Very few of us have our hands on the real levers of power. We lack the money and influence to write policy, create tax codes, move resources around or start and stop wars. Most of us spend almost all of our time going along with the macro trends of the world. We might hate the implications of a fossil fuel economy, but everything we do is firmly embedded within it. We might despise colonization, but we know that we are alos guilty of it in many small ways,
The reason challenges like that are difficult to resolve is that we are embedded within them. We are a part of them and the problem is not like something outside of ourselves that we apply force to. Instead it is like a virus or a mycellium, extending it’s tendrils deep into our lives. We are far more the product of the problems we wish to solve than we are the solutions we long to develop.
Social change is littered with ideas like “taking things to scale” which implies that if you just work hard enough, the things you will do will become popular and viral and will take over the world. We can have a sustainable future if “we just practice simple things and then take them to scale.” The problem with this reasoning is that the field in which we are embedded, that which enables us to practice small changes is heavily immune to change. Our economy, our energy systems, our governments are designed to be incredibly stable. They can withstand all kinds of threats and massive changes, This is a GOOD THING. I would hate to have the energy system that powers my life to be fickle enough to be transformed by every good idea that comes along about sustainable power generation. So that is the irony. In the western world, the stability that we rely on to be able to “make change” is exactly that which we desire to change.
We are embedded in the system. We ARE the system. That which we desire to change is US. You want a peaceful world, because you are not a fully peaceful person – violence has seeped into your life, and you understand the implications of it. This is also a GOOD THING. Because, as my friend Adam Kahane keeps quoting from time to time “if you are not a part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.” Real change in stable societies like Canada comes only from catastrophic failure. That may be on our horizon, but I call you a liar if it’s something you desire. It will not be pretty. Living on the west coast of Canada, I sometimes think about it because a massive earthquake will strike here – possibly in my lifetime – and it will change everything instantly and massively and forever. So, while climate change and economic collapse are probabilities, earthquakes are certainties.
So let’s forget about prototyping new things and “taking them to scale.” But let’s not forget about prototyping new things. Because one of the big lessons from the living systems world view is that change happens in an evolutionary way. It happens deep within the system and it requires two resources we all have – creativity and time. It does not require hope. Living systems do not hope. They just change.
Years ago I was inspired by Michael Dowd’s ideas captured in “Thank God for Evolution” in which he talks about mutations as the vehicle of change in evolving systems. Of course this is a widespread thought, but it was quite liberating to me when I first discovered it because it compels us to use our own creativity to make change. Practicing something different, as some small level, is not a useless endeavour. There is no way to know what will happen when you mutate the system. And so that is a reason for practicing. That is why I love Occupy and #IdleNoMore and other social gathering practices. They are creative mutations of the status quo. And they are undertaken without any expectation of massive change. Instead they seed little openings, the vast majority of which don’t go anywhere. In an evolutionary system, mutations may introduce new levels of adaptability, but they might alos kill off the organism. But to survive and evolve, an organism needs to mutate. Remaining the same is also suicidal, because everything else is mutating and changing, and you will lose your fitness if you don’t also change.
So the second resource we all have is time. if you are beholden to making change along a strategic critical pathway, especially in a complex living system, you will suffer terrible delusions. Very few of us have that kind of time. The kind of time we do have is the time to let whatever we do work or fail. To orient yourself to this kind of time, you need to practice something with no expectation of it’s success. The moment you cling to a desired result is the moment suffering creeps into your work, and the moment you begin to lose resilience. Adaptability is reliant on creative imaginations working resourcefully.
So changing from within has something to do with all of this. Watching #IdleNoMore is to witness a celebratory mutation in the system of colonization. It is impossible to say if it will have the desired results that people project upon it. But of course it will “work.” We need to sit and watch it work as a mutation in a living system. And the bonus is that we get to round dance while we do it!
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Working with groups is not easy. This is Ian McGeechan, manager of the British and Irish Lions before a dead rubber test.
My friend Kathy Jourdain was quoted yesterday as saying “our power comes from our vulnerability.” This video reminds me of how that feels some days.
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A little reflection today about social change and Occupy coming out of a conversation yesterday.
When I was a young man we talk about “movements” like we were on the go. From whatever place we were in we will move to another. And we marked this action with marches and demos, dancing and action. The feeling of action was powerful and palpable.
Once in a while we occupied a place and sat there for a while. But in general we were all about the movement. We made ourselves different from those we were working against and we moved.
Occupy did two things to change this, or at least introduce some new strategies. For one, they began by staying right where they were: occupying the place where you already are seems like not a very radical form of action, but fully occupying a space, living there, governing yourselves, creating services: that was somehow new, and over the past year I have thought about what it means to choose simply to be present and fully occupy your own space.
Second, the occupy movement in it’s declaration of “we are the 99%” played at a halfway gesture towards thinking about what social change looks like if you first have to build relationships with many who are your traditional “enemies.” The 99% contains a lot of people that you and I would rather not be associated with in any way. The choice was a conscious practice of seeing each other together. Occupy breaks down, as has always been the case, when difference drives people apart. If difference could drive people together, if we could practice handling difference with a container of relationship, then something new might be born.
And third, Occupy gave up the idea that any of us know exactly what changes are required in the world to make it better. Obviously there are strategies, tactics, policies and experiments that can be tried, but there are no answers. Refusing to publish demands is a key piece of this acknowledgment that a) the world is too complex to direct its evolution and b) any action that does not work with existing power in some way is easily crushed. Once demands are issued, the anti-Occupy narrative can be framed and the movement is marginalized and dissolved.
