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The Presidential primary season gets us all thinking about the big picture: Wars and the threat of wars, what can be done to save the economy, and making our society more liveable. With many of the candidates dropping out that we had hoped for and worked for, and with the final result of the election almost certain to lead to some distasteful decisions in November, I think it's a good time to reflect on what we can do, as progressives, outside of the election process.
The bad news is that once again the corporate forces of oppression have successfully manipulated the political process in their favor. Bush has laid the groundwork for a police state that the next president, Democrat or Republican, would repeal. The Bill of Rights has been gutted, the FCC has okayed even greater media consolidation (can it get worse?), and it's looking more and more like political dissidents will end up in concentration concentration camps in the next ten or fifteen years. Obviously we have been completely ineffective in stopping this process, and only slightly effective in slowing it. You just can't fight that kind of evil.
The good news is that there are a lot of meaningful ways that we can do good on a more local level. The words that I find more and more encouraging every day are "Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good." Essentially the way I interpret this mantra is that we can't do much to stop bad things from happening, but we have at all times the capability to make good things happen, and that this good we do may eventually counteract everything that's going wrong. For example, we can still join a CSA and buy our food directly from local farmers (food production and transporation is the #1 producer of greenhouse gases in America), ride our bikes to work, live frugally and buy used, develop a network of friends with whom we share our love, energy, and wisdom, find someone we love and create a stable, lasting relationship, change our living situation so that we live, work, and entertain ourselves within the same small geographic area, work to educate our local population about climate change, America's global empire, and the (symbolic?) actions we can take to counter both. Finally, the most important thing we can do, in my opinion, is to continue to reflect on and question our own lifestyles and worldviews in order to create the negative social space that is necessary for any qualitative change.
Thinking about our beliefs and actions, and creating a solid identity for ourselves as distinct from our pragmatic social function and economic status, is the most revolutionary act in any age and much more difficult and costly than it might seem. Now I'm not saying that we should stop petitioning elected officials, voting smart, canvasing our neighborhoods, or acting as media watchdogs, or that we can simply think ourselves into a revolution. However, I am saying that at this time when the disappointment and despair is fresh, and hatred threatens to divide us, that we should stop and think about our long term goals for the life we want to lead, and want our children to be able to lead--a life of peace, freedom, beauty, and security--and how we can make that a reality within our zone of influence.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
