Mobilize

[H2O Man]

" ….you think everybody has no secret or one big, big secret, they are what they seem or they are the opposite. You look at me and think: ‘Which is he? Plus or minus?’ …you insist on laboratory standards for reality, while I insist on its artfulness. So be it with us all, we’re not so one-or-the-other." – Tom Stoppard; Hapgood

I am admittedly unqualified to comment on the quantum mechanics of subatomic physics, nor upon Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle on our potential for self-understanding. My grasp of such things is no greater than that of the large, lazy dog that lies sleeping near my feet as I type this. More, Stoppard’s play, which focused on the seemingly permanent tensions between the USA and USSR, is not of particular interest to me today. In fact, rather than an atom or a universe, I find myself thinking of a mobile hanging over an infant’s crib as an appropriate model for this discussion. Still, I like the quote, and opted to use it, rather than Harry Nilsson’s, "Everything is the exact opposite of what it really is."

The mobile model can be used to help us visualize the dynamics of a family, a classroom, a work place, or most any group of people. It can be applied to the subatomic particle of your community, and to the universe of our nation. It is the balance that is created by the interconnected relationship of the individual pieces of the mobile.

A couple of years ago, my younger son started a job in a correctional facility that housed teenagers. He went into this experience with high hopes and great expectations. Within two months, his eyes had been opened. He saw things that he knew were not right, and he was determined to change them. And, of course, he experienced the frustrations that so many people who have high hopes and great expectations experience when we hope to change the balance of a mobile.

If, for example, that mobile has one dozen pieces in a balance, if but one piece attempts to move in such a way that would create a change in the balance, the other eleven pieces resist. This is, of course, the same unified resistance that a therapist dealing with a dysfunctional family system expects, if one family member seeks to make healthy changes. In the work place, those with a vested interest in keeping the balance intact tend to be willing to cut the piece seeking change loose, if that piece attempts to unionize the workplace, or to implement changes that would require treating incarcerated youth like human beings, rather than sub-humans to be packaged for the adult prison industry.

"What, then, can be done?," my son asked. "Or is it hopeless?"

Nothing is impossible in this unnatural laboratory that we call our society. However, the art of instituting change demands two difficult things. First, as unpleasant as it may be for an individual to hear: in order to do more, one must be more. For example, a young person taking an entry-level job is not in as good of a position within an institution/mobile to effect meaningful change, as is a more educated person who has a higher level position. That, of course, is a matter of one type of authority. There are other types of authority – one need only think of George W. Bush babbling about economic reform within the corporate mobile for an example of a little man who lacked the moral authority for even an entry-level position (except as an inmate in a federal prison).

The mobility required for ethical change in an unethical society is restricted by that resistance we see today. Another option for combating that systematic resistance to healthy change is found in numbers. Sarah Silverman’s observations on the Vatican being sold, in order to feed starving people, are as true as they were humorous. Michael Moore’s new movie on capitalism is more honest and accurate than, at the very least, 99% of the nonsense coming out of Washington, DC.

As long as the odds are 99 to 1 in favor of the lies of an unhealthy society/mobile, there will be no meaningful change. But, as Moore advocates, we have the ability to change the way that people view those odds. We can use both laboratory diagnoses and art to help others to see the differences between the sick culture we live in, and the potential for an ethical, just society.

Social justice requires constant struggle. But is not that struggle the very definition of what is best in any society, including the USA?

Mobilize.