The Movement we Need
A great Substack book that has just started, by Starhawk, "The Movement we Need." She plans to write and publish it in this way.
I'll just give a few interesting quotes:
With the alt-right telling people “Your resentful emotions make you a heroic defender of freedom”, and a left telling people “No matter how good you think you are, you are inherently racist, sexist, selfish and your privilege is oppressing others all over the world”, it's not surprising that many disaffected people are drawn to the right instead of the left. This is a simplification, of course, and there are many voices on the left that are calling for a movement that is inviting, affirming and empowering. I strongly believe that we have the capacity to create such a movement, and to do it skillfully. But to do so, we must organize people as they are, not as we think they ought to be.
Human beings, regardless of background and culture, have some core emotional needs that are important to recognize. Movements that succeed find ways to meet these needs that are inclusive and empowering. Many of them are easy to meet in negative ways, and to understand the success of right wing movements we must take an honest look at the ways that they do meet people's core needs. I will outline the five needs that I think are most key to organizing, and as these posts continue I'll go deeper into the ways we can address each one. Those five core needs are safety, belonging, value, agency and meaning.
The five core needs: safety, belonging, value, agency, and meaning, can be met in negative ways that exclude and disempower one group of people to benefit another, or in positive ways that are liberating. empowering and connecting.
Safety: The safety we strive for within our movements is emotional safety. As activists, we can't and don't always want to assure physical safety. We sometimes ask people to do physically and legally dangerous things in the furtherance of justice. But we do want to create a sense of emotional safety, a confidence that we are involved with others who care for us, will look out for us and will consider our interests as well as their own. We might frame this as solidarity.
Belonging: Humans are social animals, and we need to feel a sense of belonging, to know that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Traditionally that might be family, community, clan, tribe, nation, but it may also be political orientation, fan club, religious or spiritual group, or any other collection of people we can identify with. Ideally, we long to be part of something important, something that furthers our values in the world.
Value: As well as being part of something, we are also unique individuals. We have a powerful need to feel seen and valued, for the fullness of who we are as human beings. We resent being placed in categories or boxes, slapped with labels that define us more narrowly than we experience ourselves. Successful regenerative movements contest categorizations, and fight against prejudice of all sorts: racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the isms. We're often very good identifying and calling out instances where they appear overtly or subtly. But we also need to get good at finding ways to truly see and value each one of us as fully rounded human beings, not just as representatives of some particular identity.
Agency: There are many different sorts of power in this world but one definition I like is “the ability to get what you want done”. We strive for that kind of power, and we have a strong need to feel a sense of agency, that we can make choices and decisions and take actions that have an impact on the world around us. Ideally, that's a positive impact. we each want to make our own valued contribution to the community we belong to, and to its goals and projects. But thwarted, we'll settle for a negative impact, as opposed to feeling no sense of impact at all. When I was practicing as a therapist, I had a client who had recently been released from a long prison term. In jail, she had often gotten into fights. When we discussed why, she said “I would just start to feel like I was disappearing, like I wasn't there. I had to lash out and hit somebody just to know that I still exist.” I often think of her when I hear about some young, disaffected person shooting up a schoolroom or a shopping mall with an AK47. Is this a desperate, horrific attempt to feel some sense of power and impact in the world?
Meaning: We also have a powerful drive to find meaning and purpose in the world. The human mind has evolved to recognize and create patterns. We look out into a field of stars and see figures, heroes, deities, animals. We want the world to make sense. Too often it doesn't. Injustice surrounds us, some of it human created, some of it just the function of bad luck or circumstance. When we find or impose a pattern, we feel a sense of control and relief from some of the existential anxiety of being a mortal, vulnerable body in a dangerous world. We look for patterns in our own lives, and we want to believe that our lives mean something, that we can act in pursuance of our deepest values and bring reality closer to our ideals.
Extremist movements play on these needs very effectively. Right-wing news media inflame people's sense of fear and insecurity, painting the world as a threatening place, and then promise them safety, offering a ‘strong man’ who can save them. They offer a sense of belonging the easy way—by identifying and vilifying an out-group that does not belong. People gain a sense of value by partaking in the group (although that value is conditional.) Identifying with the strong man, people feel a sense of power, however illusory, often bolstered with the possession of weapons and fantasied or real acts of violence. Finally, they wrap it all up with a powerful sense of purpose—take our country back, make America great again.
To meet these needs in empowering and inclusive ways, a regenerative movement needs to be strategic, long term, and above all, welcoming. To make the profound changes we see are needed, we need a broad-based powerful movement, a big tent that can shelter a broad diversity of people and groups.
This is a terrifying and challenging time, but it is also a great time of opportunity. If we commit ourselves to valuing the inherent worth in every human being, if we identify our core human needs and find positive ways to meet them, if we are willing to organize, educate, and value people as they are, not just as we wish they would be, if we think strategically and plan for the long term, we can build a broad-based, regenerative, welcoming movement that will be an enormous force for positive change.
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I look forward to reading the next chapters as she writes them. I subscribed to receive them.
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