Conscious Choice: Social Activism in Cynical Times

November 1999

Social Activism in Cynical Times

Self-Help for Society

by Mark Harris

"It’s what everyone is talking about, media, politics, technology, high and low culture...all with a certain insouciant smirk that thinking people find compelling." —Advertisement for Slate, Microsoft’s on-line magazine.

We live in cynical times. In one recent survey, nearly two-thirds of employees were found to perceive their employers as neither trustworthy nor fair-minded. Indeed, the modern corporation can be a highly cynical, authoritarian organization, rife with manipulation and insecurity and offering little room for dissent. When it comes to politics, perhaps one veteran news reporter’s comments aptly capture the current state of affairs, "Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter because nobody listens."

Of course, there are good reasons to be cynical. Politicians do lie. Corporate CEOs do enrich themselves at their employees’ expense. Big money does corrupt elections. As for alternative perspectives or visions? Well, there’s talk radio, where hosts package smug, bullying skepticism and then mislabel it as intellectual daring. Or evening news programs where preferences are based more on personality or hair styles than discernable differences in viewpoint.

If you prefer more "in-depth commentary," you can tune in Meet-the-Press type luminaries who equate lack of passion or idealism with seasoned journalism. And, then, of course, there are the copy writers for Slate, who think that an attitude of hip, condescending detachment is an attractive, marketable quality.

Kind of a sour picture, isn’t it? No wonder so many Americans think politics and social activism are a hopeless game. Better instead perhaps to huddle around the home fire, do the best you can to treat people well, and leave the larger issues to the "world out there."

Certainly it’s an understandable attitude. Social activism in the 1990s lacks the cohesive power of earlier eras, such as that of the 1930s labor activists or the 1960s marchers for civil rights and peace. It can be easy to assume that our public efforts matter little now, especially when weighed against the enormity of society’s ills or the depth of entrenched interests and attitudes. But if the assumption is understandable, it is also mistaken.

The Gated Communities of the Heart

In his new book, Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999), Paul Loeb highlights many stories of activist individuals and communities and their sometimes quiet, sometimes clamorous, but always heroic efforts to bring a little more justice into the world.

Loeb, an associate scholar at Seattle’s Center for Ethical Leadership, wrote Soul of a Citizen in part to counter what he sees as a widespread sense of futility about the prospects for social change. Notably, he is among few social critics to address the politics of the self-help or New Age movements, such as they are. "A lot of people these days, particularly in the New Age community, wouldn’t say that they’re cynical," Loeb told Conscious Choice. "They say they believe in personal growth and healing, the power of individuals to realize themselves — all these legitimately good things. But then when we come to the larger society, they say there’s nothing we can really do about that. They succumb to what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls a‘radical sense of futurelessness.’ And that is actually a form of cynicism."

I would agree with Loeb that many otherwise positive-oriented individuals turn away from politics or a focus on social justice because to confront the reality of evil or injustice in the world is perhaps to confront their own underlying despair. And that is a psychological place they don’t wish to visit. Instead, they adopt what Marianne Williamson describes as a kind of "false positivism," rigidly averting their gaze from troubling issues lest they sully their personal peace.

Yet activism is not only alive and well, as Loeb documents throughout Soul of a Citizen, activism can make us alive and well. "Becoming more involved in our communities, making a commitment to social justice, can be a great gift, an opportunity to realize our souls more fully," Loeb remarks. "Conversely, when we retreat into what I call the gated communities of the heart, when we become indifferent or see ourselves as separate from others, we risk losing a vital part of ourselves. If nothing else, cynicism can be soul-deadening."

Everyday People Making a Difference

Soul of a Citizen is rich in examples of ordinary people getting involved in politics and seeing their own and others’ lives transformed in the process. There’s the story of the Long Island grandmother who saw a video at her church about young Salvadoran women working in sweatshops making clothes for The Gap. She was so moved by their story that she did something she had never done before, joining a grass-roots campaign to force the clothing giant to improve working conditions for those who make their clothes.

