Hey Eric-
The discourse continues.
From: eric + michiko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [ecopath] Internal Cultural Activism
Date: Sunday, April 11, 1999 11:40 AM
Eric wrote:
>But I also thinkyou can give your power away in the sense that you can
>knowingly, unknowingling or through confused thinking support others >or
causes or trends that you do not necessarily agree with, or might not if
>you saw the whole picture. Unthinkingly going along with the crowd >often
falls into this category.
Yes, this is what the vast majority of the inert populace I mentioned
later in my post are doing all the time; and all of us are
guilty/susceptible to doing this when it is convenient or we are too busy
or too tired to struggle with a particular issue. Remember, humans are
really herd animals like lemmings or cows or wolves or baboons, not
solitary creatures. We only have so much time and energy. We work at what
we can and every once in a while we have to remember to play and dream and
just sit doing nothing, or we go crazy or crazier, as the case may be.
Eric wrote:
>I think consumer support of large corporations also falls into this
>category. If we could really see the end results of supporting large,
distant >corprations versus locally owned modestly sized businesses, we
would >choose to support the local ones instead. If the consequences of
our >actions were more visible or understanable, we would choose different
>actions. The scale on which our economies, societies and politics work
>are so large that we can not really grasp what is going on. This leads to
>appathy and a feeling of helplessness. Smaller scales and clearer
thinking >are necessary.
I believe, maybe even know, that many more people see the hidden costs in
our current cultural/economic system than did 20 or even 10 years ago.
People are afraid of their food because of how far it is shipped and the
outbreaks of disease caused by the lack of controls which is caused by the
scale of these businesses and their greed and purchase of regulating
agencies. It is true that many are driven to apathy by the scale of all the
problems, but a lot more are starting to ask questions, build food circles,
buy organic, join CSA's. I think the problems are very visible and very
understandable, but some of us are too busy or afraid to see and understand
because it leads to some very hard questions and difficult decisions. I
remember my family (parents, grandparents, and great grandparents) laughing
at me and calling me radical for some of the things I would say and do, the
food choices I would make, etc. Now they are more adamant about some
features of the problem than I am.
How can the scale and consequences of the problem be invisible and
incomprehensible and yet still "lead to" apathy? If you cannot see or
comprehend it, how does it influence your living? Subconsciously? I think
it is readily apparent to a lot of people, but this realization overwhelms
and leads to apathy, or more accurately feelings of impotence. And this
feeds right back into another of the points of contention; the reason they
feel impotent (without power) is that they buy into the top down view of
power. They believe that power comes from government or other big
institutions; they do not realize that we give/create the power for these
institutions by acquiescing and refusing to own our power. Governments and
corporations rely on this assention; ironically, so do all forms of
political violence, except terrorism. Terrorists believe that they, a small
group, can influence the political/cultural discourse through acts that
influence another small group of people (usually) that will spread terror
in a larger group and cause them to remove their support from the
government or corporation that is in apparent control. When we move this up
the scale ruler we legitimate it with governments and call it "war".
I have been working with food circles and other groups locally to create a
regional food system. While we can never quite produce everything we want,
we can probably produce everything we need; at least for 9 months of the
year. We can make this year round by canning, drying, freezing our food,
but most of us, myself included, still have to purchase some non-local
food. And until I find a way to grow coffee in Missouri, I am convinced
that I will HAVE to purchase some food from elsewhere. I could not do all
the things I need to do without it, or a tasty alternative. My mantra is,
"Buy your food from a farmer whose face you can see, farm you can visit,
and practices and inputs you can question." Of course this can be applied
to anything you need to buy by replacing a couple of words.
Eric wrote:
>I believe in all cases the individual was assisted by many others.
Without
>such assistance their effect would have been severely limited. Perhaps
>"very small minorities" can effect change to some degree, but again it
>seems to assume that at some point the rest go along with it.
>Sounds resonable, but again 20 or 30% is not an individual and still
>assumes the cooperation of the rest at some point, even if that
>cooperation is in the form of no resistance.
