Civil Disobedience Is Necessary But Not Sufficient

An activist sentenced to jail for nearly a year for breaking windows at JP Morgan in London compellingly states her reasons for doing so. Though I sympathize with Amy Pritchard’s sentiments, her mindset and approach are no solution.

“Every day I struggle to hold the insanity of our collective behavior within me – in my psyche, my heart and my body,” Pritchard states. “The harm we are causing to ourselves, to our fellow humans and all other beings, and our incredible, beautiful home, is horrific.”

The second sentence is irrefutably true. But the triple separation of “my psyche, my heart and my body” lies at the root of the fragmentation of the earth and humanity that she rightly decries.

To say, “my psyche” is to preclude insight into the human psyche. To say “my heart” is to reduce one’s heart into an individualistic chamber. To say “my body” is to remove one’s body from the corpus of living things.

There is no such thing as “my psyche.” The separation of the self, and the duality of the individual and the collective, is the root cause of “the harm we are causing to ourselves, to our fellow humans and other beings on our incredible, beautiful home.”

Either the “we” in this clause refers to humankind as a whole, or it is oppositional, reflecting the division between ‘us vs. them.’ Pritchard is attempting to have it both ways – referring on one hand to humans in general, but pointing the finger at big bankers and their ilk on the other.

Can we, the shrinking number of people who still care about the future of the earth and humanity, hold those possessing and possessed by obscene wealth and power accountable, without coming from the same consciousness that gave rise to them, and without exacerbating the fragmentation that’s destroying the earth and humanity?

That’s a very different way of thinking, feeling and acting than the attitude that animates the vast majority of activists, who need enemies like the right-wing extremists on the rise all over the world.

Civil disobedience is necessary, but it’s not sufficient to meet the planetary ‘polycrisis’ wrought by the mind of man. It’s simply not true that “when you see doctors and grandmothers breaking your windows in objection to your work, this has great potential for change.” Such actions no longer hold any potential for change.

The idea that there is a great ‘them’ out there, which if we could only amass enough people to oppose and resist would bring about the radical changes required, has become a sad refrain. It’s falling on deaf ears because both bankers and ordinary folks are “blinded by the acquisition of wealth, or captured by addiction, or in an altered state of consciousness, asleep, or compartmentalizing to the extreme.”

I don’t know what Pritchard pejoratively means by “altered state of consciousness,” but trying to awaken bankers by breaking their windows, and trying to inspire global citizens by symbolic acts of resistance like throwing paint on great works of art, is frankly juvenile.

However her activist philosophy is well expressed:

“We know from history that when ordinary people take a stand against injustice and take bold action, otherwise unimaginable or seemingly impossible change can be created. Examples include boycotts, divestment, sanctions, strikes, movements for people’s civil rights – including gay rights, disabled rights and voting rights – and communities resisting pipelines, fracking, mining, deforestation, water pollution, deportations, evictions and colonial rule.”

Even so, the idea that opposition to the juggernaut of man’s rapaciousness will prevail and halt the decimation of the earth and humanity has become patently ineffective. We have to face the fact that the same strategies and tactics that progressives used successfully in the past to redress injustices are no longer viable in redressing the unprecedented global challenges of today.

Secondly, the idea that each expression of injustice and ecological destruction must be addressed as a separate issue – for example, “resisting pipelines, fracking, mining, deforestation, water pollution, deportations, evictions and colonial rule” – plays right into the hands of the powers that be.

Such a separative, externalizing approach not only prevents dealing with the root cause of man’s fragmentation; it adds to it.

Finally, there’s the implicit premise that dealing with human destructiveness on the political level is our only option. Thus we’re caught in the vicious circle of a former UN climate chief saying, “civil disobedience is the most powerful way of shaping world politics,” when the United Nations itself is past its political use-by date.

I too would like to “believe that almost all humans have caring and compassion within them, and this can be reached.”

However, though many talk a good game, the vast majority of people don’t care about anything except themselves when it comes down to it, whether the genocide in Gaza or the ecocide of the earth. Rather, with the oceans inundating islands and coastlines, the waves are getting bigger. So let’s go surfing!

That increases the burden on the few who still actually care. Let’s not waste our energy and time on the inwardly dead, much less on breaking windows, when we need to ignite a psychological revolution within ourselves.

Martin LeFevre

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