saurabh: “we can do it!”?

saheli & gpuss: you’re both reminding me of the rosa parks section of a book that had too catchy a title to remember but was something like “everything you learned in school is wrong.” the gist: rosa parks was an activist, first. her role as tired-working-woman-wanting-to-sit was the national sales pitch; she herself had resisted the bus segregation several times before. “community leaders” were ready to do a legal challenge and had tried to start it before but had rejected several candidates. rosa was older, more reliable, less out-of-wedlock-pregnant, and gave good interview.

anyway the author retold the story because he thought people who didn’t know the organizing part got a little freaked out by such superheroic stories, thinking to themselves, “i’m no rosa parks, what can i do?” but rosa parks wouldn’t have been ROSA PARKS if she hadn’t been trying to bring about the right thing in a day-to-day way for a couple decades, making the connections she did, finishing high school, and everything else. it’s slow going when you’re working alone. it’s when you work with other people that myths emerge.

the hero thing has brought us to the brink, IMO. no green heroes. al gore is probably playing a rosa parks role right now, having been stuffed by a bunch of know–nothings who are the shame of the country. like montgomery 1955 there’s finally an opportunity to really get the crowd moving and make changes that have had support but no real way through the muck. 

Posted by hibiscus

Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions. It was on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and before any necessity had arisen for having his own writing examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with my head bent over the original on my desk, and my right hand sideways, and somewhat nervously extended with the copy, so that immediately upon emerging from his retreat, Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business without the least delay.

I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero23 out of doors. I stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very strange, thought I. What had one best do? But my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the present, reserving it for my future leisure. So calling Nippers from the other room, the paper was speedily examined.

As the bloggers say, read the whole thing. 

Posted by hedgey

As Puss points out, the culture of compliance is more important than anything else - and changing that culture does not necessarily mean adopting a culture of non-compliance . In fact, I think this is a really rotten way to do things, since mirror images are rarely congruent or meaningful in their own right. But adopting a different culture IS an excellent way to undermine power. What’s really tough is, what should this culture look like, and how do we create it?

I suggest the answer is: art. Not post-modern, nihilistic art, but life-affirming, positive art. Someday I’ll write about this in greater detail I guess. 

Posted by saurabh

Did it? While see it on a lot of posters and in a lot of collages, when it comes to basic freedoms like speech, press, religion, and assembly, the PRC still seems to have a long way to go. To you that image is a touchstone of courage, but to me that story is a shuddering lesson in what one must be willing to risk–perhaps for nothing. That man was pulled to safety back into the crowd by the fearful crowd itself, perhaps saving his life–unlike the hundreds of students and workers who were massacred, many of them shot in the back . He might very well have been executed shortly thereafter anyway .

In Vaishnav theology, there is an idea called the “opulence of renunciation,”– along with fame, physical power, resources, beauty, and intelligence, these are kinds of abstract power. We don’t want to “live in a commune” and eat what we grow”—we do not, generally speaking, posess this opulence, which is why it is particularly attractive. There’s also the idea of being detached from the results of one’s actions, doing one’s duty regardless of the result. That’s a kind of renunciation as well. Maybe Tiananmen shopping bag man was, in fact, detached from the results–from the possibility of death, from the impossibility of change–and that was what enabled him to do it. I admire that, I don’t mean to detract from his courage. The very possibility and existence of such courage is, in fact, something of a relief. But inspiring and hopeful gives me the sense that our appreciation of him is grounded in some notion like, “Oh look he did, so can I, just do this, everything will be fine.” Everything will not be fine. Some people will be shot. Some people will get crushed. Gandhi knew this. He spend decades of his life clearing it of all kinds of dross and entanglement and hardening his ability to deal with the crushing. It’s not a force one accesses in a single moment of epiphany, like Neo or Luke Skywalker. It’s a lifelong process that may lead no where. And it’s a lot easier if you don’t have any attachments, like, say, loved ones. Gandhi dragged his family along on quite a life–in a society and time whent the paterfamilias decided everything. And while they might have eventually decided it was worth it, and they were with him, that’s some rough dragging. He got independance for his country, and without minimizing that at all–I am so very grateful for what he and his fellow freedmom fighters did–please remember that he lost his own life and that his country got freedom at the cost of two or three gaping wounds that still bleed and burn.

I’m not disagreeing with anyone, I just think we should be honest about how bloody awful the consequences can be.  

Posted by Saheli

I’m not saying we all have to live in communes and eat what we grow, but we do need to be aware of the ways we comply with the state. Hedgehog is so right when he says that power can only be given and the power of the individual is awesome, truly awsome. The image of one man standing in front of a tank in Tiannamen Square mobilised the world.

Personally, I am a huge fan of Ghandi. He was utterly true to himself - walked the walk as well as talking it, and achieved independence for his country. There is hope, and hope always lies within us, we just need to access it.

Puss 

Posted by Glamourpuss

the folks at the helm now learned this lesson 30+ years ago and have been planning and building up to this act of piracy ever since. they did a good job, all the loopholes and wishful thinking are pointed their way. it’s their show to run into the ground.

you have to believe i am not being sarcastic or defeatist. i’m shocked-like-a-little-kid that the american system didn’t have better defenses against this. well no — people fought off the fixes. my point is the power that is being given or taken here was given years ago and the how-and-from-whom of taking it back isn’t as clear as it looks like it should be. this was never intended to be a populist government. (a couple weeks ago i dug around and found that the presidential election of 1800 involved barely over 1% of the country’s population. that’s our system today — more people can vote, petition, assemble, etc, but that early bias toward elites remains.)

yes i could have done more. what i did was wrack my brain for answers. but almost nothing you can say right now can convince me that i could have saved lives in iraq. that ship sailed years ago. maybe with the first OPEC boycott. 

Posted by hibiscus

Posted by hedgehog

GP 

Posted by Glamourpuss

Posted by saurabh

Posted by hibiscus