Pursuing the relationship between theory and practice is often daunting for activists. Communicating something to an audience bound by a spectrum of concerns that are narrowly defined is the easy part. If your audience is against war, it is easy enough to say, "I am against war." Additionally, it is never too hard to accuse someone else of not being sufficiently against war, in order to highlight one's own level of commitment. This is almost always a waste of practical energy; but again, easy enough to do as long as we know the bounds of debate in advance.
Once we exit the predictable confines of our own group or club, the bounds of debate can only be discovered by testing them -- by talking to people and hearing their concerns. Insofar as we wish to be persuasive, the concerns of others must form the starting point, for the simple fact that nobody is bound by ours. This includes concepts and vocabulary used during the conversation; again, to the degree that we want to communicate anything at all to others, we first yield to their terms. And this is because no amount of self-satisfaction on our part ever obliges them to listen -- or to care.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
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27 comments:
"Yield" seems unduly passive.
You say "passive" as though it's always a bad thing.
Direct attacks are not always the most efficient. If you try to assert your own power over someone, they will resist. Certainly a forceful enough argument may overcome; but there is more than one way to get past a person's defenses, and (as jujutsu teaches us) yielding first can be an equally effective way to bring our audience around to where we want them to go. Certainly it is more graceful; if nothing else, it leads to less resentment on the other party's part.
And if yielding to our partner's terms of argument requires us to be pliable, to shift our own position slightly in the process, is that always a bad thing?
Quin,
On my way back again. Not a lot of time. Sorry I can't go into it at greater length right now, but:
I didn't write "passive" as if it's always a bad thing. I didn't write "passive" as if I meant to imply "always go on the attack."
I wrote "unduly passive."
I chose the modifier "unduly" with some care.
~ Jack
I know you didn't say "always attack", but I (mis?)read you to mean that you disapprove of "yielding" to anyone else's terminology in order to communicate with them better.
And, if you're seeking to engage another person, it seems to me that any change in status between the two of you is going to be the result of resistance or acceptance-- yielding or attack. This is why I turned, then, to speaking of "attack". Because I though you were rejecting "yield".
Quin,
I just reject the either/or.
Quin:
I think you've helped me understand that the left is broken because substantial parts of it know neither when to yield, nor when to advance; and in either case they are reluctant to take their cues from the working class!
Well, I don't know the answers to those questions either; but it makes me very happy to hear that I might have helped you understand something!
Quin:
I would say: Yield to the expressed concerns of the people around you ("I totally want the new iPhone!" or "Mexican immigrants are breaking our laws!"), but advance an awareness of the objective struggles that are happening independently of the news or advertising cycles ("That's cool, dude; but it's so expensive and I can barely afford groceries" or "That concerns me, too! Why are there so many immigrants coming from Mexico? What's going on down there?"
5. As a rule, stay friendly and calm. Most folks, when talking to people they disagree with, tend to start to put up some kind of a challenge (whether in the form of aggression or passive aggression). It's in a missionary's best interest to glide above these concerns, if it's at all possible. Responding to force with force gives your partner a thrill at successfully "defending" against you with their old belief system.
6. Finally, though a missionary lives among heathens, she gets involved in the things which the heathens value-- whether or not it actually has to do anything directly with the missionary's beliefs. People will heed someone who works well with them much more easily than someone who hides away and doesn't get involved.
That's all I can think of now, but if there's one thing I'm sure of, though, the only way to improve any of these skills is to start trying to have some conversations with some real people from outside your circle.
(Once again, sorry for posting so much here. Maybe I should have waited til morning and tried to sort out my technical problems at my own place. But I'm tired and sleepy. So. Here!)
Perhaps I cannot understand the arbitrary either/or because I fundamentally disagree with the missionary/proselytizing approach to human existence. Anyone who conceives of his or herself as a bearer of saving or good news does so as a would be ruler of others.
It's a ruling class approach to human interaction.
Quin:
Wow, we should talk about jujutsu more often!
I'm not sure where some of your posts have gone, but I liked them. I hope you will be able to get them up at your place for everyone to read.
I prefer the political concept of "propaganda" -- propagating ideas -- to the religious connotations attached to "missionary work" -- but we understand each other well enough: there is a need for outward engagement with people in areas of shared concern; namely, of a supportive variety that most of us lack.
