This post will have to be short. I've been very busy over the last few days, and things are starting to move rather fast.
A number of nonwhite engineers and other degreed professionals (including myself) in my area have gotten together to start a volunteer group engaged in building parallel institutions. We had our first meeting this weekend. The initial focus of our group will be on providing a parallel option for educating low-income youth in our area. It will be an all-volunteer, self-funded venture, provided free of charge. As we are able to be successful in this venture, we intend to branch out into other ventures, such as helping low-income neighborhoods become more economically self-reliant. We will be creating a blog in the next few months or so to document our efforts. Although we the volunteers are nonwhite, our offerings will be available for all low-income people, regardless of color or national origin.
I have also discovered other resistance groups in my area, and we will be getting together next month for a series of presentations on nonviolent resistance. And I have discovered a volunteer group which recently put on a presentation designed to help people who have to live outside. (That's the homeless population, in plain English.) They also provided resources on health care options for the homeless. I intend to network with this group and have an idea exchange with them.
Lastly, in the next few weeks I will hopefully develop a flyer titled, "The Resistance Lifestyle," containing tips on how people can develop their own networks of self-reliance while withdrawing as much as possible from the formal economy. (Thanks very much, Aimee and CZBZ for your frugal living tips. I will incorporate some of them into the flyer.) And I and others will be handing out these flyers in as many places as possible.
That's all for now. (Speaking of self-reliance, I have to run and buy a half yard of compost for my garden.) Have a good week!
Showing posts with label community responses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community responses. Show all posts
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Friday, March 10, 2017
The Recovery of Subversive Virtue
About eight or nine years ago, a social movement came into existence in the United States. It was not a particularly political movement, nor was it strategically planned, or even intentional. Its birth was simply the result of the economic conditions which prevailed at that time, namely, very disruptive energy prices, a real estate bubble, and an overload of personal debt, especially among recent college graduates and other young people. One word characterized that movement, namely, frugality. This movement spread, not only by word of mouth, but by many websites and blogs, such as the Festival of Frugality blog ring, "How to Survive on $12,000 a Year," and "How I Live on Just $12,000 a Year," along with news articles such as "The Secret to Living Well on $11,000 a Year," "Living on $10,000 a Year Requires A Certain Ingenuity," and "How to Live on $10,000 A Year."
Evidently this movement grew to such an extent that it attracted the serious attention of the holders of concentrated wealth and economic power at the top of the economic heap. For a number of op-ed pieces started coming out in major media outlets which warned Americans that frugality was a "threat to the economy" and a "threat to recovery." I won't give you an exhaustive list, but there were such pieces as, "Frugal Americans Hurt Economic Recovery" (courtesy of Fox News, of course!), "How Shopping Is Good for The Economy - And Your Soul" (I kid you not!), "Frugality Is Bad For The Economy," and "Consumers Turn Frugal, But Economy Could Wither." There was also another, sideways attempt to derail the frugality movement by re-defining what frugality actually means. Namely, it was an attempt to change the definition of frugality from "living only on that which you need" to "saving as much money as possible in your purchases - by taking advantage of coupons, promotions, sales, etc." Many supposed promoters of frugality thus switched from warning people to stop buying stuff they didn't need, to trying to get as much stuff as possible via coupons and other means. (For a present-day example of re-defining "simple living," you might try looking here.)
The fact that the owners of major media outlets felt the need to spend print space and air time trying to discourage frugality says something about the power of frugality as a threat to the current established economic order. And as I have recently been thinking over the details of this movement, I have been struck by certain observations. Firstly, that frugality, along with other social virtues, has been a particular threat to Western societies from the time of the Roman Empire. I think of the Christian Church from the first century to the third, and I see how the peaceful, nonviolent obedience to the commandments of Christ must have threatened such a cruel military empire as that which the Romans had built. Indeed, in his book Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority In the Second-Century Pagan World, author James Francis lays out this threat, and describes how the leaders and academics in charge of defending Roman values ridiculed such Christian virtues as asceticism, voluntary poverty, and communalism. (They also attacked non-Christian ascetics.) Of course, even a casual reading of the New Testament would reveal the roots of the radical values embodied by the proto-Church - as seen especially in the Lord's encounter with the rich young ruler, the Lord's denunciation of the Pharisees, the radicalism of Luke 14 and Luke 16, and the denunciation of the rich in James 5.
However, the Roman Empire succeeded in co-opting key elements of the Christian community, and one of the casualties of that co-opting was frugality and the rejection of materialism. (For a look into how this happened, you might try looking here.) Other virtues that died by the way were pacifism (the outright rejection of violence) and communalism. I don't have time to describe the entire arc of the ensuing battle between materialism and voluntary simplicity since those times, but I do want to focus on another period in the history of the Church in which the recovery of New Testament virtues threatened to shake an existing social order.
That period began with the conversion of Peter Waldo to Christianity during the mid to late 12th century. He founded a group within the Catholic Church who came to be known as the Waldenses or Waldensians, and they took the Scriptures seriously enough to actually try to live by the New Testament. Among the elements of their fundamentalism were the following:
What has been described above is not confined only to societies that have been exposed to Christianity nor to people who act solely from Christian values. Frugality continues to be regarded as a terrifying threat to those who hold concentrated economic power in a society based on buying and selling. It is only fitting that in these days, frugality should be revived as a subversive virtue. I am glad to see that there are Christians who have been in the forefront of this revival, as seen in "Toward The Revival and Reform of The Subversive Virtue: Frugality," by James Nash. (One of the subsections of his paper is titled, "Frugality As Economic Subversion." (I like that!) There is also "Voluntary Simplicity and Voluntary Poverty: Alternatives To Consumer Culture" by Malgorzata Poks.
Frugality, or voluntary simplicity, or voluntary poverty - no matter what you call it, the widespread practice of such a way of living can shake a murderous, materialist society to its core. (See this, this, and this, for instance.) Therefore, it is an especially relevant way of living just now - in a world in which the majority of the world's people are now being ruled by greedy strongmen, including the regime of our 45th President. The mass adoption of frugality by a society can bring down dictators who rule that society and the wealthy corporations that put those dictators in power. And here's the good news: you don't have to sell everything and move to a gold-plated off-grid doomstead in Montana to live a frugal life. It can be done right where you are, if you know how to think strategically about your situation. In fact, the chances are good that over the next months and years, you will be forced to live such a life whether you want to or not.
Evidently this movement grew to such an extent that it attracted the serious attention of the holders of concentrated wealth and economic power at the top of the economic heap. For a number of op-ed pieces started coming out in major media outlets which warned Americans that frugality was a "threat to the economy" and a "threat to recovery." I won't give you an exhaustive list, but there were such pieces as, "Frugal Americans Hurt Economic Recovery" (courtesy of Fox News, of course!), "How Shopping Is Good for The Economy - And Your Soul" (I kid you not!), "Frugality Is Bad For The Economy," and "Consumers Turn Frugal, But Economy Could Wither." There was also another, sideways attempt to derail the frugality movement by re-defining what frugality actually means. Namely, it was an attempt to change the definition of frugality from "living only on that which you need" to "saving as much money as possible in your purchases - by taking advantage of coupons, promotions, sales, etc." Many supposed promoters of frugality thus switched from warning people to stop buying stuff they didn't need, to trying to get as much stuff as possible via coupons and other means. (For a present-day example of re-defining "simple living," you might try looking here.)
The fact that the owners of major media outlets felt the need to spend print space and air time trying to discourage frugality says something about the power of frugality as a threat to the current established economic order. And as I have recently been thinking over the details of this movement, I have been struck by certain observations. Firstly, that frugality, along with other social virtues, has been a particular threat to Western societies from the time of the Roman Empire. I think of the Christian Church from the first century to the third, and I see how the peaceful, nonviolent obedience to the commandments of Christ must have threatened such a cruel military empire as that which the Romans had built. Indeed, in his book Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority In the Second-Century Pagan World, author James Francis lays out this threat, and describes how the leaders and academics in charge of defending Roman values ridiculed such Christian virtues as asceticism, voluntary poverty, and communalism. (They also attacked non-Christian ascetics.) Of course, even a casual reading of the New Testament would reveal the roots of the radical values embodied by the proto-Church - as seen especially in the Lord's encounter with the rich young ruler, the Lord's denunciation of the Pharisees, the radicalism of Luke 14 and Luke 16, and the denunciation of the rich in James 5.
However, the Roman Empire succeeded in co-opting key elements of the Christian community, and one of the casualties of that co-opting was frugality and the rejection of materialism. (For a look into how this happened, you might try looking here.) Other virtues that died by the way were pacifism (the outright rejection of violence) and communalism. I don't have time to describe the entire arc of the ensuing battle between materialism and voluntary simplicity since those times, but I do want to focus on another period in the history of the Church in which the recovery of New Testament virtues threatened to shake an existing social order.
That period began with the conversion of Peter Waldo to Christianity during the mid to late 12th century. He founded a group within the Catholic Church who came to be known as the Waldenses or Waldensians, and they took the Scriptures seriously enough to actually try to live by the New Testament. Among the elements of their fundamentalism were the following:
- The priesthood of all believers
- The need to give the Scriptures to people in their common language instead of a language (Latin) which most people could not understand
- The need to live a life of voluntary simplicity, also known as voluntary poverty.
What has been described above is not confined only to societies that have been exposed to Christianity nor to people who act solely from Christian values. Frugality continues to be regarded as a terrifying threat to those who hold concentrated economic power in a society based on buying and selling. It is only fitting that in these days, frugality should be revived as a subversive virtue. I am glad to see that there are Christians who have been in the forefront of this revival, as seen in "Toward The Revival and Reform of The Subversive Virtue: Frugality," by James Nash. (One of the subsections of his paper is titled, "Frugality As Economic Subversion." (I like that!) There is also "Voluntary Simplicity and Voluntary Poverty: Alternatives To Consumer Culture" by Malgorzata Poks.
Frugality, or voluntary simplicity, or voluntary poverty - no matter what you call it, the widespread practice of such a way of living can shake a murderous, materialist society to its core. (See this, this, and this, for instance.) Therefore, it is an especially relevant way of living just now - in a world in which the majority of the world's people are now being ruled by greedy strongmen, including the regime of our 45th President. The mass adoption of frugality by a society can bring down dictators who rule that society and the wealthy corporations that put those dictators in power. And here's the good news: you don't have to sell everything and move to a gold-plated off-grid doomstead in Montana to live a frugal life. It can be done right where you are, if you know how to think strategically about your situation. In fact, the chances are good that over the next months and years, you will be forced to live such a life whether you want to or not.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
The Resistance Languages
I have a general theme that I began in my last two posts, but this week I feel the need to digress a bit. In my recent writings I have covered the various categories of nonviolent resistance tactics as outlined by Dr. Gene Sharp. These include the categories of protest and persuasion, noncooperation and nonviolent intervention. Nonviolent protest and persuasion is usually the weakest of the three categories of resistance, with the other two categories being much more powerful when skillfully executed. However, sometimes one comes across methods and tactics which are able to skillfully and effectively express all three categories of resistance.
