Direct Action or Personal Growth?

I’ve made some silly posts recently (even if nobody seemed to get the flaccid flag joke!!) I think it’s time to knuckle down again and say something sensible, or at least a bit deeper.

I began reading Ishmael yesterday. I’m enjoying it greatly so far; Daniel Quinn’s style is easy yet eloquent, and so the message flows more transparently than it does in a lot of books. I had a problem, though, with the protagonist’s opening gambit. He rounded on the hippy movement of the 1960’s, proclaiming cynically that seeking personal growth was inherently selfish, and the only right way to change the world for the better was by direct action. I thought the view unnecessarily polarised, incomplete, and possibly even naïve. The problem is that to address the question fully would require the writing of a major tome, not a blog post; but I would like to make a point as briefly as I can.

I’m not against direct action. I have as much respect for the strength and courage of people like Nelson Mandela and other reformers as we all do. If something is causing innocent beings to suffer, of course it’s right to try and do something about it. The problem is that I believe the material world to be not only inherently flawed, but essentially so. Post-revolutionary environments are often as bad, and sometimes even worse, than they were before the revolution. It’s good that slavery was abolished in Europe and America, but slavery still exists in other places and in other forms. It seems that whatever wrong we right, something else pops up to take its place.

And there’s something else we need to consider: direct action is a two edged sword. The very same principle that can be used to destroy tyranny also produces war and terrorism. Everybody who takes direct action thinks they’re in the right, or at least justified in some way.

Personal growth, on the other hand, is about taking responsibility for raising our own consciousness. There’s nothing selfish about that. Ultimately, we can only be responsible for ourselves and our own part in the scheme of things. And maybe there is some justification for the belief that the more each of us raises our own state of being, the more some beneficent energy thus produced will spread out and raise the consciousness of humanity. Maybe it’s all a matter of reaching the point of critical mass. I like to think so, even if my hope proves to be misplaced.

There’s a lot more to be said on this issue, but I think I should leave it there for now.