When you account for self, accounting for other’s becomes sport.

— SNW | SHS – Human First

Oh, how fascinating.

Imagine spending your entire life building, defending, financing, protecting and proudly representing a system, only for someone to come along and start documenting the consequences of everything you’ve been defending.

How terribly inconvenient.

Especially when you’ve invested your money, reputation, career, intelligence, influence and entire identity into convincing yourself and everybody else that the system is perfectly reasonable.

And now?

YOU GET TO WALK THROUGH THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR OWN DEFENCE OF IT.

Welcome to my digital walk of shame.

No red carpet, unfortunately.

Just records, contradictions, institutional failures, decisions, omissions, accumulated consequences and some rather uncomfortable questions.

And the best part?

YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME TO RECOGNISE THE EVIDENCE.

You can dislike me.

You can dismiss me.

You can block me.

You can mark my correspondence as spam.

You can protect your reputation, defend your institution, congratulate your colleagues and continue assuring one another that everything is functioning exactly as it should.

Wonderful.

BUT WHICH OF THOSE ACTIONS ACTUALLY ADDRESSES THE HARM?

Oh.

Right.

None of them necessarily does.

And that’s where the entertainment begins.

Because the people who have spent generations celebrating their achievements seem rather less enthusiastic when asked to examine the consequences of those achievements.

You want the credit for building the institution?

Excellent.

Let’s investigate what it built.

You want the profits?

Marvellous.

Let’s examine the costs transferred to everybody else.

You want the authority?

Splendid.

Let’s examine the responsibility attached to it.

You want your name remembered for what you contributed?

Absolutely.

THEN LET’S REMEMBER THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT YOU CONTRIBUTED TOO.

Funny how quickly the enthusiasm for historical continuity disappears when continuity includes accountability.

Apparently, the past is an inheritance when it contains wealth, prestige and power.

But the moment it contains harm?

Suddenly, nobody knows anybody.

Nobody was responsible.

Nobody could have anticipated anything.

Nobody had the authority.

Nobody remembers who made the decisions.

What an extraordinary epidemic of selective memory.

And then there’s my personal favourite:

“WELL, THAT’S JUST HOW THE WORLD WORKS.”

Oh, is it?

How the world works?

Or how humans chose to organise their societies?

Because Earth didn’t invent your financial systems.

Earth didn’t create your political institutions.

Earth didn’t design your bureaucracies.

Earth didn’t establish your commercial priorities, manufacture your social hierarchies or decide that access to basic human needs should depend upon purchasing power.

HUMANS DID.

And yet, when the consequences become unbearable, suddenly everybody starts speaking as though humanity is the helpless victim of some mysterious natural phenomenon.

As though the planet personally submitted the legislation.

As though the oceans established the banking regulations.

As though the trees voted for institutional negligence.

Please.

EARTH IS NOT GOING TO CLEAN UP THE MORAL, POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL MESS HUMANITY CREATED.

Nature has its own processes.

Our social systems are our responsibility.

And responsibility doesn’t vanish because acknowledging it might make somebody uncomfortable.

So yes, I’ve essentially created a digital walk of shame.

Not because shame is the objective.

BECAUSE ACCOUNTABILITY HAS BEEN EVADED FOR SO LONG THAT SIMPLY PRESENTING THE RECORD CAN FEEL LIKE PUBLIC HUMILIATION.

And that says rather more about the people avoiding the record than it does about the person documenting it.

I am not asking humanity to inherit personal guilt for every decision made before its lifetime.

I am asking those who continue to uphold, benefit from, administer and defend existing structures to account for what those structures are doing now, including the harms they have inherited and continue to reproduce.

Because you cannot claim continuity for the benefits and absolute separation from the consequences.

YOU DO NOT GET TO BE THE PROUD HEIR OF THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND A COMPLETE STRANGER TO THE DAMAGE.

So face it.

Face the history.

Face the records.

Face the contradictions.

Face the consequences.

Face what you inherited, what you maintained, what you benefited from, what you could have changed and what you are still choosing to defend.

And once you’ve faced it all?

DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Because the ultimate purpose of accountability is not to spend eternity staring at the failure.

It is to acquire enough integrity to stop reproducing it.

And enough continuity to ensure the correction survives beyond your own lifetime.

As for those who would rather protect their reputations than confront the evidence?

Well.

I suppose you’ll have to decide whether you would prefer to be remembered for the system you so passionately defended…

OR FOR WHAT YOU DID WHEN YOU FINALLY UNDERSTOOD ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Either way, the investigation continues.

**EARTH DIDN’T CREATE OUR SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS.

HUMANS DID.

HUMANS MUST ACCOUNT FOR THEM.

ALL OF THEM.**

And what a remarkable opportunity that is.

To finally stop pretending the mess belongs to somebody else.

— Susan Ndinga-Wright (SNW)

SHS – Human First | The Womb of The Unknown Need

INTEGRITY: FACE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.

CONTINUITY: FACE WHAT YOUR ACTIONS WILL CONTINUE TO DO.

ACCOUNTABILITY: STOP HIDING BETWEEN THE TWO.