speech for president obama on the environment, written in 2010 during gulf oil disaster

i wrote this a bit less than a year ago as the speech i wanted to hear president obama give during the gulf oil disaster. it could easily be adapted to reflect current catastrophes:

Uniting Towards a Sustainable Future: A Speech for the President

My Fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight wishing that I could tell you from the bottom of my heart that everything is going to be all right. But that would be dishonest, and you have been lied to enough. You have been lied to by politicians, by CEO’s, and, the sad fact of the matter is that we have been lying to ourselves. We all know that our system is broken – that rampant borrowing is unsustainable, that voracious, wasteful consumption of non-renewable resources is unsustainable, that a culture based on greed and fear is unsustainable. Everywhere we turn, we see evidence of muck rising to the surface, muck we sensed was lingering just out of view, but chose to ignore. Citizens cannot go on pretending, and nor can the government. The time has come for us to look ourselves and each other in the eye and ask the question, “What really matters? What are the things that bring real happiness?” For most of us, family, community, health, and security might come to mind. And yet many of us feel that these things are in jeopardy. How did this happen? When we take a moment to think about it, we may realize that at some point we simply stopped nurturing the things we value most. We mortgaged away our most precious assets, bet them against some artificial notion of future success. When did the American Dream become something that very few can afford, with many others so caught up in the struggle just to get by that they have no time to tend to the things that matter most?

In the April 3, 1944 issue of LIFE magazine, there is an article on page 93 titled “OIL – U.S. Must Drill 20,000 More Wells to Get Enough in 1944.” In the same issue, almost every advertisement – from aftershave to shoes - alludes to the motto of the day, “Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do…or Do Without”. On page 130 there’s a full-page ad from the “War Advertising Council” with a list of things you can do “if you want to be able to enjoy the good things of life in the peaceful days to come…if you want to speed victory and thus save the lives of thousands of fighting men.” The first item on the list is “Buy only what you need. Take care of what you have. Avoid Waste.” Another point urges the reader to “Pay off your old debts – all of them. Don’t make new ones.” Next is “If you haven’t a savings account, start one. If you have an account, put money in it – regularly.” Last, “Buy and hold War Bonds. Don’t stop at 10%. Remember – Hitler stops at nothing!”

How different would our current wars and other crises be if our leaders asked us to contribute, to collaborate with them, all of us working together to do our parts? During WWII self-sufficiency in general was encouraged. Citizens were asked to grow “Victory Gardens” in order to limit the burden on trucking and railroad supply lines and other industries. A national “Victory Speed” of 35 miles per hour was enforced. Gasoline was rationed according to necessity, and for almost a year, anyone with an “A” sticker – those for whom driving was deemed non-essential – were allowed only 4 gallons of fuel per week. Since rubber was in extremely short supply, citizens were asked to contribute old raincoats, shoes, garden hose, and tires to the recycling effort.

What has changed? In 65 years, how did we go from a culture eager to share responsibility and involvement to one of selfish obliviousness? After 9/11, George W. Bush advised us to go about business as usual, act like everything is fine and leave it to him to annihilate “evil”. Well, it turns out that, unlike Hitler’s army, this far less tangible and insidious enemy could not be annihilated with aggression – in fact, hostility and hatred are the very food on which it thrives. After 9/11 we were justified in our anger – but we did not clearly define our adversary before we began the battle. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan were not our enemies. Brothers, fathers, mothers, children, homes, schools, farmland, ancient relics – all destroyed because violence was used as the first resort instead of the last one. Our crusade to root out and destroy evil has wreaked havoc on countless families, livelihoods, and traditions in the cradle of civilization – and here on our own soil as well. In our vain attempt to destroy the enemy, we have lost no small part of ourselves.

But it’s not too late to begin now to do what’s right.

This starts with the understanding that there are bad seeds and extremists in every land, but this does not justify unbridled aggression. We must trust what we know in our hearts to be true: that most people, regardless of their religion or nationality, yearn for a peaceful existence, and hold out hope for a better life for their children. We must focus on that which we have in common with our neighbor, rather than seek out and exaggerate our differences. After WWII, Americans were viewed as heroes who made great sacrifices to come to the aid of forces fighting on the side of good. In stark contrast, our current wars have caused us to be seen as lone vigilantes, serving only to isolate us and ignite disgust and disdain for the United States around the world.

