Is avoiding political engagement ‘more enlightened’?

Let me start by acknowledging that many people are barely getting by in their life with mental space & emotional capacity. I believe this is by design in our society, to keep everyone at their wit’s end so they don’t have any time or energy left to pay attention to the bigger picture. You are told to do it all, get married, have kids, have a career, be healthy etc. The USA is a burned out nation, by design.

I truly believe that everyone is doing the best they can given their own circumstances, AND we also sometimes have to do more (this is a dialectic). I also understand that everyone engages in positive change or activism in different ways and value the variety of approaches people take, and that different things are needed at different times. 

Many times in my life have I fantasized about moving into the forest on a large plot of land with my cats in a cottage. Disappearing from the chaos and hair-pulling complexity of human society that both enrages and disgusts me at times. All I want to do is sit in the grass and count rainbows. I could cozy in by the fire, grow a garden and live in my fantasy novels in a bubble of bliss while the world burns. ‘I choose peace.’

However there is some part of me that feels like that is a form of giving up. There is a part of me that feels like my withdrawal from society and trying to do my part to address the larger problems of the world in whatever small way that I can, would be a direct abandonment of the trees that would surround me in that peaceful forest.  They would be burned long after I was gone.

There has always been a disdain for politics, and I get it. I’ve shared multiple posts about the uncomfortable emotions brought up by political discussion, as well as the entitled comfort and convenience obsession in US culture that can’t be bothered.  The last thing I want to be spending my time doing is following this shit, paying attention and speaking out.  TRUST ME! I want to be floating on a boat somewhere with my best friends sipping bubbles… and I’ll try to make time for some of that for sure – it’s not all or nothing.

Lately I’ve noticed another dismissal for paying attention to what’s happening on a larger scale, where people seem to hold themselves above it.  There are camps that mock people who participate in political actions, pinky in the air or namaste prayer bow in place, 

‘Why bother with government? What’s the point? It’s all corrupt anyway. If you’re political you must have some fantasy that the government is going to save you and take care of you. Don’t mess with people who participate in political action and trust the government. Don’t fight the old system, focus on building a new one!’

In many ways this reflects New Age and modern spiritual movements, which let me start by saying – I genuinely identify with a lot!! I don’t tie myself down into any camp with locks and chains (I have an upcoming podcast about my own spiritual journey coming soon!), but there are some solid benefits in being able to detach, rise above, not get bogged down and work towards something better. Envisioning the world we want and manifesting it by ‘being the change’, what you embody is what you attract.

And we CERTAINLY need to manage our own mental health, resilience and stamina as we work towards change so we don’t get bogged down in painful emotions and burn out (Listen to my podcast on how to do that with Mindfulness HERE).

Modern New Age practices have grown up in Western Culture which is hyper-individualistic and strongly influenced by puritan religions.  This means over-focus on ‘how I feel and my own happiness’ (vs. also considering the collective/others) as well as valuing ‘purity, light, love, high vibration, being without sin or darkness’ in order to achieve ‘salvation’ or ‘enlightenment’.

This is another place where it doesn’t have to be ‘all or nothing’.  Those above mentioned things are important, however they leave out another side.  They leave out the fact that we are a part of an interconnected whole. We cannot separate ourselves out entirely as individuals, because everything we do also impacts everything else. This is quantum physics. We can both consider our own inner peace and self-interest AND pay attention and support collective change and liberation.

It leaves out the fact that darkness, pain, inequity, abuses etc. exist in this current state of reality. We have to understand, face and acknowledge these things if we want to work towards reducing and changing them.  This requires mindfulness practice and distress tolerance skills.

The fact is that our current reality is living in a governed society, so we need to work with the present to create the future. Yes, we want to start by visualizing and embodying what we want to see reflected in the world, AND there also must be action to follow. Simply thinking about something doesn’t change it. And ignoring something doesn’t either.

Yeah, maybe we’re in the matrix. Maybe this is all temporary and meaningless – a hallucination of our consciousness. But then like, what’s the point in being here? To be here obviously. Let’s play the game. And by that I mean, support the increased expression of love, freedom, community and collaboration with concrete actions.

In advocating for political changes I do not believe that the system is ‘good’.  I absolutely and unequivocally do NOT trust the government. Nor am I under any naive pretense that big daddy government is going to take care of us and do the work needed to build a better world.

That is the job of the people. Of society. Government is a system and tool that can be utilized, but WE have to work IT. When we don’t pay attention, stay informed, participate and hold our elected officials accountable – it will absofuckinlutely fuck us over.

