Opening Our Eyes to the Spiritual Imperatives of Our
Time.
I’ve just spent two months trying to
recover my health by soaking up the natural world at the cottage. What a shock to move from that place of
retreat to the pace of the city and a conference of about a thousand people of
all ages and types—a Social Forum.
The Social Forum is a wide open
process. Anyone who thinks they have
something important to offer schedules a workshop and is given a room. People go to talk about the issues they think
matter. It’s a very dynamic, creative
process. Then people organize around the
themes to create a consensus statement on issues like inequality, democracy,
climate change, oppression, and so on. We
try to capture the vision of where we want to go, and build the relationships
that will help us to get there.
When you read the program, it is hard not
to feel despair. We have so many
pressing problems. It is clear just from
the workshop titles: Native women – 40
years of struggle;, Resource exploitation and land grab in Afrika, The
dismantling of citizenship; Racism; Climate Change; Water --- You get my
point. How do we find the personal
strength to open our eyes and look at all these problems? How do we find the hope that our actions will
make a difference? How do we find the
physical strength and stamina to tackle this enormous set of problems?
At the cottage, we have a gaggle of geese
that is just huge since the babies have grown up. ----and we have a beautiful beach – nice and
grassy and sandy—the perfect spot for a gaggle of geese on Eagle Lake to go
down to rest at night. A nice large
space where they can all be together, yet spread out and relax. They love it.
But there are so many of them that after a few days the beach is covered
in “you know—doo doo--” and it is no
longer sanitary for our children who will come on the week-end.
So those of us who are here make an effort
to keep them off the beach. It’s quite a
battle. Actually, I prefer to think of
it as a strategic campaign. We chase
them off. As soon as we turn our backs
they come back. We chase them off
again. They come back. We chase them again, and this time stay and
watch until they finally back off and settle some where else—for a while. Our wins are invariably short-lived..
Nobody wants the geese. Everyone chases them off when they are
there. But then they go away and the
geese come back. After all, it is their
territory! Who owns the beach? Us who have paid for it? Or the geese who have been laying their eggs
there and raising their young for thousands of years? PAUSE
Have you ever seen a wild goose chase? We all know what a wild goose chase means –
you expend a lot of effort for no result.
One day we decided to chase them off the beach with the canoe. We managed to get them half way down the bay,
but then they just ducked into the rocks and weeds to eat and wait. We waited, and they waited. Finally we gave in and parked our canoe. Then, when they came back, our neighbour
decided to try with his motorboat. He
took 3 or 4 runs right at the geese.
They would divide and regroup.
They would move closer and closer into shore until they knew the big
boat couldn’t follow them. Lee managed
to cut away some young gander, just learning to fly, and chased it right across
the lake. Terrified him. But ultimately we could do nothing with
force. They would just retreat and come
back, just as always. I noticed the
group waited patiently for that young gander to reconnect before they moved
on. I came to see that it was a battle of
patience, commitment, and determination.
It was a spiritual battle to see who would ultimately occupy the beach.
This is a wonderful metaphor for the
challenges we face. Whether it is our
own First Nations, or the Palestinians, or the Roma, or the aboriginal people
in South America and Africa who are defending their land, our Western
civilization is challenged to answer this question – who owns the land and what
are the rights of people who have lived there for thousands of years? We Unitarians have joined with other faith
groups and social activists to become allies of the First Nations. When we make this choice, we are siding with
the geese.
What does it mean to side with the
geese? In our case, it means something very
fundamental.
The First Nations told us from the first
day Europeans set foot on this continent that we had an improper understanding
of our relationship to the land. No one
owns the land. We share it. Every person and every animal who lives there
has the right to what it needs to sustain itself – food, a place to sleep. Us cottagers have a right to use the beach
and to clean up after ourselves. But it
really belongs to the geese. They have a
right to use it, and if we have to clean up after them to make it safe, so be
it. Do it cheerfully and thank the geese
for lending you their beach for awhile.
We have to reexamine total ownership and control --over land, over ideas,
DNA, seeds -- the air, the water etc. We have to reexamine ownership as a fundamental
building block of our society. We have
to change the model to one of sharing, respect for others, and meaningful
consultation.
But this raises some very fundamental
questions.
Human civilization has been developing its
ability for human beings to join together in larger groups for thousands of
years. We look back at achievements like
the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian pyramids and we are amazed at their
ability to raise and control armies of workers to do these things by manual
effort alone. Every army in history
developed new ways to motivate, coordinate, and control people so they would
work together on the task. Our
businesses have been designing and developing many different techniques to
manage and control workers, mostly using power over and fear, but occasionally
allowing for creativity and internally motivated people. They have become so good at it they control
workers who are producing the equivalent GDP to that of many countries. The people at the top call the shots and get the
benefits, while the people at the bottom do what they are told.
We celebrate the first moves towards
democracy in Athens at the time of Plato.
