Volume LVII, No 9
May, 2004
Roots for Radicals: The World as it is and
the World as it Should Be*
Edward T. Chambers and Michael A. Cowan
IN THIS ISSUE
We present an excerpt from the new book, Roots for Radicals, which is a distillation of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) philosophy and its unique approach to community organizing. For sixty years, IAF's mission has been to train people to take responsibility for solving the problems in their own communities and to renew the interest of citizens in public life. At the conclusion of this issue we introduce the new editor of Blueprint, Bill Quigley, who really needs no introduction to Blueprint readers.
"Out of such crooked timbers as man is made, nothing entirely straight can be fashioned." Immanuel Kant
The Two Worlds: "As is" and "should be," "is" and "ought"
People live with a tension at the center of our personhood. We are born into a world of needs and necessities, opportunities and limitations, and must survive there. No one has the luxury of ignoring these realities. Self-preservation, food, clothing, shelter, safety, health care, education and work are necessary for everyone. Large numbers of people agonize over these things every day of their lives; many of us think of nothing else. This demanding set of real circumstances, which we didn't create but which we are thrown into, is the "world as it is." When people refer to the "real world" in conversation, this is what we mean.
We also have dreams and expectations, yearnings and values, hopes and aspirations. We exist from day-to-day with the awareness that things not only might, but could be, should be, different. We aren't born with realized vision and values. We inherit them from our parents, teachers and the received culture. And as we grow and move into adulthood, these formative patterns of the good and meaningful life must be acted upon to be real. The guiding ideals that we receive from our culture and predecessors make up the "world as it should be." Cynics deride vision and values as irrelevant in the "real world," but they are indispensable to our sanity, integrity, and authenticity.
"As is" and "should be" are abstractions. They don't exist as such. You can break them apart like I just did, but only for the sake of explanation. In real life the two always exist conjugally. Their reality is their relationship, the tense, constantly shifting interplay between them. The hard existential truth is that from the awakening of our consciences until we lay down in death, we feel an unrelenting struggle between "is" and "ought." Why aren't we born straight instead of crooked, with no in-betweens, no more-or-less? The answer is freedom葉o think, to feel, to imagine, to will and to act. There is the tradeoff for being born crooked: in the midst of the tension of living in between the two worlds, the human spirit is free.
The foundational conviction of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) organizing tradition is that it is the fate of human beings to exist "in between" the world as it is and the world as it should be. Reflective people of conscience are constantly and painfully aware of the disparity between our espoused values and real life in the everyday world within which we operate. When these two worlds collide hard enough and often enough, a fire in the belly is sometimes ignited. The tension between the two worlds is the root of radical action for justice and democracy.
The constant tension between the world as it is and the world as it should be is the primary motivation leading people to seek the common good. What I mean by being moral or ethical is stepping up to the tension between the two worlds. Understanding the world as it is while ignoring the world as it should be leads to cynicism, division and coercion; concern for the world as it should be divorced from the capacity for analysis and action in the world as it is marginalizes and sentimentalizes morality and ethics. IAF's position is that maintaining a good enough tension between the two worlds is the hallmark of authentically moral and ethical human living. Embracing this tension every day is our spiritual destiny.
In a world conscious of cultural diversity, I need to add a nuance here. The tension between the two worlds is a tension between interpretations. Human beings don't just see the world as it is as a raw fact, nor the world as it should be as simply there. People from different histories see the two worlds differently. Any group's readings of what's happening in a situation (the world as it is) and the key values in that situation (the world as it should be) are interpretations from that group's perspective. When we meet in public life, I bring my group's interpretations of the world as it is and as it should be, and you bring your group's. What you and I can create for our respective groups or institutions and the larger community depends on bringing our respective interpretations together in a better reading of our common situation and obligations than we could do alone, one that enables us to act together with power despite our differences.
Uneasiness in the face of the disparity between the two worlds haunts us throughout our lives. It isn't a problem that could be fixed, or a temporary state of affairs which we can end by getting things right. It's the human condition. It's possible to reduce the tension between the two worlds through consumption, addiction or just giving up to the frenetic pace of modern life. We can and do numb ourselves to the gap between the social reality we encounter and our best hopes and aspirations. When this numbness sets in, our humanity is diminished; when it takes over, our humanity is lost.
Living in Between the Two Worlds
It is useful to break down the relationship between the two worlds into four polarities, each of which contributes to the overall tension. The four are represented in the following diagram, which is an abstraction.
