Isn’t there a big — humongous, crucial — difference between doing and embodying? Doing means some activity that pays heed to my concerns and cares. Embodying means ‘giving birth’ to a human being who lives those concerns and cares as naturally as fish swim. If I become a person who embodies empathy, then whatever I do comes to be infused with empathy. If I turn into someone who embodies profound ideological tolerance, then my discussions and interactions will be deeply informed by it. If I dream of tolerance but remain an intolerant person in my everyday outlook and habits, then what I actually do in the world will be far more likely marked by intolerance as well.
The process of changing one’s behavior surely includes stories and ways of speaking, as in, for example, “sisterhood is powerful.” New words and images can inspire and provoke. But if one’s inner being and the behavior arising from it isn’t altered, in turn producing changed outer reality, isn’t it then all for naught? “Sisterhood” fades into yet another broken dream.
A person can talk about cooking from scratch all the time, or read cook books, or organize on behalf of slow food, or write manifestos, but will it really amount to anything unless that person opens up to something new within, which in turn produces actual cooking behavior resulting in tasty home-made meals?
In a well known essay Forget Shorter Showers, and elsewhere, Derrick Jensen has criticized the sentiment behind the quote often attributed to Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” He says, “I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.”
Jensen is right; personal change does not equal social change. If I become a person who embodies respect for water, and live this respect in the outer world only by changing some habits and undertaking household modifications, I will not save the Ogallala aquifer upon which I depend. For that, I must do more than embodying my water-respect in small personal ways. The Ogallala aquifer will be sustained and replenished when a critical mass of people – householders, business people, farmers and all — who draw from it come to embody water-respect in their individual and collaborative actions, both public and private, which will then add up to a profound shift in how things are done at all levels.
The point that Derrick seems to have missed is that activity without embodiment cannot produce the profound, fundamental shift he is calling for. “Be the change” is necessary though not sufficient. One online commenter astutely remarked: “Jensen is right in the sense that if you only effect personal change, that doesn’t do much at all. But he’s wrong in the sense that you only focus on outside change. If you do that, you get a reproductive rights organization like Planned Parenthood where so many of their own low-income staff have unplanned pregnancies, or a rights organization like Acorn that union-busts its own employees. We must be the change, and we must effect change from that place.”
I want to distinguish no action (hypocrisy), vs. earnest outward action (conventional activism), vs. lifestylism (“personal = political” green quietism) vs. embodied action (“personal to political” activism). What I am trying to get at is this: the path of embodiment, of incarnating my values and desires in my flesh-and-blood being, leads then organically into action which is infused by those values and desires.
Perhaps the best way to get at the inner kernel of embodiment is via stories…
There was a time when I got involved with the Greens, in the late 80s. Eventually, I had to leave town for three years. At the time of my leaving, the group was fairly large, energy was high, mini-conferences were organized and projects started. When I came back, I found a handful of stalwarts hunkered down working out in excruciating detail how not to be bogged down in minutiae, finessing a variety of rules and directives the national organization had passed on down and which were meant to put an end to this pattern once and for all. The group faithfully toiled on the document’s behalf. After sitting in the stupefyingly boring meeting for some time, I said, “Here’s an idea. Remember that Muste peace quote [above]? Let me paraphrase it. There is no way to not doing organizational minutiae. Not doing organizational minutiae is the way.” They looked at me with instant recognition and shock. A few long seconds passed. Then they said, oh, but we have invested too much energy in this already. We have to go on and see it through. And that was that.
Once upon a time there gathered a group of people who were onto interesting projects. They organized well attended and lively events. Over time, however, they became troubled. Though living in a diverse city, the attendees were invariably lily-white middle-class people. So the group got together to look for solutions. Many concerned discussions were held about the need to pay attention to inclusivity and to change the group to appeal to the others. Various ideas were written up as a result. Funding was sought, and eventually received. A Diversity Coordinator was hired. Outreach PR activities were undertaken, educational workshops were planned to draw a greater variety of newbies in, and obligatory contacts with non-white, non-middleclass organizations were proposed and initiated. Several years later, more or less the same situation prevails, and the same calls for more inclusiveness are heard at the gatherings.
Another group in the same situation, located in a remote and eccentric kingdom, faced this problem another way. The participants decided to embody the solution, opening up to becoming the sort of people who have diverse friends and acquaintances. They each began to seek out neighbors, friends of friends, fellow students and colleagues who did not fit the white middle-class profile. What they learned from these encounters they brought to the group to chew on, and eventually, some began to bring along their new friends to the group’s events.
