Dr Chris James

Talk to Leo Baeck Centre . 22^nd September 2019.

                                                    Peace.

I would like to thank everyone for attending my exhibition opening.  My sincere thanks go to Rabi Johnathon Keren Black and the Leo Baeck Arts Committee for allowing me to exhibit my work in what is a very special place.   I feel very honoured.   Also, thank you to Val Silberberg and her family for the wonderful hospitality they  bestowed upon me over this weekend.

The collection of paintings on exhibition here is very different to anything that I have ever produced, or exhibited in the past.  It is different because it is very personal.  There are paintings in this collection that reveal my most difficult existential struggles as well as my moments of joy and gratitude.

When it comes to art, people generally look for meaning.  I regard meaning as being very subjective. Every person will find their own interpretation in the task of viewing my work.   My art then, is not about meaning, it is about purpose.

My purpose has always been about healing.  In order to explain this, I need to tell you something about my journey through art.

I grew up East of London in the aftermath of the Second World War amidst a lot of uncertainty, fears and confusion.  What followed was the Cold War, with more fears and much uncertainty and confusion.

By the time the Cold War struck I was old enough to have an opinion on wars and their consequences for people and the environment.   I joined the Peace Movement while I was still in High School and this probably kick started my career as an artist.  I spent much of my time in the school art room helping my teacher to create posters for the anti-nuclear campaigns. Needless to say, I was recruited into the Peace Movement before I left school. 

When I left school at the age of fifteen, I went to work for a famous Hollywood film producer by the name of Sam Spiegel.   Mr Spiegel had a fabulous art collection of original paintings, which drew my attention. He was a very rich man. I wanted to be an artist.

I recall how I drew a portrait of my boss to try and impress him, but  it did not please him at all. The receptionist put the drawing over the mantle piece in the waiting area and my boss took it down again.  I had no bad feelings over the rejection of my art, I was still learning.  It was not a good drawing, but I believe he kept it.

Mr Spiegel gave me a job and he paid me enough money to live in a nice flat just off Grosvenor Square and this enabled me to finish my education at night school and I enrolled in the Kokoschka School of Painting. (The original Kokoschka school had closed and another had started up by one of the master’s best students).

 I enjoyed a salubrious lifestyle for three years, travelling around London delivering documents and exchanging conversations with interesting people.  I made some good friends and I had some extraordinary mentors.

Sometimes I would travel by taxi to offices and homes and at other times I would save the money and take the tube train.  Over time I began to feel stuck and  I wanted to do something more meaningful.

When I took the underground train, I used to sit and look at the pictures that ran along the carriages above the windows. Two advertisements attraction my attention, one was on vivisection and the other was of starving children in Africa.

The pictures disturbed me, they made me feel selfish and I knew that that my good fortune was not fulfilling my true purpose.  I wanted to make the world a better place.   I knew nothing about vivisection so I opted for the starving children in Africa.

After three years of being in the film business. I travelled to South Africa, where I worked in a commercial art studio and exhibited my paintings in a commercial gallery.

I was very ignorant of South Africa’s politics and I had not anticipated the violence that that comes with extreme oppression.

I arrived in South Africa well after the Sharpville massacre, but the memories and tensions were still raw and escalating.

I lived in Johannesburg with my friend Ann Sherman who was a popular singer and I often went with her to work at night so she did not have to drive herself home alone.   Night time in Johannesburg was particularly unsafe and despite a curfew and it was not unusual to come across violence.    I was very affected by what I saw and with activism already in my blood I rebelled and I broke a few laws.

In South Africa there were rules that compelled one to have black servants and workers.  We had neither so we were immediately under suspicion from   neighbours.  I remember being in the front garden one day weeding the flower beds when a police patrol car stopped outside the house.  The officers approached me and asked “what are you doing?”

“Gardening,” I replied.

“What are you gardening for, where is your boy?”, one officer asked.

“I like gardening,” I answered.

The fact was, no one did work that could be done by a native for next to nothing, this was the nature of the apartheid system.

The following day the police arrived with a African man who was told by the officers to work in my garden.

We tried to share the work, we tried to treat the man well, but to associate or assimilate with Africans was a crime. We had to be careful.

Despite the political climate in South Africa my career as an artist flourished then something unthinkable happened.

I was walking to work one day; it was Summer and the air was already warm.  My studio was in the far end of town among other industries and a collection of buildings that were used to house African mine workers. It was never a safe area and most people would drive through it as quickly as possible. I did not drive. The pavements were generally splattered with blood and there was graffiti on the walls of buildings. Johannesburg was rather a clean city, there was barely a trace of trouble in the main centre of town, but the outlying areas were considered quite dangerous.

