What We Are Trying to Do
From a talk by Tim Jackins to a group of Regional Reference Persons, on Zoom, in May 2022
We’ve been figuring things out for many years. It took us fifty to sixty years of discharging to uncover how isolated we’d been early in our lives—and how alone we still are. We’ve been figuring out how to not let confusion and restimulation keep us separate; how to show more to each other, reach for each other more deeply, and care for each other more openly—using our knowledge, practice, and techniques to move in these directions.
More and more we recognize each other as human and try to treat each other that way. Each of us is exactly as human as anyone else—no matter what has happened to us, no matter what distresses we still carry, no matter what restimulated distress leaks out (in spite of how hard we try not to let it). We are all equally human—whether our distress is passive or active; whether it makes us act like a victim, a silent observer, or one who acts out the oppressions of society.
We also try to openly care about everybody and to share with them what we know. We are reaching more people and inviting more of them into our Communities. We can now handle far larger numbers than we could at the beginning.
We come into RC hurt and malfunctioning, and because we’ve built resource among us, we are increasingly able to handle in human ways the acting out of distress. When someone acts out distress, we want to be able to interrupt that behavior. We want to be able to reach for them and care about them as a human and not be upset that they’ve shown the scars of having been hurt. We want to not take it personally and not chastise them for carrying distress.
We care deeply about this. We care about ending all oppression. We care about the people who are stuck in both oppressed and oppressor roles. We are using our ideas and tools to stop oppression from happening—forever, for everybody.
SOCIETY DIVIDES, ATTACKS, AND PUNISHES
We’re in a society that depends on oppressing people. It depends on installing distresses on people to make them oppress each other. At the same time, it attacks people who fully act out the very same distresses that society has installed.
This society cannot do otherwise. It is not interested in ending the oppressions. It uses them as a pretext for attacking and dividing, both groups and individuals, and for making everyone scared of being attacked for the ways they’ve been hurt by the society.
It uses oppression to make people timid and passive. And because everyone has been hurt by the oppressions, it uses them to make everyone a potential target.
Society attacks individuals and groups that are a threat to it. It also attacks them when they’re not much of a threat—to restimulate them and keep them from thinking about real issues and what is actually happening.
This means that any of us could be attacked. We could be attacked just because we are in RC. Then RC gets attacked—for supposedly allowing wrong things to happen, for condoning and supporting wrong things and not punishing people for their mistakes. (If we’re not punishing, we are seen to be “allowing.”)
All of us, and the RC Community itself, have restimulated some people enough that they are pulled to blame us for their feeling desperate, disappointed, and more. Those of us who are leaders are especially vulnerable to being attacked.
The attack on RC in Boston (Massachusetts, USA) is an example of how an attack can disrupt, spread, and attract ex-RCers to return with their restimulations and threaten to come after [pursue and attack] us. It’s a good example of what we must learn to handle—happily, and without being disrupted by it.
HOW DO WE COMMUNICATE ABOUT RC SO THAT PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF RC CAN UNDERSTAND?
So here we are. We are trying to put something in our official papers—in our Guidelines for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities—that shows that we understand what oppression is about and how damaging it is. That we stand against it and have useful tools for preventing it and healing the damage done by it. That we are trying not to punish people or blame them for the ways they’ve been hurt, but rather help them heal so that the damaging behavior does not continue.
How do we communicate this so that people outside of RC can understand it?
It’s not that we don’t make mistakes. We all do. But we are committed to trying not to make them and to understanding and handling them effectively when we do. We want to bring up [discuss] our mistakes with each other, work on them, and take care of what has caused us to malfunction so that they don’t happen again.
How do we communicate that our way is far more effective than punishing people for their mistakes? How do we write that in our Guidelines so that it’s clear to people who aren’t going to quickly understand RC? How do we write it so that they understand what we’re doing when society may be intentionally restimulating them about RC? Should we put something in our Guidelines that could usefully counter attacks in a court of law, in case things go in that direction?
This is what we’ve been trying to do with the Guidelines. We are taking some first steps. Nobody is completely satisfied yet, and we will change them twelve more times this week. Who knows what we will come up with [think of]? But it’s a useful process. It has forced us all to think more clearly and to understand our situation more broadly and precisely.
(Present Time 208, July 2022)