Personal Growth and Social Change (Part 1)
by: Miki Kashtan on August 8th, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Many of us who practice nonviolence carry a vision of a world that works for all, where everyone’s needs matter and people and the planet are cared for. None of us know what will or could bring about our vision. Will it be a miracle of a single leader transforming the cultural assumptions and practices? Will it be a world collapse which will create a void and an opportunity to restructure society? Will it be a critical mass of people who inhabit different forms of human relationship? Will it be a nonviolent revolution? Will it be alternative structures that gradually attract more and more resources and people to them? Or will it be something else none of us can imagine?
Is “Being the Change” Enough?
Not knowing, how can we predict what actions that we engage in could potentially lead to social change? Here’s how one reader has expressed this challenge: “I don’t have the clarity I would like about your distinction between personal growth and social change work. Particularly within the NVC [Nonviolent Communication] framework, where we intend to create change without coercion. We can model the values we want to see; we can invite, request, even try to persuade or instruct when the occasion seems appropriate, but we’re not forcing change on anyone. And so a big part of the force for social change that I am imagining comes from being the change that you want to see in the world, which to me sounds like personal development.”
Not knowing what leads to change, I am holding great humility regarding what I am about to say. I really don’t know.
Understanding Structures
Although I can imagine the possibility that if enough individuals undergo a personal transformation the result will be structural and systemic transformation, I have serious concerns about this approach. I do hold that organizations, governments, and other social structures are fundamentally based on a set of agreements, usually implicit, to which individuals give their consent, usually unconscious of having done so. Nonetheless, I also believe in the essential necessity of thinking and acting on the systemic/structural level, not just the personal level. What does it all mean?
Here are four examples of what structural change can mean:
- Changing the way the economy functions. Our current economy is based on exchange and profit. Other models exist. For one example, an alternative economy could be based on gifting and needs.
- Changing the way governments run. Current governments have executive power resting in one or few individuals. One other example could be a government based on citizen deliberative councils for policy decisions (see the Tao of Democracy, especially chapters 12 and 13).
- Changing the way the justice system operates. Most current justice systems are based on a retributive model of punishing people for what they have done. Instead, more and more experiments with restorative justice systems are taking place in the world. I am personally familiar with one such approach, called Restorative Circles, which was initiated by Dominic Barter in Brazil and has been operating with remarkable success since 2003.
- Currently, more often than not, international disputes lead to war. Instead, methods of international mediation can be employed to de-escalate and resolve conflicts and create robust agreements.
Beyond Personal Growth
On the personal level, the practice of NVC supports the inner work necessary to maintain a stance of nonviolence even in difficult circumstances. However, personal growth, “being the change,” is only one aspect of the work. How do we work towards creating change at the structural level? However we conceive of leverage points for structural change, we would need to organize and act with others to create shifts. For that, we need concrete practices to bring our consciousness and practice of nonviolence to beyond the personal, inner work. Their absence results in at least three interrelated phenomena:
- Organizations made up of people with a high degree of personal capacity are nonetheless mired in conflict, mistrust, and inefficiency.
- People with an understanding of and a commitment to interdependence are nonetheless operating as collections of individuals instead of a community of mutual support and effective feedback loops.
- Individuals committed to a vision of care, inclusion, and distributed power form and run organizations based on command and control practices, and others are unable to stand up to their leaders with love and clarity.
In my next post I plan on addressing how the practice of NVC can address all of the above phenomena as well as offer a perspective that allows for envisioning, and eventually designing, social systems based on attention to human needs, care for nature, stewardship of resources, and respect for the interconnected web of all life on this one planet we all share.
Links to the complete mini series: Parts One, Two, Three, Response to a Comment on Part 3 Four, Five, Six and Seven.
Looking forward to the next part.