We study the milestones in the development of democracy from the Magna
Carta, the French revolution, and the Declaration of Independence. (I learned, yesterday, that Washington and
Jefferson were taught the ideas in that great document by the six nations, whom
we call the Mohawk or the Iroquois, who had been practicing democracy for
hundreds or even thousands of years.) In
it it states:
“ ---that human rights are endowed by nature
of man’s creation and are inalienable. They don’t derive as a decree from
force, nor are they granted by any transitory ruler. Democracy recognizes the divine right of the
ruled, rather than the ruler. It isn’t a
right by virtue of title, wealth, or military superiority, but instead is a
profound statement of the essence of man’s nature, defining principles
intrinsic to human life itself: liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.”
In Canada we have been proud to be part of
one of the most democratic countries in the world. But now, it feels like we are in a time of
democratic decline. Many of our
democratic institutions are under attack.
The fall of the Berlin wall and the Arab Spring gave us great hope for
democracy in developing countries but it has proved difficult to make it
work. Governments are signing away their
sovereignty and their power to make change in free trade agreements. We can imagine a future where we will be
ruled by these autocratic supercorporations.
We wonder.
Will we continue to grow and develop the democratic processes for people
to work together? Or will we lose our
knowledge and skill in this area as the world becomes more and more
totalitarian? This is especially
problematic because of the potential for chaos with escalating climate
catastrophes, burgeoning population growth and fierce competition for resources
like oil and water.
How do we maintain, develop, and grow
democratic practices? How do we build a
society where freedom, liberty, equality, and respect for the earth and all
life are the core values of human society?
In his book, Power vs Force, David R. Hawkins talks about the different energy
levels involved in solving problems through the use of force or through the use
of power. Force involves the imposition
of negative energies, often motivated by greed, fear, anger, or hatred. Power comes from your own natural positive
energies, often motivated by vision, courage, hope, compassion, and love. The books and documents that generated the
most good for society over the long haul came from such positive motivating
forces – the Bible, the Dhamapada, the Quran, the US Bill of Rights. How many centuries have we been inspired by
the sermon on the mount or the Buddha’s vision of escape from suffering? How many people have dreamed of freedom
because of this statement from the Bill of Rights?
“We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness “
We gather together at the social forum to
defend, and ultimately to embody, this vision and these values, values we fear
are under threat. In the face of wealth,
power and the blatant use of force, —how can we influence society in the
direction we want:
·
Toward greater equality
·
Toward a sustainable and
respectful relationship with the earth
·
Toward meaningful consultation
and shared decision-making
I would like to propose that we take some
lessons from the geese on how to deal with the blatant use of force:
·
First, geese just go about
their business every day doing what they need to do to live. They are meeting their basic needs – being
themselves.
·
They stay focused on the goal –
to spend the night on that particular beach.
They are not easily distracted with other possibilities.
·
They are patient and
persistent. They just keep doing what
they want to do.
·
When someone pushes them away,
they wait awhile and come back, often grazing for food while they wait on the
sidelines. Might as well replenish your
energy.
·
If they are attacked, they
retreat – just as far as they have to, no further. They take evasive action. They take time to regroup and collect
themselves.
·
They are patient, committed, determined
and persistent.
·
If necessary, they use a
fallback position and live to fight another day.
·
It is ultimately a non-violent
battle of wills and effort.
This is why I so much enjoyed reading “What Then Shall We Do” by Alperovitz. His idea that we don’t have to wait to use
our powers to create the society we want appeals to me. We can develop the seeds for the
democratization of wealth by simply exercising our power and meeting our
needs. We can do it by participating in
voluntary associations of like-minded others and we can practice democratic
decision-making as we do so. We can
build new democratic institutions by forming coops instead of looking for a job
with a corporation. We can push our
cities to empower themselves and us. We
can invite others to join us. To make
democracy work we have to be skilled at building consensus among people who
don’t always agree. No society, no
matter how totalitarian it appears, is a monolith. There are always different viewpoints that
have to be resolved somehow in order to move forward. The more we practice, the better we’ll get.
The democratization strategies that
Alperovitz presents are the equivalent of being yourself, building your
strength, having a clear goal and going for it.
You have to know who you are and what core values you support. It requires patience, persistence,
commitment, and determination. To make
democracy work you have to be committed.
If attacked, take evasive action and go
back to work doing what you do. Find new
ways to do it. Rebuild your energy
during waiting periods, taking the time to take care of your physical and
spiritual needs. What level of energy
are you operating from? Hope or
despair? Love or hate? Compassion or vengeance? Take the time you need to lift your
spirits.
If you have to retreat, retreat only as far
as necessary. Hold on to your courage,
your commitment, your reason for being who you are. Operate from as high an energy level as you
can sustain. If you let your courage
fail and your hope falter, then you fall into despair, hatred, anger, and
potentially violence. You may get a
short term victory with violence, but in the end, you will be defeated. Low energy levels are not productive. The Israeli occupation is a good example. It is entirely negative. It produces short-term security but no
solutions. It will take a very different
kind of energy based on radical empathy and compassion to build a future of
peace and justice in the Middle East.
If necessary, take the time to organize or
show up for a protest, or put yourself on the line against something you really
oppose. We must resist bad
directions. But remember: keep building
the future. It will take creativity,
vision and a lot of persistence to build the institutions that will eventually
replace corporate capitalism; economic
structures that will allow us to live in peace and justice with the earth and
with each other. And one day, when we
least expect it, the old ways will take a step back, and the new will emerge—because
we had the courage to dream and make it real.
So may it be.
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