Question 3:
So to dig deeper on your answer to question 2 as to get more specific in regards to what is to be done. To summarize what you’re suggesting, and please tell me if I’m misrepresenting your answer, when we’re talking about creating a change agent to foster a spiritual revolution of sorts and ultimately create the desire to change, your recommendation is that could be would brought about by a dedicated close knit group(s) able to communicate to the masses via a message or a communicate through an act, or art, or something else perhaps; and whatever this or these act(s) may be it would potentially create a rattle in the public sphere that sparks change and would make an attention getting bang equivalent to self immolation, but without self immolating, yet perhaps requiring the commitment of such an act.
The powers that be have captured the gaze of the public, and in order to change there must be some sort of shift or change in perception to the public to the point they are willing to go along with what it is you’re trying to do, and obviously you don’t have to have the approval of everyone, but there has to be “enough”, there’s a tipping point somewhere in there that probably isn’t that high, but there is a number. So what I’m getting at here is that it’s extraordinarily difficult without a pile of money to 1. Be able to peacefully wrestle the attention of the populace away to communicate and get to that tipping point, or 2. Convince enough of them to go along with the change. So without divulging what you noted above that would be giving the game away by informing the powers that be of your plans, how in fact do we facilitate action in this age of distrust that would begin to build what you’re talking about, and where to start, what to do. How does rubber meet road and a start is formally instantiated that can push that spiritual change; And is what you have in mind something that you’d envision could happen in a year or two or will it take longer?
Richard Oxman:
First of all, and most important, what I’ve said must step back from dealing with my words in generic fashion. There is a huge — vast — difference between going on a hunger strike and having the general public easily (with the help of the media, of course) ignore even deaths that unfold from that so-called supreme sacrifice and participating in the unprecedented act of mass suicide (which is not of the Jim Jones variety, clearly) at, say, a venue like the Democratic National Convention.
Permit me to quote Flannery O’Connor, a mentor of mine at length to help you and readers enter into a more imaginative zone:
“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
The germane main point here is that exaggeration of some kind, an over-the-top approach that will out-9/11’s so-called game changer with an audience that’s pretty much like what you describe. Deaf, dumb, blind, subject to Stockholm Syndrome dynamics and cruel with a tradition of callous indifference to all that’s dear on this Heaven on Earth. O’Connor is a particularly appropriate person to invoke at this juncture because I’m using the word “generic” respecting your understandable response. She, as a person, received considerable flack when she refused to meet with Jimmy Baldwin during the height of the Civil Rights era. But that was because Northerners responded to her refusal in generic — automatic — fashion. For the vast majority of us who were advocating that the racists in the Deep South at the time be confronted directly and in the most harsh terms possible anyone refusing to meet, say, Baldwin, anywhere would be automatically dismissed… prematurely. Out of hand. The dynamics of labeling would kick in, and labeling is almost always — in socially conscious circles (unconscious circles?) — a matter of refusing to get down with the specifics concerning an individual or event, etc. It circumvents (unconsciously, as a rule) having to deal with the real person, all the variables that go into making one place or one person different than another. It’s reductive for the purpose of making things easier for the labeler. Flannery’s work too — initially, and still to this day among many — is prematurely dismissed as violent. And the typical response to her short stories is quite generic, labeling her… fitting her into what academics call The Southern School. But she’s not to be put on the shelf next to Faulkner or any of the others who came out of her region; she’s a singular force whose work — to do it justice — must be embraced with a highly imaginative readings.
Which brings me back — correct me if I’m wrong, Jason — full circle here, where you likened what I was recommending as something that can be compared with anything that’s come before. And on that note, I humbly and respectfully request that everyone dig in deep and use their imaginations for all they’re worth. For, otherwise, the dramatic shouting and drawing of large circles for the near-deaf and near-blind (the majority of U.S. citizens) won’t make enough sense. Instead of my spelling out what would unfold exactly and why if a large group of healthy concerned citizens committed suicide in the name of a Cause at the next Democratic National Convention — unafraid of death — leaving a very detailed collective suicide note behind during — get this, don’t miss this all-important point — during a time that many are saying we must go into a Planetary Hospice mindset to deal with the climate-related catastrophe we’ve created… I leave it to you and readers to come up with what your imaginations tell you would happen. I can tell you this, though, it wouldn’t be along generic lines, and prisoner-centered hunger strikes would not enter an openly imaginative mind.
Truth be told, what would unfold cannot be predicted, not any more than one could predict what the consequences would be from flying planes into the Twin Towers. But I can tell you this, that it would be an unprecedented shock to everyone, and in this country where a great percentage of the public embraces the vision that’s advocated by many Protestants… you know, that apocalyptic rising up of the “chosen people” in some kind of “Rapture”… with almost all demographics having been fed a steady diet of end-of-the-world flicks and talk… and everyone virtually having retreated to isolating themselves into their high tech gadgetry… the breaking through of an authentic act which could not be easily processed or tweaked by the media uniformly… like a hunger strike is handled routinely… sometimes ignored totally… would be immense, a watershed in history of some kind, unquestionably. The shock would give us a shot at reaching the Instrument of Thy Peace mindset that Alan (Cry the Beloved Country) Paton wrote about back in the day… the very spiritual seeds which reside in each and every one of us… except perhaps the dyed in the wool logical positivists who “know everything” about human nature… as a machine. We are increasingly buying into that notion that we’re machines, giving ourselves over to Master Machine mentality, but an authentic shock which speaks of what Gerard Manley Hopkins described as “the dearest freshness deep down things” would — maybe — open a door to salvation of some decent sort. It would give us a shot at that, and we cannot ask for more. What we have at present is nothing more than resignation — a function of labeling — on a mass scale… dooming ourselves out of hand… unnecessarily. Pitifully.
Q4:
If such a plan was successful can you give a brief overview of how you would you envision the operating structure for a new society. What would our days look like, how would socio-economic system operate?
RO:
Like Arundhati Roy said years ago, one doesn’t have to have a game plan which replaces the status quo to proceed with revolution, but because your question is understandable and because the general public seems to need such details, folks can start to secure details about an “operating structure” by checking out, say, Michael Albert’s extensive treatment of his Parecon on his ZNet website. I have reservations about his “game plan”… but it’s certainly a decent, well-thought out proposal for replacing the barbarism of Capitalism. Begin there, perhaps, and then get down with in-depth Q&A… with me, if you like… via email at first… and then, once I feel comfy with a given person I could give out my phone number for a more direct exchange in real time. But I’m not really needed on this score, as there are quite a number of Michael Alberts out there with their take on what we should have in lieu of Capitalism. The point is to acknowledge that what’s in place is — to put it mildly — not working. I could certainly live with Parecon if some spiritual element were encouraged a big more; Albert’s take on the old “Eyes on the Prize” mantra is a bit too grounded in Marxist roots for my taste, and I prefer — to put it mildly — that a loving embrace of Eyes on Eternity play a greater part of the whole enchilada. Like what Robert Pirsig recommends in highlighting what he calls Ultimate Reality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