Then there’s the story of Loeb’s friend, Kelly, a massage therapist who had participated in many New Age self-actualization groups. Kelly had long been interested in helping people reconnect with their bodies. She considered it an important, nurturing avocation that gave her great satisfaction. But she had also come to feel frustrated with her New Age circles and what she perceived as a narrow concern with one’s own internal healing.

"There’s a process of dying that happens when you shut yourself off to the inequalities and injustices in front of you," Kelly told Loeb. "I felt I was living happily in my own small nucleus while the rest of the world decayed around me." Consequently, Kelly began attending a Unitarian church in Seattle, where personal spiritual development was closely linked with visions of social justice. She joined a group, Promise the Children, which provided tutoring services and campaigned politically for better access and quality housing, education, and health care for children. In time, she began to feel more empowered and less despairing about the state of the world.

There is also the story of Jorge, a young Latino man who had found a job at a small Boston mattress factory. He made only $7.50 an hour, but had been promised quick raises to $10 and $11 an hour. On the job, he learned to coil inner springs, build frames, and sew padding and fabric. He worked hard. But, a year passed and, as Loeb recounts, the promised raises never came.

Subsequently, Jorge learned that no one among the forty or so employees had received a raise in three years. Coupling that information with his concerns about some safety and health issues in the plant, Jorge decided to contact UNITE, a progressive textile union, to see if they could help improve working conditions. He also started talking to the other employees about why they deserved better pay and working conditions.

"I asked them how they felt about getting paid five or six dollars an hour, when in that same hour they made three or four top-quality mattresses that sold for eight hundred dollars each.‘Management doesn’t make five dollars an hour,’ I said.‘You can’t buy a house with that money. You can’t raise a family.’"

Jorge felt vulnerable that his actions would endanger his job, yet he was also more confident and energized than ever. Despite management threats, Jorge and his coworkers could not be deterred. A representation election was held and the union won. Even then, the company offered wage increases of only sixteen cents an hour, prompting the new union to strike. Buoyed by strong community support, the company settled five days later, offering significant raises, plus sick days, health insurance, and two weeks paid vacation.

The upshot of the experience was a new sense of empowerment. "These were old men and women who’d worked hard all their lives and gotten nothing," recalled Jorge. "I was so happy to see them [on the picket line] I almost cried. Now people dare to talk with the boss and tell him what they feel. They go by themselves to the office, with the problems they have. They learned to stand up for themselves."

You Create Your Own Reality — Sort Of

In a sense, Jorge and his co-workers were practicing what in New Age terminology some would describe as "prosperity consciousness." Yet it is rare that New Age writers, ministers, or others who use such concepts ever apply them to community issues or social campaigns to improve peoples’ situations.

"You are your own reality," proclaims Deepak Chopra. "You create it. You carry it around with you." Such thinking, Loeb notes, reduces the world to nothing but individual problems, accompanied by what he describes as a "willful insensitivity" to social context. How else could a woman attending a Seattle New Age conference explain that welfare recipients "just need to wake up and realize their mythic selves?"

It’s a common limitation in the self-help mindset. "You are not the victim of circumstances," writes "New Thought" minister Eric Butterworth in Spiritual Economics (Unity Books, 1993). "Admit to yourself that your present experience, even the condition of your bank account, reflects your present level of awareness....If, however, the cause is "out there" in people or circumstances, then there is little you can do."

Of course, it’s healthful to cultivate a positive, stress-hardy outlook. And we all have to take personal responsibility for our lives. Yet why if the cause is "out there," is there then "little you can do?" If a person cannot afford health insurance, is this only their individual problem, demanding only an individual solution? Might it also have something to do with a certain social reality, namely, that 45 million other people also cannot afford insurance? And is there no political solution to that problem?

"The most troublesome consequences of this type of thinking," concludes Loeb, "is that it exempts even the most powerful economic, political, and social institutions from all responsibility for the state of society. Take the extreme case of slavery. Who created that reality? Was it the slaves or the slave masters who needed to wake up and think about their actions? Such contemporary social problems as unemployment, discrimination, and inadequate health care may not be as dramatic as slavery, but no amount of positive thinking or self-actualization is going to solve them without common public action."

