What do you mean, doing something??

A late night conversation with my lovely non-violent (fairly Gandhian) peace activist flatmate has me jotting down the following notes:

The key difference between political activism that makes a difference and that which does not has nothing to do with the difference between protest and resistance, as many Gandhians would have us believe. It is not that those who “protest”, attend demos and write petitions, are just confirming their ultimate allegiance to the present, admittedly limited, system of parliamentary democracy, while those who are prepared to “take it to the next level” and actually resist (i.e. in this terminology break the law in an open and non-violent way) are the ones who are offering the chance for real change.

No, the key difference is between those who act from a place of profound understanding of self and other, and those who do not. Unfortunately, most activists today would fall into the second category, whether we are resisters, protestors or creators. That is, we act from a place of unacknowledged despair over the state of the world, and the main purpose of our action is to free ourselves of that panicky feeling of the world moving closer to the abyss each day. We need to feel that we are "really doing something". As long as we get to feel that, we don’t really ask to what extent our activities are touching the hearts of people, making them want to join us, or whether we are alienating more people than we gain for the cause. We turn inward, affirming our own identities as the good guys, in opposition to the Bad Guys over there – the problem, whatever it is, rests with them and surely not with us.

The activist (I really don’t like that word, but I haven’t come up with a better one yet) who knows the depths of her own despair and isn’t afraid of it anymore is calmer, and much more prepared to wait, be still, listen, and seek to understand the situation that she wants to change deeply. She recognises that in order to affect profound change, her focus cannot be reducing her own anxiety level, but it has to be to really communicate – communicate with people who often dislike and distrust her. She recognises that her actions need to communicate to the hearts of those concerned, the people who populate the institutions, corporations or whatever that she has a problem with, and that an action that might seem skilful from her own point of view could be extremely provoking and in fact lock people tighter in the prescribed roles, undermining communication instead of strengthening it. She doesn’t need to affirm herself as a Good Guy anymore, or to affirm this or that method as the only “real” form of resistance or creativity (whether being an insider in the system or an outsider seeking for radically different alternatives). She has a bird’s view, recognising that different situations call for different means, and that the key concern is to get the situation as a whole to open up and evolve, rather than proclaiming her own point of view to the world. That is why she makes a difference.