I'd like to present two such methods in this post. The hostility of the Trump regime to nonwhite peoples and cultures is very well-known. Trump represents the naked id of a certain fascist, supremacist element of the Global North. This element is characterized by a desire to destroy all other cultures and their peoples. This element feels intolerably threatened by the existence or close proximity of people with dark skin who speak a language other than English (or Russian or German or French if you happen to live in those countries). Unfortunately, all three branches of the U.S. Federal Government are now controlled by members of this fascist element, who also control many of the largest corporations in the world.
So...what if those in the U.S. who are part of the resistance to this regime decided to learn some of the languages of the oppressed? What if they decided to use these languages as their main way of talking with each other? What if the resistance began to learn some of the cultures of the oppressed and to deliberately adopt these cultures? What if, for instance, those in the U.S. who oppose the Trump regime learned Spanish, or Arabic, or Vietnamese, or Hindi, or Korean, or Chinese, or Swahili? What if they began to talk publicly to each other in one of these languages instead of English? What if they used one of these languages instead of English when writing emails, memos, and letters (o entradas de blog)? What if, for instance, researchers and academics at universities and labs started writing technical articles primarily in Spanish or Swahili? That's not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds. Spanish is very well suited for technical writing. (In fact, the Latin American School of Medicine, which trains some of the best primary care physicians in the world, does all of its teaching in Spanish.) And for the last four decades, the use of Swahili for technical and academic writing has been growing. (See this and this also.) The same things can be said of the other languages I have listed.
Imagine how well such actions would serve as a means of both nonviolent protest, social (and potentially economic) noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention! For one thing, if you and your friends started speaking and writing in one or more of the languages of the oppressed, you would annoy the living daylights out of any bystanders who happened to be bigots. For another thing, if anyone wanted to join in the conversation, he or she would have to have the humility needed to learn another language - thus also learning to see the world from another point of view. Seeing things from new points of view is frequently very good for people. A third benefit is that you would drastically increase the costs which the State would have to pay in order to do surveillance on you. A fourth benefit is that you would make a whole new set of friends - people now demonized by right-wing media would suddenly become more human in your eyes by your learning to speak their language, as the social distance between you and them was reduced and you began to see them as they truly are. Lastly, by speaking and thinking in one of the languages of the oppressed, you would be declaring your withdrawal from the dominant oppressive culture and your intention to be part of an alternative to that culture. Who wants to learn with me?
There is something else resisters can do as well. The Trump regime has been breathing fire about deporting massive numbers of Hispanics from the U.S., and of drastically expanding the grounds for deportation. Many of the targets of his deportations have been adults with small children or spouses who are American citizens. At this time, we can reach out to the families who have been bereaved of one or both parents by deportation - by providing food, care (including foster care) and other material resources to them. And when they are sent to deportation hearings, we can volunteer to walk with them, to go with them to their hearings, to document what is done during those hearings, and to report it to the world. This too achieves more than one resistance goal, as it is both a method of nonviolent protest and a method of nonviolent intervention.
Over the next few months, I will begin writing about some technical, volunteer-based initiatives that I am organizing in my community to help people who are currently without help. I will be describing in technical terms some of the approaches we are trying, and documenting the results. When I publish these posts, I will try to publish them first in one of the languages of the oppressed. (I know people who can translate for me.) A few days after publishing each of these posts, I will also post an English version. Mira este espacio.
I'd like to present two such methods in this post. The hostility of the Trump regime to nonwhite peoples and cultures is very well-known. Trump represents the naked id of a certain fascist, supremacist element of the Global North. This element is characterized by a desire to destroy all other cultures and their peoples. This element feels intolerably threatened by the existence or close proximity of people with dark skin who speak a language other than English (or Russian or German or French if you happen to live in those countries). Unfortunately, all three branches of the U.S. Federal Government are now controlled by members of this fascist element, who also control many of the largest corporations in the world.
So...what if those in the U.S. who are part of the resistance to this regime decided to learn some of the languages of the oppressed? What if they decided to use these languages as their main way of talking with each other? What if the resistance began to learn some of the cultures of the oppressed and to deliberately adopt these cultures? What if, for instance, those in the U.S. who oppose the Trump regime learned Spanish, or Arabic, or Vietnamese, or Hindi, or Korean, or Chinese, or Swahili? What if they began to talk publicly to each other in one of these languages instead of English? What if they used one of these languages instead of English when writing emails, memos, and letters (o entradas de blog)? What if, for instance, researchers and academics at universities and labs started writing technical articles primarily in Spanish or Swahili? That's not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds. Spanish is very well suited for technical writing. (In fact, the Latin American School of Medicine, which trains some of the best primary care physicians in the world, does all of its teaching in Spanish.) And for the last four decades, the use of Swahili for technical and academic writing has been growing. (See this and this also.) The same things can be said of the other languages I have listed.
Imagine how well such actions would serve as a means of both nonviolent protest, social (and potentially economic) noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention! For one thing, if you and your friends started speaking and writing in one or more of the languages of the oppressed, you would annoy the living daylights out of any bystanders who happened to be bigots. For another thing, if anyone wanted to join in the conversation, he or she would have to have the humility needed to learn another language - thus also learning to see the world from another point of view. Seeing things from new points of view is frequently very good for people. A third benefit is that you would drastically increase the costs which the State would have to pay in order to do surveillance on you. A fourth benefit is that you would make a whole new set of friends - people now demonized by right-wing media would suddenly become more human in your eyes by your learning to speak their language, as the social distance between you and them was reduced and you began to see them as they truly are. Lastly, by speaking and thinking in one of the languages of the oppressed, you would be declaring your withdrawal from the dominant oppressive culture and your intention to be part of an alternative to that culture. Who wants to learn with me?
There is something else resisters can do as well. The Trump regime has been breathing fire about deporting massive numbers of Hispanics from the U.S., and of drastically expanding the grounds for deportation. Many of the targets of his deportations have been adults with small children or spouses who are American citizens. At this time, we can reach out to the families who have been bereaved of one or both parents by deportation - by providing food, care (including foster care) and other material resources to them. And when they are sent to deportation hearings, we can volunteer to walk with them, to go with them to their hearings, to document what is done during those hearings, and to report it to the world. This too achieves more than one resistance goal, as it is both a method of nonviolent protest and a method of nonviolent intervention.
Over the next few months, I will begin writing about some technical, volunteer-based initiatives that I am organizing in my community to help people who are currently without help. I will be describing in technical terms some of the approaches we are trying, and documenting the results. When I publish these posts, I will try to publish them first in one of the languages of the oppressed. (I know people who can translate for me.) A few days after publishing each of these posts, I will also post an English version. Mira este espacio.
Monday, February 20, 2017
The Road Between Before And After
Most people in America have been exposed to Before and After ads - ads designed to make you dissatisfied with the "You" of the present moment. These ads usually contain Before and After pictures - the "You" before your desired change, before you send away money to get the thing (exercise equipment, exercise plan, financial advice book, space in an addiction treatment center, prayer cloth, etc.) that will transport you effortlessly from Before to After; and the "You" all glamorous and happy after your "change." But there's one small catch. Because most of these Before and After solutions don't force you to fundamentally change yourself, your stay in the land of After is usually short. It doesn't take long before you wind up back in "Before."
The lesson in this example is that a permanent relocation from Before to After requires a personal change - often a deep and permanent change - in the way you live your life. Usually that change is costly. So is the change of an oppressed people from a condition of oppression to a condition of freedom, the change of a dictatorially run society to a society free of oppression. That change requires some necessary first steps, such as:
What then does it look like for ordinary people to start the first steps of breaking free from a dictatorship? Let's examine each of these steps in turn.
Strengthening yourself and your people to be self-reliant first requires the willingness to look long and hard at your situation. It requires the willingness to do a thorough strategic assessment of your situation and the threats that you face. You must put as much effort into this assessment as a wise general would put into the assessment of battlefield conditions before he send his troops into the fight. Then you must have the willingness to make yourself as smart and as capable as possible in order to deal with the challenges you face. The future does not belong to the stupid! You've got to hit the books and learn such things as math, basic sciences (including biology), principles of engineering, and techniques of crafts and skilled labor. You must also learn the history, strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle - a method of struggle which is both much more complex than armed warfare and much more effective when skillfully executed. Even the great Chinese general Sun Tzu recognized the value of being able to win without fighting.
Part of your initial assessment of your situation should consist of figuring out how much of the oppressive system you can do without, and learning to need as little as possible from that system. Then you will be able to create alternatives to that system that are within the means of yourself and your people. If you now believe you need as much bling as your money can buy, you may want to re-think that. Do you really have to drive everywhere by yourself? Do you really need a big-screen TV that can play movies and be turned into a gaming console? Do you really have to eat out all the time? Would it not be more sensible, rather, to live as frugally as possible so you can pay down your debts as fast as possible?
Having strengthened yourself and your people thus, you are now prepared to create your own, personally owned alternatives to the oppressive system that is destroying you. Here I must warn you that those alternatives will require more personal time and work from you than the current system seems to require. And they will require you to physically work with other human beings. But they will cost you less in actual terms. One of the attractive parts of the current system is that it is so convenient to use, and you can use it without having to interact with other people. Indeed, one of the ways the current system induces you to depend on it is by making you addicted to "convenience." But what if, say, instead of driving everywhere by yourself, you took public transit? Or, say that you lived in a place which did not have a good public transit system or was not easily walkable, and yet you made friends with your neighbors so that you could carpool and combine errands that required driving? Or, say, instead of driving several miles to take your kids to basketball camp, you started a basketball league in your own neighborhood?