Yes, at some point, the majority has to go along, but I think that the
majority is often fairly inert, carried by the weight of history and the
actions of a few. 55 white men in Philadelphia in 1776, and in the
formation of the Constitution later, exercised a great deal of control on
the shape of the colonies. It is true that there was a lot going on
already, but they convinced enough people that their group (White,
landowning, males, many of them slave owners) were the ones who should
control the new country; in fact, they were the only ones who could vote.
So even though the colonies had to approve it, those that could do this
were the framers themselves, or their buddies. Truly, the rest of the
colonists could have withheld their support and many did through acts like
Shay's rebellion, the Civil War, and many more opted out and moved West.
Unfortunately destroying some good examples of how to live in harmony with
each other and the land by wiping out the indigenous population.
20 to 30 % is a small minority, and the operative number is probably even
smaller to effect change. In those small groups the action of the
individual take on even more significance because of the sheer scaling down
of the problem. This whole question was made clear to me by a book by
Starhawk called "Dreaming the Dark". In it, she compares two kinds of
power, "power over" and "power from within". This is the dichotomy that we
are dealing with. Thankfully, in a later book she added a positive social
power, "power with". It has been written about many times, but these books
were in the right place at the right time for me.
Eric wrote:
>I like the river analogy.
I will have to tell you my other operative theory of life, the Wily Coyote
theory of life, sometime. You will laugh yourself silly.
Eric wrote:
>Leaving the planet sounds at least as unlikely as my vision of people
>living quietly in our own communities. I won't go too far with this but,
>let's say you move on to "somewhere" else, then what? What if there
>turns out to be some "bad" people there too, do you leave for yet another
>place? It sounds like running away from problems not dealing with them.
Yes. There are two, at least, desires/motivations of people in this area of
humanity's desire. The urge to go on, to see what is over the hill, to
ramble (often manifested on this list :->); and the urge to stay put,
settle down. It is painfully clear in the conquest of this continent by
white people. Also evident in the struggle between the sedentary,
matriarchal, agricultural cultures of the Middle East and the nomadic,
patriarchal, herdsmen cultures that came into the region. This is the
origin of the two creation myths in the Bible and the parts that were taken
out dealing with Adam's first "wife" Lilith. That myth is a perfect example
of this struggle.
Eric wrote:
>Since prunning will take place, don't we want to choose which branches
>will remain and to stay on the branches that will remain? Don't we want
>to reduce the effects of things that promote unwanted growth?
Yes, and this is why leaving the planet seems like a false hope to me.
Unless we change, fundamentally, our way of thinking and acting, we will
simply replicate our problems out there; this is exactly what nearly every
revolution has done on earth. You make apparent changes, you even have the
best of intentions; but once in power, you are forced into things you
despised in the former regime because you did not, fundamentally, change
your belief/action system. All you end up changing is who sits in the
catbird seat. The only real revolution might just be evolution.
When we are making decisions about what to prune and what to keep, it is
essential to realize that most structures in a society, no matter how
terrible, perform some function (however well or poorly). If you simply
remove the structure without a replacement, then you risk replication of
the structure because the culture and the people need it, or think they do.
The key is to study the structures and figure out their purposes. Once you
understand this, then you can begin to build alternative structures that
fulfill the function(s) without the negative side effects. Usually you can
do this within the rotting shell of the dominant culture (ain't this what
we are doing right now?). At some point, when you reach critical mass or
that 20 to 30% threshold, enough of the people have opted across to the
alternative structure and the old structure begins to crumble. You can see
this in the crash of East Germany, though it ended up failing miserably.
The thing to remember is that the old structure, and the entrenched
bureaucracies supported by it, may become violent because they are backed
into a corner. I see this change as like a snake that grows too big for its
skin and has to slough it off.
Eric wrote:
>I thought you just said that individuals and small minorities had a BIG
>influence : )
It is all relative. Minorities and individuals have a lot more influence
than the general public, but we are a mosquito on a hippo's butt compared
to nature, the universe, and random chaos (or not so random chaos). It is
much easier to influence the trajectory of the pendulum in that second it
stops than when it is accelerating toward the bottom of its swing. All it
takes is the merest tap. When in motion it demands gigantic expenditures of
energy to influence it. I think this works well as an analogy because it
points to the different levels of coercion, violence, and energy necessary
to change things between the two models (violent -vs- nonviolent change).
Namaste,
Guy Clark