As I walked I could see an women lying in a doorway.  She was very large and slumped over with her head resting to one side of her chest.  I thought she was dead at first and I was about to cross the road, which is what one did upon encountering a diseased person.  I stopped, because I thought I saw the big woman move.  I went over to her and she groaned.  She had multiple stab wounds along her arms and she could not speak.  She had a large stab wound in the chest, the area was soaked in blood and looked awful.   Beside the woman there was a line of bottles containing blood.  I was told the African Bantu were very superstitious about the loss of blood.  The woman had tried to catch the blood from her wounds in the bottles.

On the other side of the road, there was Police Station. I crossed the road to get help. The police must have spotted me from the window before I reached the building because two of them stood on the pavements as I approached.  “The women in the doorway is alive,” I said, “can you get help?”

They told me to move on. They said it was none of my business and it was not wise to hang around.  I pleaded with the men to help the woman, but they became more assertive with one officer stepped forward and putting his hand on his gun in a threatening manner. “Move on,” he said.

I had no choice.  I moved on and continued my journey to work.

I did very little work that day, I could not get this injured woman out of my mind. The sun was beating down and I wondered if someone had managed to help her and whether she had survived.

Come five o’clock, it was time to go home. I left the studio and walked the same route as I always took and as I approached the area near the police station, I noticed the woman was still there in the doorway.  She had passed away!

Over the course of the day the street had seen a lot of activity.  The day’s garbage had been put out on the pavement ready for the morning collection and it had piled up around the body of the African woman.  As the acrid smell and the flies hung in the air, I stopped for a moment to take in the horrific scene.   Here was a human being, a woman immersed in the rank and rotting garbage as if she too was just part of the garbage. I was shocked, dismayed, traumatized and suddenly very fearful of the country I had called home.

When I got to our house, I told Ann what had happened, but she was not so shocked. She was out at night and witnessed many similar scenarios. “This was Africa,” she said “a black life is worth only what can be exploited and there is nothing anyone can do to change it.”

I did not agree, there had to be some way to make changes, at least to tell the story of what was happening. I took to my studio and began painting.  I painted various scenes of life in Africa under apartheid. None should have been provoking, however, when they were exhibited the gallery was asked to remove them. Shortly after our home was raided by police. We though we had got away with a warning, but later a journalist friend suggested I leave the country because the police were going to prosecute me.  Whether this was true or not I could not be sure, but after what I had witnessed, nothing would be the same. I could not sit back and ignore what was happening.  Sooner or later I would be arrested.

A few days afterwards another friend named Melvyn arrived at the house.  I had a plane ticket, but I was not sure whether to use it or not.    Melvyn looked at me and said, “I am driving you to the airport before you get arrested.”   I went without protest.

I made a split-second decision, there seemed no choice, but to go with my friend that night to the airport. I left everything behind and I would never see Ann, my friends or my dog again.

When I landed in Rome I had nowhere to go, no money, my papers were not in order and I did not speak a word of Italian.  I was apprehended and driven to a building in the city where I had to undergo a medical examination.  The doctors cleared me of any contagious diseases and then let me go.

I walked for a while and found the Trevi Fountain. I sat looking at the coins in the water. People threw coins in the fountain for good luck.  An American man came and sat next to me.  We talked. I told him my story.  He had come to Rome to reconcile with his wife and they were both leaving Rome that same evening, so he gave me the key to his apartment for three weeks before the lease expired.   There was food in the apartment and I was starving.  A few days later, a letter arrived with a ticket to London’s Heathrow airport and a little English money.

I could not settle in England and three years later I arrived in Australia, which in some ways reminded me of South Africa because one of the first things I saw was a bus shelter with graffiti reading “Asians Out”.   Was this just another racist country?  I hoped not, but all was not well.

My instincts once again drove me to act.  I joined the Womens’ Movement, the Prison Reform Movement, the Council of Civil Liberties, the Human Rights Association and the newly formed Friends of the Earth and I threw myself into protest art.

Eight years later I moved to Victoria and along with my partner and started a political graphics production company, working mostly on posters, advertising and copy-writing.  Some of that work is now housed in government archives.

My art had a purpose.  I still has a purpose.  through my art I can heal myself of the daily trials and tribulations.   I can speak out and contribute to healing the world (Tikkun Olam).

Trying to bring about social and political justice to the world might seem like an impossible task, but one has to keep trying, we cannot give up.

