The Big Community

The Big Community

Our work at Side By side is informed by our concern for peace and social justice… period! That’s what it is all about for us! Where we might be different from others who have similar interests is that we go about our work with a sense of hope and optimism. Our work is grounded in the belief that united in community people can push for change and construct a world that is more just and more peace abiding. We believe that community is key.

We are also aware that there is a “system” in place that wields power and control over the lives of people here and around the world. The system holds hostage the real desires of people everywhere to live in peace and harmony and respect. This is not the “bogeyman” for in many respects we are the system because it is so deeply sewn into the fabric of our daily lives. The building of community can defeat the system.

On a regular basis I’ll post some of my thoughts about The System here:

The System
Alvin Herring © 1998-2009


Systems of human relationships have always been global but only now do we have the technology to see and feel the extent to which all of our lives are part of an interdependent web. The present global system is governed by a set of simple rules that generate a staggering complexity; one that requires a massive amount of power and resource to maintain.

There are primary human needs that all people are trying to meet:

o Physiological Needs - physical sustenance;
o Safety Needs - shelter, work, energy
o Social Needs - family/clan/kinship/lineage identity, relationships, work,
esteem

•There are some needs that only those with resource, power and opportunity get to meet. Those are the self-actualization needs.

•There is an imposed and false competition for the resources to meet the primary needs.

•This competition is governed by power, race, gender, class, age, physical ability, social status, nationality, religion.

•The numerical minority has become the holder of power and determines the rules of the system, hands out the rewards, and impose the sanctions.

•The numerical majority are made to get in line and accept handouts of resources, access and power.

•The world system is presently constructed to involve us in competitive and destructive relationships with each other.

•The system has us believe that resources are scarce and we must compete with each other – even to the point of death - to get our share.

•The system is governed by and is a slave to a “market mentality” –everything is reduced to a commodity and all relationships are defined by market rules of interaction.

•The system does not value all life equally…value is allocated along power and resource lines defined by the market and assessed value by the system.

•The system dictates to us what our fair share should be. We are convinced to seek more than we presently have but never enough for true parity and power.

•The system reinforces the submergence of our innate human need for connection and community and replaces that with an egocentric self-absorption and indifference to the needs of others .

•The system touts a “rugged individualism” and sanctions any attempt to unify the people across identity lines.


•The system is based on a power standard that reinforces that “might makes right.”

•The system presents materialism as a moral and ethical code.

•The system teaches that it is better to consume – even over-consume - than to produce.

•The system teaches us to view the planet as a resource factory with an infinite capacity to withstand the destructive changes we make to it; to be used, exploited, dominated and then cast off.

•The system encourages a schizophrenic relationship with spiritual faith or moral guidance - embracing it on the surface, abandoning it when economic or power interests are involved or creating warped versions of it to conquer and subdue.

•The system uses war and violence as tools of oppression and coercion and plays on our fears of the “other” to get us to go along.

•The system requires markets for economic expansion and uses the machinery of war to open those markets.

•The system seems not to value peace because conditions of peace do not allow for the best environment for unilateral market penetration, market expansion and market hegemony.

•Aggression; violence; war, religious fundamentalism; zealous nationalism; ethnocentrism; gender oppression; ageism; sexual identity phobias; “able-bodiness;” and environmental degradation are the preferred tools the systems uses to impose order, create false dichotomies, set up unfair competition, exploit resources, transfer wealth from the powerless to the powerful and disabuse the powerless from challenging the system.

•The system has determined that war is better than peace; more is better than less, all is better than some, aggression is better than reason.

•The system abhors diversity and elevates one sense of cultural expression over others, ultimately seeking to obliterate difference. To execute this, the system foments fear and suspicion among groups and offers “culturelessness” and color-blindness as “safer” substitutes.

•The system teaches a deep and abiding dissatisfaction with life and the living process encouraging us to seek shallow resolutions to majestic questions and pursue immediate personal gratification over a conscientious search for what is right.

•The system does not value the lives of women and sees them as commodities to exploit and dominate.

•The system does not value children and sees them as commodities to exploit and dominate.

•The system does not value the elderly and sees them as resource consumers, expendable, and “in the way.”

•The system uses men as tools and teaches them to disregard life, living, loving and being. Men of color, economically oppressed men, men with mental and other disabilities and men who are damaged by war are warehoused in money making prisons without the hope of rehabilitation and subject to state execution.

•The system places humanity on an island, alone in the universe, afraid of our mortality and in denial of our linkages to each other, the planet and then universe.

You and I must change the system … isn’t it time for a change?