Both Sides Now

. . . I'm not sure.

There is something deeply true about the need to bring everyone with us (or to move with everyone out of this system that sets up these oppositions) and I was certainly trying that in Kenya just now - trying to persuade people who were full of a sense of injustice at having their homes burnt down (imagine your home being burnt down?) and their communities being forced off their land (imagine having always lived on and belonged to and cared for Dartmoor and being forced off it at gun point along with family and all the people you know?) - I was trying to persuade them to take just the approach you suggest, to focus on the fact that there was no contradiction between their being on the land and the land being conserved. In fact their being there clearly protects the forest and moorland and wildlife. And they did extraordinarily well to stay calm in the face of some really unpleasant responses from some of the conservationists who we were also trying to get to step away from thinking nature protection must mean no people. I was assuming that the conservationists were like the people you describe as having good reasons for plonking down a supermarket, I was assuming their priority was conservation, just as your supermarket person's may be economic growth, I was assuming that there is not an underlying opposition . . . and clearly there isn't if the question is one of peoples rights and conservation, the ecology and a sane economy, etc. But if those with power are simply so caught up in their position and power and the hollow fear that goes with it, and are grasping for any excuse to justify the things they have done to others and the things they are still doing to others, then I'm not sure.

To, in effect, say - as you do here, and as I did in Kenya - that those being shafted need to move on from their/ our "righteous position" maybe misses the point that - unlike in personal relations - in these contexts of oppression there is a clear right and wrong. Yes, being in conflict is "massively draining on our energy (think of all the emotion, the human effort of maintaining a protest, the effort of repeatedly saying “no”)" - which is why the cruise missile peace camps, the treetop dwelling road protests, the Transition movement, the Occupy camps, didn't and don't focus on saying no, but on saying yes. But maybe part of what nourishes and flourishes that YES is a very loud NO to the ongoing "civil disorder and war" that is being rained down on people and planet with increasing ferocity. This NO can be done - and in my experience in these protests and initiatives, is done - "without enemies", is done in a way that works really hard "to include everyone, even the 1%, in our vision for the future", and is done without any illusion about the fact that we're likely to fail.

Maybe the profound spiritual shift you are referring to is happening. Maybe we don't have to wait until we are wise and forgiving rather than passionate and angry. Maybe that wisdom is more of a skill to be practised than a quality which is there or not. Maybe it is something that is only gained and given and shared as we work on this.

Here's some thoughts I jotted down after returning to Occupy Edinburgh after being engrossed in the work in Kenya:

> I guess Occupy is proving perplexing for all those who have been involved in trying to change things for the better. I find that that is one of the best consequences of its presence: a perplexing end of planning for how to get out of this mess.

> And will the end of our endless planning and proselytising be the beginning of taking those steps out of the mess? I guess that depends on what the mess is we think we're in.

> People I know often come away disappointed from visiting Occupy Edinburgh: it's not dynamic, they have no sense of where they're going, there's drunks and druggies, they say.

> But what I see is this:

 - the tents on the green in St Andrews Square in the centre of Edinburgh have multiplied, grouped around the tall Victorian column of Melville, a severely corrupt banker of his day. And (due in great part to a transition type older man who for years manned the vigil for a Scottish Parliament) there is a large white marquee at the centre and there is electricity. Now there is also good food being cooked, there are events like pedal powered film screenings in the dark, and there are of course the daily General Assemblies, and the music . . . and through it all they/ we are sorting out how to live together.

- in their florescent jackets are the 'love police' (with 'love police' written on the back of their jackets). They are mostly drawn from the group that has had a pretty rough life themselves, not from the students and others who - like me - have had a far easier time of it. There are safety rules against drink and drugs but those are rules, then there are people, and when others in that rougher group interrupt the General Assembly with a completely off-topic rant, instead of trying to stop them, the process stops and they are listened to and their issue dealt with before returning to the subject under discussion.