And these things are but baby steps compared to some of the things you could do - especially if you were willing to rub shoulders with neighbors and with people you would not normally associate with, if you were willing to reduce the atomization and social distance that separates you from your fellow humans. (I saw a good example of social distance and atomization recently - a sign next to the front door of a not-quite-McMansion which read,
The lesson in this example is that a permanent relocation from Before to After requires a personal change - often a deep and permanent change - in the way you live your life. Usually that change is costly. So is the change of an oppressed people from a condition of oppression to a condition of freedom, the change of a dictatorially run society to a society free of oppression. That change requires some necessary first steps, such as:
- Strengthening oneself and one's people to be self-reliant
- Creating your own, personally owned alternatives to the oppressive system that is destroying you
- Withdrawing your support from the oppressive system by ceasing to rely on it
"Under the dictatorship the population and civil institutions of the society have been too weak, and the government too strong. Without a change in this imbalance, a new set of rulers can, if they wish, be just as dictatorial as the old ones."And,
"Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands. [Emphasis added.] Although dictatorships may benefit from or be somewhat weakened by international actions, their continuation is dependent primarily on internal factors."That second quote accurately describes what has happened, not only in the United States, but throughout the developed world. Those who have power over the global industrial economy revised the rules of predatory capitalism to such an extent that they were able to concentrate an overwhelming percentage of that economy's wealth wealth in too few hands. Then they started buying governments and began changing those governments into tools for lining their own pockets even further. And they bought most of the world's media and turned it into a pulpit for preaching the propaganda that the government as a guardian and promoter of the common good was an evil thing. The results of this include such things as the Citizens United verdict by the Supreme Court, which was the last step in turning the United States from a "one person, one vote" society into a "one dollar, one vote" society. The results also include the presidency of Donald Trump.
What then does it look like for ordinary people to start the first steps of breaking free from a dictatorship? Let's examine each of these steps in turn.
Strengthening yourself and your people to be self-reliant first requires the willingness to look long and hard at your situation. It requires the willingness to do a thorough strategic assessment of your situation and the threats that you face. You must put as much effort into this assessment as a wise general would put into the assessment of battlefield conditions before he send his troops into the fight. Then you must have the willingness to make yourself as smart and as capable as possible in order to deal with the challenges you face. The future does not belong to the stupid! You've got to hit the books and learn such things as math, basic sciences (including biology), principles of engineering, and techniques of crafts and skilled labor. You must also learn the history, strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle - a method of struggle which is both much more complex than armed warfare and much more effective when skillfully executed. Even the great Chinese general Sun Tzu recognized the value of being able to win without fighting.
Part of your initial assessment of your situation should consist of figuring out how much of the oppressive system you can do without, and learning to need as little as possible from that system. Then you will be able to create alternatives to that system that are within the means of yourself and your people. If you now believe you need as much bling as your money can buy, you may want to re-think that. Do you really have to drive everywhere by yourself? Do you really need a big-screen TV that can play movies and be turned into a gaming console? Do you really have to eat out all the time? Would it not be more sensible, rather, to live as frugally as possible so you can pay down your debts as fast as possible?
Having strengthened yourself and your people thus, you are now prepared to create your own, personally owned alternatives to the oppressive system that is destroying you. Here I must warn you that those alternatives will require more personal time and work from you than the current system seems to require. And they will require you to physically work with other human beings. But they will cost you less in actual terms. One of the attractive parts of the current system is that it is so convenient to use, and you can use it without having to interact with other people. Indeed, one of the ways the current system induces you to depend on it is by making you addicted to "convenience." But what if, say, instead of driving everywhere by yourself, you took public transit? Or, say that you lived in a place which did not have a good public transit system or was not easily walkable, and yet you made friends with your neighbors so that you could carpool and combine errands that required driving? Or, say, instead of driving several miles to take your kids to basketball camp, you started a basketball league in your own neighborhood?
And these things are but baby steps compared to some of the things you could do - especially if you were willing to rub shoulders with neighbors and with people you would not normally associate with, if you were willing to reduce the atomization and social distance that separates you from your fellow humans. (I saw a good example of social distance and atomization recently - a sign next to the front door of a not-quite-McMansion which read,
"DO NOT KNOCK OR RING DOORBELL UNLESS -
YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED,
YOU ARE JESUS RETURNING
OR YOU HAVE A WARRANT.
DO NOT DISTURB!"
Nice neighbor, eh?! I wonder if he's ever threatened to shoot anybody.)
Creating alternative systems which reduce social distance between diverse participants is one of the required steps in building a successful movement of nonviolent struggle.
By taking the first two steps, you are automatically taking the third step, which is withdrawing your support from the current system by ceasing to rely on it. What might this look like? Maybe like a group of neighbors, each of whose households has devised a strategy for living on $1000 a month or less, who rely on each other to meet as many of their collective needs as possible without relying on money, and who decide that they like such an arrangement so much that they are willing to live this way for the long haul. (And there are a number of resources available, both on line and in many communities, for people who want to learn to live cheaply. But be warned - cheap living will require a permanent attitude adjustment.) Groups of such people who had extra funds left over each month would be in an ideal position to help groups of people who are struggling, thus strengthening the resilience of their entire community. They would also be in an ideal position to to begin applying what Gene Sharp calls the methods of nonviolent noncooperation and nonviolent intervention - methods which are much more powerful than nonviolent protest in waging nonviolent struggle.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
The Power of Decentralized Resistance
I've been enjoying listening to some talks by Jamila Raqib, who is Executive Director of the Albert Einstein Institution and a Research Affiliate of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In one of those talks she made a point about the nonviolent struggle waged in the American colonies for over ten years which granted de facto independence to many of these colonies months before the start of the Revolutionary War. Her words got me thinking (and Googling) for more information.
In my search, I ran across a book (which, I must admit, I haven't read yet) called The First American Revolution - Before Lexington and Concord, by Ray Raphael. In reading various summaries and reviews of the book, I came across some surprising information about the decentralized, grassroots nature of the vast majority of the resistance in Massachusetts to British rule. No matter what one thinks of the aims of the revolution itself, one can't help but appreciate the wealth of information captured by recent historians about the ordinary acts of social and political disconnection by ordinary citizens which weakened and eventually destroyed de facto British rule throughout many of the colonies.
According to one source, the points made by Raphael concerning the revolution in Massachusetts are these:
This presents an important lesson in the power of everyday resistance. A grand strategy of resistance is very important, and a wise and well-executed strategy by a wise leadership insures the success of a resistance movement. Yet ordinary everyday resistance is also very important, even though acts of everyday resistance are not likely to make it into the news or the history books. Such everyday resistance was used by the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles East Germans, Hungarians and Czechs in their struggle against Russian Soviet occupiers in the latter half of the 20th Century. (See this for instance.) Such everyday resistance is also part of a manual for civilian-based defense published by the Lithuanian government in 2015 and designed to help Lithuanians foil any future Russian attempts to invade their country, whether that threat comes directly or through "hybrid warfare."
There is just one cautionary point I want to make about everyday resistance, as it is defined and has been studied by political scientist James Scott. His catalogue of acts of everyday resistance includes acts that most societies would consider criminal, such as arson, sabotage and theft. I don't think these acts should be part of the toolbox of tactics of nonviolent resistance. The reason why I would exclude such acts is that criminal acts - even if they are nonviolent - weaken the mechanisms by which nonviolent resistance removes the pillars of support of a dictatorship, in much the same way that violence weakens nonviolent resistance. Those who engage in such criminal acts give the oppressor an excuse for his oppression. Instead, nonviolent resisters should be guided by the following principle: "...let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evil doer..." - 1 Peter 4:15.
That still leaves many very legitimate acts of everyday resistance that can be employed. (See this and this, for example.) Using your imagination and creativity can be a lot of fun here. In a future post I will describe an an idea that recently came to me for just such an act of everyday resistance. Let's explore how to take bites out of the Trump regime, shall we?
In my search, I ran across a book (which, I must admit, I haven't read yet) called The First American Revolution - Before Lexington and Concord, by Ray Raphael. In reading various summaries and reviews of the book, I came across some surprising information about the decentralized, grassroots nature of the vast majority of the resistance in Massachusetts to British rule. No matter what one thinks of the aims of the revolution itself, one can't help but appreciate the wealth of information captured by recent historians about the ordinary acts of social and political disconnection by ordinary citizens which weakened and eventually destroyed de facto British rule throughout many of the colonies.
According to one source, the points made by Raphael concerning the revolution in Massachusetts are these:
- The revolution was strongly democratic, and therefore highly decentralized.
- Because the revolution was decentralized, it was ubiquitous (in other words, it sprang up everywhere, "taking place everywhere and at once without any central organization, specific times or geographical locations.").
- Many of the revolutionaries were people who had had their voting rights taken away by the British. Hence, the strong commitment on the part of these revolutionaries to participatory direct democracy among themselves at the local level.
- The revolution occurred without bloodshed.
- Because the revolution was decentralized and ubiquitous, it was extremely hard for centralized British authorities to counter, or even to understand.
This presents an important lesson in the power of everyday resistance. A grand strategy of resistance is very important, and a wise and well-executed strategy by a wise leadership insures the success of a resistance movement. Yet ordinary everyday resistance is also very important, even though acts of everyday resistance are not likely to make it into the news or the history books. Such everyday resistance was used by the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles East Germans, Hungarians and Czechs in their struggle against Russian Soviet occupiers in the latter half of the 20th Century. (See this for instance.) Such everyday resistance is also part of a manual for civilian-based defense published by the Lithuanian government in 2015 and designed to help Lithuanians foil any future Russian attempts to invade their country, whether that threat comes directly or through "hybrid warfare."
There is just one cautionary point I want to make about everyday resistance, as it is defined and has been studied by political scientist James Scott. His catalogue of acts of everyday resistance includes acts that most societies would consider criminal, such as arson, sabotage and theft. I don't think these acts should be part of the toolbox of tactics of nonviolent resistance. The reason why I would exclude such acts is that criminal acts - even if they are nonviolent - weaken the mechanisms by which nonviolent resistance removes the pillars of support of a dictatorship, in much the same way that violence weakens nonviolent resistance. Those who engage in such criminal acts give the oppressor an excuse for his oppression. Instead, nonviolent resisters should be guided by the following principle: "...let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evil doer..." - 1 Peter 4:15.
That still leaves many very legitimate acts of everyday resistance that can be employed. (See this and this, for example.) Using your imagination and creativity can be a lot of fun here. In a future post I will describe an an idea that recently came to me for just such an act of everyday resistance. Let's explore how to take bites out of the Trump regime, shall we?
Sunday, January 22, 2017
The Role of Women In The Nonviolent Struggle
I feel the need to revisit some comments I made in my last post, and some points I have made several times in my posts on nonviolent resistance to the Trump presidency. It bears repeating that civil resistance campaigns against an oppressive regime have a much higher chance of success than violent campaigns. One main reason for this is that an oppressive state has a monopoly on the use of violence, and is much better prepared to use violence than any resisters who are not part of the state apparatus. Waging a violent resistance campaign is fighting the state on its own terms, which means that the state usually wins.
