Occupy Your Life

Have you been following the “occupy” movement?  After a few weeks without any media attention, it’s hard not to hear about it now.

I just can’t seem to get enough of it.  It is more interesting to me than who’s going to accuse Herman Cain of what next.  (That’s interesting, too, but not in a good way!)

I see a lot of good in the Occupy movement.  

  

You know I grew up during the push for civil rights and the peace movement.  So, I just can’t help it; fascination with revolution is in my bones.  Even as an adult, I called in sick to watch the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests unfold.   It’s hard to believe that was 22 years ago.

 

It seems to me that what is going on now is very much in sync with the Unitarian Universalist principles, especially the desire for “justice, equity and compassion” and “the use of the democratic process” parts!

I remember, just four years ago, when so many people were so hoping a new day was dawning.  Many wanted to believe that because we were voting for a different kind of President, he would lead us to the “promised land”.  A majority went to the polls believing, “Yes, We Can.”  I was one of those voters, with really high hopes.

As so many of you are aware, too much of what so many expected hasn’t happened.  The debt crisis got worse.  And, if we are to believe what some are now saying, the American middle class “dream” is all but disappearing.  Maybe, that’s not necessarily a bad thing! 

   

But, it is scary.  Too many families losing their savings, their jobs, their homes…  Too many young people incurring huge student debt, with little prospect for gainful employment... The future does not look very good, for my people…the American middle class…

Many people are struggling, frustrated, and if not worn down by depression, they are angry!  Especially in big cities, where the contrast between the super rich and everybody else is really striking…  People who have recently experienced economic suffering are looking around and seeing that the wealthier are getting more so, while the poor are getting poorer…

 

Something is wrong with this picture! 

    

Voting didn’t help us move towards the future we imagined…

Rather than put up with the distance between the dream of what was supposed to be and the reality of what is, some have taken it to the streets!  If you can’t make a difference with your vote, or you are disenfranchised; use your voice, use whatever power you have…to press harder for change…

Stand in the way of normal until normal changes…

Social protest is always dramatic, because it is “street theatre”.  It’s a fight between good and evil!  It is a battle with winners and losers.  At least, that’s how we think of it from a distance, and how the media often portrays it, making it even more dramatic and compelling, making some of us that love drama want to watch all the more…

   

Even though I am one of those who thinks good drama makes for a great story, I also think that most of the time significant social change comes about through evolution more than through revolution. 

When enough people begin to act differently… little by little, incrementally… then things change.  Change is often so slow it takes decades, centuries, to even realize something monumental has taken place.

 

There are those of us, of a certain age, who thankfully have lived long enough to see the immense changes that have come about because of the women’s movement, the push for civil rights, the greening of our collective conscience.  It took generations, many generations evolving…to make huge changes…that now seem “normal”. 

(Obviously we are still evolving when it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace!  But, that is a different sermon!) 

      

Slow evolutionary change is not very sexy or dramatic.  It doesn’t give us much of a story about “good” over coming “evil”.  The drama of revolution is appealing partly because there is always an enemy over there, who is not us, that we can blame for what’s wrong.

 

We hear the Occupy movement suggesting that “the enemy” is the 1%.  An identified enemy provides a convenient rallying point.  It’s just human nature.  It is just easier to think that if we can just force change on the 1%, everything will be better. 

   

In the long run, it’s not going to be about what is forced upon the 1%.  It is going to be how the 99% evolve over time! 

   

That’s because the real enemy is our own ignorance, our own not paying attention, our own going along blindly with the “way things are”.  The problem is our own short sightedness…even selfishness…

We, regular folk, enlightened about the collective power we hold, will eventually over time change the way we spend and invest what money/what resources we have in ways that make for the differences we want to see…. 

Don’t like what Bank of Big Money is doing?  Move your money to a local credit union.

