This commentary is by Tim Stevenson, a community organizer with Post Oil Solutions from Athens, Vermont, and author of “Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age” and the recently published “Transformative Activism: A Values Revolution in Everyday Life in a Time of Social Collapse.”
While it’s true that for humankind to be liberated, we need to transform the ancient political hierarchy of one-up/one-down power relationships (patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and the like), it is a fatal error to then conclude that the solution to this political problem is political as well, reversing these oppressive dyads into so-called “liberated” ones, where the exercise of power is now administered by the oppressed over the oppressor.
As history illustrates time and again, political solutions do not resolve political problems.
This mistake is understandable, of course, given the fact that we are born to and grow up in a political world, and are therefore conditioned to accept power relationships as reality. Since politics characterizes our relationships and interactions with one another, and other living beings, they appear to be the natural order of things.
But unfortunately, subscribing to this approach only reproduces a “revolutionary” variation of the original political dynamic that underlies all power relationships, rather than realizing the peace, freedom, equality and social justice we sought. This is the inevitable outcome of the political logic that establishing control over others is the necessary prerequisite to liberation.
There is no “good” politics when it comes to transformative change. By employing a political approach to overcome the “bad” power that men use over women, whites over people of color, and humans over Mother, we don’t plumb to the original source of the problem. We only replicate the same dynamic of dominance and subjugation, force and violence of the prevailing system we are revolting against.
At best, politics only evades translating our otherwise noble intentions into the commensurate actions required for the liberation we seek by disguising our efforts with reforms that maintain the original power-over relationship.
The exit from this cul-de-sac is to grow up and become spiritual adults. Only then are we able to get to the heart of the matter and realize transformative change.
Essentially this involves moving away from our customary adversarial, oppositional, combative approach, where our purpose is to overcome and defeat our enemies, to one where we conduct ourselves with the liberating values of the transformed world we seek and doing so within our circumstances as they are. In this way, rather than being an event that takes place in some forever-receding future and is dependent upon the right conditions to do so, we prefigure the revolution by being the revolution now, today, through our acts in the present moment. Instead of trying to change others, we are the agency of transformative change by being the revolution ourselves.
To do this, we don’t have to reinvent ourselves. We only need to value life, which begins when we are able to recognize and accept ourselves as the essentially good people we are, and were born to be.
Not only are we then able to appreciate that what is true of ourselves is also valid for all human beings. We also are sufficiently mature to consistently exhibit such spiritual values as compassion and kindness, forgiveness and gratitude, unconditional love and selfless generosity, personal integrity and moral courage, equanimity and humility, and this despite the fact that we have demonstrated over the years that we are a people capable of behavior ranging from soul-numbing horrific to that which the poet, May Sarton, describes as “the small, corrosive daily cruelties that salt our days with sorrow.”
We resolve this basic contradiction of our kind that arises from an ego-driven anxiety to exact control over life when we finally accept that we are essentially powerless in this world, as life’s characteristic impermanence and our always pending death continuously reminds us.
Because our political culture has conditioned us to power relationships, realizing our full potential and engaging in a practice that advances, not retards, our values is challenging, indeed. Notwithstanding that we are imperfect beings, what renders spiritual adulthood possible is that we’re not starting from square one. With righteous intentions and a disciplined commitment, we can cultivate the goodness we were born with so that it increasingly informs our moment-to-moment interactions and relationships with our fellow beings, family and stranger, friend and enemy alike.
The challenge, therefore, is to make the choice to cross our own Rubicon, and be the person we already are, not just in exceptional moments, but as a matter of everyday course. For most of us, this is likely to be the result of a spiritual journey we make a lifetime commitment to.
When we arrive at this liberating consciousness, we know we’re on the right path as it becomes perfectly obvious to us that, despite our differences, we’re ultimately all part of an interdependent whole, doing the best we can in our own ways, to make it through this contradictory, uncertain, insecure, ambiguous world, however we and others might judge our efforts otherwise. This awareness is especially helpful to activists in our attempts to craft a skillful, wholesome practice.
For while we continue to resist that which diminishes and oppresses life, and is responsible for so much of the unnecessary pain and suffering in the world, we do so without being vengeful or punitive. We oppose the offending behavior while respecting the other for the fellow living being they are. We are transformative.