But nonviolent struggle fights the state on a battlefield where it is weak - and oddly enough, the more oppressive the state, the weaker it is on the battlefield of nonviolent resistance. There are four reasons for this which have been identified by Chenoweth and Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. These reasons are:
In view of the above points, I want to comment on the protest marches which took place on Friday and Saturday. The protests that took place on Friday were focused on opposing the inauguration of Donald Trump. That is an admirable goal, and I entirely agree with the protesters. However, the protesters are guilty of failing to plan and prepare adequately for their activities on Friday. This allowed people who call themselves "anarchists" to infiltrate the protests and cause violence and property damage. The actions of these "anarchists" almost certainly helped the Trump presidency by giving it a legitimate excuse for repressing future protests. Their actions also caused revulsion and disgust even among populations who fear a Trump presidency, such as Christians who belong to immigrant churches. It is quite possible that these "anarchists" were paid by the supporters of Donald Trump to cause trouble in order to de-legitimize the protests. Allowing these people to infiltrate a peaceful protest was a bad tactical mistake.
The women's marches that took place yesterday, were, by contrast, entirely nonviolent. They also attracted hundreds of thousands of participants. The key to their success was the extensive preparation and teaching of nonviolent discipline which preceded the marches. (See this and this also.) To me, this shows that the women who organized and participated in these marches were wiser, more skillful, more strategically savvy and more level-headed than the marchers on Friday. Certainly they were sharper and more on the ball than a bunch of hot-headed young male "anarchists." Perhaps we should learn something from them. And maybe they should be relied on to teach the rest of us the right way to do protest.
I am sure that more protests against Trump are planned. I would just say two things. First, any participants who resort to violence during any of the protests should be regarded as agents provocateurs, troublemakers hired by the supporters of Donald Trump in order to give him and the police an excuse for violent repression of protest. Such people should be avoided like the plague. Secondly, should it become impossible to conduct a mass protest without fear of infiltration by paid troublemakers, the nonviolent struggle should switch to tactics of dispersion, such as the strike, the boycott, and the stay-away.
One big target for a potential stay-away or boycott is the Super Bowl which will take place in two weeks. What if, instead of watching - either in person, on TV in your home, or at a sports bar - you spent that time doing something more useful with your life? Don't feed the beast that bites you.
But nonviolent struggle fights the state on a battlefield where it is weak - and oddly enough, the more oppressive the state, the weaker it is on the battlefield of nonviolent resistance. There are four reasons for this which have been identified by Chenoweth and Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. These reasons are:
- Much lower physical barriers. Participation in nonviolent resistance does not require people to be elite wanna-be "Crossfitters". Therefore, it is open to women of all ages, children, elderly men, and young men who are smart enough to avoid violence.
- Much lower informational barriers. Those in violent struggles must keep most of their activities secret, whereas those in nonviolent struggles can be much more open - thus much more easily attracting others to join in the struggle.
- Much, much lower moral barriers. A person who commits himself to participate in a violent struggle is basically making a commitment to kill people and break things. Most people, myself included, think that such activities are immoral, and we are thus not likely to participate. But the tactics of nonviolent struggle are not immoral; therefore, they don't require people to violate their consciences to participate.
- Much lower commitment barriers. Once a person has involved himself in a violent campaign, he can never entirely return to his old way of life. He may need to spend the rest of his days on the run, in hiding, living a life that is physically very difficult. But those who participate in nonviolent campaigns can do so while leading lives that feel relatively normal.
In view of the above points, I want to comment on the protest marches which took place on Friday and Saturday. The protests that took place on Friday were focused on opposing the inauguration of Donald Trump. That is an admirable goal, and I entirely agree with the protesters. However, the protesters are guilty of failing to plan and prepare adequately for their activities on Friday. This allowed people who call themselves "anarchists" to infiltrate the protests and cause violence and property damage. The actions of these "anarchists" almost certainly helped the Trump presidency by giving it a legitimate excuse for repressing future protests. Their actions also caused revulsion and disgust even among populations who fear a Trump presidency, such as Christians who belong to immigrant churches. It is quite possible that these "anarchists" were paid by the supporters of Donald Trump to cause trouble in order to de-legitimize the protests. Allowing these people to infiltrate a peaceful protest was a bad tactical mistake.
The women's marches that took place yesterday, were, by contrast, entirely nonviolent. They also attracted hundreds of thousands of participants. The key to their success was the extensive preparation and teaching of nonviolent discipline which preceded the marches. (See this and this also.) To me, this shows that the women who organized and participated in these marches were wiser, more skillful, more strategically savvy and more level-headed than the marchers on Friday. Certainly they were sharper and more on the ball than a bunch of hot-headed young male "anarchists." Perhaps we should learn something from them. And maybe they should be relied on to teach the rest of us the right way to do protest.
I am sure that more protests against Trump are planned. I would just say two things. First, any participants who resort to violence during any of the protests should be regarded as agents provocateurs, troublemakers hired by the supporters of Donald Trump in order to give him and the police an excuse for violent repression of protest. Such people should be avoided like the plague. Secondly, should it become impossible to conduct a mass protest without fear of infiltration by paid troublemakers, the nonviolent struggle should switch to tactics of dispersion, such as the strike, the boycott, and the stay-away.
One big target for a potential stay-away or boycott is the Super Bowl which will take place in two weeks. What if, instead of watching - either in person, on TV in your home, or at a sports bar - you spent that time doing something more useful with your life? Don't feed the beast that bites you.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
The Nonviolent Resistance - A Grand Strategic Vision
I read today about the large number of protesters who rallied in many cities in the United States to show their opposition to Donald Trump. I am very glad to hear that the number of those participating in rallies and protests yesterday and today far exceeded the number of Trump fans who attended his inauguration. But it is critical for those who oppose Trump to be able to formulate and present a vision of the future that stands as a viable alternative to the plans and policy of Mr. Trump. Here I will propose such a vision.
The first element of such a vision is a realistic view of what is possible in the world that is now emerging. That world is no longer a world in which one nation, or one segment of that nation, can command all the world's resources and rule all the other peoples of the world with an iron (or velvet) fist.
The second element of such a vision is a willingness on the part of the many to create a society that provides equal and effective access to life-sustaining resources for all its members, regardless of ethnicity, national origin or religion, by means of the following:
Those who are involved in creating alternatives to a Trump society must maintain nonviolent discipline in their struggle. I am thinking of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Chenoweth and Stephan. (I got my copy of that book on Thursday night, and have been reading it ever since.) In the book, the authors document the negative effect that the presence of violence has on a civil resistance movement, and how violence by armed resistance wings or by government-sponsored agents provocateurs reduces the likelihood that the civil resistance movement will succeed. It is thus regrettable that "anarchists" were able to infiltrate peaceful protests on the day of Trump's inauguration. Those who organize protest marches should work as hard as possible to make sure that such people are excluded from future marches or rallies. It is also necessary for the nonviolent struggle to combine tactics of concentration, such as rallies and protests, with tactics of dispersion, such as strikes, boycotts and stay-aways. (On Friday I "stayed away" from work. Instead, I spent the day reading and praying. That was my form of protest. And I did not watch the inauguration.) Movements that rely on only one or a few tactics are easy to defeat.
The first element of such a vision is a realistic view of what is possible in the world that is now emerging. That world is no longer a world in which one nation, or one segment of that nation, can command all the world's resources and rule all the other peoples of the world with an iron (or velvet) fist.
The second element of such a vision is a willingness on the part of the many to create a society that provides equal and effective access to life-sustaining resources for all its members, regardless of ethnicity, national origin or religion, by means of the following:
- Effective education (teaching its members how to think, how to understand and navigate the world in which they live)
- The best health care that its members can provide by pooling their resources for the common good
- The most equitable livelihood that its members can provide by pooling their resources for the common good
- The best use of housing and land that its members can provide by pooling their resources for the common good
- An equal say for each of its members in determining the shape and course of such a society
- The safety that arises from being insulated as much as possible from supremacist predators.
Those who are involved in creating alternatives to a Trump society must maintain nonviolent discipline in their struggle. I am thinking of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Chenoweth and Stephan. (I got my copy of that book on Thursday night, and have been reading it ever since.) In the book, the authors document the negative effect that the presence of violence has on a civil resistance movement, and how violence by armed resistance wings or by government-sponsored agents provocateurs reduces the likelihood that the civil resistance movement will succeed. It is thus regrettable that "anarchists" were able to infiltrate peaceful protests on the day of Trump's inauguration. Those who organize protest marches should work as hard as possible to make sure that such people are excluded from future marches or rallies. It is also necessary for the nonviolent struggle to combine tactics of concentration, such as rallies and protests, with tactics of dispersion, such as strikes, boycotts and stay-aways. (On Friday I "stayed away" from work. Instead, I spent the day reading and praying. That was my form of protest. And I did not watch the inauguration.) Movements that rely on only one or a few tactics are easy to defeat.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Equipment for Nonviolent Struggle
We have only seventeen days until the inauguration of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. As I have written previously, it appears that Mr. Trump won the Presidency in a rigged election in which there was significant voter suppression, and in which recount efforts in some battleground states were either blocked by the Trump team or were so severely compromised that they are unreliable. Mr. Trump campaigned on a platform that was morally repugnant to a majority not only of Americans, but of people throughout the world - especially in the Global South.
Those of us who are the intended targets of his agenda would do well, therefore, to prepare to struggle for the basic human right to live our lives in peace without being scapegoated or molested by imperialists, or white supremacists, or the most powerful members of the Global North, or the wealthiest members of our societies, or even of the dupes of these powerful people, many of whom are poor and are likely to be hurt by the very policies they have been brainwashed into supporting. As I have said before, in order for the struggle to have maximum effectiveness, it must be nonviolent.
But some will ask, "Can nonviolent resistance actually succeed in this struggle? Is it really effective?" To answer that, I will refer you to a few videos and some audio books that you can chew on. The first is from Dr. Erica Chenoweth of the University of Denver, who defines nonviolent resistance as "...a form of active conflict where unarmed civilians use a variety of nonviolent tactics like strikes, boycotts, protests, stay-aways, demonstrations, and other things, to try to effect political change without using violence or threatening to use physical violence against the opponent."
One of the great strengths of nonviolent struggle is that it is able to recruit a much larger portion of a nation's population than violent conflict. Chenoweth shows that if the level of participation rises to between two and five percent, the nonviolent movement has at least a 50 percent chance of succeeding. If the participation level is at five percent or above, the nonviolent struggle becomes almost unstoppable. When we consider that the official November election results state that only 25 percent of all people of voting age in America voted for Trump, and that even that figure may be overly optimistic, finding five percent of the population that does not want to be molested by a Trump presidency should not be very hard.