 

 

 

 

Sociopaths are perhaps the most insidious of predators because their grooming involves sophisticated mind games that can target their victim’s sense of self and reduce them to a state of mental despair and desperation.  Above all, the sociopath will often present as an interesting person with immense social skills and charm, but nothing could be further from the truth, sociopaths can be very dangerous.

The sociopath operates on facile and superficial charm.  Sociopaths are highly manipulative con artists. They pretend to recognize the rights of others, but in effect they never do. They are self-serving and view their behavior as normal and acceptable.

Sociopaths are often romantics who draw their victims into their web with beautiful and poetic words, but beneath the feigned beauty, sociopaths are hostile and controlling.  They view their victims as merely an instrument of domination and self-gratification.    Ultimately the sociopath will act to humiliate their victim.

How to spot a sociopath.

The sociopath has a grandiose sense of self-importance. They have a sense of entitlement and ownership over other individuals and they do not like to be challenged.

Sociopaths engage in pathological lying and can often believe their own lies and/or they will refer to them as a plan or a vision.   It is almost impossible to tell when a sociopath is lying because they do it on a consistent basis and they get caught up in the falsity of their own complex drama.  These people are so convincing they can pass a lie detector test because they truly believe in their own powers and narratives.

The sociopath will have no shame or remorse. Inside the head of the sociopath there is a deep-seated rage, which is split off from the normal personality and repressed. The sociopath is an opportunist and will choose victims very carefully.  With this in mind, the sociopath will not shy away from the well educated or successful person, rather, they will be attracted to them because the challenge and self-gratification is much greater.

The sociopath will always see the ends as justifying the means, they do not give up easily and they allow nothing to stand in their way. They can be very clever and persuasive.  Once hooked, the victim finds it hard to escape.

The sociopath is very good at feigning emotions. They can show compassion and kindness and will frequently use love as an ulterior motive.  They will make what appear to be sound and sincere promises, but on the inside, the sociopath is cold and calculating and they see no wrong in misleading their victims, in fact they delight in it because their victim has become their property.

Importantly, the sociopath has no capacity for love.  Proclamations of love and trust are merely the tools the sociopath uses for stimulation.  There is nothing genuine about the sociopath because they have lost touch with what it means to be a loving and caring human.  Sociopaths are callous and feign empathy. They have only contempt for their victims and have no understanding of the pain they cause.  Their aim is only to enslave their victim. From this enslavement the sociopath gains psychological and/or sexual reward, which in turn becomes an addiction.

Sociopaths find normal life boring so they tend to live on the edge. They can be both versatile and criminal, they are generally promiscuous and like taking risks. Sociopaths have poor behavior controls and can flip from being the nice person to being the dangerous one. Above all, sociopaths are very good at gaining your trust and attention and it becomes easy to make excuses for them.

The sociopath has no sense of boundaries and no concern for others. They are irresponsible, unreliable and they are oblivious to the damage they cause.

The sociopath has generally had a painful history of abuse, displacement or insecurity, which over time causes them to move away from realism. They can become authoritarian, secretive and paranoid and they have contempt for anyone who tries to help them.

Sociopaths rarely have to confront the law because they seek out the environments in which they can operate safely without detection.  Sociopaths are hard to spot because they are generally very conventional.

The sociopath needs their victim’s love, respect and gratitude and will work hard to secure it, but always with despotic control.  They groom their victims to satisfy their extreme narcissism and they will often use that energy to rise to other forms of personal power and achievement.

Finally, the sociopath operates with impunity on the social media platforms where there are few methods of detection and almost no consequences for the perpetrator of sociopathic  crimes.

Further, identifying a sociopath is not easy.  One needs to be vigilant and in tune with one’s instincts.  If something does not feel right, then it probably is not right and the best advice would be to end the connection immediately.

 

Online Scammers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australians are losing millions of dollars to scammers according to figures in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Targeting Scams report.  “Total combined losses reported to Scamwatch and other government agencies exceeded $489 million, $149 million more than in 2017 and they were expected to jump again to 532 million by the end of 2019…  These record losses are likely just the tip of the iceberg. As the report suggests, “we know that not everyone who suffers a loss to a scammer reports it to a government agency.” In 2018, more than 378,000 scam reports were submitted to the ACCC’s Scamwatch, the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) and other federal and state-based government agencies such as the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), of these dating and romance scams represented significant losses increasing from $42 million in 2017 to $60.5 million in 2018. Dating and romance scams are particularly insidious because they play on the most fundamental of human needs, love, caring and  the desire for belonging.