One thing I notice is that as a less-empowered person in a classist social mess, being the change I want to see is often futile once I bump up against those who are more/totally-empowered; the structure of disempowering by the empowered necessarily means the only way such a structure can change is by those who are maintaining and running it have to change; people completely external to me and well beyond my “social” groups or circles. While inspiring, “being the change” for a lower class person really ends up meaning, just try not to be a jerk and duck when you hear the sirens/lower your gaze in the presence of the powerful/authorities (deference, though humiliating, will usually save one’s butt).
I guess for people down here with me, it’s more a matter of waiting on others to fix the system they setup and rigged for themselves at my expense, then when those structural changes have been made by those others, I’ll have practiced enough on my own little limited level to step up and partner-up in such a new/changed structure.
OTOH, the one or two times something like that has occurred, albeit on a much more limited level, the empowered quickly realize they don’t want lowers to be their partners in these new structures and quickly shut it down and go back to the old way. I’ve seen “progressive” organizations do this frequently (revert back to their cults of personality rather than actually sustain the more vulnerable/democratic changed structures). Again, for the lower class person, being the change is strictly personal. For any actual change to occur, it has to come from the empowered owning class who made things the way they are and established the corresponding rules. The intersection of personal growth and social change for us is outside our own spheres of influence.
Hopefully it won’t always be that way, but that’s not up to the lowers, only the owners.
This analysis of our current situation causes me to look forward to reading more about anticipations for a better future via NVC. While there is a debate under way (see “Immanent Frame” on Geroulanos’ new book about “anti-humanism”) over the human prospect for progress, I believe that we need a positive specific program for policy and action.
My experience with non-violent action during the civil rights and anti-war activities showed that it can be effective, so long as communities of people are committed to acting cooperatively. In our competitive ethos, cooperation is hard to come by. Yet positive examples do attract and build such communities.
At the theoretical level, Jurgen Habermas offers resistance to anti-humanism with his analysis of communicative action. I have read that he is rediscovering American transcendentalism, specifically John Dewey, whose pro-humanism philosophical foundation appeals to cooperative prospects.
I am convinced that our most likely global future has been adequately described by “Collapse” and “Planet of Slums.” So change is most likely to be forced upon us under circumstances that ;promote coercion and dictatorship. It is always difficult to build a community but the need already exists and will become even greater in decades ahead.
If truth is found more in working with antinomies rather than simple positive delarations, then Miki has asked one of the crucial questions for anyone resonating with words like”progressive,” “left” or “the movement”.
Many, many folks do small good things, both individually and in groups. Yet we live with the death and destruction practiced by most of the structurally signicant power-wielders, including not only warlords small and large, but notably our government and transnational corporations. The farthest i’ve seen the “personal” folks go is to become healers, and work with the positive potentials of grief, as in Caroline Casey’s treatment of the massive Pacific albatross-starvation that comes from the birds mistaking our garbage — plastic — for food.
Much more to be said, but on to Part 2….
I don’t think these “agreements” are “implicit” – I think they are quite clear. Do exactly what we tell you, without complaining, no matter how unethical, weird or humiliating, and you get to keep your job. Pay your taxes, and you won’t have your property seized by the IRS. Pay rent and you won’t end up homeless. Don’t try camping in the park, either. Obey the rules, or we will put you in prison (don’t protest outside the “free speech zone” – but if the government invades a foreign country and millions die, that’s ok). It takes a really, really strong person to opt out of these “agreements”. However, we can withdraw our active support and redirect our energy in some ways. We can avoid taking jobs that cause harm or that violate our conscience, we can spend our money in thoughtful ways by choosing small or local or cooperative or progressive businesses, we can reach out to like-minded people and try to form alternative communities, whether physical or virtual, and try to support and defend each other. We haven’t been reduced to complete slavery yet, but too many people adapt and accept the dominant value system, because to do otherwise involves lots of risk and hardship.
“I do hold that organizations, governments, and other social structures are fundamentally based on a set of agreements, usually implicit, to which individuals give their consent, usually unconscious of having done so.”
Thanks to a helpful article