Here also is a video of a talk by Jamila Raqib, in which she gives a few humorous, yet highly effective examples of successful nonviolent struggle:
(Disclaimer: although I don't agree with everything in this video, I do agree with her main point concerning the effectiveness of nonviolent struggle.)
There are also audio recordings of two books by Gene Sharp, which were provided by the kind volunteer readers at the Librivox website. The books are From Dictatorship to Democracy and There Are Realistic Alternatives. These books are also available in PDF form from the Albert Einstein Institution. Mr. Sharp constantly stresses the need for comprehensive strategic planning in preparing a nonviolent struggle. He outlines the need to focus on four planning levels: grand strategy, strategy, tactics and methods.
I hope that these materials may guide fellow resisters in planning a varied, multilevel resistance effort that uses multiple tactics for maximum effect. One caution regarding social media: Erica Chenoweth makes the point that social media is a great tool in the hands of oppressive regimes, but that resisters should beware of relying overly much on it.
Good luck in your preparations!
Those of us who are the intended targets of his agenda would do well, therefore, to prepare to struggle for the basic human right to live our lives in peace without being scapegoated or molested by imperialists, or white supremacists, or the most powerful members of the Global North, or the wealthiest members of our societies, or even of the dupes of these powerful people, many of whom are poor and are likely to be hurt by the very policies they have been brainwashed into supporting. As I have said before, in order for the struggle to have maximum effectiveness, it must be nonviolent.
But some will ask, "Can nonviolent resistance actually succeed in this struggle? Is it really effective?" To answer that, I will refer you to a few videos and some audio books that you can chew on. The first is from Dr. Erica Chenoweth of the University of Denver, who defines nonviolent resistance as "...a form of active conflict where unarmed civilians use a variety of nonviolent tactics like strikes, boycotts, protests, stay-aways, demonstrations, and other things, to try to effect political change without using violence or threatening to use physical violence against the opponent."
One of the great strengths of nonviolent struggle is that it is able to recruit a much larger portion of a nation's population than violent conflict. Chenoweth shows that if the level of participation rises to between two and five percent, the nonviolent movement has at least a 50 percent chance of succeeding. If the participation level is at five percent or above, the nonviolent struggle becomes almost unstoppable. When we consider that the official November election results state that only 25 percent of all people of voting age in America voted for Trump, and that even that figure may be overly optimistic, finding five percent of the population that does not want to be molested by a Trump presidency should not be very hard.
Here also is a video of a talk by Jamila Raqib, in which she gives a few humorous, yet highly effective examples of successful nonviolent struggle:
(Disclaimer: although I don't agree with everything in this video, I do agree with her main point concerning the effectiveness of nonviolent struggle.)
There are also audio recordings of two books by Gene Sharp, which were provided by the kind volunteer readers at the Librivox website. The books are From Dictatorship to Democracy and There Are Realistic Alternatives. These books are also available in PDF form from the Albert Einstein Institution. Mr. Sharp constantly stresses the need for comprehensive strategic planning in preparing a nonviolent struggle. He outlines the need to focus on four planning levels: grand strategy, strategy, tactics and methods.
I hope that these materials may guide fellow resisters in planning a varied, multilevel resistance effort that uses multiple tactics for maximum effect. One caution regarding social media: Erica Chenoweth makes the point that social media is a great tool in the hands of oppressive regimes, but that resisters should beware of relying overly much on it.
Good luck in your preparations!
Saturday, November 26, 2016
A Thinking Cap for Resisters
In the wake of Donald Trump's ill-gotten capture of the Presidency, it has been mildly interesting to see mainstream television entertainers pleading with Americans to give Donald a chance. I guess it's only fitting that among his flying monkeys should be people who make a living by acting silly or by pretending to be what they are not. The Donald fits right in with them, as the former star of a cheesy "reality" TV series. Those who study dysfunctional family dynamics will also recognize the parallels between the people begging us to give the Donald a chance and those members of dysfunctional families who cover and make excuses for those members of their own families who are the actual cause of family dysfunction.
The problem is that ever since it was announced that the Donald "won" the Electoral College (with only 25 percent of all people in America of voting age supporting him!), he has had chance after chance to show that he is capable of sane, moral, just and fair leadership. And every day he has failed the test in one way or another. Asking the majority of people of voting age in this country to give him a chance sounds a bit like a violent and/or substance-abusing husband asking his wife to give him another chance even when there is no evidence that the husband has begun to do the hard work of repentance. Those of us who are being asked to "give him a chance" are therefore being asked to ignore the lessons of pattern recognition, to ignore the data points supplied by the trajectory of Donald's life from way back in the day up to the present, to expect that a man who has enthusiastically pursued a course of selfishness and petty evil and has shown no sign of changing his course will suddenly be a different person tomorrow.
Those of us who have to live in this country under a Trump presidency would do well to avoid having any hopeful illusions about him. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Donald will try to do just about everything he threatened to do during his campaign. (The leaders of some of the countries which the Donald threatened during his campaign are assuming that very thing, and have begun to issue warnings that if the new administration revokes certain treaties and agreements, or re-imposes certain sanctions, there will be consequences.) I think it is also reasonable to assume that many of the more objectionable types who have latched onto Trump and to whom he pandered during his campaign are an accurate reflection of his character. This means that a large number of us will be targeted for suffering, repression, denial of equal protection, false imprisonment, economic discrimination and threat of physical violence by these types.
Therefore, it will be necessary for us to resist. Resistance, moreover, is not optional. If we don't resist, we will suffer for sure. If we do resist, we may still suffer - but we might also win.
Moreover, the resistance must be nonviolent. There are ethical and moral reasons for this, especially for those of us who are Christians. (No, this is not the time for so-called "Christian patriots" to bust out their hardware and their ammo. If you're in that crowd, grab a clue from Luke 3:14. By the way, the translation I quoted renders this verse exactly as it is written in the Greek, so don't try to weasel out of it.)
But there are also very pragmatic reasons why the resistance must be entirely nonviolent. A number of those reasons have been captured in the work of Maria J. Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and by and Erica Chenoweth of Wesleyan University. In a 2008 paper titled, "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict," Chenoweth and Stephan examined a large number of nonviolent resistance efforts which took place over the last hundred years or so, and discovered the shocking fact that nonviolent resistance movements had a success rate of over 50 percent. Violent resistance movements, on the other hand, had a success rate of only 26 percent. In addition, societies which experienced successful nonviolent resistance tended to be much more stable and peaceful afterward than those societies which experienced violent revolution or civil war. Chenoweth and Stephan have expanded their findings and published them in a book, and there are other researchers who have confirmed their findings as well.
The goal of nonviolent resistance is not necessarily to persuade an oppressive, powerful and violent opponent to "listen to its better angels." After all, it may not have any "better angels!" Rather, the goal is to deprive the opponent of its ability to continue its oppression by removing the sources of power of that oppression.
As for the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, there are a number of sources. (See this and this, for instance.) One source I have been enjoying over the last few days is How Nonviolent Struggle Works, by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution. How Nonviolent Struggle Works is a short, easy-to-read condensation of a much longer book by Mr. Sharp, who has written several lengthy books on the subject. If you see yourself as a resister in these days, and you're wondering what to do, Mr. Sharp's short book would be a good place to start.
The problem is that ever since it was announced that the Donald "won" the Electoral College (with only 25 percent of all people in America of voting age supporting him!), he has had chance after chance to show that he is capable of sane, moral, just and fair leadership. And every day he has failed the test in one way or another. Asking the majority of people of voting age in this country to give him a chance sounds a bit like a violent and/or substance-abusing husband asking his wife to give him another chance even when there is no evidence that the husband has begun to do the hard work of repentance. Those of us who are being asked to "give him a chance" are therefore being asked to ignore the lessons of pattern recognition, to ignore the data points supplied by the trajectory of Donald's life from way back in the day up to the present, to expect that a man who has enthusiastically pursued a course of selfishness and petty evil and has shown no sign of changing his course will suddenly be a different person tomorrow.
Those of us who have to live in this country under a Trump presidency would do well to avoid having any hopeful illusions about him. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Donald will try to do just about everything he threatened to do during his campaign. (The leaders of some of the countries which the Donald threatened during his campaign are assuming that very thing, and have begun to issue warnings that if the new administration revokes certain treaties and agreements, or re-imposes certain sanctions, there will be consequences.) I think it is also reasonable to assume that many of the more objectionable types who have latched onto Trump and to whom he pandered during his campaign are an accurate reflection of his character. This means that a large number of us will be targeted for suffering, repression, denial of equal protection, false imprisonment, economic discrimination and threat of physical violence by these types.
Therefore, it will be necessary for us to resist. Resistance, moreover, is not optional. If we don't resist, we will suffer for sure. If we do resist, we may still suffer - but we might also win.
Moreover, the resistance must be nonviolent. There are ethical and moral reasons for this, especially for those of us who are Christians. (No, this is not the time for so-called "Christian patriots" to bust out their hardware and their ammo. If you're in that crowd, grab a clue from Luke 3:14. By the way, the translation I quoted renders this verse exactly as it is written in the Greek, so don't try to weasel out of it.)
But there are also very pragmatic reasons why the resistance must be entirely nonviolent. A number of those reasons have been captured in the work of Maria J. Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and by and Erica Chenoweth of Wesleyan University. In a 2008 paper titled, "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict," Chenoweth and Stephan examined a large number of nonviolent resistance efforts which took place over the last hundred years or so, and discovered the shocking fact that nonviolent resistance movements had a success rate of over 50 percent. Violent resistance movements, on the other hand, had a success rate of only 26 percent. In addition, societies which experienced successful nonviolent resistance tended to be much more stable and peaceful afterward than those societies which experienced violent revolution or civil war. Chenoweth and Stephan have expanded their findings and published them in a book, and there are other researchers who have confirmed their findings as well.
The goal of nonviolent resistance is not necessarily to persuade an oppressive, powerful and violent opponent to "listen to its better angels." After all, it may not have any "better angels!" Rather, the goal is to deprive the opponent of its ability to continue its oppression by removing the sources of power of that oppression.
