Proposing inner-life solutions to our political and economic catastrophes is something done, say the critics, only by people who've spent more time in la-la land than in the 'real world' - Parker Palmer

by IWP Staff • September 1, 2014 • Blog Categories, Guest Feature, Uncategorized • Comments (0) • 2791

Our Deepest Political Divide

I would like to thank Shelly Francis, Director of Marketing and Communications at the Center for Courage & Renewal for sending me this excerpt, a new introduction from Parker’s Healing the Heart of Democracy. Following the excerpt, you will find the link to a Readers Discussion Guide. The second link is to Parker’s essay, from the Huffington Post, “Real World Change Can Come from Within.” You will find Parker’s full bio at the Center for Courage & Renewal @ http://www.couragerenewal.org/

-Akilah

As I’ve traveled the country with Healing the Heart of Democracy, I’ve begun to think that for those of us who want to mobilize “We the People” across our lines of difference, the great divide is not between the left and the right. It is between people who hear stories like that of Rod House as sources of inspiration for citizen action and those who dismiss them as sentimental and politically irrelevant.

This divide reaches much deeper than the simplistic “hope vs. cynicism” frame in which it is often presented. Instead, it reflects three fundamental differences in the way people understand power—differences that must be addressed if we want to activate more “people power” in response to the current crisis in American democracy.

First, there is the divide between (a) people who believe in the power of ideas, values, commitments, and visions—aka the power of the human heart—and (b) those who believe that power comes only from possessing or having access to social status, wealth, positional leadership, and the capacity to command institutional resources. This is the divide between those who believe that power is found within us as well as outside us, and those for whom all power is external to the self.

Second, there is the divide between (a) people who believe in “the power of one” to act on the heart’s imperatives, especially when such an act calls a community of shared concern into being, and (b) those who believe that ordinary people, alone or together, are fundamentally powerless in a society dominated by mass institutions. This is a variant on the first divide, of course. But here, those who disbelieve in the power of the human heart have doubled down on their disbelief. Not only do they regard the heart as inherently powerless—they believe it remains powerless even when we follow the heart’s imperatives with personal and communal actions. To the argument that community has the capacity to multiply personal power many times over, they respond, “A thousand times zero is zero.”

Third, there is the divide between (a) those who believe in the power of small, slow, invisible, underground processes, and (b) those who believe that only processes that yield large-scale visible results in the short term qualify as powerful. The former understand the importance of political infrastructure, and have the patience to work away at strengthening it, even when their work is slow to yield measurable outcomes and never generates headlines. The latter seek quick fixes that look like solutions, whether or not they solve anything—and, if they fail to achieve them, either jump to the next quick fix or quit the field.

As I began to reject the traditional left-right notion of our great political divide in favor of a schema built on different assumptions about the nature of power, I began to see something hopeful. Redefined this way, the “great divide” does not parallel the left-right divide: it is nonpartisan. To cite but two examples, both the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party are made up of people who believe in the power of ideas and values, the power of one multiplied in community, and the power of invisible, long-term, infrastructure work. On these counts, at least, there is no fundamental difference between groups that are poles apart ideologically.

Here, it seems to me, is an important area of common ground between the left and the right that deserves exploration: a deeply shared belief in the pivotal role that “We the People” play in American democracy.

If I am right about this alternative way of seeing the “great divide” among us, it gives me more hope that left and right can come together around the conception of the common good I wrote about in the hardbound edition of this book:

Even if we could achieve respectful discourse, I doubt that we could reach widespread agreement on the details of the common good: Americans are deeply divided on issues ranging from supporting public education to financing health care to the role of government itself. We may not be able to agree on the details, but if we believe in our form of government, we must agree on an alternative definition that makes preserving democracy itself the focus of our concern. We must be able to say, in unison: It is in the common good to hold our political differences and the conflicts they create in a way that does not unravel the civic community on which democracy depends.

Reader’s Discussion Guide link: http://www.couragerenewal.org/democracyguide/

Real World Change Can Come From Within” by Parker Palmer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/parker-j-palmer/the-inner-revolution_b_1170426.html