Recalibrating the System

System is the word I use to describe that collection of values and habits that form our society. We could call it - the world, truth, reality, democracy or capitalism - but whatever we call it we must engage with it. 

It isn’t always fair. The system seems to be indifferent towards our needs and wishes but we are not free of it until we die. Anger, love, hate, indifference, are some of the emotions we feel but we learn to adjust our responses for the least pain possible. 

BUT NOW OUR WORLD IS IN CRISIS. IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO JUST BE REFLECTIVE OR REACTIVE - WE NEED BOTH. 

Sometimes we will not submit and we find ways to change the system by talking, listening and planning to recalibrate. This is the politics that rarely gets covered publicly, although there are voices quick to claim failure or success at the end of all our work.

This post reflects on some of the initial stages of making changes. 

1. Examine Anger

Anger is a natural response to feeling threatened. Injustice, racism, phobia toward any gender or sexual orientation, religious intolerance, war, crime, all make me feel threatened. The retreat from civility to targeting (blaming) means I am not protected by principles of law or compassion. Any cruelty towards living entities and nature, means our system is moving towards brutality and away from civil society. Any fundamentalism or ideological authority means we are all at risk of being pushed through a mincing machine to produce a brand.

What makes you angry, what caused the source of your anger? To examine this question is to own your anger.

2. Choosing Hate is Not a Way Out

When does anger turn to hate? What thoughts lead us to find blame and to invest in violent “solutions”? What feelings enable us to feel sympathy for those who have chosen hate?

I have felt hate towards others when I fear, but hate for me has never led to a resolution. Hate makes me feel powerless, unable to move forward. It just makes me feel bitter and cynical.

If hell, as the saying goes, is other people, if all the problems I face are the fault of others, the biggest problem is that I have no agency. It's all the doing of the other who is entirely separate from me.  Hate doesn’t have a way out, an exit.

What hate does achieve is centralized power for those who seek to gain by violence. Hate enables the war strategist to blame the people for the conflict.

3. Invite People into the Conversation

Recalibrating the system is not about what any one person thinks the problems are. Rather it’s a conversation where friends and neighbours have a space to express their thoughts and to hear what others have to say. Some rules are necessary for participants to feel safe: (a) we agree not to share what is said in the circle outside the circle; (b) allow everyone the opportunity to speak, (c) be clear in establishing all participants are equal and valid members - there are no experts, (d) no personal insults or attacks, (e) don’t define others by their opinions, i.e. sexist, racist, bigot, snob. 

4. Plan 30 Years Ahead.

It took centuries to be where we are today. Each decade came out of the decade before. It took the current system thirty years to move from a general acceptance of social justice as a basic level of protection, to the market driven neoliberal focus that says the arbiter of all things is dependant upon “jobs and the economy”. 

Self interest is in our human nature. What are we willing to give up for our own interest? If we see a continuum where at one end there is security and peace, and at the other, we are free to do whatever we please as long as we keep a gun in the night table, we need to ask ourselves where we sit on that bench and where we would like to sit. 

To draw that bench and ask people to label the different stations from left to right can elicit a conversation about where their preferred place would be, and how can we move towards that?

5. How Will Anger Lead Us to Truth and Beauty?

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede

 Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

 With forest branches and the trodden weed;

 Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought

 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

  When old age shall this generation waste,

 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

 ( Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats.)

How have we personally endured the last three decades? What gave us hope and courage to choose integrity over despair when faced with personal crises? What have we learned about our own strengths? How have our views of beauty changed?

These are timeless questions for those of us who shall not live as long as Keat’s  Grecian Urn.

Hedges: Our Mania for Hope Is a Curse

"There is nothing inevitable about human existence except birth and death. There are no forces, whether divine or technical, that will guarantee us a better future. When we give up false hopes, when we see human nature and history for what they are, when we accept that progress is not preordained, then we can act with an urgency and passion that comprehends the grim possibilities ahead." Chris Hedges

Desire, Design and the Operating System

It appears to me that human history and all its inventions dwell within a circle of power.  The glorification, the use and abuse of power interacts with our human endeavours mostly beyond our control. There are nations and people who possess power but not forever.  Anyone who has had power over others or things fears they cannot hold their control forever.  As individuals and institutions we create laws, culture (media) and ideology in order to maintain an illusion of control, to protect ourselves from chaos.  If I were to say this is the truth - it would be my attempt to wield power over this instant.  If I were to study philosophy, science, law and culture to the breadth and depth of my capacity it would be in order to influence the world.  It's too late in my life to attempt this even if I could, and even if I achieved it (500 years after William Shakespeare), it would be for a brief moment in time and place, and it would be a call for the next player to deconstruct this theory.

As news stories appear daily about our prime minister, the mayor of Toronto, or the president of the United States as they play out the extent of their given powers while they can, some may believe they possess powers beyond their position and that all they have to do is manage it well. But all political leaders must negotiate with the ever changing directions of power in their lives - the interests that support them and attack them are like tennis balls on a court which they must hit and send back to their opponents.

All that we desire and design is negotiated with other desires and designs which we cannot see or even plan for. There is always the pressure of the operating system projecting and sabotaging our strategies.

Our human history has led us to believe that we possess the power to control the world and we give those willing to stand up as leaders our loyalty, as long as they convince us they can protect us from the chaos of invading interests. But when our leaders break or reveal cracks in this promise we sack them with derision and ridicule.

This is a very violent game - to the senses of all who are involved.  It seeks scapegoats and sacrifices.  It allows millions to suffer starvation, genocide, indignity and madness, mostly because we cannot see power as something beyond our will, that no matter how much we worship and strategize, we can never control.

Because we are addicted to our own sense of entitlement we believe our leaders hold the key to our security through some kind of magic.  The esoteric rites are for high priests only, who are trained to keep the secrets of their submission to powers we cannot name or see.

So how can we live free of oppression? First by understanding that the oppressor is not a person or party or nation or corporation - it is a co-dependent game of denial.   They play their part sometimes well, sometimes appallingly, but the news reveals they are exhausted.  Even the largest corporation treating civil society like an obstruction to their goals, installing  puppet governments to do their bidding, can only maintain their illusion if we keep believing in it.

If power is within and beyond us then we must learn how to negotiate with power as we would with nature - that it belongs to history and the future, to our ancestors and our great-grandchildren.  This requires a sense of shared ownership and responsibility.