What are your responsibilities as an "awake and aware" social activist?
For a while now, I've been impatient with, and frustrated by, what I see as wishy-washy responses to what's going on in the world by people who claim to be compassionate social activists...
These people criticise my perspectives and actions, saying there's no place for anger in creating a peaceful future. They suggest that giving energy to the negative will increase it and that focusing on the positive will undo all that is so damaging in our world.
I can't buy into that attitude/belief system.
I think there's a place for righteous anger and action to call attention to the things that are hurtful in our society. Jesus got pretty angry with the merchants in the temple and with those who wanted to stone the adulterous woman. Gandhi wasn't shy in expressing his anger at the British ruling India. Martin Luther King was pretty vocal - blunt in fact - in demanding equal rights for African Americans. Mother Teresa didn't soft-pedal on the poverty and disease killing women and children in India... In my opinion, those who say we should concentrate on the positive are in denial about what is really going on; they're overwhelmed by the imbalance in the world and are too scared to confront it. If they did really face it, what would that require them to DO? Would they be required to put it all on the line, risk losing their place on the ladder if they really named what is going on? If we name it and label it as unjust, don't we then have to own our complicity in the status quo, stop enabling, stop participating in the system that's creating and continuing this imbalance?
So how far should we go, then, in confronting injustice in our society?
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I agree with this, but if you are just anger and have no positive vision of where we want to go, then often you get burnt out before you get to the finish. I am angry about the injustices in the world, but I also now the power in visioning the better world. It helps you to see a goal, to have a path forward. Anger works short term. But all those names you stated also had a vision of what they wanted that was not angry but instead positive and it was there they moved, not towards the anger.
ReplyDeleteBe angry at injustice, but with positivity as the goal.
I agree with you David.... I have a vision for a better world, as do many others.... just seems that this world needs to fall completely apart before something new can be built... perhaps a bit like certain seeds needing the "destruction" of fire to activate their germination...
ReplyDeleteCertain seeds may need destruction of their seed coats but they are still alive inside and must be contained within a living ecosystem. If it all falls apart the seeds may germinate but will not continue to live. Even if you think of the blackened aftermath of fire with many tree trunks blackened and shrub and grass layers burned away, the teeming life beneath the soil is not destroyed. When it is then that soil is dead and will become wasteland rather than regenerating.
ReplyDeletethank you for the reminder, Anita... I'm hoping that our souls will be the earth, still teeming with life, and that, once the husks of the outer illusion are stripped away, something holistic will germinate and flourish...
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