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“Play the tape machine
make the toast and tea
When I'm mobile
Well I can lay in bed
with only highway ahead
When I'm mobile
Keep me movin'
Keep me movin'
Over 50
Keep me groovin'
Just a gypsy hippie.”
The Who
When I made the drive to (and from) where I was making a presentation last night, a couple thoughts were moving through my head. The first was simple: it takes a lot longer for me to reach a destination driving, than when riding as a passenger with my wife. However, it is not my intent to discuss theories of “time travel” here today.
More interesting – at least to me – were thoughts about the structural dynamics of groups. I was thinking of the groups that I speak to about hydro-fracking and the environment; the groups that I coordinate efforts with to oppose hydro-fracking; the groups that were are in opposition to, which include those from energy corporations, and the “common folk” who are under financial pressures, and are desperate to believe that signing a lease with the energy corporations will lead to a pot of gold; and also about that curious collection of people known as the “Democratic Underground.”
Even under these conditions, traveling in these strange regions of my mind, I can honestly say I did not engage in even a single episode of “road rage.”
While employed in “human services,” I learned to view family systems as being like a mobile that hangs over a baby's crib. There are numerous individual pieces that find some type of balance. A “good” family will, at times, hit a bump that causes the individual and collective pieces to bounce around a bit. But it stays balanced.
An unhealthy family system is actually more rigid. The collective attempts to hold each individual firmly in place. Thus, if one family member grows to recognize the system is sick, and attempts to change, the other pieces will try to lock that individual in place – for if he/she moves, they must all move. If that individual insists upon changing, the whole of the mobile may well “cut it off” in order to remain in their rigid balance. (A few forum readers may be familiar with this reality.)
I've used this same model to illustrate to my children the difficulties that one can encounter in other larger groups. Just as a healthy family dynamic not only allows, but encourages and nurtures growth, a healthy school classroom or workplace allows for creativity and growth. But unhealthy groups can be defined as those demanding rigidity, and which inflict punishment to discourage even the thought of creativity or change. (Again, a few forum readers may actually have encountered a “boss” who has exhibited such traits.)
In grass roots activism/community organizing, a certain amount of structure is definitely needed. This includes the recognition that individuals bring different talents and strengths to the table, and thus can and should play different roles. One overall goal is to find a good balance of groups members, in order to be able to translate interest and efforts into meaningful activity. Yet, even within such a group, there are individuals who come from remarkably different family experiences; from differing educational backgrounds; and various levels of experience in political-social activism. Thus, the potential for imbalances is real. In order to deal with these, we must have patience with others, and both understand and appreciate that other people view things differently than we do.
(Note: Those with much experience in activism know there are still others, from time to time, that “join” our ranks for various reasons. A few years back, when we attended a presentation by the “St. Patrick's Four,” I asked my son if he could pick out the police investigator in the crowd? He did. These days, we encounter this same fellow at some anti-fracking meetings. I want clean water for everyone, and hope that he does, too. However, he doesn't identify himself as a police detective. We also encounter individuals not employed by law enforcement, with very different agendas, from time to time.)
Now, when The Who sang about goin' mobile,they were not referring to something hanging over a crib. Likewise, when then-candidate Barack Obama spoke about how someone had driven an the country into a ditch, he was referring to an automobile. However, I was alone in my vehicle on this ride to and from the meeting where, many years earlier, MartinLuther King, Jr., had stood where I stood, and spoke about the need for grass roots activism. Plus, I have a small pair of “Golden Gloves” hanging from my rear-view mirror – not exactly a mobile. And I was listening to The Beatles Anthology #3.
Now back to that national vehicle in the ditch.
Issues such as hydro-fracking are a heck of a lot larger than a few jobs, or a former farmer being able to pay his taxes. Those are a couple pieces in the state mobile in New York, and some people view the issue exclusively in those terms. But any rational, informed person can look beyond that, and see that fracking poisons the environment in terrible ways. It poisons the land, the water, and the air. It represents a potential short-term benefit for the few, while creating an unacceptable health risk for all living things exposed to its poisons.
It is, of course, just one of many interrelated issues that involve a culture that has driven itself into a ditch. We see President Obama and that weeping orange-stained fellow debating the tax ceiling. We don't see much about the on-going wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the numerous other little conflicts the public is largely unaware of. A few of us are noticing some changes in the climates we grew up in. And on and on.
I think that this is what a large amount of the conflict on this forum is about. We have seen it at various times in the past, usually during the primary and general election seasons. It is still here between these cycles. And now that the 2012 presidential election is getting closer, we see it daily on General Discussion, in often toxic arguments about people supporting or not supporting President Obama.
Individuals are in very different positions on this mobile/forum. They bring different life experiences, different wants and needs, expectations and goals. In a very real sense, in the example of President Obama, opposing views can actually be valid. In the context of “who is better: Barack Obama or Sarah Palin?” it is obviously President Obama. But in the context of what general direction the national vehicle should go on, after being pulled out of the ditch that George W. Bush drove it into, there is legitimate concern that we are speeding along towards a cliff.
That our society requires a large amount of “energy” is obvious. The experiences with power outages, especially in disasters, indicates that we are generally unprepared to transition from those sources our culture is dependent upon. Mobiles comprised of unhealthy systems with issues of addiction are, by definition, rigid. Individual pieces refuse to even consider the option of moving. The unit responds negatively to those individual pieces that recognize the dysfunction, and attempt to adjust.
I wonder, sometimes, what what all of the misdirected and wasted energy invested on this forum could accomplish if used properly. I think of Robert Kennedy's misquote of George Bernard Shaw: “There are those who look at thing the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” And of Shaw: “You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream of things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'.” I suppose people could argue about the two. I think they are both good.
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