A boy went to a Zen master to learn about jade. At the first lesson the Zen master put a piece of jade into the boy’s hand and proceeded to talk about the wind. The boy played with the pebble while he focused on the conversation. After a while the master announced that the lesson was over. The boy gave back the jade and left. This continued for some weeks. The master gave the boy a piece of jade to hold and proceeded to talk about the things of nature. One day the boy’s parents asked him what he was learning about jade. The boy felt that though he had learned much from the master, he had learned nothing about jade. He went to his next lesson determined to remind the master of his reason for attending the lessons. When he arrived, the master put a small stone into his hand. The boy jumped up and cried, ”This is not jade!”
Leaving Babylon 
July 15, 2010 at 9:47 am
I have struggled mightily with trying to clarify this post. It looks like I cannot. I will have to write a new one.
Basically, “be the change” can refer to inner changes that flow out into the world, and it can also refer to personal, individual, private changes. I think Derrick uses it in the latter sense, but I doubt that Gandhi did. I think what he meant (if he had said it at all) is that if you want to change the public, political sphere, you have to start with yourself. And go from there.
So what I meant to say is… we gotta *begin* with opening up to embody the changes we seek. And secondly, that ‘be the change’ expressed *only* in personal, private actions is not enough to change the world.
July 15, 2010 at 3:03 pm
My take is that Gandhi meant both…start with changing yourself, because that is all you can really change. And that must come first, or it will have no weight with others, as it has no weight with your self.
Then, once the change is personally incorporated, your direction will always be informed by the change. So your every action and word will forward the change, if you remain steadfast. People tend toward herd behavior, and so may tag along in your wake, when in your presence; if the change is for the better they will tend to keep to it, and maybe even think they came up with it themselves.
Boy, that’s optimistic.
I might suggest that there’s no changing the world; changing yourself is quite difficult enough. But we choose to remain selfish and humanist if we just go along, in this culture.
Here’s my newest bumper sticker idea, perfect for SUV’s:
Follow Us To Extinction
July 16, 2010 at 9:33 am
Having read a lot of Mr. Jensen, no fan of the “pacifism” i don’t think he even understands, it seems he sort of dismisses Gandhi with a wave of his hand, and unfairly at that, writing things like quoted above. Of course personal change does not EQUAL political change; how does DJ construe that MG stood for such hypocrisy, that he didn’t live and strongly advocate changing oneself such that one can be effective in changing the world? The core of this post, though, is key for us to get anywhere from here but deeper into the sinkholes humankind is creating. We have to bridge the inner and the outer and have a hypocrisy detection ability to catch ourselves when slipping into denial. Embodiment is absolutely crucial to get grounded and real with our idealism. I’m working on this all the time, against a long-ago-but-lasting tide of training by the world to split myself off and stay unintegrated. What a task while still in Babylon, recovering balance and wholeness while surrounded by careening craziness!
July 19, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Hey, Vertalio —
Maybe you should suggest your bumper sticker idea to Keith Farnish for his monthly undermining. We could each have several dozen of those stickers printed and stick them surreptitiously on SUVs in our neighborhoods! 🙂 There is a Hummer in this town I would love to smack…
As far as worrying whether people will emulate… of course they will. Like the macaques washing potatoes in the sea. But only when it’s well on the way and making sense. Most folks are not pioneers… and frankly, for good reason. Meanwhile… let’s put our energy into us, rather than them…
JayD, I doubt that Derrick accuses Gandhi of hypocrisy; I rather assume he is simply too caught up in his urgent calls for action to worry about embodiment. That’s a problem for his own calls. His own behavior shows that unless you *embody* something new, you will keep doing the same old damn thing despite knowing better intellectually. Viz Derrick describing the efforts of his and fellow locals’ who fought a next door development in the old woods behind Derrick’s place. They did everything Derrick already knows does not work. And one gets the impression that the developer ran circles around the activists, and that what finally stopped the project from continuing (after part of the woods was cut down) was not the locals’ efforts but the real estate bubble bursting.
July 26, 2010 at 7:15 am
Our problems with “getting along” (Rodney King) go way back and are way deep in our psyches. And yet, throughout our history we have also striven to mitigate the powerful gravity of these lower chakra imperatives for safety and control, by means of laws and agreements, voluntary sharing and charity, and by development of inner restraints through education or religion or ethical or spiritual development.