Whenever I hear someone say they don’t involve themselves in political action because it’s a ‘waste of time’ or ‘doesn’t matter’ I think: Tell that to everyone who benefitted from the women’s suffrage movement, indigenous rights movement, workers rights movements, the civil rights movement and LGBTQ+ rights movement.  Prior to these political movements, none of those people were considered human or worthy of equal rights.  

The US Government has never been fair or equitable to ‘We the People’ (that’s all of us by the way, not just certain races, religions or genders).  It has always taken organized action to gain rights and freedoms. It’s all political, but yeah sit back and ignore politics, and enjoy your freedoms while you have them. There are highly organized power hungry groups actively working to take them away.

I know very clearly the numerous harms the government has systemically enacted on people of this nation, from the genocide of Native Americans and slavery, to selling out with Reaganomics and later Citizens United and giving corporations ‘personhood’, maintaining a class system that only increases poverty and the shrinking middle class.  

Let me share with you some startling history about Institutional Oppression that has always been around in this nation (that means the government imposed system was built to benefit some people more than others).  This is a long and incomprehensive list:

-1662 A law decreed that the children of slaves took on the status of their mother, in contrast to common law, which conferred the father’s status on a child. The law was intended to enslave the increasing number of children fathered by white men.

-1664 Maryland enacted a law that punished a woman who was “English or freeborn” who married a black slave, making them slaves and their children slaves.

-1740 Carolina passed the Negro Act, which made it illegal for slaves to gather in groups, earn money or learn to read or raise food, gave slave owners the right to kill rebellious slaves.

-1787 The Constitution was drafted.

-1790 The Naturalization act limited naturalization to only aliens who were ‘free white persons’.

-1793 The Fugitive Slave Law provided for the capture and return of runaway slaves who escaped into federal territory, without a jury trial.

-1798: The Alien and Sedition Acts required 14 years of residency before citizenship.

-1819: Congress passed the Civilization Act to assimilate Native Americans and provided US government funds to subsidize protestant missionary educators to convert Native Americans to Christianity.

-1820’s Philadelphia physician created a false science measuring human skull size to assert that different races were different species and Europeans had the highest brain capacity. This was used by US. Secretary of State John Calhoun’s effort to negotiate the annexation of Texas as a slave state.

-1830 The Indian Removal Act passed by Congress to appease white settlers who wanted 25 million acres of land in the southeast, and enabled the removal of  the five ‘civilized tribes’ as they were called: Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminoles.

-1948 Displaced Persons Act allowed 200,000 refugees over two years, and had a technical provisions that discrimination against Catholics and Jews. That dropped in 1953.

-1850 California becomes a state of the Union and passed the Indenture Act which gave whites the authorization to legally enslave Native peoples and their children, resulting in widespread kidnapping of Native children who were then sold into slavery.

-1857 The Dred Scott decision was handed down by the Supreme Court which denied citizenship to free and enslaved blacks.

-1862 Lincoln signs the Homestead act, allotting 160 acres of western land, nNative land, to ‘Anyone’ who could cultivate it for 5 years.  It only applied to U.S. citizens, leaving out Native Americans, Blacks and Non-European immigrants.

-1865 Lincoln was killed. The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified by the states.

-1865 The Ku Klux Klan is formed by ex-Confederates.

-1871: Congress passes the Indians Appropriations Act, dissolving the status of Indian tribes as nations.

-1878  Supreme Court rules Chinese individuals are ineligible for naturalized citizenship.

-1882: Chinese Exclusion Act. Congress prohibits Chinese immigrants for 10 years. Made permanent in 1992. Repealed in 1943.

-1883 Supreme Court strikes down the 1875 Civil Rights Act and reinforces the claim that the federal government cannot regulate behavior of private individuals in matters of race relations.

-1887 Dawes Act dissolves tribal lands, granting land allotments to individual Indians, leading to the division of Reservations and the encroachment by whites on Indian land.  The act explicitly prohibits communal land ownership.

-1892 – Ellis Island and Angel island are opened for East & West coast immigration screening.  Ellis Island officials reported that women traveling alone must be met by a man, or they were immediately deported.

-1896 Immigrants arriving from southern and eastern Europe (Italians, Jews, Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian Empire) received markedly different treatment from northern European immigrants. They were placed in urban ‘Ghettos’ and not given the same work opportunities.

-1920 Congress grants women the right to vote nationally, when prior it was slowly only being added to some states.

-1923 U.S. vs. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court recognizes that Asian Indians are ‘scientifically’ classified as Caucasian, but concludes that they are not white in popular (white) understanding. The lawyers for the United States attacked Thind’s “meltability” by defining Hinduism as an alien and barbaric system and not fit for membership in the ‘civilization of white men’.

