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3. If you take the risks in #1, in order to survive and thrive what do you need from: · yourself · others · institutions and organizations (public and private) When people with relatively high levels of privilege do not make a conscious attempt to assess accurately these things, we tend to overestimate the risks of acting and underestimate the risks of not acting. In other words, privilege makes it easy to avoid our responsibilities. So, it’s important for us to consider these questions carefully, not just for what we learn about ourselves but to help us in reaching out to others. We need support, and others need us to support them, to understand the risks they face. We need each other to encourage us to take risks. The prophetic path to love We live in a society that appears to be awash in political talk and religious activity. But, in fact, we live in a deeply depoliticized society, full of political chatter on cable TV but lacking spaces in which we can have meaningful discussions about how to address problems that politicians often ignore. We live in a largely soulless culture in which megachurches flourish, but many of us search for something beyond doctrine and dogma to help us answer questions that preachers often ignore. We live in a world in which politics is too often little more than public spectacle and religion is too easily cordoned off as a private matter. In such a society, we don’t need more politicians who avoid the pressing problems that have no apparent solutions. We don’t need more preachers afraid of the questions that go beyond the available answers. And we don’t need a prophet. We need prophets, ordinary people like us who are willing to tap into the prophetic voice that I believe is within us all. To speak in that voice is not to claim exclusive insight or definitive knowledge; it is not to speak arrogantly. To speak in the prophetic voice is not to proclaim the truth self-righteously but to claim our rightful place in the collective struggle to understand the truth, which we do in order to deepen our capacity to love. This we should never forget: We seek the prophetic voice within us to allow us to love more fully, something that Paul understood. When we call out injustice, when we find the courage to speak truths in a fallen world, it can be easy to be consumed by our anger and our grief, to lose track of that love. I know this, painfully, from experience. So, as we go forward to find the courage to speak prophetically, we should hold onto these words from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: [2] And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.[1Cor. 13: 2] Let us seek knowledge. Pray that we stay strong in our faith in each other, that we help each other find the courage to speak prophetically. But, more than anything, let us remember to keep our hearts open so that we do not lose the capacity to love, always more. Let us leave here today taking seriously -- as if our lives depended on it -- a question posed in song by one among us who regularly dares to speak in the prophetic voice, Michael Franti: “Is your love enough, or can you love some more?”[5] [1] Wes Jackson, “Toward an Ignorance-Based Worldview,” The Land Report, Spring 2005, pp. 14-16. [2] For more on this, see my 2003 interview with Wes Jackson, http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/wesjackson.htm. [3] Karl Marx, letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm [4] Johnson has written two widely used texts about power and privilege: The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005); and Privilege, Power, and Difference, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005). For more information, see http://www.agjohnson.us/ [5] Michael Franti and Spearhead, “Is Love Enough?” from the 2006 CD “Yell Fire!” That question also runs throughout Franti’s video documenting his trip to Iraq, Palestine, and Israel, “I Know I’m Not Alone,” http://www.iknowimnotalone.com/
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen's articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.
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