As for the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, there are a number of sources. (See this and this, for instance.) One source I have been enjoying over the last few days is How Nonviolent Struggle Works, by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution. How Nonviolent Struggle Works is a short, easy-to-read condensation of a much longer book by Mr. Sharp, who has written several lengthy books on the subject. If you see yourself as a resister in these days, and you're wondering what to do, Mr. Sharp's short book would be a good place to start.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Living In A Place Named "Predicament"
Explosion Kitty walking away from the Zombie
Apocalypse
And now in this post we return to the roots of this blog (and we show how a discussion of national and cultural abnormal psychology relates to those roots). This blog began as a diary of my observations of the changes in mainstream American society which are being caused by the decline in energy and natural resources needed by the global industrial economy. Personally, I think some of my earliest posts on the topic were rather amateurish, due to the fact that I didn't quite understand at first everything I was looking at. (Petroleum geology, in particular, is not my forte.) But even people who were born yesterday can catch up a bit by staying up all night studying. ;)
When writers seriously discuss resource depletion, climate change and their likely effects on the global industrial economy, some readers tend to react as if they'd just met a conspiracy theory/zombie apocalypse nut. But these subjects actually have a very solid technical background. Let's explore that background for a moment.
First, there have been thinkers from way back who understood that the earth is finite, and who accepted the possibility that humans might one day bump against the limits of the earth's resources. Two 19th century names come to mind: Thomas Malthus postulated that the human population could grow to a level that would not sustain extravagant lifestyles. Svante Arrhenius postulated that human industrial activity could release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in such quantities that it could cause significant long-term changes to the global climate. Malthus and Arrhenius did not have the benefit of computer modeling to validate their assumptions. But in the 1970's, there were scientists who did have that benefit. A group of these scientists assembled under the auspices of the Club of Rome to study possible future scenarios for the global industrial society from the 1970's to 2100. They discovered a number of scenarios in which the industrial economy would run into hard constraints related to the amount of virgin resources which could be extracted, and the amount of industrial waste which could be dumped into the environment without serious side effects. Running into those constraints would lead to economic contraction and population distress. Their findings were published in a volume titled The Limits To Growth, which has been periodically updated to the present. The First World in general, and the United States in particular, did not heed the warnings of The Limits To Growth, and so now we see the beginnings of our society running into hard constraints.
One of those constraints deserves special mention. In the 1950's, M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist for the Shell Oil Company, derived a simple formula from calculus to model the flow rate of an oil field as a function of its proven reserves. (See this also.) The implications of this formula led Hubbert to conclude that production of conventional oil in the United States would peak in the early 1970's and enter into irreversible decline thereafter. He also postulated that production of conventional oil worldwide would peak some time in the early part of the first decade of the 21st century and enter into irreversible decline thereafter. He published his conclusions in a prominent peer-reviewed journal and managed to make his Shell Oil bosses very unhappy. The trouble was, he was right.
Hubbert's assumptions were validated by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere in an article titled “The End of Cheap Oil,” published in Scientific American in 1998. This article provoked a flurry of both interest and controversy and was a catalyst in the formation of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, or ASPO in short. The Oil Drum website was also born, as well as organizations like the Post-Carbon Institute. A child lately born among this brood was the Energy Watch Group which began as a collection of geologists and other scientists sponsored by the German government under the leadership of Hans-Josef Fell of the German Parliament. (The Energy Watch Group correctly stated that the peak of global conventional crude oil production (excluding shale and tar sands) had already occurred by 2008.) All of these groups were characterized by strong technical leadership consisting of scientists with strong technical backgrounds who were well-qualified to discuss the field they were addressing, namely, the likelihood of near-term declines in global conventional oil production.
The discussion of the likelihood of near-term decline in the availability of cheap oil naturally led to the discussion of the likely impact and effects of such a decline on First World economies. This led to the generation of a number of scenarios. At first, those producing the scenarios were strongly technical types very similar to the people who were studying the possibility of production rate declines. For instance, the United States government commissioned a group of respected scientists led by Robert Hirsch to study the likely impacts on American society of permanent near-term declines in availability of oil. The results of that study were published in 2005 in a document now known as the Hirsch report.
The Hirsch report predicted major disruptions to industrial society unless preparations were made sufficiently far in advance (as in, 20 years) of the peaking and decline of conventional oil production. Hirsch, et al, did not exactly talk about zombies, but the impacts described in the report were dramatic enough to inspire a number of other people (including several people without technical academic degrees) to start mapping out possible scenarios. These scenarios tended to fall into two general categories: a “fast crash” case and a “more nuanced” case.
In the “fast crash” camp were such people as the creators of the World Without Oil website, a supposed reality “game” in which people could explore the impact of a sudden drop in oil availability. (I discovered the site in 2007, and noticed that most of its scenarios tended to be variations on a violent “zombie apocalypse” theme. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) There was also Matt Savinar, a blogger who formerly devoted himself to covering the impacts of peak oil on industrial societies. Matt earned a degree in law (and thereafter started calling himself the “Juris Doctor of Doom”) while trying to build a business selling what I would call “doom preparation kits” of emergency rations and other “collapse preparation” supplies. But there came a point in 2010 where he suddenly felt “led” to switch from collapse preparation and law to astrology. Among the ranks of “fast crash” writers were also people like Guy McPherson who is trying to build a career as a traveling doom counselor, Michael Ruppert who reportedly shot himself in 2011, and James Howard Kunstler, a former journalist and writer of fiction who used to regularly predict at the beginning of each year that the stock market would crash to a level no greater than 4000 points in that year. Over the last few years, Mr. Kunstler has expanded his offerings to include extremely racist, misogynist and right-wing statements of the sort that make it clear that he is eager to throw those whom he deems powerless under the bus if he thinks he can get away with it.
The “more nuanced” camp also had a number of members, who generally tended to be much less colorful and much more cautious in their assessment of the future, and who also tended to be much more prudent in giving advice and recommendations for dealing with a future of economic contraction. They also tended to be strong and deep systems thinkers. Three names immediately come to mind: first, Richard Heinberg, a fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute, and David Holmgren, who together with Bill Mollison founded the discipline of permaculture (a discipline which is now being seriously taught in government-sponsored Australian universities, by the way). In looking at a future of scarcity, such people as these tended to recognize the need to play a long game.
Over the last several months, the differences in outlook between the two camps has intrigued me, not least because the way a person sees a situation tells a lot about what's inside that person. And the differences in outlook between the two camps has been interesting from a psychological, sociological and spiritual viewpoint. The key assumptions of the “fast-crashers” was that a sudden or serious shortfall in availability of the resources and consumer goods needed for a middle-class American lifestyle would result in the eruption of instant anarchy, with violent mobs (all assumed to be poor and usually dark-skinned) raping, pillaging, looting and burning everything in sight. Therefore, the proper way to prepare for such a shortfall was to buy a doomstead in Montana or some other isolated place, and to stock it with an abundant supply of guns, ammo, baked beans and gold pieces, and to outfit one's doomstead with as many trappings and gizmos as necessary to preserve “liberty!” (and a middle-class lifestyle) into the post-apocalyptic age. (Another key to preparation was to watch the stock market obsessively every day, watching for the first sign of collapse in order to know when and how to shift one's "investments" in order to preserve maximum value.) In such a fast-crash world, the kind of morality that regarded other lives as precious enough to share your material goods with them (especially the lives of people different from you) was to be regarded as excess baggage to be discarded as soon as possible, and the “survivors” of such a crash were exhorted to adopt a moral compass that looked a lot like the compass of selfishness that guided Ayn Rand throughout her miserable life.
One problem with such a viewpoint is that it was and continues to be contradicted by evidence from every available corner of the planet. For instance, there are hundreds of millions – even billions – of people who live in societies with per capita incomes much lower than the per capita income of the United States, and these people live quite peaceably as long as they have their basic needs met. They are not zombies. (What warfare arises among these people is usually provoked by resource-hungry Anglo-American or European powers, and not by the indigenous people themselves.) And there are a lot of poor people in the U.S. who are the salt of the earth. Who says that instant anarchy has to erupt if people don't have all the stuff that most mainstream Americans are taught to crave? Such a belief is a fallacy typical of spoiled mainstream Americans who tend to believe that if they can't have a lifestyle of “special” privilege and comfort, the end of the world must be at hand. Another problem is that people with this point of view are trying to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle by a zombie apocalypse version of hoarding, like Gollum or Smaug the dragon in Tolkien story The Hobbit. So we have people who outfit their doomsteads with several kW of solar panels and massive battery storage systems so they can enjoy all the comforts of home in case the grid goes down. (Good luck trying to get them to share any of their stash.) Why not learn to live without some of those comforts, since after all, the batteries and panels will eventually wear out?
To me, it seems that the fast-crash scenario has become something of a blank slate on which certain personalities project fantasies whose characteristics have been covered repeatedly in the psychology-related posts of the last year and a half on this blog. So it is probably not surprising that over the last few years, such zombie apocalypse/prepper thinking has been picked up by the talking heads at Fox News and similar media outlets, who have gotten into the business of hawking gold and emergency rations as part of their campaign to instill mass hysteria into a captive cult audience of aging white Baby Boomers. (That's how I knew I tasted something funny...) Another example of this is the post-apocalyptic novels of James Howard Kunstler, in which he places the survivors into ranks and social classes that suit the fantasies of Anglo-American narcissistic males. (I bought his first "collapse" novel, but I have to admit that I didn't even get halfway through it, as the prose in his novel seemed to be no better than that of the Left Behind novels. (Although I am a Christian, I couldn't stand those books - it's a sin to make cheap art out of Scripture.) Here are a few trenchant lines regarding Kunstler's book from a Los Angeles Times reviewer. If you want to read some well-written post-apocalyptic fiction, I would recommend Stephen King's The Stand, although King does not deal with resource depletion and climate change.)
The more nuanced camp has thus had increasing appeal to me over the years. I now consider myself to be a member of that camp. I believe the official reports of the Energy Watch Group and of Robert Hirsch's task force. I also believe the authors of the Limits to Growth reports. I therefore believe that our global industrial society (and American society in particular) is already encountering some non-negotiable changes. But I also believe that this fact does not give us a pass to throw away our moral compass. Rather, that moral compass (and a firm grip on reality) should guide us in assessing our situation. We should be asking whether we face a problem to be gotten over, or a predicament to be lived with graciously. (I believe the evidence points to the latter.)
If then we face a predicament, how shall we address it? What are the strategic goals we should have? One reason I like people like Richard Heinberg is that he seems to be looking for solutions which benefit as many people as possible (rather than clamoring hysterically about a coming zombie apocalypse)! If helping as many people as possible is to be our goal, that goal will guide the technical adaptations we pursue. The search for technical adaptations will have to take place on three scales: the individual, the local, and the societal. And these adaptations will not be effective without first adapting psychologically, namely, in deciding whether we are willing to accept a humbler lifestyle. Dysfunctional psychology will interfere with the wise choosing of appropriate technical adaptations! Can “we” get over our modern Western, American dysfunctional psychology in an age of limits? Or will we continue to hawk the same “solutions” that got us into our present mess: guns, “liberty!!!”, selfishness, the “free market,” the exaltation of the “agentic” over the “communal” (as blogger CZBZ puts it)? The coming days will mark the end of Anglo-American “fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,” and "we" will have to heal our diseased mindset, lest we continue to try the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. Those who keep pushing wrong approaches may end up trying to feed themselves with long spoons in Hell. And let me tell you something. The rest of the world will not simply roll over and die so that you can have a temporary extension of your fantasies of unlimited power. You will have to adapt to life in a multipolar world and a multicultural society.
