Practice Radical Compassion

I've been listening to people ask the question, "What now?" a lot.

"What now?"
"What next?"
"Where do we go?"
"Where do we start?"

Everyone I know has been inspired by big things -- myself included! make no mistake! -- and all those big things have been happening fast and piled on top of each other. Protests, recalls, elections, occupy, marches, even one brave girl standing against her culture: it's all one giant source of motivation and strength for anyone with an eye on changing the future.

And those moments, those big moments, are important. It's important to know that you're not utterly alone in wanting a different world, and it's important to know what it feels like to stand with 100 or 10,000 or 100,000 of your fellow human beings, voices raised together. It's important to know what that feels like, for an individual, and it's important for the world at large to know that there are so very many individuals working in concert.

But the big moments are demonstration, not change.

Politics will never change the world. I'll say it again: Politics will never change the world. Part of this is the nature of politics as compromise. Perhaps we've all lost sight of this, so here's a reminder. Politics is the art of compromise through persuasion. But that means you are never going to get everything you want, and your opposition is never going to get everything they want. Even a majority must compromise with the minority in a representative, nominally democratic system.

(Side note to everyone involved in politics: Could you maybe start compromising? Just a little? It's your job, so do your job, please.)

But politics imposes a consensus compromise on people from the outside. To change the world, you have to change the people. The only way the world will get better is if we make humanity as a whole better. The only way to stop people from doing awful things to each other, either actively by waging war and murdering and raping, or passively by ignoring the hardships they suffer, is to make every person in the world acknowledge the humanity of every other person.

Overwhelming. It's an overwhelming thought. Are you overwhelmed?

Don't be.

No one, no one in the world, can alone effect change of that scale. No one. It's not possible.

Here's what you can do: you can change one person. You can reach out to one person and show them that you're human, and they're human, and that you respect their humanity. You can show one person the effects of the decisions they make. You can show one person that you respect them, that you love them, despite any and all differences, and you can hope that such a demonstration inspires them to change even a little.

Here's another thing you can do: live humanely. Live your life to the best of your ability such that you respect and care for other people. Think about how you define "people." Then think about how you define "people who deserve respect." Are these two definitions the same? Probably not. What can you do to make them the same?

Who are your neighbors? Do you know their names? Do you know what they value? Do you know what they dream of? Can you help them? Who are their neighbors? What do they dream of? Can you help them? Build a community based on personal relationships; the larger community will build itself, so long as you maintain the long view of respect for all people simply because they are people. Those people don't have to have the same values you do; they don't even have to agree with you on anything. Your job is to respect them anyway. Your job is to care about them anyway. Your job is to love them anyway. Lead by example. It's the only leadership that works.

Politics in America, and everywhere, has long been the art of defining "The Other" for one group or another. Most of human history, in fact, can be viewed through the lens of power pitting groups against each other to maintain power. Reject that history. Reject it forcefully. Refuse to think of anyone as The Other, as unlike yourself. Refuse to accept that you have to denigrate and degrade another person, no matter how far away and no matter how strange their life seems, just to make yourself feel better.

After all, you are the scary, frightening Other to someone else. What would you prefer they do, when you meet: kill you or listen to you? Don't conjecture about what is LIKELY to happen. Don't rationalize shooting first, or cutting someone off, because of what you think they will do, or even are likely to do, or what they've done in the past. Stick to this alone: which would you rather happen? Then you have to choose to do the thing that you would like to happen despite whatever fear, rational or irrational, you feel.

You want to be a radical? You want to be a revolutionary? Here's the ultimate radical act: Love the Other. Love them like you'd love your own child. Endure deprivation for them, live with the knowledge they might take advantage of you, forgive them when they do, and go right on loving. Love them until they cannot but recognize your humanity, and love you back. It takes courage, and forgiveness, and a deep sense of self, and a firm commitment to the worth of the future being built. But you can do it. And if you mess up, if you can't do it, if you're too scared or too dazzled by the world, forgive yourself, too: you're human.

And then, try again. Pick yourself up and try again. And again. As many times as it takes.
Love will change the world, and the world will change one human being at a time.