Rather than putting out each fire as they light it, how do we put out the fire from the base? How do we change the fundamental story?

Ruth Rosen from the Progressive think tank Longview Institute (a spin-off of the Rockridge Institute for some reason) tells us to challenge market fundamentalism. You know that story. Tax cuts will provide jobs, which means people will buy their own health care, housing, and transportation. In this story, “the common good” means everyone for themselves. I have no doubt this is one of the lies we need to engage to some degree in order to discredit it. OK. Yes, let’s do that. But, let’s not stop there.

I want to see us go further than telling the story of what we are not. I want to see us tell the story of what we are.

I have been reading Mark Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea. He quoted Vaclav Havel as having said that the way to create a viable alternative to violent culture was to live not in opposition but to live in parallel. You can be, as John Mohawk wrote, a good subject (”Yes, sir”), a bad subject (in rebellion), or a non subject (moving on with your own concerns, not accepting the terms of domination). The non subject doesn’t live in reference to domination. (Though it is amusing that both nonsubject and nonviolence do refer to themselves in the negative.)

Rather than letting the dominant story determine our response (”not market fundamentalism”), we can tell the story the way we see it — not the challenge to their story but the heart of our story. We can tell the story of community, cooperation, and genuine democracy. This is a story in which we actually do love one another, a story in which the common good is determined in common.

Cliff Schecter thinks we’ll find synergy in the variety of voices and ways they find their audience to retell the story. I hope we reach synergy in our non subjecthood rather than in our bad subjecthood.

UPDATE:

• Immanuel Wallerstein makes an excellent point in his International Herald Tribune article, “The ‘Alter-Globalists’ Hit Their Stride”: the World Social Forum, which met last week, is already on that parallel path.
• Joshua Holland asks “Do you challenge them on their ‘free-market’ fundamentalism, or do you call bullshit on the entire premise?”

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