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Now
[Remarks to the first in a
series of "Last Sunday" community gatherings in Austin,
TX, November 26, 2006.]
We billed Last Sunday as a place for
people to come together to explore the intersections of the political,
artistic, and spiritual. The idea came out of conversations among
friends: Eliza Gilkyson,
a singer/songwriter with interests in politics and spirituality;
Jim Rigby,
a minister who has a knack for stirring up trouble, theologically
and politically; and me, a professor involved in a variety of
political groups.
There are lots of organizations
and movements taking up issues that we care about. Last Sunday
was designed not to compete with those, but to create a different
kind of space, where people could bring all aspects of themselves
for conversation and connection. The name plays off the "First
Thursday" tradition on South Congress Avenue, with perhaps
an invocation of the Last Supper for some, though I want to be
clear that none of us has any messianic inclinations.
We hope people will not only
listen to what comes from the stage, but connect with friends
and allies in the hall. We hope that existing progressive projects
will be strengthened and that new ideas will emerge from those
conversations.
So, there's no hidden agenda
tonight. We,re not recruiting or selling anything. Like so many,
we,re just hungry for that conversation, that connection, that
sense of community.
Okay, but what is Last Sunday
really about?
All the conversations that
Eliza, Jim, and I had in planning this gathering eventually came
back to a core point: Hard times are on the way, coming sooner
than most of us expected, and we,re not ready for them.
We started with the recognition
that for all its affluence and military power, the United States
is in many ways a society in collapse. On all fronts -- politically,
economically, culturally and most important, ecologically --
we are in trouble. We live in an increasingly callous culture
that exploits sexuality and glorifies violence; embedded in a
house-of-cards economy built on orgiastic consumption, deepening
personal and collective debt, and an artificially inflated dollar;
at the end of an imperial era that is grinding to a disastrous
demise -- and, as if that weren't enough, looming behind all
those crises is the recognition of the consequences of humans
too-long ignoring the unraveling ecological fabric that makes
life possible.
That's the bad news.
Here's the worse news: In this
country, we do not have the cultural, economic, or political
institutions in place to deal with these cascading crises.
Here's the even worse news:
We don't have a lot of time left to build the institutions we
need.
If one agrees with this view
of the world to any degree, it seems to me there are two options
for those of us with privilege.
1. We can seal ourselves off
in gated communities (at the personal and/or the national level)
with the highest walls and sharpest razor wire we can afford,
hunker down with what we have acquired, and hope that somehow
the collapse will be far enough off (in time and/or geography)
that it won't touch us. Or,
2. We can get to work on making
the human connections necessary to build the institutions we
need to deal with what some call "the great correction"
that is coming.
To some that may sound overly
dramatic, maybe even alarmist. But for many of us, the alarms
have already gone off, and this kind of analysis resonates in
our hearts and our heads. It feels like what is happening, and
it's consistent with what we know about the world. Even with
that conviction, it's difficult to say all this in public, to
risk being ridiculed as histrionic or hysterical. But that naming
of the crisis is, I believe, one of the most creative acts we
can undertake today. In 1957, Albert Camus explained:
"To create today is to
create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes
one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing."
That is the simple goal of
Last Sunday -- to offer some space for that creative activity,
which has to begin in conversation, together, in a world that
is not very forgiving.
Beyond
cynicism to stubborn hope, authentically
When I talk about the crises
we face -- especially when I argue that neither the Republicans
nor the Democrats are likely to be part of meaningful solutions
-- people often accuse me of being cynical. So, let's deal with
that up front.
I am not cynical. I am hopeful,
realistically. After all, if I were cynical, I wouldn't do the
political work that I do. As a privileged person, if I were cynical,
I would avoid politics and enjoy the rather comfortable life
I have without questioning it.
I once was cynical, but I changed.
And I,d like to say a bit about how that happened.