These wars have cost too much in every sense of the word, in lives as well as dollars. WWII was a boon to our economy because we manufactured goods that were sold to our allies. We stopped making cars and made airplanes instead. In contrast, our current wars provide few benefits to our domestic economy, with the majority of funds going into the coffers of war profiteers who have proven time and time again to favor their own bottom lines over the safety and well-being of those they have been charged to protect. The biggest winner in the war on terror is the oil companies themselves. More petroleum is purchased by the Department of Defense for use by the U.S. military than by any other singular entity in the world. If the oil companies had their way, we’d be at war until our tanks came to a grinding halt on the battlefield, having run out of last drop of fuel on planet Earth.

Which brings me to the subject I came to speak with you about tonight - the torrent of oil currently gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I wanted to speak with you first about the wars in order to make something amply clear: we are not fighting over religious differences, or to retaliate for the attack on our soil on 9/11. The unspoken truth is that we are in these battles for the sake of a substance that controls our every action. We have been led to believe that we cannot survive without it, and the fear of not having enough of it compels us kill or die for it.

We can and must end these wars, but doing so as quickly, efficiently, and humanely as possible will require us to first understand the real reasons we began them. As a nation, we must come to realize that the true enemy is our dependence on oil, and collectively agree that the appropriate way to fight it consists of each and every one of us doing our part to simply use less of it. These wars – and the system that supports them - will cease to exist the moment we reduce our reliance on oil. We need to bring our energy and our efforts back home to help protect the things that are in danger here on our home soil. Our men and women abroad are needed here on our own shores to join a new and very different kind of battle.

This will necessitate immediate legislation and, in the longer term, the development and implementation of technologies based on harnessing renewable resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. This is your government’s responsibility. We have subsidized the oil industry, provided astronomical tax breaks, and given it free reign on the shortsighted premise that our economy will continue to require more and more oil - and only oil - in order to thrive. We have put ourselves in the precarious position of having no back-up systems, no safety net. Rather than accept oil’s limitations and begin to scale back our reliance on it, we’ve developed a culture based on ever-expanding markets and increasing dependence.

Let me be clear: BP is fully to blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster – they will be held financially and personally accountable for the reckless, irresponsible decisions that caused its equipment to fail and put its employees, the Gulf of Mexico, and countless lives and livelihoods at stake. But there are painful truths that must be faced – first we need to understand that all the money in the world is not sufficient to clean up the oil that is choking sea life from plankton to birds and is seeping into sand and marshes. We will try everything in our power to restore the Gulf to its former glory, even strive to make it better than it was, but a clean up could take years, or even decades.  The most difficult truth to face is that, directly or indirectly, we encouraged and participated in a system that cut corners and allowed this catastrophe to occur. Now we must leave behind these obsolete and reckless ways, and instead concentrate our efforts on new, sustainable means to thrive. The government can and must facilitate these changes in any way it can, but the fastest route to change will be through the actions of the people. Your help is urgently needed. We must act immediately if we wish to enjoy the good things of life in the peaceful days to come, if we wish to live healthier, less wasteful, more sustainable lives, if we wish to share the burden with our soldiers abroad. If we have any hope of leaving the world a better place for our children, we must make changes necessary – today, not tomorrow. The fate of our families, or nation, and our world is in our hands. Our greatest resource has been and always will be the determination of our people, our resolve, and our ability to do what is necessary in the face of challenge and adversity. 

It seems there is a lot of fear around change – many people argue that changes will take too long and cost too much. The hemorrhage of oil into the Gulf is the most tangible evidence our country has ever seen that we have no choice – we cannot afford NOT to change. This isn’t only a matter of the perilous state of the economy of the Gulf – this is rapidly becoming a matter of health and safety on a global scale.

American citizens constitute 5% of the world population, and yet we consume nearly a quarter of all the world’s resources.  China has a billion more people than the United States, and yet the Chinese consume less than a third of the resources we use. So much of what we Americans consume is simply wasted – water down the drain, lights left on, disposable packaging, inefficient automobiles, appliances, and architecture. By reducing waste and maximizing our efficiency, almost without noticing we could cut consumption of resources – and costs - by 50%. During World War II, citizens were asked to “Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without.” I must ask this of you again today.

