I’ve been having a conversation with myself for some time
now about how discouraged I feel about what’s going on in the world. My country has fallen to pieces and is held
sway by a corrupt self-serving oligarchy.
A Pew Research Center report suggests support for same-sex marriage may
be leveling off. (But that has to be measured against another Pew Research report from last
March showing support for same sex marriage among Republican young people is up
now to 61%.) We’re at the point of no return on climate
change and may not have the power to keep ourselves from the abyss. Our policy of capital punishment has killed
hundreds of falsely accused. Poor black
Americans are losing their voting rights after fifty years of struggle. Americans appear to get dumber by the minute
on any number of scales. The tin hat
wackos are claiming that Iraq War III is proof we’re in the apocalyptic age,
and who am I to say they’re wrong?
And what are you going to do about all this, I ask
myself. One voice in my head says get
out in the streets, go door to door, empty your bank account into some good
cause. Another says, it’s much bigger
than you are, go tend your own garden, listen to music, and use that money for
fine wine instead. Still another says,
go on as before. You’ve found your
rhythm. Keep it up.
I want to share some of these thoughts in my head.
I came across this quotation the other day:
There
is also work to be done in study. Every revolutionary movement needs people who
think and study and write and analyze. A revolution is not sustainable if there
are only people on the street.
Just the words people like me are looking for who bang out on
keyboards our anger and resentment and outrage and dismay over the slow pace of
recognition of the rights of women, of racial minorities, of immigrants fleeing
poverty, and other folk at the mercy of powerful people with reasons to
discriminate against them. My focus has
long been mostly on the rights of LGBT people, and their abuse, particularly by
people who use religious scriptures and religious tradition to justify
foot-dragging in the granting of universal human rights.
The quotation comes from Bill Lindsey’s blog. A black theologian expressed his frustration
to theologian Walter Brueggeman over the fact that racism is alive and well in
America and had reared its head recently in Ferguson, Missouri. The quote is part of Brueggeman’s
response.
These words speak to me because I have a little voice in my
head that drives me nuts. “You’re
beating a dead horse,” it says. The
battle is already won, it says. You’ve
had your say, now move on to something else, it says. I look at the categories I’ve created on the
Hepzibah blog and see I’ve written 192 articles under the rubric of gay
liberation, way more than the next category of miscellaneous commentaries. And I have to admit that while they each deal
with different particulars, there is an awful lot of repetition. It’s clearly time to leave it to others who
might have something more original to say.
Unlike many other bloggers, I make no effort to reach out to
the world at large. And that means I am
largely preaching to the choir. Some of
them pass what I have to say on to others and I am always pleased to hear from
strangers who agree or disagree with my conclusions. The positive comments make me feel good, of
course, and the negative ones are welcome too if they suggest a genuine interest
in dialogue. “You’re a left-wing asshole,”
comments, not so much.
Bill Lindsey’s blog, Bilgrimage,
is addressed to a Catholic audience. He chronicles
the slow painful progress (and sometimes the steps back, as well) in the
Catholic church to bring the church closer to the message of the Gospels and
away from the men in silks and satins who steeple their fingers, roll their
eyes toward heaven, and assure us we do well to believe they speak for the
Almighty Father in Heaven. He too is
often discouraged by fears he is beating-a-dead-horse and speaking only to the
choir, but in his case, at least, it is clear he is speaking far beyond the
choir, not only to Catholics, but ex-Catholics, never-been-Catholics, and any number
of folk who recognize his efforts to keep the fire going under the pot. He is a model for those who live lives of
contemplation rather than street protesting, and he appears to have a very wide
following. I read him regularly because I find him, despite his support for religion, a kindred spirit. I find
his efforts enormously encouraging, even when they are not my fight. Apathy is perhaps the bitterest form of
defeat, and as with depression, I get the feeling the entire human race is
served when people get up and go, even if it is only to sound off on the smallest injustice. I have friends who wish I'd get off the gay liberation bandwagon (and I imagine Bill does as well) and on to what they consider more pressing issues. But, as one of my heroes, Alice Walker, once said to her critics, "You tell your story and I'll tell mine."
There is so much one can do. In my younger days, I marched in anti-Vietnam
war protests in San Francisco. Thousands
of people streamed down Market Street year after year to Kezar Stadium. It took years, but in the end those protests helped
stop the war. On another front, I spent
some time in Buenos Aires and am familiar with the Mothers who marched before
the presidential palace demanding an accounting of their missing children
during the dictatorship abuses of the 70s.
