“… The real problem is the entire money system and the deep mythologies that underpin it… Yes, I am horrified by racism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and the rest of the ugly sentiments that have erupted in the USA in the last year. But if we really want to change these things and not just feel righteous about being on the right side, then we have to address the ground from which they spring. To do that, we have to let go of war thinking with its accompanying dehumanization, and enter the question that defines compassion: What is it like to be you?”
I am one of the spokespeople for a different kind of politics that, while hardly visible in dominant media, is gaining strength at the grass roots. I saw some of its spirit in the Women’s Marches last weekend as well, in the form of a playfulness, humor, and forgivingness in some of the placards that communicates, “Come on dude, let’s be done with the misogyny. See how much love awaits you?” instead of, “We’re gonna tear you down, you misogynistic asshole!”
Shari Motro, a law school professor friend of mine who was in the D.C. Women’s March said, “We spent the day falling in love with strangers... This is what the more beautiful world looks like.” Shari encountered a family of lost Trump supporters decked out in make-America-great-again paraphernalia who had somehow wandered through looking for a museum. “You could see nervousness in their faces, not quite fear. But also, I want to believe, wonder. Because we were just so beautiful. And I found myself wanting to reassure them. So I said: we love you too. And that’s what I said to every Trump supporter I saw that day, and I felt it in a way that the night before, which vibed Kristallnacht, I could not.
"Because we were just so beautiful.” Can you see the power of that? Can you see how it offers hope when, seeing the world through the lens of struggle, there is no hope? It has seemed crazy to attempt to translate that into politics, but (at risk of making too grandiose an interpretation of my small brush with the mainstream) I see signs that it is breaking through. The spirit of Gandhi and King, waxing strong on the margins of the political world in peace villages and restorative justice circles and ground-level community building, is taking form once again as a politics of love.
Sometimes there is a time to fight, that is true. The problem is the habit of fighting, which in our culture we apply indiscriminately to nearly every situation. Notice the military metaphors that infuse political conversation. A march. A campaign. A struggle, a fight, a battle. This habit comes in part from the dehumanization of those who are different in thought, word, action, appearance, or culture from ourselves. They hate blacks. They hate women. They are not like us. They will not change. They have to be fought. But the Trump supporters who stumbled into the Women’s March were overcome, and it wasn’t by fighting.
Despite the fiery, militant rhetoric, despite the military metaphors, love, peace, empathy, and compassion are ascendant in all these “marches.” The women aren’t going to tear down the patriarchy using its own devices. They aren’t going to turn patriarchy’s violence, degradation, dehumanization, and humiliation back against the men. They aren’t (to paraphrase Audre Lord) going to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. To do so would be to join the patriarchy in the guise of opposing the patriarchy. It would be to exchange a greater power for a lesser power. Political culture, by and large, does not recognize this truth, but it is growing stronger and, I hope, will transform politics. As normal falls apart, that moment may come soon...”
~ Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. “I accepted help... I met Stella and we had a baby, and there is so much love between all of us including my ex-wife Patsy. I have become rich... in connections to other people... I’m not the guy who has got it all figured out. I’m connecting to a field of knowledge, or to a story that wants to be told… wandering as best I can toward “the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible.”
"...What is it like to be a Trump supporter?” Ask it not with a patronizing condescension, but for real, looking underneath the caricature of misogynist and bigot to find the real person.
Even if the person you face IS a misogynist or bigot, ask, “Is this who they are, really?” Ask what confluence of circumstances, social, economic, and biographical, may have brought them there. You may still not know how to engage them, but at least you will not be on the warpath automatically. We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil.
We’ve got to stop acting out hate. I see no less of it in the liberal media than I do in the right-wing. It is just better disguised, hiding beneath pseudo-psychological epithets and dehumanizing ideological labels. Exercising it, we create more of it. What is beneath the hate? My acupuncturist Sarah Fields wrote to me, “Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.”
I think the pain beneath is fundamentally the same pain that animates misogyny and racism – hate in a different form. Please stop thinking you are better than these people! We are all victims of the same world-dominating machine, suffering different mutations of the same wound of separation. Something hurts in there. We live in a civilization that has robbed nearly all of us of deep community, intimate connection with nature, unconditional love, freedom to explore the kingdom of childhood, and so much more. The acute trauma endured by the incarcerated, the abused, the raped, the trafficked, the starved, the murdered, and the dispossessed does not exempt the perpetrators. They feel it in mirror image, adding damage to their souls atop the damage that compels them to violence. Thus it is that suicide is the leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Thus it is that addiction is rampant among the police. Thus it is that depression is epidemic in the upper middle class. We are all in this together.
Something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. One earth, one tribe, one people.
We have entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual retreats, meditations, and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that, like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath, and how it doesn’t feel good, not really. Maybe it is time to stop.
This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to speak hard truths with love. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of “Aren’t those people horrible?” Such analysis is rare. Usually, those evangelizing compassion do not write about politics, and sometimes they veer into passivity. We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate "the deplorables." We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: “Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.” If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty."
Even if the person you face IS a misogynist or bigot, ask, “Is this who they are, really?” Ask what confluence of circumstances, social, economic, and biographical, may have brought them there. You may still not know how to engage them, but at least you will not be on the warpath automatically. We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil.
We’ve got to stop acting out hate. I see no less of it in the liberal media than I do in the right-wing. It is just better disguised, hiding beneath pseudo-psychological epithets and dehumanizing ideological labels. Exercising it, we create more of it. What is beneath the hate? My acupuncturist Sarah Fields wrote to me, “Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.”
I think the pain beneath is fundamentally the same pain that animates misogyny and racism – hate in a different form. Please stop thinking you are better than these people! We are all victims of the same world-dominating machine, suffering different mutations of the same wound of separation. Something hurts in there. We live in a civilization that has robbed nearly all of us of deep community, intimate connection with nature, unconditional love, freedom to explore the kingdom of childhood, and so much more. The acute trauma endured by the incarcerated, the abused, the raped, the trafficked, the starved, the murdered, and the dispossessed does not exempt the perpetrators. They feel it in mirror image, adding damage to their souls atop the damage that compels them to violence. Thus it is that suicide is the leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Thus it is that addiction is rampant among the police. Thus it is that depression is epidemic in the upper middle class. We are all in this together.
Something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. One earth, one tribe, one people.
We have entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual retreats, meditations, and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that, like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath, and how it doesn’t feel good, not really. Maybe it is time to stop.
This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to speak hard truths with love. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of “Aren’t those people horrible?” Such analysis is rare. Usually, those evangelizing compassion do not write about politics, and sometimes they veer into passivity. We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate "the deplorables." We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: “Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.” If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty."
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