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  • In The Right Spot After All

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                      Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

    “To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

    Goethe captures the crux of a dis-ease I felt at the dam conference, a dis-ease that probably explains more of why I didn’t end up in academia than other explanations I often give myself.  In short there was more talking than acting and even the references to acting were talking and more it was talking about talking to partners and allies in their language.

    Thinking of the caliber in this dam conference is, however, not easy; in fact, it is hard and many of the people who spoke were clever, insightful, giving a new spin to old ideas, my favorite example the delta subsidence problem. People who can take a long held belief and shake it inside out until it reveals it’s underpinnings have my utmost respect.  I hope sometimes I can reach that level in my own thinking; it’s the way change can get started, the reframing of the old in terms of something new.

    Who would think, for instance, that sea level rise inundation of coastal delta areas might be alleviated by removing dams upstream?  So, first you have to have the new idea, the problem and its source carefully linked before action can target a plausible solution.

    Still, I find myself impatient with just this kind of thinking, that is, root and branch thinking that stops without corollary action.  In the end I’m more of an action guy, much as I love the abstract, the analytical, the historical, the exegetical and the hermeneutical.  I want to change the way dams impact rivers and streams, whether it be by better design or by removal or by prevention.  I want to leverage the way dams have become visible issues into victories for the planet, victories that turn us toward a benign human presence on the face of the earth.

    In the end I would have been unhappy as an academic, I see that now.  I would have strained against the confines of the classroom and publish or perish.  As it happens, I’ve been able to continue my learning on my own while engaging pretty consistently as a change agent.  Probably led the life I was meant to lead after all.  Good to know.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dreams Faith and Spirituality GeekWorld Great Work Humanities Myth and Story Politics 📎and tagged

  • Political Action: It’s Personal.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                              New Moon (Wild)

    Politics.   Sigh. I feel bad for all those bright young things who worked their butts off for Obama and instead ended up with a President.  To be political is to be cynical.  All of us who move outside the coziness of home and into the political fray will confront a sobering realization:  change is slow and change that isn’t usually wrecks something in the process.

    Not only that.  The change that is possible at any given time has little to do with the righteousness of the cause, the clarity of the facts and the obvious path to a particular solution.  The reason?  All things happen within a context and nothing, let me repeat that, nothing transcends context.  Consider early efforts against Jim Crow legislation.  Look at the long protest against the Vietnam War.  The twisty, tortuous path of health care reform.  Political financing.  Matters related to a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

    Climate change is the issue of the current moment that I would nominate as most likely to transcend.  Has it?  No.  Lobbyists muddy the water with false research.  A few loud conservative voices make it seem as if the questions are still in debate, when they are not.  The long curve of climate change effects makes change now difficult.  Not to mention health care reform is in the pipeline. We may fail on climate change because this mix of factors makes us dither until New York is underwater and the south a burnt over district.  Time will tell.

    Why not give up then?  If change is unpredictable, then why give any effort at all?  So many people drop out because their first taste of politics or their first taste of issue advocacy ends in failure.  Or, worse, ends in a success that does not produce the results imagined.

    Here are three reasons for staying on the ancientrail of political life.

    1. Change does happen. It may be slow and off point for a long time, but we no longer have slaves or Jim Crow laws.  A woman’s right to choose an abortion has remained steady in spite of considerable agitation.  Gays and lesbian can be married in several states now.  The Vietnam war is over.  If many activists had not stayed engaged, then none of these long term victories would have happened.

    2. To give up gives the victory away. If Martin Luther King and his generation of civil rights workers had decided the work had cost them too much, or the probability of success was too low, we would not have an African-American president or burgeoning African-American middle class.  If the folks in the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter had backed off in their support of the Boundary Waters because the opposition was too strong, there would be motorboats now where thousands, hundreds of thousands canoe quietly.

    3. If not you, who?  If not now, when? Politics is personal.  We have, in a democratic society, a gift of political engagement that matters.  It matters, though, only if you engage.  This is a question of authenticity, of being the person you are and can be.  At this level success or failure does not matter.  What does matter is that you listened to  your own heart; and when it said, here I stand, you stood up.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged