Finding What Is Ours To Do

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BY HARV BISHOP

The mystic David Spangler relates a story about the Buddhist Beat poet Gary Snyder meeting a man while hiking in the early 1970s. The man was struggling with his conscience and the two spoke of protests, the Vietnam War, loyalty, and doing what was right.

Later that week the Pentagon Papers were released to the media and Synder recognized the man from the hiking trail as whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the Edward Snowden of his day.

I was reminded of this story when a student asked me what one person can do to affect positive social change in the midst of busy lives, work and other demands of modern life.

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As a political science teacher at the University of Colorado it is a question that I hear often and it is not easily answered, but it is not impossible. Each person must find what is theirs to do.

This question is also being asked as New Thought expands from a focus on individual healing to also including collective well being.

Sometimes people think that social justice demands that New Thought adherents and others march in the streets and wave signs, but there are as many ways to create a world that works for everyone as there are people. Everyone’s individual talents and skills are needed.

Four paths to a better world

One of my students is a courageous street protester, but he is now becoming an innovative and creative college teacher helping students think and be more aware of the world.

Another never marched in the streets, instead she joined the green consulting company CH2M Hill after graduation to nudge businesses toward environmentally sustainable practices.

A third student, who faced prejudice for being on the autism spectrum, went on to work for a non-profit started by the Denver-based band the Flobots, teaching disadvantaged young people to make electronic music.

A thoughtful Christian conservative student realized that his basic values were honored in the classroom and learned there was a business case to made for environmentalism. He then broke stereotypes and proposed a brave but ill-fated resolution to reduce Climate Change to his campus Young Republicans group.

Very different paths, all valuable.

And the steps we take can be even simpler:

1) Increase our awareness. We can be blind to many injustices. On our campus, the largely Latino custodial staff faces serious issues of injustice- low pay, abusive supervisors and the basic lack of respect that comes from being invisible. But it doesn’t stop with the custodial staff. It extends to the teachers themselves. Many of my coworkers—part-time faculty- face low pay, long hours and no benefits or job security. Universities and colleges exploit their passion and dedication.

Unlike dirty smog, Climate Change suffers from its effects being largely invisible unless you live in Alaska or low lying Pacific islands. Sometimes injustice is deliberately hidden. For example, Texas school history texts now refer to African-American human slaves as “workers on southern Agricultural plantations.” The issues faced by indigenous peoples ranging from land theft to environmental degradation are largely invisible to the dominant culture.

We must become more mindful and aware of injustice and focus on where our unique talents and skills can help. After the massacre at an Orlando nightclub many people have changed their social media pictures to include rainbow colors to show solidarity with the LGBTQ community. It may seem small, but to a group historically ostracized it can mean a great deal. If you want to do more, additional avenues to help are well publicized. For less visible issues such as discrimination against native peoples link to Facebook pages such as Indian Country Today. Find issues that speak to you.

2) Small steps matter. Would the Pentagon Papers—which showed lies by the government about the war in Vietnam—have been released minus Elsberg’s seemingly random encounter with Synder, who did not recognize its import as it was happening?

On our campus just acknowledging the presence of the custodial staff with respect addresses their greatest concern- being invisible. A smile and hello, to the custodial staff, makes a difference.

Havel quote 2

The late Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became the leader of post-Communist Czech Republic, talked about a “politics of everything”- how we treat and interact with each other in families, clerk to customer, and teacher to student and so on. Respect brings us together and is the foundation of change.

Likewise, withdrawing our consent from injustice even in small ways has an impact. Havel’s famous example is a grocer who one week decides not to put up the mandatory “Hooray Communist party” sign. This simple acts breaks consensus and gets people talking.

3) Big Change relies on small steps. In the seminal book “Blessed Unrest,” Paul Hawken tells about a grieving Ralph Waldo Emerson who travels to Europe after the death of his wife and sees scientific evidence of the interdependence of nature. Henry David Thoreau goes to a lecture by Emerson, reads “Nature,” and is inspired to apply this view of interdependence to create an ethic of social justice based on our common humanity and interconnection with nature. As a protest against the Mexican-American war and slavery he refuses to pay a tax and spends a night in jail.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson illustration by Tim Botta

His resulting essay, “On Civil Disobedience” then inspires Tolstoy, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hawken asks what would have happened if Emerson remained mired in his grief and not made the trip to France or if Thoreau skipped the Emerson lecture and the life-changing book?  We can never know which of our actions will matter, says, Hawken, but we can resolve to act from our highest intention. “Corn seeds produce corn,” he paraphrases Emerson and Antionio Machado,” justice creates justice… make the road by walking.”

“’If only one man withdrew his support from an unjust government,’” Hawken writes of Thoreau’s idea, “’it would begin a cycle that would reverberate and grow.’ For [Thoreau] there were no inconsequential acts, only consequential inaction.”

Hawken contrasts the convenient path versus the path of integrity and intention. “We face such forks a million times a day, even in the space of a breath. Life is permeated with possibility at every instant.”

4)  Every step by any political persuasion matters. Sometimes the Political Left and Right can eat its young. You are not liberal or conservative enough, they say, demanding tribal loyalty more than pragmatic results. What is lost is the opportunity to find ways to address problems that might include creative combinations of government, markets, and non-profits.

I have been called “acommodationist” by friends on the Left for holding that view.  On the Left, the theory goes that mainstream non-profits put a band aid over deeper systemic problems and dissipate the demands for change that will come when the disadvantaged realize what a raw deal they are getting. Let people suffer so they will demand radical change? That is a view that can only be held by those privileged enough to not be hungry or in need of medical care.

The Right certainly isn’t off the hook for ignoring reality. Climate Change is explained away as an illusion in order to cling to a fantasy of perfectly functioning free markets.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to our problems so all perspectives from left and right and in-between can help find answers. Any time human suffering is relieved it is good whether that help comes from a radical left arnachist collective, a conservative Christian church or a New Thought center.

Make the Road by Walking

If every step matters, then taking action is key which is the Religious Science adage “Treat (pray) and move your feet.”

Consciousness grows by fits and starts. Sometimes that change is significant (abolition, the Civil Rights movement). It can also regress and harden (the US after 9/11 and the 08 economic downturn). Change is never perfect and linear.

Change and evolution are inevitable and we must undertake these changes consciously as possible. That requires our intentions, prayer, our spiritual tools (which can save us from burnout as well as shift consciousness) and our action steps.

 

 

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