Personal Discipline in a Time of Transformation
Lucinda J. Garthwaite, ILI Director
. . . . anxiety and suffering does not give us license to attack those thought of as different.
john a. powell[i]
Scrolling through my personal social media pages on any given day, I’ll come across at least one declaration in big letters on bright background, “If you support Trump or any Republican leader, unfriend me now!” The first comments that follow range from “Good for you!”, to “What? All those years of friendship and you’re dumping me because of politics?” The conversation goes downhill from there, many leading to name-calling the likes of which I last heard on my grade school playground.
Please don’t get me wrong; I share the impulse. I am as angry as I’ve ever been. Like many, I struggle with despair, the systemic inequities I’ve always seen brought into even starker focus in the midst of this pandemic. It’s not only political for me, it’s very personal, my own and the rights and well-being of my dear ones are in serious peril. For disabled, poor, old and incarcerated people, something like genocide feels possible. (If this sounds outlandish to you, message me and I’ll send references without judgement.)
There is, arguably, a swelling consensus about the need for a new normal, a transformation in the direction of increasing equity and decreasing violence. More people are calling for deep systemic change, but here’s the thing, each of us is part of the system. Simply externalizing blame will get us exactly nowhere.
“We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression, and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” That declaration by the writer Robert Jones Jr. is sometimes used to defend disengaging entirely from those with whom we fiercely disagree. Withdrawing love, which implies trust and intimacy, is substantially different from disengaging entirely.
Disengaging, especially from relatively safe socio-economic positions, will do nothing to advance an agenda to increase equity and decrease violence -- and assertively advancing that agenda is what we ought to be about.
Because real adversaries do exist, people with who embrace or act on behalf of inequity and violence, some with intention and some without thought. It will take strategic, conscious non-violent action to reduce the power of the systems and ideas that feed that beast. In the history of social change, that’s the only approach that has ever worked.
Serious work for change has always required disciplined commitment. This moment is no different, and it begins with disciplined personal behavior. Undisciplined action will not advance equity and non-violence. john a. powell continues, “We do not accept beliefs or policies that signify that any people are less than others. We cannot accept personal or institutional efforts to other anyone.” Anyone, even those with whom we fiercely disagree. Violence begins the moment we reduce another’s complex humanity to one essential thing. That’s a fancy way to describe name-calling.
The impulse to channel our anger, fear and despair into violence is strong. But violence always invites violence, and now is not the time for impulse, it’s time for focus and for collective, disciplined behavior. If we’re serious about transformation, self-righteous indignation is an indulgence we can ill afford. The place to begin is ourselves.
[i] powell (lower case is his preference) is the Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkley. This quote and the other in this piece are excerpted from a blog post, “Resistence and the Rebirth of Inclusion,” 11/28/16. I highly recommend it, and anything else powell writes. His is largely unsung and important voice in systems thinking and change.