Using less would also go a long way towards resolving another problem – pollution.  There’s been a lot of debate about global warming, about whether it exists and if we should trust the scientific data. The fact is that it doesn’t really matter if humans are causing global warming. Clearly, humans are causing pollution. Pollution causes cancer, lung disease, birth defects, and a whole host of ailments too numerous to list. We now know better than to eat lead paint chips, drink the effluent from a factory, or breathe the air in a sewer. We need to learn to be more conscious stewards of the home we share, this small and miraculous planet Earth. We don’t need scientists to tell us that all the oceans are connected, or that the air we breathe here in the United States is the same air that people in China or Australia or Europe are breathing. Poet John Donne said, “No man is an island.” No war, no environmental catastrophe is an island either. All of these events are interrelated. Decisions we make today will determine not only the future of our own families, but the future of families on the other side of the world.

This is why today I am proposing the following:

1. A permanent moratorium on all deep water drilling for oil.

2. A national campaign for every citizen to USE HALF of all non-renewable resources to begin immediately, with greater emphasis placed on those who have had the luxury of using the most. The new American way of life will not be one of wasteful excess, but one of thoughtful, sensible, comfortable efficiency. Constantly striving to streamline our habits will make the transition to alternative energy sources easier and cheaper – the less energy we require, the smaller and more affordable the system needed to sustain our lifestyles.

3. The establishment of an independent non-profit Sustainability Advisory Council to develop guidelines for the transition to a more sustainable society. This council will design programs for corporations, government offices, families, and individuals to assist in maximizing efficiency and eliminating waste. The American government will serve as an example, beginning immediately by converting the White House and all buildings in Washington to renewable energy. These guidelines will be considered when taking into account future government contracts, purchases including supplies, vehicles, and buildings, and other government spending. Non-essential plane and automobile travel will be eliminated or discouraged, with as much business as possible being carried out via Internet and electronic technologies.

4. A 5% tax on fossil fuels with all monies going to fund development of renewable technologies, green jobs training for those in the fossil fuel industry or other industries such as fishing which have been put at risk by non-renewable resource mining and drilling, improving and construction of new national train infrastructure and improving efficiency for other ground transportation systems, rebates and incentives for those who build new homes and businesses that utilize renewable resources, and retrofits for existing structures.

5. New utilities billing practices, with the greatest discounts given to those who use the least. This new more-you-use-the-more-you-pay model will make it especially desirable for the largest consumers to develop ways to maximize efficiency and reduce waste.

6. New efficiency standards for all vehicles and appliances, and incentives for the development and implementation of technologies that maximize efficiency from foot-pedal operated faucets to chest-style refrigerators that require a tenth of the energy of upright models. The age of planned obsolescence, disposable everything, and shoddy workmanship to save a dime in the short run and lose dollars in the long run is over.

7. A “Victory Maximum Speed Limit” of 55 miles per hour on all roadways, with 65 being allowed on major interstates only.

8. The establishment of a “Peace Advertising Council” to encourage “Using It Up, Wearing It Out, Making It Do, or Doing Without”, promote green entrepreneurialism, and distribute information on gardening, permaculture, and food forestry for homes, parks, college campuses, community developments, and industrial complexes.

This is just the beginning. With your help, this horrific catastrophe will become an opportunity to unite the people of our United States of America towards a common goal. Together we can strengthen and heal our families, our communities, our society, and our world. In this way, the suffering of our Gulf of Mexico and all affected by this tragic disaster will not be in vain.

Thank you and good night.

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN P. CLARK on THE IMPOSSIBLE COMMUNITY

 

To social ecologists, environmental issues are, at their core, socio-economic issues. The same sense of separateness that justifies our exploitation and domination of one another makes possible similar acts of violence against nature. As long as we remain oblivious to underlying flaws in our collective logic (i.e.: that it is reasonable to endlessly consume non-renewable resources on a finite planet; that peaceful, just societies can emerge out of competitive, hierarchical frameworks) any responses we could devise will be insufficient to significantly alter our current course. A social ecological approach to “saving the environment” would require balancing relationships between humans and other humans, and between humans and all other phenomena. It sounds like a tall order…and it is. In light of the obvious destructive effects of systems within which we are obliged to strive for quantity of goods for one over quality of life for all, we are now faced with two choices: pull off the impossible, or perish.

