Many people within the Occupation keep pushing the Occupiers to articulate coherent demands. They are concerned with solidarity, legibility, and with productivity. Without demands, they claim, we will not be a unified group, will not be able to recruit new members or retain the attention of the various media, and will not actually make any of the changes we are so desperate to make. I think they have some genuine concerns, but I wonder if they are moving too quickly.
The solidarity of demands is a solidarity of ideas and principles, perhaps, but this is not the same as being a community of people. When the primary connections we have with each other are based upon definite political, social, legislative, or economic demands and exchanges, the possibility of connecting with one another as human beings becomes much more difficult. From what I have been hearing and feeling, people have joined together here out of frustration and anger and fear and desperation, and, importantly, also out of hope. The kids here aren't just frustrated because they don’t think they’ll get what they want and need. They’re frustrated because they’re facing a world that doesn’t want what they have to give. All human beings are equipped to respond to need, to suffering. And this is good. Biologically speaking, we are the most fragile, dependent organism on the planet. Helping and caring - even about strangers - is so deeply instinctive that it can only be overcome with years of training. (cue: No Child Left Behind and capitalist ideology around the "ethos of greed") No generation in history has been so thoroughly "educated." But something's amiss. Something didn't take among many of these students, and it's now coming to the surface.
Their whole lives this generation has been fussed over and told they were special. And what does it all amount to? Now they are being told to put their specialness to good use by being acquisitive, greedy, selfish. “Become part of the system, and success will follow.” Do they want success? Perhaps they detect the scarcity and isolation implicit in the very notion of success. And so they are beginning to rebel not only against this system, but against their own training. “We’ve been duped! They only told us we were special so that we would feel deserving of all the consumer crap they push on us.” They are tired of being told what to want, and not being given an opportunity to lend assistance, to make a difference, to alleviate suffering, to be needed. As David Bowie sang so long ago, “And these children that you spit on /As they try to change their worlds / Are immune to your consultations / They're quite aware of what they're going through.”
And they are quite aware of what their world is going through: endless war; arbitrary power exercised against the weak; Wall Street thieves with no conscience lauded as engines of progress; the reduction of all noble dreams into mere consumer preferences; the blitzkrieg against the environment – as if it were an enemy that needed to be vanquished - for a quick buck; and, most importantly, the shrinking ability to make a difference. The world is bleeding, and they are being told to put the bandages and sutures away and help with the stabbing.
They are rejecting that pervasive model of the human being - now about 60 years old - that sees people only as isolated, calculating, paranoid agents determined to maximize self-interest. It's a model that comes out of the highly artificial Game Theory and Rational Agent Theory of the Cold War, but still tenaciously persistent in models of human experience.
They have come here because they are being treated as objects whose only function is to become a part of the producing-consuming machinery. Their hopes as well as their pain and suffering are thoroughly disregarded by the system, and by those in power. They have come here with their stories of loss and struggle. When I hear their stories, and when I tell mine, I know that we are people to one another. I know that we are creating solidarity of care and not one simply of policy and ideas.
Their whole lives this generation has been fussed over and told they were special. And what does it all amount to? Now they are being told to put their specialness to good use by being acquisitive, greedy, selfish. “Become part of the system, and success will follow.” Do they want success? Perhaps they detect the scarcity and isolation implicit in the very notion of success. And so they are beginning to rebel not only against this system, but against their own training. “We’ve been duped! They only told us we were special so that we would feel deserving of all the consumer crap they push on us.” They are tired of being told what to want, and not being given an opportunity to lend assistance, to make a difference, to alleviate suffering, to be needed. As David Bowie sang so long ago, “And these children that you spit on /As they try to change their worlds / Are immune to your consultations / They're quite aware of what they're going through.”
And they are quite aware of what their world is going through: endless war; arbitrary power exercised against the weak; Wall Street thieves with no conscience lauded as engines of progress; the reduction of all noble dreams into mere consumer preferences; the blitzkrieg against the environment – as if it were an enemy that needed to be vanquished - for a quick buck; and, most importantly, the shrinking ability to make a difference. The world is bleeding, and they are being told to put the bandages and sutures away and help with the stabbing.
They are rejecting that pervasive model of the human being - now about 60 years old - that sees people only as isolated, calculating, paranoid agents determined to maximize self-interest. It's a model that comes out of the highly artificial Game Theory and Rational Agent Theory of the Cold War, but still tenaciously persistent in models of human experience.
They have come here because they are being treated as objects whose only function is to become a part of the producing-consuming machinery. Their hopes as well as their pain and suffering are thoroughly disregarded by the system, and by those in power. They have come here with their stories of loss and struggle. When I hear their stories, and when I tell mine, I know that we are people to one another. I know that we are creating solidarity of care and not one simply of policy and ideas.
The systems of policy, of economic formula, of law and order – are all ways of measuring what we are and then telling us what to do, without ever knowing or caring who we are. When we cohere around a set of demands, we play that game. When we become merely a set of ideas or votes or a quantum of economic impact, they simply measure and adjust. They “fix” our problem, and then quickly devise a way to break our humanity in some new way. We can resist becoming an object of their power and systems when we resist reducing our humanity, our stories, our struggles, and our pain, to object, ideas, demands, and policies, in this way. Their system and their ways of thinking are simply not equipped to recognize people as people. It is precisely in being a who to them instead of a what that we retain the possibility of ultimately breaking their machinery.
Like most of you here, I cannot get behind every specific political action against corruption, or corporate power, or the degradation of our environment, or the loss of our constitutional rights. And this is simply because I feel overwhelmed with the enormity of the crimes against my – our – humanity. A jobs creation bill won’t fix what’s wrong. A law protecting workers rights won’t fix what’s wrong. Reversals of judicial interpretations about corporate so-called personhood won’t fix what’s wrong. Stronger enforcement of environmental regulations won’t fix what’s wrong. Eliminating the Federal Reserve won’t fix it. Even jailing the Wall Street criminals – satisfying as that would be – won’t fix it. I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t vote or push for this or that economic policy or political change. There is often some good, perhaps, that can come from specific political and social action. But these particular actions – these demands – can be only one small part of what we do. And we must resist reducing ourselves to only this or that policy position or vote. There is so much wrong, and so much that has been going wrong for so many years that there is no policy fix or set of fixes for a system that has been fundamentally designed to benefit the very few at the expense of the many. There is no fixing a system that sees only economic data points, or merely counts votes “for” and “against,” or measures each of us in terms of our dollars earned and spent, or surveils our activity in terms of threat to the system. There is no fixing a system that does not see and hear human beings.
But here in this sacred space, sanctified by our being with, we can and we will see and hear and touch one another as human beings. Speaking for myself, I cannot be reduced to a “for” or “against” this or that policy and still Be. Right now, I am simply trying to occupy. Occupy Where and Who I Am. Be where I am. And I can Be for: for community, for connection, for a thriving planet, for humanity, for a shared future, for hope, for being heard and cared about, for my own healing, and being moved to heal another. I can Be for your story, Be for my story, and Be for the story we are telling together. My hearing and my testimony is my offering to you and myself, and my occupying of this space together with you. It isn’t easy, but I am listening. I hear you. Tell me your story.
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