This is an intro box of which I'm not a big fan. If you're interested in why I'm calling you a pansy, keep reading.
During the apartheid era in South Africa, a tiny minority cruelly dominated the lives of the majority. Similarly, in the United States, where the scope and brutality of slavery has been largely glossed over, millions of human slaves were effectively subjugated by less than ten percent of their number. These are but two of the many instances where small groups have wielded disproportionate influence to oppress the majority. They all reinforce the same dog-eared notion: Perception is reality. (I know, profound concept, right?)
This perception of achieved power is a dangerous and powerful illusion, one that humans have become quite expert at reinforcing...and rebelling against. Consider the historic fights to overcome the illusory perception of minority control; the high profile struggles for racial and gender equality as well as those less well chronicled battles for food, water and energy independence. Today’s rebellion in Egypt is heavily rooted in the control of these very resources.
Governments, corporations and their handlers are adept at wielding the power illusion. And the rest of us are really good at buying into it. Even many of the nonprofits, activists and others who are working to achieve social and environmental gains have accepted and internalized an "us against them" strategy framework that has them feeling overwhelmed by the task of overcoming a seemingly megalithic power structure. This "they’re so big and we’re so small" attitude keeps us gunning for incremental and ultimately meaningless gains (though they do keep the coffers of ‘big green’ NGOs nicely filled). Increasingly few have the "we can have it all, right fucking now" attitude that is needed to save the best of what is left. Those who do are often dismissed as "crazy kids" or idealists who have clearly never experienced how things really work in Washington, D.C. Now, I’m not an angry person. Or a particularly violent one. (Actually, neither of those statements is true, but I wanted to set up the next line a bit) But when I hear media observers, nonprofit executives and so-called activists express similar sentiments, my arms and legs go shaky and my fingertips throb with the desire to bludgeon these people with their own ignorance. I imagine tossing their yellow balls into the air and playing a brutal game of tennis with razor blade rackets.
Our movements aren’t dying because people don’t care. We aren’t losing our oceans and forests for of a lack of funding. We’re failing at overcoming the opposition because we’re a bunch of pansies. The other team isn’t really that good. They’re not very bright, they’re clumsy and they don’t play well together. Which means that we’re really, really, really, really bad. And we’re bad because we buy into a reality that is nothing more than a crappy mirror inside a glass house hidden in a bank of fog. And because we don’t work out. And because we hate sports and eschew violence and revere ‘All Things Considered’. And if that isn’t obtuse enough, then I’ll end this sentence with the assertion that we all need to check our moral compasses at the door. The weight of the damned things is a handicap not shared by our opposition, who fly freer and faster without pockets full of fool’s gold. While we talk about the virtues of nonviolent protests, they sneer at the fact that we confine ourselves to the passivity of protesting in the first place. Protesting is not doing. We should not be wasting out time protesting when we have a world to reclaim.
Phew. Razor blade rackets. Moral compasses. Impotent protesters. I’m all wound up.
Look, add it all up and you’ll find that the entirely of our opposition numbers in the low thousands. We’re talking about key bankers, corporate CEOs, assorted politicians and heads of state. The people crafting the worldwide webs of control could all fit at one of Hugh Heffner’s barbeque parties (Hugh, if you’re reading this, send me an invite old timer—I’ve read everything Gay Talese has written about you and consider myself a fan). And guess what? We number in the...millions. The millions! So WTF are we waiting for? The rapid change we seek is at our fingertips. It’s there for the taking. For those of us who lack self-confidence and need to look to the past for support, there are numerous examples of peoples who have dissolved these illusions of power by doing, by taking, by asserting themselves in The Now.
We know where our opposition works. As I've pointed out, we know where our opposition lives. We know where our opposition dines, golfs and takes vacations. With our opposition completely surrounded, we need barely exert ourselves to overcome him in an instant.
The question isn’t whether we can make the changes needed. The question is whether we really want to. I don’t think that we do.