John P. Clark, a social ecologist/cultural theorist/activist operating out of Loyola University in New Orleans, specializes in the "...potential of a positive practice of social transformation and social regeneration based on nondominating mutual aid and cooperation”; In other words, tall orders. His latest book, titled The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism, outlines historical cooperative political/social/ecological movements, provides examples of successful initiatives currently in progress, and suggests that the present and future wellbeing of all life on earth is dependent upon grassroots revolution of thought and action.

 AS: Are you suggesting that social transformation can happen now, without waiting for radical change in the dominant political structure? Do you see “the impossible community” as a viable next phase in the evolution of the OCCUPY movement?

JPC: Change can only happen now. That’s when we do all our living, thinking and acting. So, we need to focus on how we can be most effective in creating forms of social transformation now. We need to rethink the temporality of change and also the spatiality of change. This means rethinking the old cliché “think globally, act locally.” The challenge is to think and act locally and globally at the same time.  In fact, we can’t avoid acting locally and globally simultaneously, since global phenomena are largely made up of local ones and the magnitude of the global impacts of local action are constantly increasing. But there’s another crucial dimension to this issue.  

We need to continue to occupy, in the sense of truly liberating putatively public spaces, but we also have to consider carefully the ways in which we are occupied, in the sense of being dominated. To change the dominant structures, we need to find a way to break free from their dominance, which is not only institutional, but also ideological, imaginary, and practical. Our lives are determined powerfully by our shared systems of ideas, our collective fantasies, and our common forms of social practice, or ethos.  The only effective way to short circuit this order of determination is to create, and then live, moment-to-moment, other institutional, ideological, imaginary, and practical realities—realities that embody freedom, justice and solidarity. To be effective, this must take place above all on the level of our most basic, primary communities. 

The idea of “the impossible community” is that the community of solidarity and liberation appears as an impossibility within the confines of these structures of domination. So, the only viable alternative is to create—here and now—those impossible communities. We need to stop demanding the impossible and simply do what is impossible. The strongest evidence for the possibility of something, including the impossible, is its actual existence. So, to begin with, we have to do some serious anarchaeology, uncovering the rich history of free community that lies under layers of domination and the ideology of domination. But, above all, we have to get in touch with the practice of free community that is very much alive today, so that these living traditions can be nurtured and realized further.  

I have in mind, historically, the enormous legacy of cooperative community, including many tribal traditions, the caring labor of women and traditional peoples, historical practices of local direct democracy, movements for workers’ self-management, the vast history of intentional community, and the multitude of experiments in cooperative production, distribution, consumption, and living. This history continues today, especially on the margins of and in the gaps within the system of domination, and thus provides the “ethical substantiality,” the realized and embodied social good, that is our best source of hope, guidance, and inspiration. 

Occupy is part of the process that I am describing. I devoted a lot of time to Occupy, and believe that, whatever its limitations, it has been enormously significant in engaging large numbers of people at the grassroots level, and giving them experience in participatory, directly democratic and consensual forms of decision-making. This kind of experience is invaluable to the kind of libertarian communitarian project described in the book. In such a project, the primary focus is on the regeneration of communities of solidarity and liberation through such specific forms as affinity groups, base communities, and intentional communities. At the same time, it requires expanding our efforts horizontally, through complementary cooperative projects in spheres such as the workplace, education, media and cultural creation, and vertically, through federative efforts at successive levels from the local, through the regional, to the global. Protest, occupation, and various forms of direct action must of course continue. But the creative, regenerative dimension must become our primary focus. Bakunin said, famously, that “the urge to destroy is a creative urge also.” There is truth in this; however, we need to avoid lapsing into the leftist pitfalls of reactivity and the culture of permanent protest. Above all, we must not forget that that “the urge to create is a creative urge also.”

AS: It seems the words “libertarian” and “anarchy” can be broadly interpreted; “communitarian”, on the other hand, seems somewhat less ambiguous. Can you provide some basic definitions/current context for these constantly-morphing terms? 

