Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!

Scoop

4 days ago

'Every action matters now. Every effort small or large counts. And moving, movement is the essential key to dispelling despair.' That directive sounds compelling, but it's the cri de coeur of the externally oriented activist mindset, and it is simply false.
Sadly, there are three reasons why it made no difference that an estimated 4 million to 6 million people marched in the streets of America on 'No Kings' day.
The first is that mass marches are no remedy for the moribund core of the American body politic that gave rise to the bare-knuckle fascism of the Trump Administration.
There's a tremendous hollowness and untruth behind this sentiment: 'Mass marches are public moments to show the rest of the world that we are the majority and we do not want and will not accept a king.'
Why do activists and pundits need to be reminded that a majority of Americans elected Trump a second time, and that polls are mere numbers, which don't measure the absence of passion in a benumbed people?
Mass marches, inveterate activists maintain, 'Are places to let off steam and make great art and music and network…the expression of our collective sorrow and outrage, thereby saving our own souls.' Bullshit.
Can a woman or man save their individual soul if the soul of their people has expired? Not if s/he denies the collective deadness that gave rise to Trump's authoritarianism, and finds false comfort in 'collective sorrow and outrage.'
The second reason is that once unvarnished evil is entrenched in positions of power, its course cannot be altered by the means that previously affected less mendacious and malignant governments.
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President Nixon is an example. As spiteful and malicious as he was, he was brought down by an intact people and an intact Congress. But the American people are no longer whole, and the checks and balances of the founders no longer work, which is why Trump is able to send in thousands of troops to crush non-violent protests in Los Angeles, and leave them there with impunity.
Once in power, only external war or internal revolution can dislodge a complete tyrant. Since humankind cannot have another world war without the total destruction of civilization, and since political revolutions belong to bygone eras in previously distinct cultures and countries, it will take a psychological revolution to rid the world (and not just America) of Daddy Dictator and his ilk, as well as his domestic and international sycophants.
The third reason marches and movements make no difference is that the attitude of 'strengthening the bonds with our own tribe' is very much part of the problem. Tribalism is primal source of the nationalism that tyrants like Trump exploit. Defunct patriotism is no antidote to virulent jingoism.
It's true: 'Your humanity is also your resistance. Don't underestimate its power. It's the only thing they can't take away from you.'
But it's egregiously false to conflate that with 'every action matters now; every effort small or large counts…and moving – movement is the essential key to dispelling despair.'
Engaging in collective movements without individual self-knowing means running away from one's despair through the crowd. Remaining with what is within one is the essential key to dispelling despair, and changing what is. Stepping back from the world, without cutting off and numbing your heart, is essential.
Joining some march to make one feel alive and part of something larger, under the illusion that numbers will make a difference, benefits neither the individual nor the society.
Ironically, the idea that we are separate from the world is also a feature of the mindfulness movement, which has given rise to the retreat industry and the wellness craze. Rather than providing life-giving water to the deserts of political life, the retreat industry reinforces the underlying individualism that has made marches and movements so ineffective.
After all, for the majority of people, mass marches hold the same appeal and have as much meaning as attending big concerts -- 'places to let off steam and make music and network.'
It comes down to what one puts first – collective action, or self-knowing? The first is an extension of externalization and busyness, the accepted excuse for not doing the spadework within, and thereby taking responsibility as a microcosm of humanity.
Despite the risk of isolation and navel staring, self-knowing is the truly radical course. Effective collective action flows from attentive individual inaction. Ten self-knowing human beings, who stand alone before working together, will make more of a difference than ten million clones that march together to ward off alienation, powerlessness and loneliness.
What's at stake is not the socio-political future of a precipitously declining former superpower, or any other nation-state in an utterly dysfunctional and defunct international order, but the viability of the Earth and the future of humanity.
Activism can't cut it. But self-knowing reflection plus shared revolutionary insight can.