As far as technical adaptations, that has been my focus for the last few years, and it is the reason why I have gone back to school. I believe that the formulation of technical adaptations to resource scarcity and lower energy availability will require the presence of people with a strong background in math and the sciences. That will be the background of people who are interested in playing “the long game,” and that is the background which I have been acquiring. Those with such a background will not only be able to formulate technical adaptations, but will also be able to test and fine-tune those adaptations so that they work optimally. Along those lines, I intend, God willing, to write a post this summer about a project that I've been working on since last year. Stay tuned...
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Resilience, Healthcare and Cooperation
Here is a link to a post I did over five years ago concerning the Cuban health care system and the ways in which it is both different from and better than the U.S. health care system. That post also contains an audio interview I conducted with Rachel True, who is a member of the staff at MEDICC, a health care education cooperative group which has partnered with Cuba to train doctors for the developing world and for underserved communities in the United States. In that interview we discuss the Latin American School of Medicine, a medical school founded by the Cuban government under Fidel Castro to provide free medical education to prospective students from poor countries and communities who would not be able to afford tuition at medical schools in developed countries such as the U.S.
The Cuban medical system is a prime example of the good that can arise in a society that is founded on cooperation and collaboration and not on ruthless Calvinist cut-throat competition. For that reason, such an arrangement is not likely to arise in mainstream Anglo-American society unless that society undergoes a radical change. Until then, we in the U.S. will have to content ourselves with window-shopping (or, for the richest among us, with medical tourism.)
The Cuban medical system is a prime example of the good that can arise in a society that is founded on cooperation and collaboration and not on ruthless Calvinist cut-throat competition. For that reason, such an arrangement is not likely to arise in mainstream Anglo-American society unless that society undergoes a radical change. Until then, we in the U.S. will have to content ourselves with window-shopping (or, for the richest among us, with medical tourism.)
Friday, June 19, 2015
Resilience Counterpunches
Many of my recent posts have chronicled the bad news that is the unraveling of the mainstream American psyche, and the ways in which certain elements of mainstream America are taking out their dysfunction on minorities and people of color. But all is not bad news. In minority communities, there is a growing awareness of steps which these communities can take to become more resilient. I'll give just two examples.
First, there is the educational clinic about which I wrote several months ago. I am one of the tutors for that clinic. We (the tutors) are planning a solar energy science activity for the kids at the apartment complex we visit. Specifically, we are planning to build solar ovens. Our aim is to provide enough materials so that kids from five or six households can construct the ovens. As for the ovens, they are not just some science-fair craft that is good for nothing more than melting chocolate. Rather, these ovens will be the real deal, capable of cooking some serious food. The design for these ovens was invented by Maria Telkes, an appropriate technology pioneer of the 20th century. We obtained the design for the ovens from Engineers Without Borders. We are planning to build the ovens over four sessions with the kids. Next to their apartment complex is a large vacant lot with plenty of sunshine where they can try the ovens out. I'll try to take and post some pictures or video of the project as it progresses. We will also teach the kids the theory of operation of the ovens and use that teaching to further strengthen their math skills.
Second, there is the Detroit Water Brigade, a grassroots organization which has arisen in response to the Detroit city government shutoff of water to tens of thousands of Detroit residents. Not only is the Detroit Water Brigade involved in providing water bill assistance and collection of drinking water, but they are also teaching residents the basics of rainwater harvesting. Such efforts are geared toward enabling large numbers of Detroit residents to adapt to life without a utility system which is not only aging and increasingly unreliable, but which has been turned into a weapon against them. If anyone wants to help, you can send donations to them, or to the Detroit Water Project.
I am sure that there are many other initiatives springing up, but I haven't had time to research them all. As I hear of them, I will keep you all posted. Stay tuned...
First, there is the educational clinic about which I wrote several months ago. I am one of the tutors for that clinic. We (the tutors) are planning a solar energy science activity for the kids at the apartment complex we visit. Specifically, we are planning to build solar ovens. Our aim is to provide enough materials so that kids from five or six households can construct the ovens. As for the ovens, they are not just some science-fair craft that is good for nothing more than melting chocolate. Rather, these ovens will be the real deal, capable of cooking some serious food. The design for these ovens was invented by Maria Telkes, an appropriate technology pioneer of the 20th century. We obtained the design for the ovens from Engineers Without Borders. We are planning to build the ovens over four sessions with the kids. Next to their apartment complex is a large vacant lot with plenty of sunshine where they can try the ovens out. I'll try to take and post some pictures or video of the project as it progresses. We will also teach the kids the theory of operation of the ovens and use that teaching to further strengthen their math skills.
Second, there is the Detroit Water Brigade, a grassroots organization which has arisen in response to the Detroit city government shutoff of water to tens of thousands of Detroit residents. Not only is the Detroit Water Brigade involved in providing water bill assistance and collection of drinking water, but they are also teaching residents the basics of rainwater harvesting. Such efforts are geared toward enabling large numbers of Detroit residents to adapt to life without a utility system which is not only aging and increasingly unreliable, but which has been turned into a weapon against them. If anyone wants to help, you can send donations to them, or to the Detroit Water Project.
I am sure that there are many other initiatives springing up, but I haven't had time to research them all. As I hear of them, I will keep you all posted. Stay tuned...
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Exodus As Survival
As I have watched the unfolding pattern of police violence, excessive force and murder against unarmed people of color in the United States, I have also been watching the protests which have arisen in response, and particularly the organized Black Lives Matter protest movement. I am encouraged in a small way by the protests; however, I am also deeply ambivalent toward them. It's not that I don't think that the murder of unarmed people of color should be quietly accepted. It's just that I don't think that the protests by themselves will accomplish anything.
The cause of my pessimism lies in the subject which has occupied this blog for almost a year, namely, the way in which an entire national culture has become personality-disordered. The particular personality disorder which I have discussed is malignant narcissism. One of the features of a malignant narcissist, whether that narcissist be a person or a narcissistic nation, is an overwhelming urge to abuse others. Another feature is that reasonable people cannot reason with the narcissist to restrain his abuse. The narcissist is unreasonable, and thus implacable. A reasonable nation would apply one standard of law enforcement to all of its residents, rather than playing “favorites.” The police forces of a reasonable nation would not murder unarmed Hispanic teens driving cars as the police in Denver, Colorado did to Jessica Hernandez in January. (They allege that the car she was driving was stolen. I did a Google search and was unable to find any evidence to support this claim.) The justice system of a reasonable nation would not throw the book at people of color accused of petty crimes while being lenient toward rich white offenders guilty of much more serious offenses. But the United States is not reasonable. The United States is a narcissistic nation now indulging in narcissistic rage. Therefore it is violently projecting its own dysfunction onto people whom it has tried to groom to be scapegoats and receptacles for its rage, targets whom it blames for its own dysfunctional behavior.
I have previously listed examples of scapegoating behavior, but here is a new example of scapegoating and “white-on-white crime,” a story about the Midwestern and Western towns and small cities which became boom towns during the now-expiring shale oil craze. As prices rose, a large number of Caucasian oilfield workers flooded these towns, bringing with them both lots of money and a sharp increase in crime. Now that shale revenues have fallen, oil patch towns and counties have fewer resources to fight the increase in crime that has resulted. But they haven't lost their ability to scapegoat, blaming, for instance, the sharp increase in drug use on “Mexican drug cartels.” There's only one problem with that accusation: the biggest drug problems in these towns are methamphetamine, prescription painkillers, and alcohol. You don't need to find a Mexican drug cartel to find these items. And meth is incredibly easy to make. The corruption in this nation's heartland is not the fault of Mexicans.
The wealthy and powerful, and those who enjoy American “white privilege” in this country are facing an existential crisis internationally, as the United States loses its place in the world. In their desperation to find some safe place where they can nurture and revive their identity of dominance, they are increasingly looking inward, at those victims within the nation's borders on whom they can dump their hostility.
One of the features of narcissistic abuse is that the protests of the victims actually fuel further narcissistic abuse. Why is this so? Because in the protests of their victims, narcissists see the reflection of their own power – so narcissists can say to themselves, “Look! I have power to inflict pain on other people. I have the power to make others say 'Ouch!'” If the only response of victims is to protest, the protest winds up feeding the abuser with "narcissistic supply."
Which leads to the second potential pitfall of protesting, namely, becoming entangled in the narcissist's response to your protests. Most of the time, that response can be summed up in one acronym: DARVO which stands for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.” The way it works is that the narcissist does something to injure a victim. When the victim protests the narcissist's action, the narcissist responds by Denying that he did any wrong, Attacking the victim's right to protest by attacking the victim's character or humanity, and Reversing the roles of Victim and Offender by casting himself as the victim of some imagined slight on the part of the real victim. In recent months, DARVO has played out thus: a crooked cop shoots an unarmed person of color under extremely questionable circumstances. When the victim's relatives protest, the cop Denies that he did anything wrong. Then the cop and his department, along with a bunch of right-wing talking heads, Asserts that the reason for his treatment of the unarmed (now deceased) person of color was that the cop was working in a high-crime area and the victim of his shooting – a member of a criminal race – somehow threatened the cop (even though a gaggle of witnesses denies this). Then the cop and friends Reverse Victim and Offender by protesting that “police lives matter” and that police work is very dangerous. "And besides, this entire ordeal has stressed out the poor 'widdle' cop, so let's support his feelings." For a sickeningly over-the-top example of an offender passing himself off as a victim, see this. For a more truthful look at the actual level of danger in police work, see this.