JPC: Libertarians are people who are dedicated to defending and expanding freedom. However, “freedom” is a floating signifier, a flexible concept that can be appropriated for diverse and often conflicting purposes. It’s also a master signifier, in that it has a kind of ineffable charismatic power that everyone wants to latch on to.  So the big question is what we mean by freedom. 

The “Third Concept of Liberty” that I discuss in the book proposes that freedom has several crucial dimensions. One of these, the one that seems almost intuitive for Americans, is “negative freedom,” or freedom from coercion, often epitomized as “not being told what to do.”  This idea must be developed into a larger conception of freedom from all forms of domination. While domination functions through overt force and the threat of force, it also (and more usually) operates through other diverse strategies and tactics of control. The second dimension of freedom is personal and communal self-determination. This means, above all, that we are able to live in a community that is a collective expression of our social being and our social ideals, rather than being an obstacle to them. Finally, and most significantly, freedom means personal and communal realization or flourishing, the achievement of the good in our personal and communal lives. 

The term “libertarian” was invented in New Orleans in the 1850’s by the French anarchist philosopher Joseph Déjacque. While he was here, Déjacque wrote his most important work, L’Humanisphère, and an important letter to Proudhon, the most famous anarchist thinker of the time. Despite their agreement in opposing the centralized state, Déjacque harshly criticized Proudhon on two grounds, first, for his sexism and support for patriarchy, and secondly, for his belief that the contribution of each individual to the value of a product could be determined. For Déjacque, true freedom requires the abolition of all historic forms of domination, including, obviously, the age-old system of domination of women by men. It also requires that production and distribution be designed to fulfill the needs of all, rather than being based on a spurious individualist theory of value and entitlement. Déjacque concluded in his letter that because of Proudhon's acceptance of patriarchy and economic injustice, he was not a true libertaire or libertarian. 

Déjacque’s analysis also explains the meaning of anarchism in its deepest sense. This is discussed in the chapter of The Impossible Community entitled “Against Principalities and Powers.” Anarchism is not merely an opposition to coercion or to any particular form of domination, such as the centralized state. Rather, it is the quest for freedom from all forms of domination—capitalism, the state, patriarchy, racial and ethnic oppression, bureaucratic and technological domination, gender and sex role oppression, and the domination of other species and of nature.

Which brings us to “communitarianism.” In the United States, this term usually has a relatively conservative connotation, and is juxtaposed to liberalism in mainstream political thought. In South Asia and Britain, it’s a more popularized term, often with pejorative undertones, and is linked to strong ethnic and religious identification and group conflicts. As I, and many others, use it, it is an affirmation of the age-old tradition of free, self-determining community. This might also be termed “communism,” and often has been, though unfortunately this term has been co-opted by the forces of domination, just as the word “libertarian” has. 

Nevertheless, I like to pose the seemingly paradoxical question: “Why is communism so good in practice, but it never seems to work in theory?” What most people think of as “communism” has not been communism at all, but rather a form of oppressive state capitalism or techno-bureaucratic despotism, justified through an ideology (a theory that doesn’t work) that disguises it as “communism.” Such a system has often been very effective as a form of domination, but not as a free, just or humane form of social organization. We might call it “authoritarian communism,” but in reality, not only is it not really communism, it is in a very precise sense a form of anti-communism, the negation of communal autonomy. Historically, it has always feared real communities, taken power away from them, and done its best to crush or dissolve them. 

There is, on the other hand, a long tradition of libertarian communism, which is the form of organization taken by communities of solidarity and liberation. It has been practiced in indigenous societies, in intentional communities (such as the most radical early kibbutzim in Israel and the Gandhian ashrams or cooperative eco-communities in India), in the self-managed collectives during the Spanish Revolution, in affinity groups, in base communities, and in many families. It has constituted communism, in the sense of the autonomous self-determination of the community. It has often worked quite well. 

