These are words to live by. But most people have no idea what they want to see in the world. They know what they’d like to cease: they want Israel to stop bombing Gaza; they want their daughter to not be on her phone so much; they want transgender people to just get a grip; they want Trump to not be president; they want lower taxes and gas prices; they want no capitalism, no homelessness, no war, no nonsense.
Such people should rightly be grateful for their objects of ire, for they are their only objects of desire. If Israel were not bombing Gaza, the whole fulcrum of their revolutionary imagination would be lost. If their daughter developed a healthy relationship with technology, they would be left with no excuse for their disconnection from her. If Trump were out of the running for president, they would have to decide who they actually like. Their whole orientation to the world consists of negation and protest.
So, how are these people to be the change they wish to see? You can’t embody a negative. You cannot be Israel stopping bombing. But you may be Free Palestine. You can’t be your daughter not being on her phone. But you may be a more interesting and dynamic home. You cannot be the absence of trash in the ocean. But you may be a devoted lover and student of the ocean; you may honour her, and embody her living infinity; you may set the example of a healthy human-ocean relationship.
We are drunk on negatives. We talk of ‘eliminating homelessness’ which is a double negative. We never talk of giving these people homes, for that would be a utopian fantasy and it has no place in the public discourse of our great cities, cathedrals of pure reason that they have become. But it doesn’t take the sharpest mind in the world to see that there is only one other way to ‘eliminate’ the homeless.
Well, what do you want to see that is not a mere absence of illness? What kind of world do you wish to build? Once you have answered this question for yourself, then you will really have something to be.
E.F. Schumacher writes:
The case for hope rests on the fact that ordinary people are often able to take a wider view, and a more ‘humanistic’ view, than is normally being taken by experts. The power of ordinary people, who today tend to feel utterly powerless, does not lie in starting new lines of action, but in placing their sympathy and support with minority groups who have already started.
So if you are lacking your own positive vision of change, join a movement that aligns with your values, and give it your all. This may be the only way to be the change rather than merely resisting the decay.