When I was younger, I looked
around and saw a world in pretty awful shape -- war, poverty,
racism, sexism, and on and on. It was hard to be upbeat living
at the end of the 20th century, one of the most brutal and bloody
centuries in human history. As I came of age in the 1970s, it
seemed to me these problems were the product of inherent human
depravity that I took to be immutable. Given that analysis, I
was cynical, which allowed me not to think much about why I was
so privileged and to be smug and self-satisfied in my passivity
and inaction.
But something started to shift
in me in 1988, when I went to graduate school and had a chance
to learn more about how the world works. I started to study and
realized that the world was far worse off than I had ever imagined,
that the suffering was deeper, and that the problems were rooted
in powerful institutions not easily dislodged.
That's when I stopped being
cynical and began to feel hopeful.
Now, that may seem counterintuitive.
How did a deepening sense of the scale and scope of injustice
and suffering make me hopeful? Because I started to understand
that the problems of the world were not simply the product of
an inherently evil and stupid human nature, though we can all
be evil and stupid at times. Instead, I started to think about
how systems and structures of power shape us and channel our
behavior. I came to realize that the authority structures that
so bend our lives are powerful and deeply entrenched. I also
realized that most of the channels that the dominant culture
offers us for working to make the world a better place are themselves
deeply embedded in those authority structures, so that often
the solutions become part of the problem. I realized that the
analysis and action that could save us has to be more radical
than I ever could have imagined, at a time when the culture is
more depoliticized and right-wing than ever.
So, at the moment I realized
the depth of the problem and the forces stacked against justice,
I got hopeful. I think I saw the monster more clearly, but in
that I also saw that the monster could be challenged and changed.
I am not saying I,m all that
optimistic these days -- I said hopeful. I think to tell the
truth about the world is to recognize the struggle for justice
and sustainability is a long one, with no guarantee we will find
our way there. Any reasonable strategy has to face honestly the
obstacles, and it's hard to be optimistic about the short-term
right now. But it's good to remember, as Martin Luther King,
Jr. put it, that, "The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice."
It's possible to be hopeful
for that continued bending, and I am. In part because history
teaches us that struggles in the past have been successful, even
if not complete. History also teaches us that there have always
been people who didn't give in to cynicism, and those are the
folks we honor today. Those people knew that the struggle for
justice and sustainability was not just the right thing to do.
They realized that the real joy of living is in that struggle,
together.
This is the basis for what
I would call authentic hope. Authenticity is a tricky concept,
but the best definition I've ever heard of it comes from my friend
Abe Osheroff, who at 90 years old is still engaged in radical
political activity, joyfully. Authenticity, Abe told me, is felt
in that moment when what you think matches what you say and matches
what you do; it's when you aren't afraid to say what you think
and to act on what you say. We have to struggle for that authenticity,
and it is worth struggling for.
The first step in that is thinking.
We need to spend some time creating an analysis that can move
us forward, creating dangerously, perhaps. Let me offer a few
more words from Camus, also from 1957:
"Tomorrow the world may
burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there
is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies,
titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing
puff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked
suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those
of a stubborn hope."
A framework
for radical politics
When I talk about radical politics,
people ask me what I mean by that term, and then they often demand
of me a clear plan on how to achieve those goals. Let me answer
the latter question first: I don't have such a plan, and neither
does anyone else. The challenges we face are such that anyone
who pretends to have a highly developed plan to achieve a just
and sustainable world is either a con artist or not very bright.
In other words, I believe we
are at a point in human history where the complexity of the task
means no one has the capabilities to fashion an alternative in
great detail, and that's okay. We don't need a utopian vision,
based either on old systems or new flights of fancy. We need
to be clear on the nature of the struggle and begin to experiment.
That requires understanding
the nature of the problem. Before we race ahead to solutions,
we have to think more carefully about what we are struggling
against. That's not negative; it's a supremely creative act,
and a prerequisite to moving forward.
What can we say about radical
politics in 2006? The first thing is to not be afraid of the
world radical. I use it here in the sense of its basic meaning
-- going to the root, trying to understand the nature of things.
If we look at the problems
we,re facing, we have to confront that at both the personal and
planetary levels we are surrounded by systems based on a domination/subordination
dynamic, which we have to challenge at all levels. There are
at least fives places we should be looking to do that: Race and
gender/sexuality, capitalism and empire, and the coming ecological
collapse.
The first two, race and gender,
are often dismissed as mere "identity politics," and
there certainly is a way that "diversity talk" can
derail radical politics. But there is no way to talk about progressive
social change in this country and the wider world if we don't
confront the pathologies of white supremacy and patriarchy, both
of which are woven deeply into the fabric of this society. Such
terms may seem old-fashioned, but we live in a world of racialized
disparities in wealth and well-being rooted not in the inadequacy
of people of color but in white dominance, and a world in which
women still face the limitations and threats that come from male
dominance.
We also can see that those
ideologies of white supremacy and patriarchy are linked to the
systems of capitalism and empire, which are rooted in the glorification
of a hyper-competitive, violent masculinity and an assertion
of a claim of the inherent superiority of Europe and the United
States. Capitalism creates a world defined by greed that reduces
us to crass maximizers of self-interest, not exactly a recipe
for decent living. Empire is the extraction of the wealth of
the many to enrich increasingly fewer, not exactly a morally
defensible model.
This leaves us in a world in
which half the people on the planet live on less than $2 a day.
Let that statistic sink in: More than 3 billion people survive
-- for food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care -- on
less than any one of us might spend on a fancy cup of coffee
in the morning. Those people living at that level of poverty
are disproportionately non-white and female. They live mostly
in a Third World that has suffered, and continues to suffer,
from military and economic domination by the First World, most
centrally the United States.
Radical politics says not only
that this state of affairs is unjust, but so are the institutions
that produce it. And these systems must be changed.
And then there is the question
of sustainability. Look at any crucial measure of the health
of the ecosphere in which we live -- groundwater depletion, topsoil
loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies,
the expanding dead zone in the Gulf, accelerating extinction
of species and reduction of bio-diversity. Look at all that and
ask a simple question: Where we are heading? Remember also that
we live in an oil-based world that is fast running out of oil,
which means we face a huge reconfiguration of the infrastructure
that undergirds our lives. And, of course, there is the undeniable
trajectory of rapid climate change.
Add all that up, and it's not
a pretty picture. It's crucial we realize that there are no technological
fixes that will rescue us. We have to go to the root and acknowledge
that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed.
We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves.
Here, just as in human relationships, we either abandon the dominance/subordination
dynamic or we don't survive.
To me, that is radical politics
-- to the root. When I talk like this, I,m often told I need
to be realistic. I think I am being realistic. I am realistically
assessing the nature of the systems and institutions, which is
necessary if we are to make progress toward real justice and
sustainability.
We may fail,
but we can fail together
One of the most important steps
for me in this process has been the recognition that we may fail,
that the human species may be an evolutionary dead-end, that
our collective life may be in the nature of dramatic tragedy.
If that is the case -- and no one can know for sure that it isn't
-- then at least we can fail together, struggling toward authentic
hope, finding the joy in that struggle.
I want to conclude with Camus,
not a place one would expect to go for an upbeat ending. In a
1948 talk at a monastery, Camus urged people to "give up
empty quarrels" and "pay attention to what unites rather
that to what separates us" in the struggle to recover from
the horrors of Europe's barbarism. I take from Camus a sense
of how to live the tension between facing honestly the horror
and yet remaining engaged. In that same talk, he spoke of "the
forces of terror" (forces which exist on "our"
side as much as on "theirs") and the "forces of
dialogue" (which also exist everywhere in the world). Where
do we place our hopes?
"Between the forces of
terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has
begun," he wrote. "I have nothing but reasonable illusions
as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought."
So, back to tonight's original
question: Just what exactly is Last Sunday? Maybe just an expression
of faith in the forces of dialogue, a plea for reasonable illusions,
a reminder that -- no matter what our chances -- the battle must
be fought.
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