We can also call this form of social organization “communitarianism.” I find this term to be politically crucial today, above all, because I see the key step in personal and social transformation to be at the level of the person-in-community and each person’s moment-to-moment practice within that community.  We show that another world is possible by making another world actual. We need to rethink politics as world creation, though it is equally a process of world preservation. I think this is why much of the most effective communitarian anarchist practice has come from groups with a strong spiritual basis that generates an all-encompassing ethos.  This is true of groups that come out of long traditions, like the Catholic Worker Movement, the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement, engaged Buddhism and Daoism, and indigenous people’s movements. But it is also true of small groups that draw on many communal and spiritual traditions and the great libertarian communitarian heritage, while finding their own way.

The emphasis on the primary community in no way excludes the need for simultaneous action at every other level.  The quest for direct participatory democracy, for worker self-management, and for liberation from imperialist occupation, for example, cannot wait. However, the only way that these struggles can avoid cooptation is if they are rooted in liberatory transformation at the personal and communal level.

AS: On page 17 of your book you say, “What emerges out of traumatic marginalization and exclusion is liberatory communitarian potentiality, not any historical necessity.” Could you talk about disaster-as-catalyst and about New Orleans as a particularly striking model of the inherent interconnectedness of the social and the ecological?

JPC: We can be in the midst of crisis without noticing it.  Disaster came to New Orleans long before Hurricane Katrina, but its true severity wasn’t noticed. Before Katrina New Orleans was already the incarceration capital of the world, it had one of the highest murder rates in the country, the education system was devastated, medical care was a disgrace for a large segment of the community, and there were growing ecological threats such as massive coastal erosion–we had already lost an area of wetlands the size of the state of Delaware. Before Katrina, one saw bumper stickers that said “New Orleans: Third World and Proud of it.” After Katrina, we understood better what it means to be “Third World,” or more accurately, to be on the Periphery, on the margins of Empire. The awareness is more akin to horror than to pride.

In New Orleans, as in the world in general, we have been faced with the tragic problems of denial vs. disavowal.  Denial is the inability to allow an idea to enter consciousness, though it always enters in strange, distorted forms. Disavowal is the inability to keep in one’s mind what one knows. It’s the problem of the elusive obvious. People often can remember everything except the most important thing. These mechanisms often occur in families that have major problems such as violence, sexual abuse, betrayal, victimization. Sometimes the problem cannot even be recognized.  Sometimes everyone knows but learns how to forget that they know. The same mechanisms work on the global level.  In fact, the single most important development taking place on our planet is met with denial and disavowal. 

At the beginning of each semester I tell every one of my classes, no matter what the topic of the course may be, that I want to mention one thing: We are living in the sixth great mass extinction of life on earth. If an extraterrestrial came to visit the Earth and went back to report on what was happening here, this would certainly be the number one item. News from Earth: “They’re going through a kind of planetary disaster that has only happened six times in several billion years!” Yet, when I go through this routine, I find that most of my students had never been told this news in their twelve-plus years of formal education. Denial and disavowal reign supreme.  

One thing that I learned from the Katrina experience is that the traumatic event can sometimes undo processes of denial and disavowal and awaken us to the gravity of our predicament. Such trauma can result in regression, which can be expressed in fundamentalism, reactionary movements, racism, nationalism, fascism, and the clamor for an authoritarian leader. We saw this in post-Katrina New Orleans, in the form of racist vigilantes, police repression, and prison atrocities. Or, it can result a new breakthrough, a new awakening, a new inspiration to act creatively and communally. 

The Katrina disaster was the most devastating experience I have lived through, but also the most uplifting and inspiring one.  Post-Katrina New Orleans was a horrifying, heart-breaking and post-apocalyptic world in many ways. But the communities of compassion and solidarity that developed in the wake of the disaster were the closest thing to my social ideal that I have ever experienced. I feel fortunate to have spent a significant period of time living and working with groups of people devoting themselves fully to serving the real needs of people and communities. In such times of communal solidarity, we can see the emergence of that “Beloved Community” that Martin Luther King spoke about. This experience was a major inspiration for what I described in the book as “The Impossible Community.”  