Occupy was, and continues to be, an experiment. It is not a new experiment but it is a recent iteration of an age old experiment to see what happens when we choose to stay where we are and deepen relationships. It continues to share learning, but for me these three practices of occupation, building a common container to hold difference and staying together in no knowing continue to echo in my own work and practice with groups trying to affect changes.
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Heard a great story today.
I’m at a conference of union activists who are working to build their activist muscles up and do work in communities. One of the presenters here is Jason Sidener, who I’ve enjoyed spending a couple of hours with. Jason is the Member Mobilization Coordinator for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). he is abased in Madison, Wisconsin and played a key organizing role in the upheavals there in 2011 when public sector unions successfully stood up to Governer Scott Walker’s anti union agenda.
Jason told a story today about some of the work he did long before that high profile action. He was brought up on a farm, a conservative rural young man who was raised Republican and came from a Republican family. He changed as he grew up, and when he started working for the union he discovered that in the AFSCME about a third of the members are Republicans. They like their guns, they are social conservatives and they don’t trust outsiders.
Jason noticed that at union meetings and conventions, these conservatives, who nevertheless were supporters of fair wages and benefits for public sector workers, often found themselves silenced, ostracized and marginalized. The temptation is to argue with conservative union members and try to convince them that their politics are wrong. But Jason took another approach. He saw that the split between conservative and progressive members was dangerous to the unity of the union, so he set about creating a Conservative caucus within the union, where Conservative members could have a safe place to discuss their ideas.
Although counter intuitive, this initiative paid dividends when Republican Scott Walker tried to pass his radical legislation last year. Many of the members of the Conservative caucus started coming to Jason saying “take me off that list.” They were realizing that the guy they had elected was no friend of theirs after all. They appreciated the Conservative caucus but saw that in this case, the bigger movement was more important.
I was struck by Jason’s unfettered approach to this work. His confidence in the right thing to do, his commitment to inclusion and his presence of mind to care for the bigger movement is inspiring.
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My friend Bob Stilger writes today from the radiation fields of Fukushima where he has been joining people for the past year in the work of remaking lives after the tsunami and the meltdown. It’s worth heading over to his blog to follow his ongoing discoveries there, but here are some good bits from today’s posting:
People are learning how to co-exist, and more, with the radiation. One story I heard was about a town that wanted to have a festival with an outside play area for their children. Playing on the ground has become prohibited. They spent days and days cleaning one park so that it was radiation free – now, one morning – so the children could play. Tomorrow will be a different story. I thought of a learning center in south Texas that partnered with Berkana for a time – Llano Grande. When I visited there once I listened with interest as teachers organized a trip. One of the things they took into account in their planning was who was an illegal alien and who wasn’t. Special arrangements had to be made for the illegals. That was just the way it was. Others somewhere might be arguing about immigration policy, but at the community level you just work with what you have. So it is in Fukushima. You work with what you have.
My most amazing session of the day was in the town of Minamisoma. It was a community of 70,000 people. As the radiation settled more than 50,000 were forced to leave. Gradually people have been allowed to return and now the population is around 50,000. Part of Minamisoma is costal and there the tsunami damage has been untouched since 3.11 because of the radiation – it still looks exactly like the costal areas in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures did in the weeks after 3.11. But people have returned because it is their home. They have returned to build something new together.
Early in 2012 some friends got together and decided to hold a future festival. More than 1000 people from the community participated. Music performances, presentations, dialogs – many different activities to engage people and invite them to think about their future together. At the end of the day one of the organizers, a woman who runs a local laundry offered a toast: before 3.11 we had a reputation for being quiet and just waiting for the government to do what they wanted. Now we know we must do it ourselves. We cannot wait for government. We must join hands and create a future together. And that’s what they are doing.
In June the opened a Future Center on a corner of a neighborhood. People started to use it immediately. Those who organized it said we don’t actually know what a Future Center is, but we know we need a place to create a future together – so we started.
The leadership circle is a delight – a truck driver, a laundress, a dairy farmer, a nurse’s aid, a bartender – ordinary people who have come together because something had to be done. One had been evacuated from Minamisoma to a town several hours to the north. It took her more than a year to be able to make her way home. Another spoke of how his family has been torn apart – he and his wife want to stay here, in their home with their children. His parents accuse him of killing his children and have moved north into Miyagi. He thinks they will never speak again. But these people have stepped forward because they must. This is home. There are dangers – but there are dangers everywhere and this is home.
They know this is long term work. One person spoke of how we hold individual future sessions and that is good. Things happen in them, but what we are really doing is working to gradually change the mindset of the community. We are helping ourselves realize that we can and will create a future together.
They are just ordinary people who are working together to create a life. With each other. Now.
Any person, any where in the world who promotes nuclear energy should be required to come and spend a week in Fukushima. They should be required to walk through Itakemura and experience its silent desolation. They should be required to talk with the parents who take days to make a playground radiation free for a few hours so their children can play outside again. They should be made to look at a future made invisible and then explain to people what they will do differently and how they will solve the problems of the soft underbelly of nuclear energy – dealing with the waste.
These people are strong. They will figure out how to live in a healthy and resilient way here in Fukushima. They will not be swayed by people who they think know what’s best for people who live here. It is their own future. They know they will make it together, working with what they have. They are amazing.
via Fukushima: Beyond Reacting –Bob Stilger’s Notes from Japan #36 ~ October 1st :: New Stories.