Too much gap between the super rich and everybody else?  Stop working for them, stop putting money in their banks, stop buying their products.   One person, one small group can make a difference, when enough other people also change their behavior…and their values…over time…

Consumers demanded that corporations produce greener products.  They have.  The same evolution can and will happen eventually in regards to a more equitable and compassionate sharing of the world’s resources.  It is a matter of the evolution of belief, of what we the 99% value. 

What does the occupy movement want?  More democracy, more equality, more treating each other as if we are all worthy…a more equitable, just and compassionate world.

Isn’t that what we say we want?  What we already hold as part of our Principles?

Did you read the article in last Sunday’s local paper about the three new books that use statistics to prove that our world is more peaceful now that it has ever been?

It is hard to believe.   Hard to believe, but statistically true.

Hard to believe, especially if you only focus your attention on the violence that happened yesterday in our world, or the violence that is happening today in your world…then it is impossible to see that there is less, much less overall armed, bloody conflict that ever before in human history

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These books use statistics to prove that this is so, that this is true.  Education is like that.  It surprises us with the facts; takes our subjective reality and alters it just enough to make a difference in what we value, what we believe...

One of these three books is by Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist.  He writes that “the decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.”    In “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” he says the main reason for the decline of violence is the higher IQ’s that have come with each succeeding generation. 

It is pretty simple.  Smarter people try harder to find peaceful ways to negotiate conflict…

 

I see intelligence in the Occupy movement.  Here are people deciding what to do in the “leaderless” consensual, participatory democracy style that is the hallmark of non-violent, share the power, “youthful” kinds of social protests…

Here are intelligent people doing their best to not use violence…trying to censure those within the protest who do…  They are operating from a different set of values than the generations that came before them…a more intelligent sense how to deal with conflict…

Will there be more “justice, equity and compassion” because of the Occupy Movement? 

I don’t know, but if ignorance is the real “enemy”,  that which slows the movement towards a more peaceful way of solving our many problems…not capitalism, not greed, not “evil” people, but IGNORANCE, then teaching ought to be where we put our best efforts…

Intelligent people have already figured out how to avert ecological disaster and end economic disparity.  It is their students, our students who will build the “promised land” …

That doesn’t mean there won’t be any blood or teargas.  What it does mean is that there won’t be nearly as many dying to make change come as was the case in past centuries.

 

The good news that violence has declined over the long haul is reassuring, at least to me.  It brings me hope, even “proof” that the arc of the universe maybe does bend toward justice, or at least peace…as long as we keep getting smarter…

We need education and we need courage.

    

The youth of today are educated, connected, used- to expressing themselves…  And thankfully youth don’t know yet how risky it is to dream that the world be different than it is.

Young people and frustrated people, people with time and energy, with dreams of making things different from how they are, and angry people and people who have been there in the streets, in the theatre of change their whole lives are all part of the Occupy movement. 

Then there is me and maybe you, at home watching the drama unfold from afar.  Even though, I believe that we will get there someday, I am afraid of the violence.  Even though I know that statistically, less will die.  I am not ready to risk that, yet.  I don't want to die or go to jail.

That’s been my excuse for years…

Maybe because I am older now and I know now how short live is…or because I am tired of it taking so long.  Whatever the reason, something has changed.

I’m connected.  I am powerful.  I am part of the 99%. 

Maybe, I am depressed enough to believe that no matter what progress we’ve made through the ages, is it too little and too late, so what’s the risk?  …what’s left to lose?  Or maybe I anticipating a tipping point, that if just a few more of us push, we’ll all be moved to a new place, the one we have hoped for, for so long.

I don’t know why...

But I know I will be there this coming Friday on the corner of Charles and Greenville Blvd’s, at 11 am.  I hope you will join me.

There will be Occupy demonstrations all over the world on 11/11/11 at 11 am. 

I don’t want to watch on TV or hear about it on social media.

When I was younger and in training for the ministry, it was a common teaching technique to ask ministerial students to present an experience or a situation, and then to ask them to say or to explore; “where is God in this picture?”  I am not sure where God is, or who God is, anymore.

But, it is clear, clear as it can be, where the energy of “justice, equity and compassion” is…

and I plan to be there, will you?