Many traditions have recognized the importance of the traumatic breakthrough.  In the Buddhist tradition, the primary teaching is that one must be shaken out of complacency and come to the shocking realization of the universality of sickness, aging, and death, if one is ever to attain wisdom and compassion. In the Jewish tradition, a break with everyday reality and the traumatic experience of the sacred is described the beginning of wisdom. In the vision quest of indigenous traditions, extreme stresses are part of the path to a spiritual breakthrough. Both Western and Asian mysticism describe a traumatic “dark night of the soul” that is part of the path to spiritual awakening.  Finally, dialectic is a kind of philosophical vision quest that works through traumatic challenges to all stereotyped thinking. In each case, trauma releases the ability to look at the gaps in our supposed reality and the incoherence in our conventional accounts of the world.  Trauma is an encounter with death, but it is also an opportunity for rebirth. It helps us to see the possibility of the impossible and to think the unthinkable.

For further exploration of these ideas, please see also John Clark’s articles Ecopolitics as a Politics of Spirit, and The Political Imagination of Beasts: Reflections on Disaster, Domination, Community, and Liberation. Please click here for a discount form to order The Impossible Community.

PUBLISHED AT ANARCHIST NEWS ON JUNE 5, 2013
PUBLISHED AT TRUTH-OUT.ORG ON JUNE 9, 2013
PUBLISHED AT NEW CLEAR VISION ON JUNE 10, 2013

MANIFESTO FOR THE OBVIOUS INTERNATIONAL

The exponentially intensifying causes of the social, political, and ecological crises faced by peoples across the globe are becoming increasingly obvious; the wellbeing of all life on planet earth depends upon the eradication of market-driven social structures that bolster the few at the expense of the many. The image of ourselves as separate – from one another, from nature, and from the havoc being wreaked – has reinforced the disastrously misguided impression that competition (as opposed to collaboration) and the quest for material wealth (as opposed to the cultivation of caring relationships) are not only prerequisites for fulfillment, but inevitable factors in the course of “evolution.”

Those of us who are members of the wealthiest societies on earth can no longer sit idly by, waiting for the catastrophes to run their course. Once we identify that which is founded on exploitation and avarice, we can begin to extract ourselves from these toxic systems and develop new approaches based on cooperation, empathy, and altruism. By engaging creatively and constructively in even the most seemingly mundane aspects of existence, each of us realizes the potential to become an active participant in the reimagining of every facet of civilization, in epitomizing what it means to be human.

Like many philosophers before him, artist and self-described “social sculptor” Joseph Beuys proposed that “before considering the question WHAT CAN WE DO we have to look into the question HOW MUST WE THINK?” By identifying the kind of thinking (individual and collective) that is shaping our situation (for better or for worse), we can begin to fundamentally and constructively recast it. Inner alterations in perception can lead to outward shifts in the structure of our relationships, society, and surroundings. But just as thinking differently leads to different actions, different actions can lead to different ways of thinking.

Convention-challenging creative practitioners of every ilk are approaching the ills of our time from all sides. By cultivating an array of alternative visions and actions, many of us are subtly undermining and replacing cultural paradigms that define “success” based on quantity of material goods rather than quality of life. We are supplanting that which emphasizes division (between human and human, human and nature, mind and body, time and space) over interrelationship.

Drawing on art’s infinite possibilities, system-defying agents are re-humanizing, de-commodifying, and debunking all manner of contrived contraries by creating barter systems, cooperative workspaces, soup kitchens, food forests, and street libraries. In societies based on an ever-intensifying quest not for peace, health, or contentment, but for “progress” (broadly defined as the drive toward maximization of personal convenience, or what social ecologist Murray Bookchin called “the fetishization of needs”) ­– strategies for existence that are participatory, inclusive, and nonhierarchical, and that encourage the sharing of skills, ideas, and resources (the maximization of meaning), are eminently subversive.

Beuys advised us to think first, but if critical thinking and appropriate action are not undertaken in a dynamic, harmonious fashion coupled with earnest consideration of underlying systemic causes, any remedies that may be devised will, at best, temporarily assuage symptoms or, at worst, divert attention away from authentic solutions while providing a false sense of effectiveness.

The most fruitful interventions will be ones that do not, inadvertently or intentionally, reinforce established destructive systems, but instead directly engage populations in acts of social transformation.

