• The Politics of Joy

    19 Dec 2008 /  Uncategorized

    This is something I wrote as part of an invite to a political summit I am organizing in Provo from December 28th-30th. If you would like to attend, you can email me for an agenda at sanders.ashley@gmail.com.

    As I traveled around on my Nader speaking tour this last month, I stayed with a dozen different friends. Every friend I visited wanted to have the same conversation. They were scared because they had entered the adult world of real jobs, real budget concerns, and real time constraints. They were worried that they would never find out what they really wanted to do, or, if they did find out, that they could never make it happen. They were worried that the restrictions and unimaginativeness and sheer drudgery of most organizations would suck their soul and keep them from being the person they wanted to be. They admitted they had a hard time standing up to the structures and managers of the status quo to demand what they really needed or what people in general really needed. They fretted that they were becoming slaves of a paycheck mentality, and that they were giving up their old ideals to be ‘practical’.

    In short, they realized that they were becoming the people they said they would never be, and they realized that this transformation did not occur overnight. Adulthood was waging a much more subtle assault on their ideals than they had imagined. They admitted that they thought their moments of defiance would be just that-moments of principle against egregious or unethical requests made by sinister bosses with ominous agendas. Instead, they acknowledged that losing your soul was a very mundane process-that they were losing it in a thousand miniscule concessions, not to overtly unethical propositions, but to generally nice people who were operating in organizations that were supposed to be doing good. It was the nature of the organization, not some sinister plot against them, that was doing the real damage. It was not they were selling themselves to the devil; it was that they were part of generally well-intentioned institutions that asked them to concede certain ideals for the sake of reality, efficiency, or pragmatism. That, or the organization was separate enough from the rest of their lives-myopic enough in its own intentions-that it simply ignored or encroached on their other goals and dreams.

    It wasn’t that these people were becoming bad people. It was more that they were professionalizing their dreams, learning to do good in the narrow grooves allotted to them. But what these people wanted was not just to do narrow good, but to be inventive, creative, and collaborative-to connect their goodness with the goodness of others to solve problems in new and holistic ways. That is what they felt that they were losing: the prospect of true creativity, imagination, and collaboration with other minds.

    It pained me to hear such creative and powerful people tell me that they felt dull and powerless. It pained me to hear that they were ready to resign themselves to something less than they were capable of offering. I understood the fear, but also felt like I was witnessing a great abdication. I realized that this slow, agonized process of concession was how adulthood happened-how it locked itself in.

    But as I listened more and more, I realized several things. First, I became more and more convinced that the reason people forfeit their best selves is not because they are unethical or incapable, but because they are operating alone in anonymous systems that rob them incrementally of their genius. Second, I realized that there were a lot of people who felt lonely and anxious. These realizations might sound dreary, but they are actually the inverses of great possibilities. If it is the structure of organizations, and not malice or lack of principle, that makes them oppressive and unimaginative, then changing the structure of those organizations can free people to become what they already are: happy, thoughtful, ethical and inventive humans. And if there are so many people who feel this way-and if changing the structures is basically an issue of getting enough people to do something different-then the lonely people can band together to create a great change. It isn’t just that enough people working together can change a bad structure; it is also that each person possesses talents and skills that-when combined with others’-can get more work done than one person alone, which makes otherwise unpleasant work joyful and which leaves time for people to do the things they most want to do.

    The problem is not that people are not creative and ethical; the problem is that people feel isolated and powerless. Bringing those people together allows them to express their hopes to each other, combine their skills, and develop a new philosophy of living that they can defend together. They do not have to feel like they are a small, defeatable voice asking for outrageous things from bosses who will surely reject them; they can know that they are part of an indomitable group of like-minded people who support their demands and make them possible.

    I learned another thing as I traveled from city to city. I learned that I feel burdened by a palpable despair for the world’s problems, and that it builds and builds until I don’t know what to do with it. The despair is potent because there are so many things that demand lament in the world; it becomes more potent when I realize that most of the problems cannot be solved by individuals, or, at least, by individuals going through the traditional methods of changing things. I realized that politics as it stands is not enough. Top-down politics can only provide for justice and restraint: it can feed people and keep them from harming each other (hopefully), but it can’t transform people and places. What I want, and what I feel most people want, is the politics of mercy and joy-a bottom-up revolution of people who speak the language of beauty and emotion and whose intent it is to make gorgeous, color-drenched, garden-crowded cities of happy, sharing people.

    And so I have decided: It is time to remember that we are powerful together. It is time to stop deferring our best selves because we happen to not speak in a language that the old powers recognize. If we come together and work really hard, we can have the lives we want. We can combine our skills and efforts so that we have the time, support, and resources to usher in the world we want. We do not have to become the people we promised we wouldn’t. We can change the whole operation, the whole structure, so that we are free to bless the world. Because deep inside our souls are saying what Waylon Jennings said: “We just couldn’t do things the way they were set up.”

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