It should be clear now (but apparently isn’t to most) that our very survival depends on coming up with a higher level solution to these problems. Our obsession with individual safety and power is shredding the delicate net of cooperative and ethical relationships. When the need to develop a higher level of self-definition and sense of purpose is put forward, people roll their eyes and say, “that sounds too much like all that woo-woo new age spirituality or old time religion for me!”
How folks can be induced to do the work needed to transcend their conditioned minds when they are firmly convinced that their minds are not conditioned remains a fundamental obstacle to creating a better world. The ancient Delphic admonition to “Know Thyself” remains to this day misunderstood and largely unpracticed.
Mission Control, we have a problem: us.
July 26, 2010 at 7:35 am
Only new people can create a new world. We could be those new people if we are willing to do the necessary work to transform ourselves. That work cannot be done in our splendid individual isolation. That work can only be accomplished in small intensive groups dedicated to creating the new authentic non-ego centered human.
Sound crazy? Do you really think that the same old people won’t end up creating the same old messes? The underlying flaws in our self-structures inevitably play out in the disasters of “civilization”. The old Greeks had it right: a man’s character is his fate. Those who seek to “save” us end up unintentionally reproducing their inner flaws in all they do. We don’t need new and improved versions of the same old shit; we need a whole new life on a new basis. That basis has to be a new kind of people operating on radically different understandings of who they are and why we are here….
July 26, 2010 at 9:27 am
Right on again, Mike…i couldn’t say it better myself, so now i don’t even need to try. So, those of us who see this same basic truth, “Let’s get on with it!”
July 26, 2010 at 11:58 am
JayD: I like what you are sharing. It makes a lot of sense to me. As far as getting something going along the lines we have been discussing, I have a couple of thoughts.
First you have to locate a few people with the energy and commitment to work together to create what we are dreaming of: a real world process for transforming people at depth in their selves, in there relationship to others, and in how they understand and live in the world. With great trepidation I venture to use the phrase, “born again”. Now the disclaimer: I am not now nor have I ever been a member of any religious sect, nor do I seek to found or be a member of any future religious sect. Neither am I a starry eyed believer in the magic of “rebirthing”. Then why the hell did I use that loaded, worn out phrase at all? (After all that disclaimer, I am beginning to wonder that myself.)
I guess I just wanted to say that the change of mind (in its largest sense) that I feel is needed in us is really big and deep. In the past folks who aspired to change the world were so unconscious of the prior need to change themselves, that they inevitably tripped over their own unreconstructed egos in the end. That is a big part of the sad story of revolutions. We like the sound of “revolution from within,” but we haven’t seen the need to do the work to make it real. I am running out of gas for this post. I have a ton of ideas and practical suggestions to share, but I am a painfully slow typist, and get fatigued easily….
July 29, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Thanks for the page# Jamie. Let me quote Derrick a little further on in that paragraph: “I’m asking you to be responsible for your own thinking, responsible to your own heart, answerable to your own understanding. I’m asking you to think and feel and understand for yourself.
If you start doing that, civilization will begin to crumble before your eyes. Because above all else, civilization cannot survive free men and women who feel and think and act from their own hearts and minds, free men and women who are willing to act in defense of those they love.”
Stirring words, appropriate for an ending to a great speech, or a great book such as Endgame. But will those words, or that book be adequate to stir sufficient numbers to take up their challenge? Must give us pause.
Then what will it take? I have suggested ten thousand intensive small action/study groups that would give rise to tens of thousands of deeply informed, committed, and powerfully active members to transform the way people look at their world and live in it. How would those groups function, what themes would they work with, how would they coordinate with each other? Those are things that can be worked out on the basis of successful models of already established groups. Some creativity and novelty and room for diverse experimentation would be essential.
We will learn and grow from our beginnings, and venture to create the communal processes that till now we have only dreamed of. The false idea that we could make significant change through atomic individual efforts would fade away. Working and sharing together will give us the elusive power we came to realize was lacking in prior efforts. The world truly and desperately awaits the processes of its deliverance. To venture will bring success….
July 31, 2010 at 10:48 am
I’m just getting back into paying more attention to this blog after some intensive focus on a paid project…You are still making a lot of sense, Mike…i assume the above was a cross-post; i wonder if you got any response from people there ready to do anything differently?
More in the still-growing comments section of the previous post…