OCCUPY WALL STREET: Now Going Beyond:

In every organized movement there is a time for solidarity, sharing information, discussing the dialectics, and nurturing the group’s identity. One of the next big hurdles of the Occupy Wall Street protest as well with any fresh new movement is to expand beyond the inner circle. Organizing the voices so that the multitude of ideas speaks beyond the park. Going beyond the park involves introspection, expression, and activation.

At times in the park, one may find that they are discussing the similarities and the shared energies of those around them, and this is a great way for us to overcome our alienation. Yet perhaps we get frustrated at why the larger center of the population is too comfortable in their luxuries and more so comfortable in their lack of luxuries these days. In the park the conversations begin to feel as if we are a collective of understanding, outside the park up the streets of Broadway and Times Square, and up the east and west side of Central Park, over into the suburbs in Jersey, too many remain naïve and distracted to realism.  How can we expand past the park and bring in more diversity and a more shared-drive away from passivity?

In R.D. Laing’s Divided Self, a pivotal psychology study in the 60’s, Laing talks about overcoming ‘ontological insecurity’, which entails overcoming depersonalization and overcoming ‘engulfment’. This is where the activist reinstates: “I am arguing in order to preserve my existence. I am not arguing so that I have the pleasure of triumphing over you.” This is not a competition of who knows more information. It is a will to preserve our survival on this sinking ship of capitalism. We must start with introspection, looking into ourselves to overcome.

In Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender, Butler, from norms to politics, reflects that “norms seem to signal the regulatory or normalizing function of power, but norms are precisely what binds individuals together, forming the basis of the ethical and political claims” … teaching unacceptable restrictions and historical reinterpretation is necessary; “Our bodies relate us against our will from the start. I deny this to preserve my existence” (Butler). Overcoming restrictions to the norms of the body, Butler denies the accepted norms to preserve her sense of self.

The introspection that Laing and Butler suggest, clearly separate from one-another, allows us to look at ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically to suggest perhaps what we have limited ourselves to and what society has limited us to is not enough for me or you to reach a healthier higher potential. The psychologist Karen Horney emphasizes that if we do not overcome our personal neuroticisms, then our neuroticism will control us. We must overcome the petty distractions that divide one another and our society. 

Caitlin Hewitt-White has discussed that “there seems to be an assumption at work that if we are fighting the ‘system’ that is oppressive, then we are somehow ‘non-oppressive' by virtue claiming to be ‘outside’ of the system. None of us are immune from the grasp of patriarchy, racism, and homophobia. The implications of thinking that we are immune can dangerously affect participation” (Hewitt-White). We are products of the system too. We have to learn to reflect before acting in order to know which action may take us towards the healthier outcome: the path of the tortoise or the path of the hare.

This reflectability helps us also through modifying our language as William S Burroughs emphasized expanding and altering our language will allow us to speak and to deny our impulse to normalization tactics. Not just restraining to correct one another’s grammar, but to add new inflections so that we stop to think about the message being said. “The first stage in such an evolution is the dissolution of boundaries: geographical, psychic, and physical” (Burroughs). We must exceed our sense of citizenship to go beyond thinking merely patriotism. Our problems are global now and we must be responsible beyond the limits of borders and language. We must exceed the limits that have indoctrinated our mind to thinking within someone else’s elite imposed parameters.

Education is a significant tool to introspection and activation. Bell Hooks in an interview with Cornel West implies: “I think that the major dilemma is the way professionalization within the academic limits those of us who want to speak to broader audiences” (Hooks).    

Deborah Rosenfelt puts it, “Education is the key to social change… Schools can become vehicles for indoctrination … I want to stress this problem of bias because scholarship is supposed to be as bias-free as possible. We will look at all questions and issues from as many sides as we can think of” (Rosenfelt). Her point is that teachers may be significant voices in our education but we must all question our teacher’s, the good ones and the negative ones, we must question our teacher’s assumptions, just as much as we must question our own assumptions, because we are all products of our system. “Skepticism is essential to continued growth and a balanced perspective” (Rosenfelt).

Grace Lee Boggs nurtures this introspection with reflecting outwards; “We urgently need to stop thinking of ourselves as victims and to recognize that we must each become a part of the solution, because we are each a part of the problem.” She continues, “We need much more than reform. We need a paradigm shift!” We need a shift in our educational paradigm and a shift in our own mental paradigm.

Some suggestions for this paradigm shift, Charles Hampden-Turner promoted in Radical Man, include: 1) Promoting anxiety tolerance, dialectic and synergy. We need to learn to tolerate our anxiety of the unknown, and realize that we do not need to control every situation and every outcome. The current anxiety does not need to be solved in an immediate fashion and the instability allows us more time for self-reflection and self-interrogation. 2) Integrating feedback; if we can share and extend our reach and gain feedback from continually diverse outlets, we will be able apply constructive feedback to current and future projects. 3) Snatching meaning from the absurd. By being incomprehensible at times, in a Helene Cixous fashion allows us to challenge our limits to concrete. We do not need to make demands or place a leader at the frontline. Having absurdity on our side allows us to not be limited to determining definitions.

   

Being able to accept comfort in the unknown and the abstract leaves an open potential that is not common in the conformity of those who need constant determination. “Developing men and women must rebel against some features in their environment and transform incoming messages into personal, meaningful synthesis. Conformity and obedience have crippling effects on development” (Hampden-Turner).

Historically, activists in the 1920’s and 1960’s left the academic world and entered jobs within the factories to educate the working class. Activists who want to awaken the working class could get jobs in schools, construction, and other personal unexpected occupations to begin hard discussions with those Americans that are too busy working to know what is going on outside conformity.  Bell Hooks emphasizes that through critical listening and reflecting, we begin to teach our selves and others to transgress. Transgression is an important tool for the challenges we face.

As a movement, Occupy Wall Street must expand and broaden its base or fear atrophy.  Activation can be as simple as going to local open mike-nights, bring prose to override the self-loathing poetry… Get a job as a teacher and encourage students in a way that does not prepare them for a standardized test, but prepares them for questioning and critical thinking… Expose students to history outside of the textbook… Crash self-help group sessions and lead the discussion away from self-gain to community power… We need to be more than just echoing parrots…  When a homeless man begs on the street in uptown for cash, direct them to Wall Street telling them there is food and shelter there.

Practice sit-ins. Go to homeless shelters. Go in groups on the subway, in restaurants, in stores, and on corners of the street and create intellectual discussions between your selves and in a way product-place the Occupy movement for those listening. People are always eaves dropping on other people’s conversations, and if you discuss the economy, politics, news and activism, we are sure to get people to hear something.

One doesn’t need drugs as in the 1960’s to alter one’s perspective. It is not easy to establish responsibility within the masses and the youth’s self-seeking pleasure principle. Crossing social and personal boundaries into communities we may not normally walk through will tamper the system.  We must remain open. Openness, honesty, as well as overcoming the reactionary quick fix that creates violence, flexible organizing are important, and finally having the maturity to recognize that it is okay if we do not know all the answers will allow us to keep growing.