Personal Growth and Social Change (Part 3)
by: Miki Kashtan on August 28th, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Crossposted from The Fearless Heart. See Part 1 of this topic here and part 2 here.
The person who raised the question prompted this mini-series concluded that social change takes “groups of people organizing together [and] taking visible, observable action in the world to help create change.” In this next post I want to take on the extension of the practices and consciousness of nonviolence to the group and organizational level.
Maximizing Willingness for Efficiency and Sustainability
Two challenges that people face when coming together to organize and work for change are how to function together efficiently in the face of different opinions and wishes, and how to sustain the energy over time. Focusing on willingness as an organizing principle of group functioning addresses both of these challenges.
Willingness is distinguished from preference on the one hand, and from any notion of what should happen on the other hand. Attempting to reach decisions that everyone is happy with is likely to result in more meeting time in groups than most people can tolerate, and is one of the obstacles many people experience to wanting to go to meetings and commit to working with a group. Even with time and heated discussions, often fatigue and resignation result in some decision being arrived at rather than a fully chosen decision that is acceptable to all.
In my experience, to reach collaborative decisions we need only focus on what people can live with willingly and distinguish it from what would be their most desired outcome. With sufficient facilitation skill and attention, many decisions can be arrived at with surprisingly little tension and within a timeframe and level of engagement that are much easier for people to experience. The essential tools are the capacity to identify and create collective ownership of needs, and the skillful application of a search for willingness rather than preference. The underlying principle is the unwavering commitment to having everyone matter, holding everyone’s needs with care. Both the commitment and the skills are necessary to be able to maintain togetherness in the face of differences.
On the other end of the spectrum another common challenge results from doing things because of thinking they should happen rather than because we are truly willing to do them. Taking action based on “should” thinking can often breed resentment or burnout. I am more and more able to accept having things not happen rather than having them done without true willingness, so that whatever does happen can be sustained over time without stress. I think of it as a deep discipline to be willing to let go of whatever has no one willing to do it. I was inspired in that growing commitment by the words of Thomas Merton: “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.”
Leadership and Power
One of the challenges I see to people organizing to create change is what I see as an aversion to power and authority. After experiencing the ways that power can be used to create so much harm, many are understandably challenged to see a useful role for the exercise of power, and prefer to create leaderless groups in which everyone participates equally and fully in all decisions. As I already suggested above, in the absence of skillful facilitation such practices often result in conflict, and/or inefficiency, and/or lack of decisive action (often, though not always, as some groups do function for years on the basis of fully participatory consensus).
If we are to succeed in organizing large masses of people to create a world that works for more and more people in more and more ways, we will need to figure out how to offer effective leadership rather than no leadership at all. I envision structures that empower people to take leadership and responsibility and offer support and feedback to those who do. Instead of abdicating power as a way to ensure we don’t recreate structures of domination, I see a possibility of shifting from using power over people to using power with people, in ways that attend to everyone’s needs. The challenges are immense and yet surmountable.
In my next post I plan to attend to two remaining pieces to complete this mini-series: what are the kinds of actions that people might take which would be consistent with a nonviolent approach to social change, and what are the systemic implications of a needs-based approach to social organizing.
Links to the complete mini series: Parts One, Two, Three, Response to a Comment on Part 3 Four, Five, Six and Seven.
Miki, I sense that this is very deep wisdom, but I don’t know how to put much of it into practice. I tend to learn initially better by stories and experience, including role playing, and only later understand the conceptual issues involved–even if I have read them before hearing the stories or experiencing the new methodology. Do you have any stories, actual or fictionalized, to illustrate starting and running a group or project in which the leader(s) know that “The essential tools are the capacity to identify and create collective ownership of needs, and the skillful application of a search for willingness rather than preference.” I assume that your later point, about effective leadership, is in most cases needed for the earlier points, about teaching and using “the essential tools”, to be realized. Most of us don’t know how to do this, so will depend on leaders who do, before we can experience the value of these tools.