Polarities Between the Two Worlds
World As It Is <----tension---->World As It Should Be
Self-interest <覧> Self-sacrifice
Power <覧> Love
Change <覧> Unity
Imagination <覧> Hope
Self-interest <覧> Self-sacrifice
The first polarity between the two worlds is between self-interest and self-sacrifice. Self-interest evokes a range of responses. To "realists," centered on the world as it is, self-interest is obviously the prime motivator of human behavior. Pursuing self-interest is as natural as breathing. For "idealists," focused on the world as it should be, self-interest is another word for selfishness. It's an isolating form of individualism with little regard for others. Both of these views convey a partial truth, but miss a deeper one.
Self-interest is the natural concern of a creature for its survival and well being. Self-interest is based on nature's mandate that we secure the basic needs and necessities of life, and develops further to include more complex desires and requirements. Healthy self-interest is one of the marks of integrity or wholeness in a person. It is the source of the initiative, creativity and drive of human beings fully alive.
The English word "interest" is a combination of two Latin words, inter, meaning "between" or "among" and esse, meaning "to be." Our interests do not reside inside our skins but in-between, within our relationships with others. To live is to be among people is to have interests. Human beings are interpersonal beings, relational selves.
Self-interest defined too narrowly becomes selfishness. This occurs, for example, when self-interest is reduced to how many cars or homes you own, or how large your stock portfolio is. Whether self-interest degenerates into selfishness and meaninglessness or not depends upon how well it is held in creative tension with its conjugal partner.
Self-sacrifice is the counterpart of self-interest. If self-interest involves knowing when and how to assert one's concerns effectively, self-sacrifice means being able to suppress your own interests for others.
Self-interest and self-sacrifice are forever joined in a give-and-take relationship. The Jewish, Christian, Islamic and other traditions long ago highlighted the great paradox of human existence: giving up one's life for another is the highest good. In real life we are always more or less concerned with self and others. Good parents, teachers, friends, and leaders understand that there are times when their well being requires curbing or postponing action on their own behalf in order to take account of others' interests. They also know that there are moments when they must strongly pursue their own interests, but without unnecessary harm to others.
The first polarity between the world as it is and the world as it should be, then, is the tension between self-interest and self-sacrifice. As with each of the four polarities, there is no formula for weighing self-interest against self-sacrifice in particular situations. As with all four polarities, that balancing act requires the seasoned judgment of practical wisdom, which comes only from ongoing action, reflection and evaluation.
Power <覧> Love
The second polarity between the two worlds is between power and love. Power is a loaded word. Those who call themselves "realists" take it for granted and try to use it shrewdly in pursuing their agendas. "Idealists" are prone to see power as negative if not downright evil, as something to be avoided. Beyond minimal forms like voting or jury duty, ordinary people have little direct experience of exercising power in public life.
Power is the ability to act. Like the capacity to love, it is given to us at birth. Power is our birthright, our inheritance. It is the basis of our capacity to address differences through politics. From one perspective power is neutral. It may be used for evil or for good. From another it is ambiguous because any employment of power by finite human beings, no matter how well intended and successful, will lead to unexpected consequences for self and others.
In Western culture, power has come to be interpreted and practiced as one-way influence. According to this understanding, one person's power is their ability to get someone else to do what they want; the other person's power is their ability to do as they choose. In a power encounter, it's one against the other. Whoever ends up making the other move more has demonstrated that they have more power. Here power means "power over."
But power has another face which the traditional, unilateral definition also prevents us from seeing plainly. Even in its most crass, dominating form, power takes place in relationships. Think about it. Does the concept of power make sense without another to receive our influence? Seeing clearly that every act of power requires a relationship is the first step toward realizing that the capacity to be affected by another is the other side of the coin named power. If you are finding this concept difficult to grasp, it is probably because the unilateral definition of power is so ingrained in you by schooling, the media culture and some pundits.
People who can understand the concerns of others and mix them with their own agenda, have access to a power source denied to those who can only push their own interests. In this fuller understanding, power is a verb meaning to give and take, to be reciprocal, to be influenced as well to influence. To be affected by another in relationship is as truly a sign of power as the capacity to affect others. Relational power is infinite and unifying, not limited and divisive. It's additive and multiplicative, not subtractive and divisive. As you become more powerful, so do those in relationship with you. As they become more powerful, so do you. This is power understood as relational, as power with, not power over.1
Like self-interest, power can realize itself fully only if held in creative relationship with its conjugal partner, which is love. Love is a loaded term. "Realists" see no place for love in what they call the real world, especially the world beyond family and friendship. "Idealists" regard love as the ultimate reality, as a force actively working to bring justice and mercy to the world.
People usually take it for granted that the crux of love is focusing on the other, while downplaying or sacrificing one's self. If exercising power means asserting one's self-interest, loving means disregarding it. Love is treated like the opposite of power. This is love understood as unilateral.
But there is a dimension of love that a unilateral perspective hides. The mandate from the Hebrew scriptures to love the neighbor as the self does not imply simply losing your self-interest. To love the neighbor as the self is to respect the neighbor's interests and one's own equally. In a similar vein, the basic ethical principle in Western philosophy葉he famous "categorical imperative" of the same Kant who brought us the crooked timbers擁s that one should never treat a human being only as a means to some end. The relational nature of interests comes into play here. Love means sustaining relationships in which the interdependence of one's own and others' interests is recognized and respected. This is love understood as a mutual, reciprocal process of give and take.
In Western culture, "power" means "unilateral power" and "love" means "unilateral love." Westerners tend to see power and love as opposites, and right relationship between them as a kind of balancing off of the effects of these two ways of relating. When people "power" someone, we ignore their interests; when we "love" someone, we ignore our own concerns. If you happen to hold these conceptions of power and love, you are profoundly mistaken.
Power and love様ike self-interest and self-sacrifice預re not mutually exclusive but rather complementary aspects of a conjugal partnership. There can be no creative power without some acknowledgment of the other's interests, just as there can be no healthy love if the self is wholly lost in concern for the other. The love that lays down its life for another is a paradoxical yet coherent act of self-respect. As any good parent, police officer or team player knows, there are many moments in life when one's own comfort or convenience or preference is not one's most pressing concern.
The second polarity between the world as it is and the world as it should be, then, is the tension between power and love. Niebuhr had it right: "Power without love is tyranny, and love without power is sentimentality." In power and love the interests of both parties matter. To power and love well is to respect the other and the self. In relational power effects are given and received. Understanding the relational character of power and love transforms the practice of both because both require give-and-take relationships. Power and love are two-way streets.
Change <覧> Unity
The third polarity between the world as it is and the world as it should be is between change and unity. His keen grasp of the realities of power led IAF founder Saul Alinsky to state the following law of change: "Change means movement; movement means friction; friction means heat; heat means controversy." Just as in the physics of the material world, in the realm of "social physics" there is no change without the movement of action; no movement without the friction of competing interests; and no friction without the heat of controversy. There is no nice, polite way to get change.
What led Alinsky to this conclusion? He understood that the pursuit of interests always plays out between and among people (inter esse). The status quo in any particular set of circumstances in the world as it is always gives some groups advantages over others. Initiatives for change will be perceived as threats by those with vested interest, and thus as controversial. There is no change without the friction of interests in confrontation.
In the dynamics of social change, differing interests will surface whenever people organize to change the status quo. Facing these differences and dealing with them straightforwardly requires that we exercise our ability to negotiate. History teaches plainly that conflicts of interest which are not resolvable through politics will be settled by one or another form of unilateral power, usually violence. All authentic politics deals with differences through constructive compromises, without force or violence.
Unity, a state of harmony or peace, is the counterpart of change. We have a need deep inside of us that cries out for peace and quiet. We all want a world of fairness and repose, but conflict, friction and confrontation are what the world as it is serves up. Is it fair? No, but it is the price of free will. We are not made straight but crooked, caught between constant change and our wish for harmony. Fleeting moments of peace and harmony are the most we get in this life; the holy books promise lasting peace, but only when the reign of God arrives. Until then unity in the real world lasts for thirty seconds or maybe a day and a half. The law of change is incessant, like the tides. The yearning for unity is like the longing for certainty. We want both, but we can't have them in this lifetime.
We yearn for peace and unity, but the law of change complicates this yearning, since there is no change without friction. How can we reconcile the law of change with our desire for oneness? The unavoidable struggle and friction required for any real change must be understood as a necessary part of the resolution of tensions arising from conflicting insights. In real life people coming from different histories, like Latinos and Anglos, blacks and whites, new immigrants and established residents in the United States, see the two worlds differently. Strong public relationships require acknowledging and respecting differences.
The deeply felt wish for harmony constantly tempts people, especially idealist types, to avoid the necessary friction that comes when real differences are faced. Let's be honest. I rarely wake up saying "God, I hope this will be a controversial, friction-filled day." Do you? But so-called harmony based on avoiding what really divides us is falsely named. In reality such a limited form of public relationship is a misguided denial of a real building block熔ur different viewpoints. It prevents the tough talk that leads to half or three quarters of a loaf.
"Civility" and "citizen" come from the same Latin word. Treating someone civilly doesn't mean being polite, it means treating her or him as a fellow citizen, as someone whose uniqueness must be respected and included, someone with whom one must converse, debate, seek compromise and collaborate. In public life politeness is not civility, it's the refuge of those who have not developed their political capacity to the point where they can stand the tension and heat of controversy. The law of change demands that we don't just huddle with our own group, but risk bringing real differences to the common table for resolution. In creating the public actions that the law of change demands, a process unfolds in which we grow in our capacity to be public people, that is, in our ability to stand for the whole.
The third polarity in the relationship between the world as it is and the world as it should be, then, is the tension between change and unity. Maintaining creative tension between these two requires that we move beyond isolated politeness, into collective public actions that include both the acknowledgment of real differences and the search for workable compromises. The common good of a large and diverse community can be effectively pursued only when a representative collective of institutions is bold enough to stand for the whole. It can be advanced only when real differences are bound up together in a web of relationships anchored in the institutions which bring citizens and people of faith together幼hurches, neighborhood groups, labor unions and other associations. Public relationships both require and bring forth the ability to live with the inevitable tensions of common life. A politics anchored in such bonds must be able to bear the necessary uneasiness between the law of change and harmony.
Imagination <覧> Hope
The final polarity between the two worlds is between imagination and hope. Imagination is connected to memory. What we remember makes possible and limits how we understand the signs of our time; how we understand those signs makes possible and limits the future we can imagine. Imagination and memory allow us to recall, reflect, re-imagine and re-organize.
Imagination is a gift, a unique faculty like instinct, but it frequently gets lost in our modern worship of intellect and will. Imagination is no less important than our abilities to think and choose. Imagination lets us glimpse a world that is not yet material, and move mentally back and forth between what was and what is, and what is and what might be. Although dismissed as mere fantasy since the Enlightenment, which sanctified reason and will, imagination is what allows the tension of living between the two worlds to create newness, first in our mind and body, and then, through our actions, in reality.
Since the Puritans and later Freud, people in the West have been frightened by instinct. But the so-called sixth sense should be honored as a faculty along with intellect and will. My experience convinces me that most people have good instincts but don't trust them. Your instincts are like your intuition and passion葉he key to all creative activity. Imagination is grounded in the body, which is where the human spirit resides, and the instrument through which it acts. Everyday ordinary people figure out how to feed and clothe themselves, make a living, have sex, raise children, and solve problems through the development of their instinctual social know how.
In a fast paced, future-oriented, advertising society, memory is short and selective. The stories of parents and grandparents who struggled to provide their children with the basic needs and necessities and the chance of a better future, contain precious, energizing memories for their off-spring. When stories remain untold, the compass of conscience and memory loses its power to feed the imagination. Social imagination grounded in memories is dangerous to the status quo, to the powers that be. They have the potential not only to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable. That is, if we remember, and if we keep imagination in creative tension with its conjugal partner.
The conjugal mate of imagination is hope, the human capacity to act in the world now on behalf of the world as it should be. When we forget our history and cannot imagine a changed world, we cannot act with hope to bring that world into existence. Hope ignites action when the struggle for justice exposes intolerable gaps between the two worlds.
For those who cherish democratic ideals, hope is grounded in a belief in the solidarity and sovereignty of citizens. Democratic hope envisions a political community where power, freedom, opportunity and accountability reside not with elites or experts, but with everyday, ordinary people. It is anchored in the conviction that the political whole is more than the sum of the parts and must include all but be dominated by none.
For religious people, hope rests on the intuition that humans are not alone in caring about the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. In the Jewish, Christian and Islamic holy texts the Creator of the universe repeatedly takes the side of the most vulnerable葉he widow, the orphan and the stranger預gainst political and economic arrangements which disregard and disrespect their legitimate interests. The spiritual intuition that we are not alone in our efforts to narrow the gap between the two worlds is captured in the famous admonition that we must pray as if everything depends on the Creator, and work as if everything depends on us.
The ground of democratic hope is a belief not in a sovereign state, but rather in a sovereign citizenry. Like religious hope it empowers citizens to act for the good with confidence that they are part of a larger whole. As people of faith, human beings draw on one set of traditions in which hope is a core virtue, as citizens we draw on another. Because both of these sources of hope are available, members of religious institutions can stand shoulder to shoulder with those of secular organizations like labor unions, business groups and civic associations in seeking change in their communities. Citizens and people of faith, and most of us are a mix of both, stand on common ground named hope.
