Shorter Showers

One of the many pamphlets I picked up in Zuccotti park was an anarchist essay by Derrick Jensen “Forget Shorter Showers – Why Personal Change Does Not equal Political Change”. I didn’t take to it’s argument then, that change in the personal sphere has negligible effect on the public sphere, but it took what Chris Hedges had to say on liberals talking about the needs and interests of the poor without ever being in danger of meeting the poor for me to understand why not.

Personal change is essential for political change. Political change requires passion, authenticity and an ability to empathize.  As banal as it might seem, it is exactly learning to buy less that awakens us to the unsustainable nature of our consumer society. It is learning to eat better, to make our own food, to know what we are putting in our mouths, that allows us to realize the importance of promoting equal rights to good nutrition. It is precisely through caring for others that we come to understand our short comings as a society in caring for the needy.

If all we do is concentrate on grand ideas, theories and mass political movements in order to affect change, we are not likely to get very far. We need to marry these ideas to practical change on the ground. It is only when enough people stop believing that change is impossible that it starts to take place. It is only when people feel that change will affect them on a personal level that they will invest the emotional capital needed. How can we convince others to affect change if we haven’t made it ourselves? Who will believe is when we speak of hollow theory?

Even though the Arab spring is more about civil liberties and self determination while protests elsewhere are more about the consequences of economic oppression, what sparked and allowed these protests to grow is personal change, personal example which allowed masses of people to realize that they were in the same predicament. One of the reasons why the protest movement has not yet turned into a mass movement in the States is because the majority of people who are struggling are still embarrassed to admit it, still believe that somehow, magically they’ll realize the American dream.

Like others I believe that the watershed in Tunis, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Athens, Madrid and Lisbon came when people no longer felt that they were the only ones that were struggling with the system. This loss of shame at not being able to keep up the farce that everything was ok; that although the economy is tough, you’re keeping your head above water; that although you need to bribe to get ahead, you are managing; that although your neighbor got dragged away by the secret police in the middle of the night, they won’t come for you. This is what is fueling the revolutionary change in governments, in the way so many of us are thinking about the way our world should look. It’s the understanding at a personal level that the status quo simply can no longer be maintained. It is seeing your friends and neighbors struggling, seeing them protesting, defying power, that will move you to join the attempt to reshape our world.