And with other ordinary homemakers who left their kitchens to bang pots
and pans in the streets. Given our
impotent Congress, I wonder constantly why we are not doing the same in the
United States, banging pots and pans at the Obama Administration for failing to
prosecute the Wall Street Bankers, for example.
We don’t have that fire in the belly anymore. Not like in the 60s. And I do feel guilty and ashamed at times
that the best I can do is bang out another rant on a blog, or on an e-mail I
send to a limited number of friends, or create a Facebook entry showing I
support immigration reform or object to fracking or call attention to climate
change and the harm being done by corporations like Monsanto.
The question is why do it?
Why keep it up? Why not organize
your neighbors into voting blocks to get better representation in
Congress? Ralph Nader is still banging
on that that’s the best way to go. I
heard him speak a few weeks ago here in Berkeley. But (beside the fact my feet hurt and I need
longer and longer naps these days) I’ve lost faith in Congress and in American
democracy generally. I don’t think
getting rid of Barbara Lee or Barbara Boxer will make things better, since they
(who are my people in Congress) are already among the best – Barbara Lee, you
may remember, was the sole voice in Congress protesting W’s invasion of
Iraq. I think the problem is much larger
than a democracy now on the skids – although I am delighted many disagree with
me and are still fighting to change it.
I think the answer has always been consciousness raising.
For years I taught communication skills in Japan. A friend once quipped that if General Motors
and Ford and Chrysler were going bankrupt, I should take the blame. I was off in Japan teaching their kids to
become more critical thinkers and ultimately be more persuasive debaters and
negotiators. I didn’t see it that
way. I don’t see any difference between
young people, regardless of where they live.
They are the hope for change. Get
them to think, get them to read and write more effectively, and you are
contributing to positive change, I always told myself.
I am now retired, and the question of how effective I was is
training good communicators is moot.
Few of my students, to the best of my knowledge, have gone on to fight
Monsanto, or Roman Catholic notions that women ought to be subservient to men
and gay people ought to be celibate. I
don’t know, frankly, what most of them are doing. I doubt I had much of an impact. I don’t think that is false modesty. I think it’s a realistic assessment
I do have one story I am proud to recall. A Saudi student once said to me in class, “I
don’t waste my time talking to people I disagree with. They have their own way
of thinking and we have ours. We should
leave them alone.” I responded, without
much thought, “But what good does it do you to talk only to people who agree
with you? All that does for you is
confirm what you believe. How are you
ever to hear something new, how are you going to correct your mistakes if you
don’t remain open to different views?” I
ran into him twenty years later and he told me that was an important learning
moment for him. In moments when I get
harshly self-critical, and beat myself up for not doing more than I do, I
remember moments like that and take heart.
My point in all this is to say that I believe, if we are to
be realistic about our ability to make the world a better place, we need to
hope big but expect small and not be discouraged. I think we can never know what impact we have
on the world, and have to act as if we are making a difference even when
everything shouts out at us that we are not.
Horrible things happen all around us all the time. Here in my neighborhood, a young man decided
this week he wanted to steal a car and attacked a 72-year old woman and slit
her throat in the process. He’s the kind
of kid one wants to lock up and throw the key away. I have to wonder if a few more voices speaking
in his ear out about kindness and non-violence might have made a difference
with this kid before he became the person he is today. And I just watched a program on German
television about the several hundred German kids who have gone off to join ISIS
in Syria, kids looking for power and identity.
No doubt they heard thousands of good people urging them to do good
things over the years, to no avail. But
maybe just one more voice, with a message spoken at just the right time when
they might have taken it in, might have turned them around.
I’m urging this on faith, and faith is not my strong
suit. But I’ve seen close elections and
I know that sometimes a single vote matters.
And that helps convince me that sometimes just putting out a declarative
statement about how things are going wrong and how they might be put right might
make a difference as well.
God bless the beaters of (apparently, but not necessarily) dead
horses, I say. And those who preach to
the choir. And those who go on and on
till you want to pull their plug and make them go away.
We, most of us, don’t make waves. We are just drops in the ocean. We don’t run marathons. We move by inches. The opposite of good isn’t always evil. Most of the time, it’s apathy.
We live in the drops and in the inches. And that’s where we ought to try to make a
difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment