Call For a Draft Program for Rational Wide World Changing
1. Basic reality is very encouraging. This is true even though the reactive processes which on the surface dominate world affairs and the larger society continue to oppress all peoples and perpetuate distress, an are moving in he direction of armed conflicts which could decimate the world’s population and, at the worst, destroy humanity.
2. Surface appearances that the peoples of the world are intimidated by, resigned to, and even cooperate with, these destructive processes are belied by many indications that people are actually eager to move towards a just society, toward the end of war, toward mutual esteem and support by all human beings, and to loving and enhancing management of the earth and its resources.
3. Two factors seem to be largely responsible for the appearance of passivity and submission to oppression and to downward trends in world affairs and for the apparent lack of initiative in upward directions. The first of these factors is a dense accumulation of distress patterns placed on people in early childhood, conditioning them to submit to and perpetuate oppression, internalized oppression, and powerlessness.
4. The second factor is the absence of a rational enough alternative program to that offered by the oppressive society, the absence as yet of a complete enough and workable enough program which offers intelligent and realistic proposals for recovery of the people’s power, for emerging from distressed conditions, for ending oppression, for achieving unity of all people, for replacing the collapsing society with an intelligent one, for ending the threat of war and nuclear destruction, and for restoring and enhancing the earth and the lives of its inhabitants.
5. There is no such program for wide world changing presently available outside of RC. No existing program being offered by other social change forces meets the standards of RC for rationality and completeness. All such programs presently being offered outside of RC contain serious theoretical flaws, are too narrow and limited, are too oriented to past situations, or have demonstrated or continue to demonstrate a lack of workability in practice.
6. Many members of the RC Communities, who began their association in RC only to assist each other in personal re‐emergence, have come, through the very success of their re‐emergence, to awareness of the wide world situation, and, in growing numbers, to desire to initiate overall corrections in that situation. The RC Communities themselves will remain, of course, devoted only to the carrying on, spread of, and enhancement of Re‐evaluation Counseling. Increasing numbers of individual Re‐evaluation Co‐counselors, however, wish to become effective change agents on the wider and most important issues and processes in the world at large. It is also true that many people who have been attempting to deal with large social issues outside of RC are now coming into the RC Communities, sometimes seeking help with their distresses and sometimes jut looking for an intelligent audience for their ideas.
7. The lack, until now, of an effective program for wide world changing developed from the standpoint of RC theory has invited borrowing and promoting inside the Communities of some policies and theories from outside RC which have demonstrated their ineffectiveness in practice and which are contradictory to Re‐evaluation Counseling. Some people become emotionally attached to such theories through the combination of their good intentions and their distress. Such emotional attachment can be reinforced, in the familiar manner, by the distress of defeats suffered in following such theories and policies. “But it should have worked!”
8. It is desirable at this time that Re‐evaluation Co‐counselors already interested in social change improvements, abolition of war, ending oppression, care of natural resources, the wellbeing of the people, and the enhancement of the environment, should formulate a tentative policy for wide world changing. This policy should be only the first of a series of continuously revised draft programs. Such a program can be circulated within the RC Communities for the information of co‐counselors, but will primarily be used as a guide for drafting and carrying out, together with all interested people outside RC, specific actions in each such area of change. Organizational proposals necessary to accomplish these programs in the wide world should be included.
9. In the first draft, we should explicitly urge study of all past practical experiences of people attempting to carry out programs for the improvement of society. We cannot afford to be ignorant of what has been thought and accomplished by others. We need to explore and become thoroughly acquainted with the philosophies, theories, histories, organizational proposals and structures, and the resulting successes or failure of all wide world changing activities of the past and present.
10. At the same time, we cannot afford to take any of this information as conclusions for our own thinking. We must treat it all as information only, to be evaluated and re‐evaluated from our own point of view, from our own philosophical framework, and from the standpoint of the concrete present, nor from any viewpoint of the past. In doing this, we need to be firmly grounded and in touch with our own theory and policy, to keep clearly in mind the assumptions from which we proceed, the rigorous operation of logic, and the clearly defined goals we expect to attain.
11. We will be aided in doing this by the special revelations about human beings and their relationships that we have already attained in Re‐evaluation Counseling theory and practice.
Among these are:
A. That all human beings are essentially good, although their acquired distress may present a contrary appearance. That every human being is a potential ally in the wide world change that we seek, although their appearances and actions may make them appear otherwise. This is potentially true of all human beings, although some can be reached to become functioning allies much more easily than others.
B. That the distress patterns, which constitute our real opponents in wide world changing, are rigid and without intelligence, and can be easily outwitted if we avoid falling into the clutch of our own distresses and refrain from becoming rigid ourselves.
C. That it has required the systematic mistreatment of human beings to prepare them to accept and continue in the roles of oppressors to other humans just as such conditioning was required to accept roles of being oppressed. No human being would agree to be an oppressor to another human being for the sake of financial reward, prestige, power, or other such inducements only, unless that person had also been hurt and oppressor‐oppressed patterns had been installed during the hurt.
D. That an oppressive society has little or no strength in itself, but continues to operate solely on the conditioned agreement that it has exacted from the oppressed to oppress each other.
E. That there can be no real conflict of interest between human beings.
F. That every group of oppressed human beings is possessed of far more strength than they have ever realized or dared to use.
G. That profound change in the human world is only accomplished by profound change in human attitudes.
H. That profound change in human attitudes occurs spontaneously following discharge of distress, as a universal result of the discharge and re‐evaluation process.
I. That the discharge and re‐evaluation process requires accompanying decisive action in the wide world in order to attain its maximum functioning and effectiveness.
J. That effective action in the wide world in greatly enhanced by the systematic use of the discharge and re‐evaluation process.
K. That the basic mechanism of oppression is the installation and restimulation of distress patterns.
L. That the distress patterns of oppression are always installed from outside the person and the group of the oppressed, but that the oppression continues to operate with most effect through internalized oppression, that is, through operation of the continually restimulated oppression patterns which invalidate, oppress, and daily re‐convince the victim of his or her powerlessness and through the mutual oppression between the members of the oppressed groups, in which the restimulated patterns daily impel the oppressed groups to mistreat, invalidate, and impugn the power of each other in a repetition of the oppressive mistreatment originally imposed from outside.
M. That the mutual oppression of different groups of humans by each other can be effectively interrupted by encouraging each group in a general convocation to meet separately and examine their oppressions, assist each other to discharge on the distress, and then prepare thoughtful reports explaining to all the humans in the other groups how the oppression afflicts them and damages their lives, and asking for cooperation of the others in interrupting the oppression.
When all such groups in the general convocation listen to each others’ reports, the whole mechanism of oppression is exposed and revealed in a lasting way.
Mutual respect and consideration begin to replace invalidating and oppressing practices and attitudes. With cultural exchanges and cross‐group co‐counseling, the mutually oppressive attitudes can be further eliminated, with affection and enjoyment of each others’ culture resulting, but the beginnings of respect can be quickly obtained through the separate groups counseling together, alternating with reports to the whole assemblage from each group.
12. All oppressed groups are powerful, but their numbers, conditions of life, and relation to the economic system, which is the basis of all oppression, place some groups in positions of special importance in relationship to the overall process of wide world change.
Women, for example, all endure oppression as women, but are also a majority of society, and are in positions to exert influence and power in every strata of society. Nationally‐oppressed peoples such as Third World people, the Irish, or the Quebecois, are highly motivated toward wide world changing because they endure national oppression (they are economically oppressed by people not of their own nationality or ethnic group) as well as class oppression.
13. The group of people who work for wages in the production of goods and services (particularly those working in the basic industries on which all other industries depend) are of special importance in wide world changing for four reasons:
A. They constitute the overwhelming majority of the population.
B. They overlap and contain within themselves all other groups of the oppressed, all ethnic or national groups, both sexes, all ages, and every variety of skill and knowledge.
C. Their conditions of life and work push them continually in the direction of greater cooperation, communication, organization, and unity with each other. (The conditions of life of some other groups push them partly in the direction of fragmentation and disunity.)
D. Since they produce the vast majority of the wealth on which all other members of the society subsist, and because the increasingly highly integrated and coordinated nature of economic production under modern conditions requires nearly universal and complete cooperation in the operation of production if the economic system is going to operate at all, the wage workers have complete power to require any change they decide upon in the operation of society any time a substantial number of them agree, organize, unite, and firmly require such change.
14. The economic organization of the wage workers (“labor unions,” “trade unions,” “employee associations,” etc.) are of decisive importance in effecting any important or basic social change. This is where the fundamental organization of wage workers take place.
A systematic, persistent effort is made by the oppressive societies to keep the membership of such organizations committed to the existing order, or preoccupied only with the narrowest economic issues, and to keep the leadership of such organizations in the hands of people opposed to change, people who collude with the employers, who are employers’ agents or who are criminal elements. This effort is often successful for long periods of time because of the isolation of each group of workers from other groups of workers and because of the lack of widely known programs for advancing the interests of the workers, as contrasted to the highly organized, awarely programmed, and nationally communicating organizations of the employers and their agents.
15. It is essential and possible to win the members of labor organizations to progressive programs for wide world change and to active participation in seeking such change, and it is possible and important to regain the leadership positions in such organizations for people who truly represent the members’ interests. The first is by far the most important, however. If only leadership posts are won for progressive programs, without attaining the conscious support of the membership, the leadership is likely to be quickly lost through corruption, violence, and bureaucratic dictation from higher leadership levels in the organization, or through legal attacks.
16. The winning of the membership of labor organizations to progressive programs can best take place quietly on a one‐to‐one basis, without publicity until sufficient support to withstand attacks is already attained. A discretely managed information center to keep people engaged in such activity supported, informed, and encouraged about themselves and each other is, however, possible and advantageous.
17. There are other conclusions which our theory leads us to, on which there is wider agreement with other groups who have been attempting to achieve changes in the wide world. Some of these are:
A. That the present economic system is well along the process of its inevitable worldwide collapse.
B. That the conditions of this collapse (economic crises, national independence movements, liberation movements, intense national competition and rivalries, increasing danger of war) increase oppression and hardship for the people, but also offer opportunities for seizing the initiative in replacing the malfunctioning social structures.
18. Just as we have found leadership training and organization to be necessary within RC, so people working for change in the wide world will need a leadership organization where they can work out theory, evolve correct policies together, establish unity of all the peoples’ forces and plan initiatives in wide world changing. Such a leadership organization should also operate without publicity, be assembled on a one‐to‐one basis, make a fresh start on theory from the viewpoint of the current situation rather than any theorizing from the past, and attempt to include leaders from and give leadership to all organizations of the people.
Such a “Good Ideas Association” should be completely independent of the Re‐evaluation Counseling Communities, although individual RCers could help to assemble it and participate in it as a small minority of its membership.