Jujutsu is a useful analogy because it anticipates circumstances that are already in motion, and against which there is a necessity to react.
Quin:
Also, I have copies of all your text, just let me know where I can send it. I'm sorry it didn't show up in the thread. Not really sure why.
That's very nice of you! I've sent you an e-mail.
I should ACTUALLY study jujutsu. It might help my conversational skills.
Quin's full text begins here:
JRB. Please forgive me; text dump ahead! I promise not to write this much very often! I was planning to turn this into a post at my own place, but I'm having technical problems on the Admin side there right now.
Those conversation examples you give are more or less the kind of stuff I meant when I was writing to Jack, above. But it will probably take most people quite a bit of practice to develop this skill. Returning to the jujutsu analogy, even if I read some books about passive martial arts, and really understand the core concepts of how to use an opponent's own force against them, it doesn't mean I'm going to be able to apply it if someone attacks me on the street. That kind of skill takes practice. And in the examples you've given, I think it would take some practice to actually achieve a fruitful result with them.
For instance, I wonder if your response to the iPhone dude skirts the edge of being dismissive-- as in "hey buddy, quit your whining, there's people with REAL problems here". This is not only a form of one-upmanship, it will also serve to remind him of the differences between you, when what you really want is for him to understand how your concerns are ultimately the same. Likewise, your answer to the anti-immigrant person will probably backfire unless you can pull it off without even the slightest whiff of condescension. If secretly you already think you know the answers, the dialogue will quickly become a monologue as the other party closes her ears. Because, if that becomes the case, then in a way you were in fact the first one to close yours.
Quin cont.:
JRB, you use the word "propoganda", I guess because you're seeking to sway other peoples' political beliefs. But I wonder if a more useful way to think of it would be "political missionary work". I say this because, well, most people really don't like missionaries (except for their own team's missionaries). So it's easy to remember just how easily you'll alienate others if you take the wrong approach.
But it's also, then, worth thinking about what makes a successful missionary. Some possible steps that come to mind:
1. Step one, I think you've successfully laid out in your post: to listen to the concerns of others and let that be your starting point.
2. Then you can search for the points in which the two of you are in agreement, and let that be your "home base": a safe place you can easily retreat to, together, if the conversation meanders out of the zone in which both of you agree.
3. Don't make it you goal to convert anyone in the course of any one conversation. People don't change their minds that quickly about political beliefs. That stuff is pretty deep-seated. All you can do in any one engagement is rub off on them a little bit, get them thinking about things so they might possibly decide to change their own mind, on their own, later.
4. Don't automatically volunteer to tell what YOU think, especially if you know if it's different from what they think. (That's called "preaching", and nobody likes a preachy missionary.) Instead, ask a lot of questions about what they think, and why they think that. If they tire of this and want to ask YOU pointed questions instead, that's perfect: you get to preach a little, and THEY'RE obliged to listen! They asked the question, after all.
5. As a rule, stay friendly and calm. Most folks, when talking to people they disagree with, tend to start to put up some kind of a challenge (whether in the form of aggression or passive aggression). It's in a missionary's best interest to glide above these concerns, if it's at all possible. Responding to force with force gives your partner a feels a thrill at successfully "defending" against you with their old belief system.
6. Finally, though a missionary lives among heathens, she gets involved in the things which the heathens value-- whether or not it actually has to do anything directly with the missionary's beliefs. People will heed someone who works well with them much more easily than someone who hides away and doesn't get involved.
That's all I can think of now, but I'm sure there are many other ways to be a good missionary.
If there's one thing I'm sure of, though, the only way to improve any of these skill is to start trying to have some conversations with some real people from outside your circle.
Quin's full comments appear above.
Thank you for restating the logic of colonialism, Quin.
Jack:
Aren't you in a feisty mood these days!
Huh. I thought I reposted Quin's reply to Jack along with the above text.
Here it is:
Jack, I understand your point, and very nearly agree with you. (By the way, it got lost in the first part, but I was only using the missionary comparison as a useful way for JRB to view the "propaganda" that he's writing about, in that missionaries tend to be annoying; in order to be a successful one requires acts of real communication.)
