Khaldun and frequently shared on social media are excerpts from his famous work, The Muqaddimah. But how many of us, apart from what we see in these shares, have been able to study this work in depth?

I write my articles as if I were conversing with my readers. My sole aim is to share information without offending or hurting anyone, and to be a useful member of society. In my opinion, if the emotional bond between the writer and the reader is broken, whatever you want to convey becomes meaningless. The same applies to state governance. The severing of the bond between the people and the ruling class, those in power, is one of the deepest crises of trust a society can experience. This situation gives rise not only to an economic bottleneck but also to a conflict of ‘perceptions of reality’. When those below and those above live different lives, the reality they experience relative to each other also diverges, as if they were two segments living in different worlds, and this is when disconnection, distrust, and lack of empathy begin.

The distance between those who govern and those who are governed in a society cannot be measured solely by protocol rules or security barriers. The real distance is the chasm between the words used and the concerns felt. At the point I have reached in today's Turkey, the enormous difference between the fire in the people's kitchens and the rosy picture painted by the rulers has turned the concept of ‘credibility’ between those below and those above into a cloud of dust.

The end point of credibility is where words lose their meaning. While for the people, not being able to make ends meet is a fundamental struggle for existence, the fact that those in power define this situation as ‘statistical data’ or a ‘temporary fluctuation’ triggers an emotional disconnect between those above, who should essentially find a solution to the problem, and those below, who are being crushed under the current poor conditions. The fact that the miserable living conditions experienced by the people have no counterpart among those in power causes every word uttered by the former to be reflected as a ‘foreign language’ to the latter. We all see this more clearly when watching television. A politician says: ‘Ahmet Bey, who works here, is 1.60 metres tall. But he weighs 70 kg, which means he is 10 kg overweight. So, as they say in this country, there is no hunger problem!’ Yes, believe it or not, these are his words. This recklessness, this unethical language, is unfortunately happening in my country. I say recklessness because the best description in our language for these words, spoken and displayed by the blind, oblivious politician figure above, who is unaware and insensitive to what is happening below, is recklessness.

The blindness created by comfort, the comfortable spaces that politics provides, must eventually prevent those in the political world from feeling the harsh winds of the outside world. A mindset that fails to understand how decisions made in warm rooms resonate in the world of citizens waiting for buses in the cold or stepping back when they see the price tag on the supermarket shelf loses its capacity for empathy, regardless of the high position it occupies. Where empathy ends, only propaganda begins. But propaganda cannot satisfy an empty stomach or alleviate anxiety about the future, nor does it!

Once the bond between those who govern and those who are governed is broken, anger first arises among the people, followed by a deep indifference! No one cares anymore what those at the top say, because they know the answer will not affect their own lives, that it will not benefit those below. In learned helplessness, they give up hope from above and continue their struggle to survive below. They do not even make an effort to make their voices heard by those above. Yet this silence is, in fact, the greatest social outcry. The people begin to see any political will so disconnected from them not as a solution, but as an obstacle to be overcome.

Whereas, for a society to believe in its rulers, it is necessary for those rulers to be able to sit at the people's table politically, but also to truly feel deep down how much that bread at the table really costs and how that bread has shrunk over time on the tables of those below. If they feel it, they will strive for a solution; they will know they must strive. If they do not feel it, as is often the case today, the Upper Classes will continue to console themselves with a manipulated perception of prosperity, with false data that can never pass through the filter of real life. But what about the Lower Classes?