- at night the love police (especially on Friday and Saturday nights) have to deal with the drunk aggression. One guy told me how he has been living on other peoples couches for years, but now: "I feel at home. We're having an effect. We're doing something. Its the end of bitterness for me. Waking at 4 in the morning on a Friday night to hear the drunks climbing over the fence and met by the love police, and just hearing them talk about the state of the world, it makes it worthwhile"

There is wisdom in the foolishness, a huge YES inside the No, a huge embrace that reaches out from - and is protected by, and sometimes blocked by - righteous anger against the killing machine that does no one any good. RightYesAnger - RightYesReachingOut . . . As you did, we are all doing with these posts, and as I try to do here and now, tussling with your words that are so helpfully saying "don't box anyone into a corner of goody or baddy, least of all yourself" - and that sounds absolutely right to me, as does this.

Thanks for your feedback Justin.

"Maybe the profound spiritual shift you are referring to is happening. Maybe we don't have to wait until we are wise and forgiving rather than passionate and angry. Maybe that wisdom is more of a skill to be practised than a quality which is there or not. Maybe it is something that is only gained and given and shared as we work on this."

Good questions. Which I won't attempt to answer now! I have to admit that I need to practise this kind of detachment a bit more, particularly in dealing with my kids.

"I was assuming that the conservationists were like the people you describe as having good reasons for plonking down a supermarket" - I didn't say they were 'good reasons', just their reasons. I was making the point that there's always different points of view. You say "in these contexts of oppression there is a clear right and wrong". But the person you've decided is clearly in the wrong won't identify that themselves. And you describing them as 'wrong' is a guaranteed way to make sure they won't want to change their mind. I don't know how it would work when things are at the stage where people's houses are being burned down, all the conversations and interventions you'd have to orchestrate to try and deal with that kind of mess ... I just think that direct activism will at most trigger off a fear reaction in decision makers, it won't change their mind. Being a "protestor" gives people the perfect reason to instantly discount your point of view. I've never seen any evidence that an action communicated with people who weren't already on board.

"which is why the cruise missile peace camps, the treetop dwelling road protests, the Transition movement, the Occupy camps, didn't and don't focus on saying no, but on saying yes." I disagree that these forms of activism can be tied together in this way. A road protest is by definition saying "no" to whatever road is being built, and cruise missile peace camps, the same. I keep on coming back to Gandhi's 'be the change you want to see in the world'. It works on a personal level (you can't change your partner you can only change yourself) and I don't see why it shouldn't work at a societal level. If we are demonstrating how we want things to be then that is infinitely more powerful than negative campaigning. If I'm having to choose where to put my limited time and energy then it's on the tangible projects I care about.

Thanks Jo.

My experience seems to differ from yours in two ways:

Firstly, I think there often is a clear right and wrong, and quite often I'm in the wrong and it is really helpful if someone (one of my kids, my partner, whoever) stands up to me and says so. I don't like it at the time, but as the realisation dawns then their clear speaking becomes a way of liberating me rather than painting me into a corner; and

Secondly, related to this, in my experience: those at road protest camps were first and foremost saying yes to the beauty and vitality of a valley, a woodland, a hillside, saying yes to life continuing - the no to the road was important but secondary (a little like Ghandi's no to Empire that Charlotte mentions); those of us at peace camps, like those at Occupy camps now, were and are primarily seeking a way of living at peace with each other and the planet - the no to a system which allows some to become rich at the expense of others lives is important but secondary.

So, related to both of these, I've experienced military people and others undergoing a radical change in their perception as they meet the YES that dares to say NO. The most striking example of this was at Molesworth Peace Camp in the 80s - a military guy was off duty and was driving his car across the still disused base. At the time it was still an old disused airbase, the peace camp was already there, but not yet the cruise missiles. He saw two of us walking across the tarmac. He drove at us, trying to hit us, and we got out of the way. Then he screeched round to drive at us again, screaming at us, and again we managed to get out of the way. The third time, the woman I had been walking with managed to run at the car as he was turning, and reach in through his car window to grab him. She was hugging and hugging him saying "I love you, I love you". He broke down in tears . . . and his story came out. The YES was to him, and the NO was to his behaviour, to whatever was possessing him, enslaving him.