I say I "nearly" agree with you, because the issue of what good news one is spreading is paramount. There is a fundamental difference between one who goes around preaching of the wonder of their God/President/etc, and one who goes around spreading messages about dispersing power away from central hubs and into the hands of those who have none. After all, we all have opinions. We all have to talk to each other to share them. We all want our friends to succeed, and we want to give them advice that we think will help them. That's all I meant. The stuff I wrote was basically saying "a good missionary, if he doesn't want to just annoy people, has two-way conversations and listens and gets involved"-- not "preaches at from above". Do you get the distinction I'm going for?
(I'm sorry that I'm referring to text that isn't actually there right now. Perhaps it's in moderation. If it hasn't shown up by the time I wake up, I'll give a go at recreating it on my own blog.)
Quin,
I don't trust the impulse to convert anyone. I reject the idea that consciousness needs to be changed, or that it even exists as a thing to be changed, in order to change the way people relate. For all that I identify as an anarchist, I find the bourgeois mystical attitude common to relatively affluent anarchists off putting. Marxists certainly have their missionary sorts, but that school of thought at least has this right: change material conditions, not "consciousness." Wasting time getting people to believe as we do won't fundamentally alter the condition of society. It will put us and them in a position to learn hatred and resentment. And as we chatter, the bosses and cops consolidate power.
Alleviate suffering, not opinions. Change the means of production, not minds. You know why Robin Hood and his analogs are such enduring myths? Because people root for outlaws who drop the missionary critique and get around to sticking it to the rich. Deeds first, not words. Any time revolutionary movements have succeeded, it's because the revolutionaries did things which hurt power. Real, physical, material things. The Paris Commune would eventually lose to superior foreign arms - but it seized Paris by seizing Paris, not by attempting to persuade workers to agree about theory and outlook. Durruti and Makhno were dicks, but they also built movements by disrupting the "social flow of power." Words might sway a crowd at a crisis moment, but they don't make the crowd in the first place. Suffering does. Outrage does. Loyalty does.
Deeds, not words.
But, I'm not particular enamored of "agreement" as a social bond. And I reject fundamentally any concept and conceptualization of the "social contract" which tends to rest as a moral foundation for conversionist thinking and behavior.
JRB,
It's not that I'm feisty. It's that I know what I know, and all that I don't know - and I'm too old for bullshit. I understand why people - especially those still in their late teens, twenties and early thirties - feel hope and all that, but I have no patience for hope. It's a disease of the mind. It paralyzes, which is probably why it is such easy and ready currency for politicians, film producers and bad writers.
We on the left need less hope, fewer happy feelings, less passivity and a boatload more spine - because we're on the cusp of losing our chance to matter for a very, very long time.
With respect,
Jack
Test.
Yes, Jack: interesting to get your take, as usual.
Aargh. I don't know what's happening. The word "test" works, but not my longer comment. Short version of it: Even Robin Hood had his "merry men".
Quin's reply to Jack:
Jack:
I think that by talking about missionaries and what makes a "good" missionary, I've gone and confused matters. Both the terms "propaganda" and "missionary" are equally problematic and should be abandoned, if we want to talk about what I *think* JRB was getting at, and certainly what I was trying to get at, which is: building relationships with others based on common ground, as the first step in working together to improve the conditions you both share. This may mean one or both of you expanding the other's consciousness about what territory that you actually share.
Once again, I agree with you on most things, Jack. You say "Deeds, not words." I say, "Deeds, with words." I'm with you-- deeds speak louder than words. And words without deeds are empty and useless. Now, deeds without words are good if you can manage it-- say, if you're working solo. But as soon as you want to coordinate actions with other people to take on a larger task, you're going to need to start having conversations with others where you agree on common ground that you can act on, together.
After all, it wasn't just Robin Hood. It was "Robin Hood and his merry men".
Thank you, Jack. Your challenges help me figure out what I really think, and how to say it. If indeed the endgame of my line of thinking is colonialism and oppression, then I don't want to go further down that road. I don't think it is, yet, though.
Quin,
Like JRB, you are generous, patient and open minded. My respect to you,
Jack
Jack, that means a lot to me. Thank you. Not just because of the high regard in which I hold JRB, but because I've learned so much from you, too, over the last year.
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