• Miracles await: unrealistic expectations.

• Miracles await: unrealistic expectations.

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"Folks, I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those too."
--Mike Huckabee (Scherer).

“PUSH: Pray Until Something Happens”
--church sign in Nigeria’s oil-ravaged delta (O’Neill 103).
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# Sometimes we expect too much from ourselves and each other: that, for instance, my neighbors should know what I need without me having to tell them; that a courageous individual, with or without all the automatic weapons vouchsafed him by the 2nd Amendment, can topple dictators; that the local Halliburton really cares for us like a dad; that we can rely on experts to look out for our interests; that life-long predators can be reformed by appeals to their good will; that my consumer choices can't hurt the world, or that they can save it by themselves; that my enormous moral and intellectual capacities allow me to rise forever above the petty prejudices of my upbringing and group affiliations; that history or scripture guarantee the eventual triumph of the working class / oppressed / meek. Sometimes people in struggle expect effortless acceptance, understanding, and courageous support from groups who should be allies, e.g. Jewish and Black people (Bulkin 149, Smith 71); then, not getting it automatically, feel more resentful at each other than at the abusers in power.

When we have no help or skills dealing with problems, it’s no wonder we should embrace Rosy Scenario. Only when folks have support to plan and manage evacuation can we usefully consider the coming hurricane-- or the ongoing rot. And when our corrupt government doesn’t help, it’s up to political workers to begin developing the material and organizational resources.

Meanwhile, though, over-optimism actively distorts our choices. Unrealistically happy expectations of ourselves and our society may set us up for years of stress and ultimate failure, and then the equally unrealistic excuses that we are helpless and can never trust the people around us or our own judgment. Conveniently, people who come to such conclusions are often drawn to the charismatic leaders who promise and demand so much in the first place.


# Sometimes we expect too little. We shouldn't speak out because we don't know enough. We dare not speak out because our co-workers won't support us. Speaking out shows we're weak; life is unfair, suck it up. There's no point to speaking out because you can't beat city hall, government is always corrupt, the world is filthy with sin and unworthy of our efforts.

What if we can envision nothing beyond the status quo? According to Sherrye Henry (150), some women can barely imagine a world in which men and women share power equally. It just doesn't seem real, certainly not real enough to fight for.
Though our focus group members had great respect for sex equality, it remained an abstraction removed from their daily world. For these women, equality was a word without a texture, a voice without tone, a form without life-- as remote as some arcane scientific theory about the beginning of the cosmos. . . . ‘Being equal means . . .’ Like cars running out of gas, our focus group women sputtered to get started. Sentences were truncated; verbs had no subjects. Little cross-conversation developed. . . " (153).

When we can’t imagine a better life, it’s easier to accept known risks and try to cope with them piecemeal. Instead of organizing together to fight back, we look for holes and caves and cracks in the sidewalk in which to take shelter, one by one, from the ferocious storm of capitalism. Some women seek out and carve out spaces a bit insulated from or privileged by the patriarchy: nunneries, kindergartens, the sacred hearth. Men, white people, farm workers, schoolkids all have their favorite hideouts; and all of these are known to Halliburton.

Ireland noticed this sort of lack of vision among Pentacostalists in Brazil, for whom the Second Coming is easier to imagine than a better life in this world (57). Closer to home, I remember the almost existential tone taken by one liberalish religious guy: since governments are necessarily corrupt and unjust, what really matters is whether a person acts or not according to his principles. What that meant to him was an obligation to speak out against the corruptors; but not a need for or even the possibility of making more than marginal changes in the system. Sometimes that’s my fallback position. I wonder what he’s doing now?

Meanwhile, the legions of servant opinion dealers are always on hand to reinforce our intellectual poverty: “What do they want us to do? Go to work on bicycles?” “They say they hate nukelar war, but you never see them protest in Pyongyang, do you?” “If you gave all the workers more money, they might not work as much!” “Why, next thing you know, we’ll have unisex bathrooms!”

That’s right. Just try to envision a world where waste, gluttony, theft, obsession and conquest are derangements treated by the Center for Disease Control, not core principles of the political economy. You can’t do it.

Can you?


# Sometimes we can imagine a better world but not how to get there. Some colleagues at a non-profit I worked for insisted that we not assess our work too rigorously and for sure not set clear goals, explaining that political change is such a slow and complicated process, there’s really no way to measure progress. I’m partial to that excuse myself, not least because it let me poke along with minimum accountability. But it meant that we had no consistent way to to compare tactics or judge the best use of resources.

Still others have such great faith in the final triumph of justice, that the pathway there seems almost incidental. From the folks who fight the atom bomb factories at Oak Ridge, just up the road from where I live:

How does one measure the impact of civil resistance actions? By the size of the headline generated? The length of the prison sentence? The eloquence of the statement made in court? How long the plant is shut down? All of the above?
One of the grand mysteries is that we can’t calculate the impact in advance. For most people who cross the line, or sit down in the street, or climb a fence, the action is not about any of the above-- it’s about following one’s conscience. The rest flows from that simple negotiation between a person and his or her heart.
Of course, strategically we try to figure out what actions might be effective in spreading the word, in confronting power with truth, in achieving our goal of shutting down bomb production at Y12” (“The Circle Widens,” OREPA News, 10/02).

The writer goes on to extol great civil disobeyers of centuries past, and concludes, “A simple act --taking a stand in the road in Oak Ridge-- has far-reaching consequences; a newspaper article that ends up in the hands of thousands, including the Judge. We celebrate the mystery of nonviolent direct action.” This kind of faith recalls the religious practice of charity for its own sake. We do have to move ahead without detailed maps, but at the edges this becomes distrust of any map at all.