Activism

Activism

The fundamental problem that I see with activism is that it is mostly focussed on getting other people to do what 'we' want, which is a little hypocritical. If I really believe it is an important task then I would do it myself rather forcing other people to do those things I am not willing to do. I imagine that activism to prevent people from harming others could be done with a correct frame of mind; i.e. advocating that laws prohibit certain clearly harmful behavior with punishments for violations. However, the correct frame of mind needs to be based on compassion for offenders rather than vengeance.

Of course I am uncomfortable with using force to get other people to do things. This minimizes the choices that they (the others) have and it is through making good choices that that we learn and grow. Forcing others to do charitable works devalues the works as they are denied the opportunity to choose to do good works.

Of course the real problem with such activism is that it promotes a view of them and us, those who we want to force to do those things we aren't willing to do ourselves. From a personal point of view, this is a dangerous frame of mind. It implies that there is some fundamental difference between us and them (increasing the imagined separation between us and them rather than celebrating our connections with those around us).

Further, it shifts our focus to things outside ourselves, a clear invitation for misery and suffering. An inward focus is to focus on being the sort of person that we want to be, whatever that it. This focus on 'being' is always within our control, we can always be the sort of person we want to be as there are no external criteria (we can be a kind person irrelevant of what happens as a result of our kindness). However, if our criteria of success for ourselves is external, in particular to force others to bow to our wishes, we are inviting failure as we really can not control what others do. This is the invitation to misery and suffering which is so pernicious.

For all of the above reasons I would suggest that to have a joyous and satisfying life, we should focus on making correct choices, doing what we can to help those around us, developing connections with those around us and leaving others to their own destiny, making the choices they view as right. We should encourage others to make good choices (which is being a responsible person) but in most cases they need to be allowed to experience the consequences of the choices they make. We should always wish them well with compassion for their suffering no matter what they do.

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This page was last updated on May 13, 2012