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Creating a better world without a party line
If we're sincere in our devotion to the business of creating a better world, then we cannot afford to imitate (and therefore reproduce) the one-dimensional, literalist, fanatical, party-line, scapegoat-creating modes of thought that the patriarchy has specialized in. What that means is: 1) We have to be in ongoing conversation with our own personal shadows; in other words, we have to apply the same revolutionary zeal to dissolving our own internal fixations as we do to toppling the ignorance we see in the world around us. 2) We can't afford to dehumanize anyone, even the people who dehumanize us. 3) We have to be humble about how complicated the world is, and therefore we have to be less than arrogantly certain in claiming we always know what's best in every situation; we have to be subtle, multi-leveled, and willing to acknowledge the ambiguity inherent in real life. 4) We have to understand that political struggle is half-baked unless it's anchored in soul work. What's soul work?
a. A ruthless, ongoing self-examination that continually regenerates our shadows.
b. The cultivation of less literal modes of knowing the world.
c. A desire to translate our high ideals into the marrow of our everyday interactions.
d. A determination to keep from becoming predictable rhetoricians forever hammering home our pet theories even as the world is recreating itself right in front of our blind eyes. 5) Our political work proceeds with far more efficacy and grace if it's mixed with at least some amount of poetry and myth and magic and ritual and soul. -- Rob Brezsny
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