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  • Organize

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                                      New Harvest Moon

    “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Gandhi

    OK.  Heresy moment.  Being the change you want to see in the world will not change the world.  Paraphrasing Patton’s famous quote:  You don’t change the world by changing yourself, you change the world by getting other poor bastards to change it.  Change is a political as well as a personal process and for any personal change to become larger than one person, you have to engage others.

    Additionally, even if you change yourself, the world will not change along with you.  Here’s an example.  Let’s say you desire a greener world.  In order to achieve a greener world you decide to drive a Prius or a Volt, compost your household organic waste, put solar panels on your roof next to the wind turbine and grow your own vegetables.  Maybe even throw in chickens and bees to round things out.  You’ve changed yourself.

    Is that a bad thing?  Of course not.  Did it contribute to a greener planet?  Yes, but in a very, very small way.  Are you setting a good example for others?  Yes.

    Do people follow good examples?  Not so much.  People follow marketing, neighbor’s status symbols and their own values.  If others don’t voluntarily buy a Volt, compost, create renewable energy and grow their own vegetables, how will we get to a greener world?

    By government incentives on solar panels and wind turbines.  Feed in tariffs.  A city or county owned compost pile available to residents.  A government that creates more public transit and fewer roads.  National standards for mpg.  A carbon tax.  Any of several wedges that can create enough change to ratchet down the pace of climate change.

    How do we get these things to happen?  How do we get these changes to happen in the world?  Not by changing ourselves (though it won’t hurt), but by becoming strong enough politically to change how government and corporations treat carbon emissions.

    Even though Ghandi become the change he wanted to see in the world, he also organized and led a large non-violent resistance movement against the might of the British Empire.  It was the British Empire that changed.  And not because Ghandi changed himself, but because thousands came along with him in a political movement.

    To make the change you want to see in the world, organize.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • They’re just being Republicans

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                          Waxing Bloodroot Moon

    Latin.  Subjunctives, indirect questions, tense sequences.  Done in a bit of a fog, almost like school.  The verb conjugations still have not taken full root in my mind, though at this point I have had exposure to all of them, for all four tenses.  I’ve had exposure likewise to five noun declensions, comparatives, superlatives, pronouns, interrogatives, adverbs, adjectives, ablative uses, dative uses, participles and participial clauses, and subordinate clauses of several types with more  to come.  I’m almost three-fourths through Wheelock and have now translated  75 verses of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

    As unintended outcome, I have found myself metamorphosed, changed.  Just how, right now, is not all clear, but it has something to do with facing a challenge, a language, and coming to grips with it, incorporating it into myself.  Just why I waited until I was 63, I don’t know; fear, yes, time, yes, but the largest barrier was lack of purpose.  When I began to want to know what was behind the translator’s veil, and, in particular, when I wanted to know what was behind the translations of Ovid’s master work, the purpose emerged and a teacher appeared.  There is no time when we stop growing, learning.

    Later in the day I prepped for and ran the Legislative Committee for the Sierra Club’s weekly meeting.  This political season will not be kind to our lakes and rivers, our forests and wildlife, our prairies.  The burden will be laid at the foot of the Republicans, but really, they’re just being Republicans, giving political expression to the wills of those who support them.  No, the burden lies squarely at the feet of those of us who want to see our forests, rivers, moose, wolf, prairies and lakes healthy and whole now and into the future.  We have not fought with the same passion today as the Tea Party folk or the Christian Right or the Libertarians.

    Over the retreat at Blue Cloud I read two novels focused on the political life of Cicero.  At the end of a brutal period for his political perspective he said, “All regimes come to an end.”

    I agree.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Commentary on the news Faith and Spirituality Great Work Humanities Minnesota 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