The Need for Change
As our society continues to crumble, it is less and less able to hide the oppressions on which it is based and their cruel and deadly implementations. Society is also less able to suppress opposition. It may be that the disruption of everyone’s lives due to COVID-19 has helped to expose these developments. There are large demonstrations of outrage and opposition to racism taking place in many places in the world. The more and more overt expression of opposition to all oppressions and other shortcomings in our societies needs to be supported if we want to fundamentally change society. These expressions of opposition are an important place for continuing to expose the injustices and oppressions built into our societies.
Our societies have pushed us, using the mechanism of restimulating old fears and isolations, into not actively opposing what we increasingly know is unjust, oppressive, and exploitive. For society to change requires large numbers of us to move into vocal, active, intelligent, and caring opposition. This needs to happen for the benefit of everyone. The more of us that can overcome the quieting effects of old distresses, the more quickly a better world for all can emerge.
The oppressive and irrational aspects of our societies will not stop by themselves. There will continue to be ongoing attempts to distract and restimulate us. Because many people have been badly hurt by these societies for centuries, some respond in desperate, irrational, and destructive ways. This will happen and does happen any time people have been hurt badly enough. It should be taken as evidence of the need for the changes we are working for, rather than used to try to distract and restimulate people. Protests must be made even though they may be used by some as a reason for other, irrational actions. These demonstrations must occur before society is going to change. Frederick Douglass, long before our picture of human irrationality developed, gave an astute analysis of situations like ours.
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Please challenge yourself as fully as you ever have. Let’s see what we can do.
With love and appreciation,
Tim