I can imagine, for example, a newly forming group in which one person has more drive and insistence for their ideas than others do, and so the others become willing to put aside their misgivings about this person’s level of judgment in order to keep peace in the group and “do something” rather than get embroiled in long arguments. How does one of the quieter people in the group lead the group towards a better mode of operating, or is this in fact a reasonable way to have gone in the first place, because it depends on people’s willingness to go along rather than their preferences?
Well, Miki, your words speak volumes to me, and i found this a very nicely juxtaposed piece to the many theoretical essays that prompt us to action. Here are some observances and cautions, and wisdom for facilitating concerted community action.
What is exciting to me about your applied theory here from what i can see is the focus that keeps surprises and freshness alive for insight and effective collaborative action, by focusing on willingness rather than preference.Or, on ability and energy, ideas as opposed to ideology, and commitment to shared problem solving rather than preordained perspectives.
Anyway it is always nice to have examples of such principles in action, and i do not doubt that for you choosing which one(s) to include could be a nice challenge.
Moving stuff. Including moving. Dave, Aminah , and yours truly to want examples. For myself, at least, that is not only pedagogy, but hunger. And in the same emotional breath comes inquiry about the relationship between the “technology” of task-oriented discussions, and what happens (or doesn’t) here, in a blog such as this one. (And as I see the personal/political, micro/macro conundrum as central, and very Tikkunish, I am also disturbed by the paucity of response.)
Now I think we are on the other border of the Merton-territory Miki noted above. Multiplicity of causes can be so much a trap and evasion, frazzling one towards desperation and violence. Yet the origin of such trainwreckage can be considered a misapplication of “the unwavering commitment to having everyone matter,” without becoming numb or shattered from the multiple agonies that haunt both personal experience and our struggling nation and planet.
I think that mainstream quasi-progressive leadership (eg., both Clinton and Obama) believe that the necessary technology of “focus” is mainly a matter of being clever (thoughtful, smart) enough. Of course it is not. Knowing that, I feel the pull of “wisdom,” as I sense it in people such as Miki, Aminah, and a healer friend I know, who lives 3000 miles from me. My “wisdom” so far is mostly the acknowledgement of these “magnetic fields.”
I guess my tactic has been that of portraying the issues that affect this country. I’m ashamed to admit, that the use of hatred, has in time been very able to organize people with speed. But I also produce love to convey the reason why there is so much animosity. It is because of the absence of respect and love for the future, the lack of acknowledging the present, and forgetting what history has shown us. I know I must stay committed to non-violence. But I speak with the anger and discontent of the past, present, and future. I know that I would be more effective if I were to not be so outspoken about politics. But really I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t have enough patience to just sit in meetings. But I have been very frozen as well. Using the full extent of the 1st amendment, to express a radical perspective about issues that affect the entire planet. Either with deep anger, or intellectual acceptance of any other ideology. I guess I have decided to be a part of something greater, in a singular manner. Not trying to lead, or have any other person do what I do. I just can’t stop thinking about horrible calamity befalling our entire civilization. So I continue to think and speak the way I do. I would be more effective if I wasn’t so damn angry at everything. I know being ruled by hatred for things you have no control over is maddening. But I try to stay as still as possible, while emitting waves of energy. I believe in peace and non-violence. But reading, and seeing all the destruction around this planet has made me very cynical. It’s not about hatred for capitalism, or corruption, or pollution. It’s about knowing there is a better way, and it’s not being done fast enough. It probably won’t be done at the level that it needs to be. So it just leaves me in a state of, who gives a fuck, so I might as well as continue to be angry. I wish people would unite like they used to. But it’s just so damn depressing how things have been working out Geo-politically. Maybe there is hope, maybe there isn’t. I’m just not sure anymore…
Juan’s reply makes visible how pain may push us toward both depression (pain directed inward) and anger (pain directed outward). Yet it comes from his heart.
In response, my heart finds a very small smile, and says: Animo, mi hermano.
Sometimes a prayer/blessing is not so different from a wish for courage, for all of us.
Amein.