If the only reality is the one you personally create, and the challenge is only that of "saying no to negativity," then there is no room for legitimate anger at injustice in the world. Indeed, some would argue that anger is always a spiritual detriment, always negative. Imagine, Loeb wryly notes, if Jesus had proclaimed in Chopra-like fashion, "I was going to throw the money changers out of the temple, but I didn’t want to be a negative person."

Without the capacity for anger we "tolerate the intolerable," as the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a Yale chaplain who became one of the leading theologians to oppose the Vietnam War, once said. The larger challenge is not to avoid or deny our anger, but to express and channel it, appropriately and effectively, into positive action on behalf of human dignity and justice.

If Peace Begins with Me, It Continues with Us

The paradox of our cynical age is that at heart most people are good and well-intentioned. They value kindness and caring and, if presented with viable political alternatives, will often embrace ideals that promote peace in the world. There’s more awareness than ever of environmental issues, support for civil rights, gay and women’s rights — and a certain healthy distrust of those in power. So there is good reason to be optimistic.

Yet a sense of cynical disengagement remains prevalent, however benignly articulated. I’ve heard people explain how in their younger days they were caught up in protesting the Vietnam War, or totally devoted to some particular cause, thinking that peace was something existing outside of themselves. But now, years later, they’ve come to realize that their anger was really about the war raging in their own hearts. In their newfound "maturity," they’ve brought their focus now to where it should be, their soul and the work of inner healing.

Perhaps the antiwar protester did have anger in their own heart, rooted in some denial of love in their childhood. Certainly that is a legitimate personal issue. But that has little to do with the legitimacy in itself of their public actions to oppose an unjust war. Such thinking also misses Loeb’s point that social activism at its best is an act of giving, of connection and service to the community. As such, it can be deeply healing on a personal level.

"The issue really is whether dealing with human pain is something we should flee from, or something that is a strengthening part of life," concludes Loeb. "I believe the spiritual challenge is to make our private values of compassion and caring the base for what we must do in public life. It’s not my role to tell people what to do, but I will say, look at what burns in your heart, start there, and then look outward to the larger world."

Soul of a Citizen reminds us that our individual fates are inextricably linked to the fate of our world, and that the ultimate self-help movement is the one that expands the social parameters of what is possible. Consider even the very concept of "the weekend," which most of us today take for granted. Consider vacations, health benefits, and — lest we forget — the idea of democracy itself. These were all products of often tumultuous social campaigns by earlier generations of activists, visionaries, and rebels.

If peace begins with me, as one popular New Age slogan proclaims, then it continues with us, in our ongoing efforts to refashion the world for the good of all. For spiritual transformation, in its most holistic sense, cannot be separated from social activism and change.

Resources for Activists

Web Active. Comprehensive directory of organizations, issues, and resources for activists.

Soul of a Citizen web site.

Campaign for Better Health Care, 44 E. Main, Suite 414, Champaign, IL 61820. A state-wide coalition of nearly 300 grass-roots organizations organized to protect the rights of health care consumers and workers, and bring quality, affordable health care to all Illinoisians.

SERVEnet, Youth Service America. Online database of volunteer opportunities. Register your skills and be contacted by local groups.

Chicago Metro Labor Party, P.O. Box 618451, Chicago, IL 60661. Local chapter of the Washington, DC-based Labor Party, a new political party of labor activists organized around an agenda of support for the right to employment, universal health care, and other issues of concern to working people.

Union Summer, 815 16th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20006. Opportunities for young people to learn organizing skills through involvement in union organizing campaigns.

School of the Americas Watch. SOA Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, implicated in some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

International Concerned Family & Friends Of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Dedicated to saving the life of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, facing a death sentence in Pennsylvania. Box 19709, Philadelphia, PA 19143, 215-476-8812.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: