Political drama continues to unfold. The issues are not new. Refugees fleeing from systemic oppression are refused entry to countries. Yet, without entry, they cannot legally make application for asylum. Racial hatred grows and is demonstrated by actions ranging inappropriate calls for the police (as the call complaining about Black women playing golf) to repeated displays of excessive force by police. Asians are discriminated against in systematic ways in university application processes. Native American land is being destroyed as federal governments grant permits for pipelines and mineral extraction that ruin the land and foul precious drinking water. These problems are not limited to the United States but are clearly out of control in my country. They are also witnessed in Italy, Hungary, Australia, and many other parts of the world.
In the face of these horrible examples of the ways human beings treat each other, we naively think that the solution is simply to vote in new officials. We think, “If only members of my party were in control, things would be different.” But these problems are not solved by political parties. Changing political parties will only lead to a cosmetic change. Political change doesn’t address the underlying problems of ideology.
An ideology is a fundamental set of ideas or assumptions that are the foundation for a way of thinking. The horrors we witness in society all stem from ideologies which purport that some people are better than others: whites are better than blacks; English speakers are better than Spanish speakers, residents are better than refugees; men are better than women…and the list goes on. These ideologies support the false notion that for life to be good for one group, another group must be oppressed or controlled. When this ideology is mixed with nationalism, the result is a political movement that asserts that one country is better than all others. This can lead to a “go-it-alone” political strategy
While a change of elected officials can make the experience of living with such ideologies less extreme, political changes only mask the deeper realities. Real change can only happen in society when a sufficient number of individuals transform their own perspectives and then demand social change.
How can this change occur? What can we do as individuals to bring it about?
Social change begins with individuals. It starts when we step out of our preconceptions of others who are different from us. By getting to know others who don’t look like me, talk like me, believe different things than me, I have the opportunity to discover that my preconceptions of “those people” are not based on reality. In other words, to change society, we as individuals must change.
It’s not our political leaders who change the country. Instead, it is when people have a change of mind, heart, and consciousness that change occurs. It was this kind of change that brought about the Voter’s Rights Act of 1965 and the end to the Vietnam War in 1975. The direction of the country changes because enough people have a deep spiritual change of heart and mind to make something different occur.
In addition to that initial ground-swell of change, people must continue to live out of a new reality or old patterns easily return. That was most clearly seen in American history when the Jim Crow laws followed the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s seen again today as a backlash occurs in an attempt to maintain “white America” as the dominant force in American life as the global community becomes pluralistic.
When will the political drama come to an end? It will end when enough individuals take responsibility for their own thoughts, actions, and biases and open themselves to be transformed by others. At that time, the world will become a place in which each person will be valued for who they were created to be. Then, as the Holy One said in the beginning, so it will be said again: It is good.
Photo by cogdogblog on Foter.com / CC BY