Hanoi in 2008. Imagine it in 2058. Or Houston, Kolkata...

On a recent Facing Privilege call, we were talking about the climate privilege we have relative to those coming in the future, and what we can do about it. This is not a question I know how to answer, even though I think of it as the key question facing humanity at this time.

 

I don't anticipate that any one of us, on our own, will figure out clear actions that can tilt the configuration of powers that's keeping us on the course of likely extinction. Still, I listened and wondered: for this person speaking to our group, what would be the next step?

 

The clue about how to respond to him came as almost a throwaway sentence, a reference he made to how sometimes all that is possible for him is to turn away from the reality of what's happening in order to continue to function. Now I knew what to say to him: often, the first step is to question why we even want to continue to function given what is happening, and to wonder what would support us in keeping rather than averting our gaze. As Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek tells us, "structural violence is simply the smooth functioning of the current system." Collectively, we co-create it with each and every action (or inaction) we take. For those of us who have access to the comforts that the affluent Global North affords, our most fundamental exit from supporting the system begins with looking: at what the system actually does instead of what we are told it does; at the effect of our actions on people and systems far away from us in space and time; and at the cost to us of continuing to avert our gaze.

 

Discomfort, as I've been saying for years now, is a necessary aspect of doing this work. We are incredibly unlikely, as unsupported individuals, to be able to recognize the possibility and value of this discomfort; then step into it; and then sustain ourselves there until we know what else to do. For this, I suggested to my caller, we need to be part of communities of other flesh and blood humans, not just symbols and letters on a screen. Communities in physical space are what our evolutionary makeup designed us for and what capitalism has severed us from. What can we each do to move in that direction? 

 

One thing I've done is to organize much of my work in intensive multi-day retreats, where a temporary in-person community forms to support focus and growth in our capacity to find creative responses to the impossible conditions that we all face now. The next one comes up very soon: the first International Intensive Training in Nonviolent Communication, sponsored by the International Center for Nonviolent Communication, to have a special focus on power, privilege, and the body. My co-trainers are Roxy Manning, Sarah Peyton, Jeyanthy Siva and Bob Wentworth, Jeyanthy Siva. We plan to explore the unique contribution that NVC can make to the vital work of examining power relations, how an awareness of power differences might inform the ways in which NVC is taught, and how our communities might rethink themselves. This is exciting for us, and we hope that you will join us in this exploration, or choose to support the many people who want to come and whose economic reality makes it impossible for them to secure those funds on their own.  

 

My final reflection as I close is about the inner dimension of the transformation I am pointing to in this letter. In my recent blog post, Nonviolence in the Face of Hatred, I trace an extraordinary example of what that can look like as one of the participants in my Responding to the Call of Our Times class sorts out her own internal violent responses to learning that her sister was assaulted years ago by the Ku Klux Klan. The work of nonviolence calls on us, repeatedly, to recognize that no matter how little say we have in what happens outside, we always have the ultimate freedom: to choose, moment by moment, where we put our attention and how we respond. 

Image credits: Top:  2008 Hanoi Flood, by Nguyen Thanh Quang, Wikimedia Commons, (CC 2.0 Generic)   Middle: book cover from the publisher, Verso. Bottom: Detail from Klansmen_in_robes_with_burning_cross, probably 1958, By State Archives of North Carolina [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.