A Common Center

by: JAWVMM

Mon Nov 30, 2009 at 18:18:34 PM EST

In a great post today, Moloch’s Children: Do Climate Skeptics and Climate Change Activists Need to Agree?, Sharon Astyk is speaking passionately about climate change, but what she says applies to all our ideological battles.

I’ve watched the battles of left and right, the old enlightenment political battles go on my whole life, quite literally, and mostly, I’ve watched scorched earth that left no one happy or satisfied.  Both sides have had their victories and defeats, some good and some bad has come out of this.  But the fixation on means here, rather than ends – that is, the fixation on alliances with political parties and traditional battles has done more harm than good, and cost us many good ends.  And in fixating on the scorched earth battles, we’ve built up barriers of  anger and contempt, a fixation on fights lost and battles [won], to the radical loss of both common ground and perspective about what matters the most.

...what we need now is a place to stand and build.  I get angry when I see someone believe passionately in something I think is deeply wrong – but I am adult enough to know that what matters is not that you believe as I do, but that we find a way to live and go forward into our common center.

the great mass of Americans and other rich world denizens whose central ideology is technological progress and consumption - Moloch is their god, the overarching center of their world is the urge for more and more comfort, more and more possessions, more and more wealth, more and more technology in complete disregard of the fact that these things are not possible....At the center of their value system is something empty and deeply wrong, and that emptiness stretches out and empties their world.  They do not know what is missing from their lives, so they seek out more to fill the empty space.

and the "People of the Center" as

anyone who has something other than Moloch at the center of their world, a hope for the future, an investment in the past, the love of a G-d, the love of humanity in general, an ethical paradigm that actually trumps the desire for more -  and thus perceives, sometimes instinctively, sometimes after long study, that we cannot go on this way, and must find something else.

She also points out that both categories cross all political, cultural, and religious lines.

I have been thinking about strategy for a while, especially since Clem's Change is hard and King Coal is shouting itself hoarse and deaf posts. Sam Pizzigatti says in his post on the Common Security clubs that Clem referenced

Over time, in a deeply unequal society, we come to feel almost totally on our own — and unprotected. Our society becomes a place where people don’t help each [other]. They fear each other.

The Appalachian Coalfields Climate Change Forum (which is an information source rather than a forum, more's the pity) acknowledged this problem here:

The Public understanding in the region about the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change and climate change policy suffers from ignorance, confusion, anger, fear, denial, and a sense of powerlessness -- at all levels, from elites to "man/woman on the street." Political and community leaders, including national political representatives from the region, are hyper-cautious about candidly addressing these questions and issues. Both within the region, and in how the region interacts on the national and global stage, the risk of unwise, wasteful, and counterproductive choices and actions is materially increased.

Cornel West says that such "progressives" must link their work to social movements, for the law as a system is not able to take on such inequity without the kind of support that social movements supply in less conservative times. ...  Critical theory has taught us to look deeply at the structure and not be afraid to change what isn't working. It should also have taught us to look at the cost of the changes we seek and know that when others are frightened of them, rhetoric won't remove that fear. We need public discourse, trust, faith in one another. This is one of the main reasons I caution you when an effective academic resource trashes its opponents. Like Cornell West, I find that counterproductive.

Astyk has laid out more eloquently than anyone I have read for a long time the need for finding the common center and working together - in coordinated individual and community action rather than dividing into opposing teams with litmus tests for belonging and relying only on the law.

Politics should be an extension of the natural order of the strong ruling over the weak.  Originally, this was the case, but then the weak founds ways to use their words and their money take power away from the strong, and they slowly turned politics into an arena for taking from the strong and giving to the weak.  Politics controlled by the weak is based on deceit. The only way to restore the natural order of the strong over the weak is to overturn the political order by any means necessary.

And finally, this article says activism "provides people with a sense of empowerment, of community, of freedom, and of transcendence."