It is no coincidence that IAF organizations are often conceived and born in devastated urban locations and written-off rural areas. That's because the demanding work of organizing across the divides of race, religion and political persuasion is usually initiated only when leaders on the scene reckon that all else has failed. When they realize that no one but they will see to it that their communities develop the political clout and money to change things, the motivation to organize is born. Hope requires intentional, imaginative moves toward a better future, based on clear and conscious knowledge of what really happened in the past. IAF organizations are founded on and cultivate the virtue of hope, because their leaders and organizers understand that as people's hope for a meaningful life ebbs, the tide of nihilistic despair rises.
The fourth polarity in the overall relationship between the world as it is and the world as it should be, then, is the tension between our innate imagination and the inspiration of hope. As with each of the polarities, imagination and hope can flourish only when held in tight relationship to each other. When that tension is maintained, imagination inspires hope for a better world, and hope fires imagination to shape that world.
Embracing Our Moral Destiny
Real values never move people to the sidelines of life. They are the stars that guide us, our moral compass in navigating the inevitably ambiguous world of power and self-interest. To be moral is to struggle in the arena of the world as it is while guided by the values of the world as it should be, not "looking out for number one" by shopping or trading on-line, nor sitting in pews on the sidelines of life saying "Ain't things awful?" Operating in reality while ignoring values leads to cynicism, division and coercion. Holding onto values disconnected from the real world robs morality of credibility and relevance. When the tension between the two worlds collapses in either direction, humanity's integrity collapses with it, because we were created to live in-between.
The great poet Goethe's final letter describes the successful life as a "judicious surrender to the natural rhythm of opposing tendencies." Surrendering to the rhythm of the inevitable tension between the two worlds is the true moral destiny of humanity. Doing that requires that we develop the social knowledge and courage to live with others inside the polarities of self-interest and self-sacrifice, power and love, change and harmony, and imagination and hope. Taking responsibility for human destiny means deliberately embracing the fearsome, creative tension which comes when we choose to live resolutely in-between the world as it is and the world as it should be, refusing to be condemned either to so-called realism or false idealism as a way of life.
Endnotes
1Loomer, B. "Two Kinds of Power," in Lee, B. The Future Church of 140 B.C.E. (New York: Crossroad, 1995), pp. 169-202.
About the Authors
Edward T. Chambers holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and classics from St. John's University, Collegeville, and an honorary doctorate from DePaul University in Chicago.
Michael A. Cowan is professor and executive director of the Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy at Loyola University New Orleans.
Editorial Farewell and Welcome!
After 7 years editing Blueprint, I am moving on to a new ministry at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, California. There I will serve as Associate Academic Dean with responsibilities in the area of cultural contextualization. As I understand this new ministry, it will involve developing theological education that bridges the local and the global, with special focuses on Latin American and Pacific Rim contexts, and linking these to local ministerial situations where such a variety of immigrants from these cultures now live in the San Francisco Bay area. Sounds like quite a challenging and exciting mission, doesn't it? As I have tried to explain this new mission to others, so many have asked me "don't you need a helper in this, and how do I sign up?" As they say, "more in this story as it develops." I am sure I will bring all that I have learned from you, our Blueprint constituency, along with me to enrich this new mission.
As I look back at the 60 or so issues of Blueprint I have edited, as well as at earlier issues edited by Richard McCarthy, I notice that Bill Quigley has been the most frequent author in the number of Blueprints for which he has been responsible, perhaps second only to our founder Fr. Louis Twomey, S.J. So it is especially consoling to be able to hand on the editorship of Blueprint to Bill, who is already so busy, but who has graciously volunteered to take over as the next editor of Blueprint.
Bill Quigley is a law professor as well as Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has been an active public interest lawyer for over 25 years. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served as the General Counsel for over 15 years. Bill teaches in the clinic and teaches courses in poverty law and Catholic social teaching and law. His research and writing have focused on minimum wage, the right to a job, legal services, community organizing as part of effective lawyering, civil disobedience, high stakes testing, and a continuing history of how the laws have regulated the poor since colonial times. He has served as an advisor on human and civil rights to Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, and served as the Chair of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. Bill is the author of Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing A Right to A Job At A Living Wage (Temple University Press, 2003), a chapter of which appeared as a recent Blueprint. Bill was named the Pope Paul VI national teacher of Peace by Pax Christi in 2003. You can reach Bill most easily by e-mail to quigley@loyno.edu.
With such a committed and generous successor, I know that the future of Blueprint for Social Justice is in very good hands. Thanks to all of you who have contributed so much to Blueprint, both in terms of writing for us and also helping out financially. As you know, we are financed totally on the basis of your donations, which are always welcome.
Ted Arroyo, S.J.
* Adapted by Michael A. Cowan from Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice, ｩ2003 by Edward T. Chambers with Michael A. Cowan. Reprinted by permission of Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