-1924 Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act codified the “one-drop rule” as the standard racial classification for people of mixed ancestry.  A person with even ‘one drop’ of non-white ancestry was classified as ‘colored’ or ‘non-white.’

-1924 Indian Citizenship Act, Native Americans are granted U.S. citizenship.

-1930’s Roosevelt’s New Deal economic recovery program which included employment and public works projects, excluded certain racial groups including blacks, Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans.

-1934 California law declares Mexican Americans are foreign-born Indians.

-1935: Repatriation Act offered free transportation to Filipinos who would return to their homeland and restricted future immigration to the U.S.

-1935 The National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) legalizes the right to form unions, but excludes farm workers and domestic workers, most of whom are Chicano/a, Asian and African American.

-1945 on Returning World War II veterans amongst the burgeoning Civil Rights movement there were conflicts over discrimination in housing, jobs and education. The Federal Housing Administrations routinely denied low-interest loans to non-whites. This economic discrimination is seen to have contributed to the wealth gap between whites and nonwhites that we still see today.

-1954 the Supreme Court unanimously decided that segregation in education is inherently unequal.

-1954 U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service sets up Operation Wetback to round up and deport ‘Illegal” Mexicans living in the U.S.

-1960 FDA approves birth control.

-1963 Equal Pay Act prohibits sex-based pay discrimination.

-1964 Civil Rights Act bans employment discrimination based on sex or race.

-1967 Loving vs. Virginia case, the Supreme Court made laws banning interracial marriage illegal.

-1969 California becomes the first state to enact ‘No Fault’ divorce (i.e. women didn’t have to prove a reason). This did not become a national statute until 2010.

-1974 Equal Credit Opportunity granted women the right to have bank accounts and get credit without a male co-signer.

-1990 the US Census expanded from only including 4 racial groups to also include different ethic groups.

-1990 The Americans With Disabilities Act provided protections for discrimination against people with disabilities, initially excluding transgender individuals.

-2001 Congress passes the USA Patriot act with virtually no debate, giving the federal government the power to detain suspected ‘terrorists’ for an unlimited time period without access to legal representation. Over 1000 Arab, Muslim and South Asian men are detained in secret locations.

-2003 Lawrence vs. Texas struck down all remaining laws against same-sex activity.

-2015 Obergefell vs. Hobsons legalized same sex marriage nation wide.

As you can see, every freedom and right granted to the diverse populations of the USA has ALWAYS required political action. So no, being invested and engaged in political actions and our system of governance does NOT mean I ‘love and trust the government’. This is the kind of stuff that our current administration wants removed from education and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion awareness training.

The United States of America is a Democratic Republic which means we the people through democracy get to elect representatives to work FOR us. And it means that our nation is ruled by law, not the people or the president.

There is a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin made on the last day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He was asked what the best form of government is and he stated, ‘A Republic, if you can keep it.’  He knew, that a Democratic Republic only works if we participate. More importantly if we participate as informed citizens that have done our due diligence to understand.

There are many WELL organized groups that are hungry for power and domination over other humans. When we are ‘above politics’, those groups assume the wheel.

So why bother with political awareness and participation?

It is entirely because I KNOW the government won’t respect our rights and freedom unless we participate, that I do.  Political action doesn’t have to be your whole personality (although I make it mine when we start sliding into fascism).  There is a way to participate that doesn’t consume your whole life.  You don’t have to run for office, but like, you also can.  The bare minimum is to stay curious, stay informed, vote, speak up, if needed protest & boycott.  Look back again at the list I shared of progress that has been made through community organizing and collective action. Do not underestimate the power of your voice.

‘Rooting out the government problems’ does not mean reversing all the progress towards freedoms, equity and inclusion that has been made.  That is supporting the old world (we could reverse right back through that list I shared).  Burning our entire system to the ground is not creating the changes that are needed.

Participating IS what creates a better world.  Ignoring and assuming there are no power hungry players out there exploiting the system is what leads to disaster.

The truth is – Life Is Political. We don’t have the luxurious comforts and freedoms that currently exist in the USA because everyone sat back and prioritized avoidance of conflict or speaking up.

We don’t have to participate perfectly.  We don’t have to focus on everything at once, or even ever – just pick one issue.  We also don’t have to participate all the time. We can rest, and each person does what they can in their own way. AND we have to acknowledge that pervasive ignoring and inaction of what’s happening in the political sphere absolutely has a direct ripple effect into the outcomes of how our world is shaped.