The Importance of Growth and Space
My friend Kate Monster posted this blurb from an Aussie book called "The Way Out Now":
Our revolutionary duty includes the creation within the movement of a social and personal reality that allows us to grow as whole people, capable of responding to each others needs and to the needs of people beyond the movement, with compassion and trust. This explicitly involves rejecting the indulgence of seeking personal solutions *or withdrawing into the reactionary mirage of a separate reality.* We must proclaim the movement as a repository of hope and a medium of change-as itself a model, albeit incomplete and distorted, of the changes we are seeking. Only in this way can we invent the humanely radical alternatives *that are real alternatives for more than a tiny privileged elite.*
I puzzled over that for a moment, then came up with a different way of saying the same thing:
We must create a space wherein we can feel safe and both be ourselves and explore new directions. At the same time, calling burning man [events] "home" or separating ourselves from those who have not yet experienced it is to ignore the reality of our lives and the need to integrate our spiritual and personal growth into our daily lives. Such integration not only benefits ourselves, but everyone around us.
That's an oversimplification, but I think it holds.
Our revolutionary duty includes the creation within the movement of a social and personal reality that allows us to grow as whole people, capable of responding to each others needs and to the needs of people beyond the movement, with compassion and trust. This explicitly involves rejecting the indulgence of seeking personal solutions *or withdrawing into the reactionary mirage of a separate reality.* We must proclaim the movement as a repository of hope and a medium of change-as itself a model, albeit incomplete and distorted, of the changes we are seeking. Only in this way can we invent the humanely radical alternatives *that are real alternatives for more than a tiny privileged elite.*
I puzzled over that for a moment, then came up with a different way of saying the same thing:
We must create a space wherein we can feel safe and both be ourselves and explore new directions. At the same time, calling burning man [events] "home" or separating ourselves from those who have not yet experienced it is to ignore the reality of our lives and the need to integrate our spiritual and personal growth into our daily lives. Such integration not only benefits ourselves, but everyone around us.
That's an oversimplification, but I think it holds.