Whether its Ghandhi or Martin Luther King or that woman on the base in the dark winter evening - my understanding and my experience is that it works. I don't know anything else that does. And how Transition with its big loud YES can be strengthened, transformed, reach out through a big loud peaceful insistent connecting NO, is the question I am left with.

Thank you for getting me to really think about this.

Hi Jo

Thanks for that thought provoking piece.  Lately I have found myself thinking quite a lot about the way we are taught or perhaps conditioned to consider so many things as one thing versus another, or one better/worse than another.  How many essays did we all write at school, comparing and contrasting two opposite notions, looking for which one was right or had the most points in its favour?  In the end are the best answers obtained this way? 

The idea that there is always one position that is correct (or more nearly correct) than another is fundamental to how many discussions and debates are framed in daily life as well as the media.  If one point of view is correct then those that don't accord are incorrect.  Someone "wins", others "lose".  But does it have to be like that?  It seems to me that opinions amongst people will always vary (for a huge number of reasons) and no doubt at the extremes at times non-sense will be advocated.  However if we are to find ways forward into the future that enable the many rather than the few and tend to encompass rather than to alienate, then we need to find ways of debating and generating solutions that do not have to end with polarised yes/no and good/bad answers. 

Of course practicality often (usually even) requires that one course of action be chosen, one decision made - if these are made within a framework of considering the different elements of the situation rather than trying to split it into two neat and opposing halves we may learn to build consensus, or at least to minimise division. 

I've been doing this myself recently - the I'm right you're wrong thing. I've been dissing other growing approaches and bigging up the low maintenance perennials. I suspect it's because it feels like I'm in a minority and that not enough people have thought about or questioned their traditional gardening approach. I'm wanting people to choose the forest garden approach  over tomatoes and sweetcorns. I feel I have a justification in arguing for that. However, of course, all food growing is good ... we will always be growing some annuals. And as food growers, I and my 'opponent' have plenty of common ground. I suppose when there's something you care about, your ego is tied in with it, you're attached to it. The challenge is to be able to detach from it enough to let other people be.

And Justin, of course some things that people do are wrong. It's just that telling them they're wrong won't change their mind/behaviour. A gardener is much more likely to consider growing more perennials and low maintenance plants if they are shown and fed them, rather than by me banging on about damaging soil structures etc etc. ... Thinking about the rainbow idea. I seem to remember that if you mix all the colours together (with paint) you get black (or a very dark brown) and if you mix all the colours together in light you get white.

 I cant form a cohesive response to the very thought-provoking conversation I have just read, but I would like to throw two observations into the mix. 

Firstly, maybe a useful distinction to state (even though you were obviously using it) is that of people versus actions. I believe that a person is never 'wrong' as Jo so rightly says, everyone has their own opinions and reasons for them. You can never truly know why someone holds an opinion and therefore you cannot judge it as wrong. Actions, however, can be wrong. And if they are wrong then they need to be opposed. However, only the actions should be opposed, not the people. I actually disagree Jo, in that I think that people will change if you point out that their actions are wrong, as long as you are not also telling them that they themselves are wrong. That sounds pretty confusing, but in practice I think it means practising the aspect of non-violent communication where everything you say is about you rather than others. For example, in my experience growing hardy perennials has led to a much better soil quality than growing annuals.

Secondly, I love your sons comment, because what I was going to say is that everything is a spectrum rather than separate things. We normally just use the two extreme ends of the spectrum as if they are separate things. eg. black and white. but I challenge you to think of something that is actually a separate 'opposite' rather than a spectrum.