In interactions with a narcissist, DARVO too often leads to a response from the actual victims called JADE, which stands for Justify, Argue, Defend and Explain. The victims, still believing that the narcissist can be reasoned with, attempt to Justify the reasons why they deserve fair treatment. Then they Argue and try to verbally Defend themselves against the narcissist's ad hominem attacks. They waste their remaining breath on trying to Explain their point of view to the narcissist. While all this might work in dealing with a reasonable person, the narcissist will respond only by serving up a second helping of DARVO – along with a side dish of further abuse. Again, our recent societal troubles provide an illustrative example. After a crooked cop shoots an unarmed person of color, and after the ad hominem attacks from the cop and his allies attempting to justify his actions, there are usually protests. These protests provoke certain right-wing gasbags to get on television and loudly proclaim that aggressive policing is needed in minority communities because of the problem of “black-on-black crime,” yadda yadda. Then the victims of police brutality begin to speak up, citing historical examples and government statistics which prove beyond doubt that white people are at least as capable of serious criminal behavior as black people, that crime rates for certain stereotypical offenses are actually lower in Black and Latino communities than they are in white communities, and that White populations regularly engage in rioting and property destruction, usually for very, very stupid reasons. The victims then heave a collective sigh of relief, believing that now that they have told their side of the story, things will change. Except that they don't. Nor do the oppressors give the slightest sign that they have heard the victims.
If the Black Lives Matter protests are just a form of JADE'ing, and the response of “the powers that be” will only be more DARVO, then what is an effective response on the part of victims to the erosion of civil rights and equal protection under the law by the rulers of a narcissistic country? The answer is simple, but it is rather painful to put into practice, because the answer is No Contact. Why No Contact? First, because continuing to remain in contact with a society which wants to use you as its toilet bowl is not good for you. It can cause a great deal of psychological damage, not to mention damage of other kinds. (An unfortunate example: suicide rates among young Black American children rose sharply from 1993 to 2012. God damn America!) Second, as long as you remain in contact with a predatory system, you continue to feed the predator. This point leads to a discussion of what going “No Contact” with an oppressive society looks like.
“No Contact” takes place within three spheres: the economic, the cultural, and where necessary, the physical. In the economic sphere, we have seen historically what can happen when an oppressed minority withdraws its support from economic organs that are used as instruments of oppression. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is an extremely effective case in point. That boycott was characterized by people of color finding and devising alternatives to a system of transportation which was being used to oppress them. But the boycott was not without cost: in addition to suffering white violence, those who participated in the boycott had to endure the inconveniences of withdrawal from an oppressive system. And the boycott lasted 381 days before its goals were met. The Blackout Black Friday boycott was very little more than a symbolic action in comparison. We went back too soon to the system that is destroying us. (How many people of color shopped at Walmart after Black Friday 2014? Walmart is where the police in Beavercreek, Ohio shot an unarmed John Crawford to death last year as he was buying toys for his children.) No Contact may have to last a long time.
To see economic “No Contact” from another angle, here's a link to a 2013 podcast covering the urban adaptation strategy known as “Permaculture.” Permaculture is a strategy for building the household economy by smart agriculture and community building. The goal of permaculture is to make households and communities resilient in the face of the failure of large-scale commercial enterprises due to resource depletion. Many permaculturists are also activists with strongly leftward economic leanings, who oppose the destruction now being wrought by the present economic order. In this particular podcast, David Holmgren, a co-founder of permaculture, stated his belief that the task for permaculture activists is not to try to start a huge movement to reshape the dominant society, but rather to develop working models for resilience and self-sufficiency. His reasoning was that economic contraction would provide all the motivation required to get people to seek alternatives to a dominant and destructive system, and that they would naturally seek out people who had successfully created those alternatives. Once a critical mass of such people formed, their withdrawal from the dominant system would succeed in bringing down the system – or at least slowing down its destructiveness. This would be far more effective than shouting loudly in mass protests. The economic contraction of which Holmgren spoke is happening now. Can you teach yourself to get your needs met without giving your money to people who are trying to destroy you?
Cultural “No Contact” begins with throwing your TV into the trash. It begins with cutting yourself off from organs of mass media which are trying to poison your mind. It proceeds to home education of your children, thus saving themselves from an educational system which has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction. It also spreads to the people of your neighborhood, where you all get to know each other and learn to work with each other and celebrate each other without some intermediary trying to tell you all what you can and cannot do. In essence, you create a culture within a culture - a culture of health and support within and separate from a dominant destructive culture.
But sometimes economic “No Contact” and cultural “No Contact” are not enough. If a locality is physically threatening – if, for instance, it is like Ferguson, Missouri which has a large minority population, yet the local political system has been so screwed up by wealthy interests that there is no minority representation in the local government and almost no minority presence in the police force – and if the local government has become well-known for throwing many of its citizens in jail or slapping them with exorbitant fines for increasingly trivial offenses – then maybe it's time to move. Moving is traumatic, especially when you're poor, but it can be done. And it's better than remaining in place and losing your life.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Hoarders Of A New Currency
Wisdom is supreme.
Get wisdom.
Yes, though it costs all your possessions, get understanding.
Get wisdom.
Yes, though it costs all your possessions, get understanding.
– Proverbs 4:7, World English Bible
In the last several posts, I covered several of the points stated in my post, “Scapegoat Survival in Uncertain Times.” Now it's time to talk about becoming rich in things which cannot be taken away from you. Those things comprise the intangible possessions which a person has. One of those possessions is knowledge. Knowledge is easy to share, and it can't easily be taken away. Moreover, the right kind of knowledge is an essential ingredient of a sound education.
The word “education” has come to be loaded with a certain unfortunate baggage. Nowadays what is called “education” is really just a glorified form of job training. I want to propose a different definition: namely, that education is the “equipping” of the person who is educated. It consists of appropriate knowledge combined with practical application to produce a suite of tools for inhabiting and navigating a particular environment. The environment for which we must be educated is characterized by the following stressors and risk factors:
economic contraction caused by the depletion of natural resources and ecological degradation caused by pollution generated by the industrial economy;
gross and intensifying economic inequity caused by the robbery of the poor majority by the wealthy minority;
social unrest resulting from the oppression of the poor majority by the wealthy minority. This oppression is motivated by the evil pragmatism and unhealthy psychology of the oppressors.
Lastly, the prospect of international conflict caused both by evil pragmatism and unhealthy psychology within the ruling classes of specific nations.
The central challenge for decent people in the emergent uncertain environment is to live a meaningful and moral life without becoming oppressors or oppressed. As one blogger put it a while ago, “...most of us spend our lives as prey, economically and psychologically. Awareness is the key to understanding this; but once we understand it, we may transcend it, choosing, when we can, to be neither prey nor predator.” That awareness must take three forms. First, we must become psychologically literate, so that we can both recognize and promote healthy psychological development in ourselves and in those we care about. But psychological literacy must also equip us to recognize the psychological diseases of those who oppress their fellow human beings, so that we may not be damaged by the oppression. Second, we must become aware of the very practical steps we can take to avoid or mitigate the physical things oppressors do in order to oppress us. Third, we must learn to use scarce material resources to achieve the maximum benefit for the largest number of people with a minimum of waste.
All these things we must do on our own, at least for those of us living in the United States. Whereas in many other countries, the governments and ruling members of those countries recognize their duty to provide for the public good, the people of the United States have been drinking libertarian, “free market” Kool-Aid for such a long time that many of us no longer recognize our duty to each other. This is especially true of our rulers and wealthy elites. Indeed, the Republicans who have captured so many state governments and both houses of Congress are busy turning this country into a place where everyone who is not wealthy will be turned into the prey of the wealthy. (For an example, take a look at this doofus, who with his cronies wants to destroy Medicare and deny tax credits to the poor in order to increase military spending.) Don't expect the government of the United States or its wealthy citizens to provide for the common good.
In the United States, what we have been seeing for a long time is the denial of resources to the poor and the increasing of obligations on the poor. The denial of resources is accompanied by a great deal of propaganda about how the poor are “welfare queens”, etc, and that the poverty of the poor is their own fault. The increasing of obligations occurs via such things as raising of rates for essential utilities and the imposition of fines for an ever-expanding list of non-criminal infractions, with jail time for those who can't pay the fines. Thus, as reported by another blogger, in Baltimore and Detroit, tens of thousands of people have had their water shut off by the city governments, who have hiked rates by huge percentages. Baltimore's water department has for years been guilty of numerous billing errors. And in Portland, Oregon, one school district has received a brand new middle school, and the school district is issuing i-Pads to each of its students. However, students at another district no more than five miles from the district just mentioned do not have access to textbooks that they can take home with them.
If you're unlucky enough then to live among the poor, and to be counted as one of the poor, learning to use scarce material resources to achieve the maximum benefit for the largest number of people with a minimum of waste will be a very urgent task – especially as the more privileged keep trying to take from you the little that you do have. Nevertheless, it can be done. The beauty of learning is that people who are motivated and have the right resources can learn to teach themselves. The knowledge gained by self-education is valuable even if you don't go the traditional route of paying lots of money for an expensive piece of paper – oops, I mean, a diploma – from a university. For while there are many baristas and burger flippers who graduated from a university with an expensive piece of paper, there are not that many people who are educated.
One strong focus of your education should be mathematics and the sciences. Mastering these two subjects will give you a suite of tools that you can apply to a wide range of difficult situations. For instance, if you live in a house in a city whose water department has hiked your rates to unaffordable levels, how much roof area do you need in order to collect enough rainwater to live decently? The answer to this question will depend on a number of factors. Can you identify them all?
As far as math resources, I'd like to begin by mentioning the excellent “Next Step” math series available from Copian. The nice thing about the “Next Step” books is that they can be used for both children and adults, and they take a learner all the way from basic counting to beginning algebra and geometry. There are also algebra and calculus textbooks available from here and here and here. Textbooks for children covering the sciences can be downloaded for free from the Departments of Education of some of the States.
As you educate yourself, you must also seek to educate your community. This is why it is a good idea to form learning “clubs”: math clubs, science clubs, etc. It is especially rewarding to get kids involved in such clubs – especially when you know that the club is exposing the kids to a world of possibilities that the dominant elites would like to deny them. Here is a picture of a kid who participated in a Saturday science club solar energy activity last year.
She is from Mozambique and she lives in an apartment complex in one of the less “well-to-do” parts of town. Her clubmates were from Mozambique, Thailand and Myanmar. And here is a picture of a kid who was involved last fall and winter in a math club at another apartment complex in the same general neighborhood.
The kid in the second picture was in the school district which can't afford to issue textbooks. Therefore, the leaders of the math club downloaded a number of pdf textbooks onto thumb drives and handed them out to all the kids in the club. As long as the kids have access to a library, they will be able to read the pdf's. Long live the sneakernet. In the picture, he is working from a printed copy of one of the "Next Step" books.
There's a lot more to say about post-Peak education, but it will have to wait. In the meantime, here is an article about the role which education and teaching of skills played in helping Cuba survive the loss of the Soviet Union in the 1990's. And here is a link to a non-traditional education initiative started by the Philippine Government in order to guarantee access to education to all of its citizens.
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