In philosophy, the collectively agreed upon definitions, symbols, styles, behaviors, ways of using language, and other factors that are held in common throughout a culture – assumptions about how things are “supposed to be” – are called the social imaginary. Whether it is “normal” to compete or cooperate, own property, go into debt, go to war, or go shopping is determined by a wide range of constantly shifting factors, including the influence of our political, legal, and educational systems; corporate advertising; the media; and various amalgams thereof. The social imaginary is like a program that runs surreptitiously in the background; until we become consciously aware of it, we don’t notice that our attitudes are being influenced by entities that may have a vested interest in them. When we fear our neighbors instead of loving them, industries that produce guns, fences, and alarms profit – we willingly give them our dollars in exchange for a strange kind of security indeed. The same happens when we buy into the illogical premise that it is “normal” to pursue endless economic growth based on finite resources that, if consumed, destroy planetary conditions that support life.

Changing what is “normal” in societies that are deeply influenced by corporate interests begins with rejection of forms of space (e.g., shopping malls, cloned fast-food/coffee conglomerates, cubicle workspaces) and time (e.g., chronic busyness, obsessive scheduling, being “on the clock”) that reinforce behaviors and routines that alienate individuals from one another, from the development of a sense of connection to place, and from the clarity of mind that arises when we feel integrated and composed.

Philosopher Henri Lefebvre believed that the fundamental character of a society stems from the everyday habits of its people. Cultural change begins when customs change. As town squares and markets, inviting cafés, locally owned shops, pedestrian streets, and solidly constructed edifices are eradicated, we succumb to a culture of the disposable, banal, isolated, and hurried, dispensed by short-sighted profiteers with little concern for enduring collective wellbeing.

Fortunately, the antidotes are obvious. We refuse to comply with those who would have us submit to a state of fearful isolation and frantic inability to think clearly, critically, and creatively. We do not allow our thoughts to be constrained by linear, commercialist clock-time, and subvert it by realizing immeasurable, fluid, unstructured time that, infused with intention, flows via its own trajectory and with its own momentum (e.g., Parisian café culture of the 1920s and 30s, Black Mountain College 1933–1957, potlatch gatherings, jam sessions). By understanding the detrimental effects of prefabricated space, we can transform or avoid it to the greatest extent possible and strive to create alternatives that provide inhabitants with deeper senses of connection to one another and to place (e.g., parks, camps, churches, locally owned establishments, community gardens).

The Obvious International is an imaginary collective – one joins by imagining oneself a part of it. While the collective is imaginary, the relationships it generates and the results of its efforts are quite real. By rethinking the meaning of evolution, humanity, progress; by reconsidering the meaning of meaning itself; and by living our lives according to what we find, we are setting a bold new course into the present. Each of us can start where we are, first by noticing and then by becoming practitioners of the arts of the commonplace, the quotidian, the obvious.

This manifesto is a catalyst for further dialog and development of appropriate action. It is neither a starting point nor an end, but an articulation along a trajectory. This text is copyleft, share-ready, and open for comment at obviousinternational.com. Plans, exchanges, designs, and modifications by collaborators are actively being sought, collected, assimilated, and implemented.

OBVIOUS PRECEPTS-IN-PROGRESS:

1. Paradox exists everywhere.

By embracing paradox, we acknowledge the human capacity to perceive subtlety and nuance, and we recognize the speciousness of habitual compartmentalization and dualistic thinking. We may feel separate from nature, but in fact we are both separate and interconnected. We are individuals and members of a society. Thought and action are not isolated; they are two facets of an intricate, dynamic process.

2. All is in flux.

When we appreciate that nothing is truly static or linear we gain a sense of the complexity of being. By embracing the idea that everything, including information, is in a constant state of refinement or modification, we see that conventional forms of communication that require one isolated viewpoint to prevail above another may hinder perception of subtle connections that exist within seeming contradiction. The dialectician’s goal is not to “win” a debate, but instead to pool and analyze knowledge to gain a deeper, more holistic understanding of a situation.

3. Culture is in the quotidian.

To change what is normal, we must recraft the commonplace and cultivate reverence for and awe at everyday phenomena including air, sensory input, flora, fauna, empathy, and architecture. By paying attention to the details of everyday existence (the ways we experience both space and time), we can influence its effect on ourselves and our communities.

This is a dynamic participatory occasion.

If you would like to propose an edit or addition,  please let us know via the comments. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!