Vision, Dissonance, Determination

I was arguing with a friend who insisted that outrage was necessary for social change. I don't think that's always true. I would like to claim, like the Buddhists that I am reading, that my motivation to change things is simply compassion. Unfortunately I'm not sure that would be entirely true either.

When I look at why I am so insistent a believer in the need for social change, while I do think that compassion is in the mix, and may have even been the instigating factor, what keeps me going is a combination of vision, dissonance, and determination.

I talked at the beginning of this blog about analysis, vision, and strategy. (See my post on Creating Social Change, 7/2/08.) In a way, this is the same bit on vision--except that this is visceral. This is no longer intellectual--it's personal. I can almost see a different society. I know a little of what it would look like, a little of what it would sound like, I can almost tell you what it would taste like. It lurks constantly in my peripheral vision. I know that another world is possible. I just don't know how to get there.

This creates dissonance. When I look around at the world that I live in, it is so far from what I can see, how I believe we should be living, where I want to be and where I want the world to be, that it almost hurts. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way; it's true of many of the writers that I read and often quote: Starhawk, Joanna Macy, Francis Moore Lappé, Richard Heinberg, Fritjof Capra, Arundhati Roy, and lots of the utopian authors I've talked about. (See 'Annotated Utopia' post of 7/14/08.) I could throw in a lot of other, now departed, folks: Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Emma Goldman, Gandhi, and on back to at least the Diggers of seventeenth century England, and probably long before that. Not everyone had the same vision, but there is a lot in common and some of that is the realization of the chasm between what is and what could be. I just read a column by George Monbiot where he declared that the talks in Copenhagen weren't only about climate change, they were about redefining ourselves, about the question of whether we create another world or whether we continue on the road we are traveling. He sees it as a "global battle between expanders and restrainers". I see it as a fight for the future. I see it as dissonance between what we have and how things could be.

And that dissonance leads me to determination. The only way things are going to change is to do something. These posts are one attempt to do something. Building community is another attempt--a try at gathering likeminded people in the hope that together we can accomplish more than any of us can separately. I go to meetings and demonstrations and try to figure out how to support people who are pushing for social change. It may not be much, but as Gandhi said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it." So I do. I keep focusing every day on wanting to make a difference in the world. I see how things could be, I see how things are, and I keep looking for ways to push things a little further toward where I believe they must go.

It's not that it's a nice idea. It's that I feel compelled. It is what my life is really about.

Another world is possible. I know it.


Quote of the Day: "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, if you listen carefully, you can hear her breathing." - Arundhati Roy