Importantly, not all scammers are seeking money, sometimes it is sex or information they want and sometimes it is just the desire for control.  In Australia there has been a rise in identity theft due to scamming.   As a result, data is being collected on all forms of predatory behaviour as government’s try to protect their citizens, but the reality is the Internet is almost beyond regulation and there will always be victims of unethical and criminal behaviour.  The stakes are high and the costs to individuals are immeasurable.

One of the main sources of scamming is social media.   Not every contact made on social media will be a scammer, many good friendships can arise through being online, but social media has few boundaries and little or no accountability, so the best advice is to be sure you know who you are dealing with.

The Internet has literally dozens of sites warning about scammers and their activities, but people are still getting caught out. There is a very distinct profile which most rational people would easily recognize, but it is generally ignored because scammers are able to subvert rational evaluations by tapping into the human emotions and they are very skilled at selecting appropriate victims.    For example, romance scammers will look through social media for people who are actively seeking a partner, or they will pick someone who appears to be alone.  Scammers will frequently target older people who are likely to have superannuation tucked away somewhere and who probably have real estate and other assets.  54.8% of victims are female and 44% are male.  Dating agencies and social media are the most common platforms used by scammers around the world and chat room scamming is fast becoming the norm.

The scammer will pretend to be a prospective companion, sometimes offering marriage, or a good friendship and he or she will aim to become your confident. Scammers are very good at using reverse psychology and emotional triggers. This is how it works:

Scammers will generally set up an appealing fake profile to lure victims into their virtual world. They will often present as trustworthy people, that is people of substance; doctors, lawyers, military personnel or other similar professions and, importantly, they may well be military personnel or people of similar rank.   The scammer’s seduction can be crude or highly sophisticated depending on the target.  There are no clear distinctions on who will become a scammer, similarly there is no clear profile describing their victims, just about anyone using the Internet is fair game.  Scammers will almost certainly be living abroad, that is outside the country they choose to target. Distance is crucial to the scammer because it allows the perpetrator to believe she or he will not be caught.

Romance scammers will generally message you with compliments, they might tell you that they checked out your profile and you seem like an interesting person.  Soon after, in a very short space of time, they may express deeper emotions for you.  Sometimes they will move you away from messaging on social media and onto the more private email. Once the scammer has convinced you that he or she is genuine they will shower you with compliments and sometimes with gifts.

Scammers are very patient, they rarely give up, they can take months or even years to gain your trust.  Once all your defenses are down the scammer will reveal his or her objective, it might be a request for financial help, for sex, explicit pictures or other. There is no age limit, scammers will target anyone who meets their criteria.

Scammers might embark on a plan to visit you, but they will never turn up. Some have been known to send money in small amounts and then to ask for more later.    Once you have paid the amount of money they are seeking, you will not hear from them again.

At one point you might start to feel suspicious, but the scammer has planned for this and she or he will work more on your trust and deepening the relationship. Often the scammer becomes so proficient that they cannot see anything wrong in what they are doing.  After all, you have been provided with some happy moments.  Or, it may be that the scammer has listened and counselled you on your life world difficulties so they feel you are obliged to repay them.  You may believe you have entered into a happy and seemingly healthy exchange but, you have not, you have entered a place of fantasy and virtual illusion. You will also find pulling back from this space is extremely difficult.

Sex on the Internet.

Over time, the scammer does not present as a villain, but as a friend or potential lover. You have never met this person and you are not likely to, but you feel reciprocating love will cause you no harm.  Soon you find that Internet lovers are phantom lovers and they can run hot and cold, playing on your needs and desires when it suits them.   One minute they are there for you and the next they are gone; this serves to deepen your emotions and heighten your basic needs for the scammer’s companionship.

Internet lovers generally use false identities and they will lie about their details. Some use more than one profile.  You may be suspicious, but the chances are you will ignore your suspicions because your new friend is an appealing romantic and you like to see the best in people.   You feel like you have found a good partner and someone who cares for you.

Soon you will realize that this friend knows everything about you and you know nothing about her or him.  Somewhere along the line there might be a twinge of guilt from the perpetrator or he or she might feel you are on to something so they will work harder to make you think they are a good person and they really want to get to know you. However, try asking a scammer to meet you in person and you will be waiting a very long time. Online scammers do not meet up with their victims.

Scammers have all kinds of reasons for doing what they do, sometimes they are   lonely, sometimes they are in pain, but scammers can also come with real dangers if they have criminal intent. They can use you as mules for money laundering or drugs and they can involve you in their illicit activities without you being fully aware of what is happening.    In addition, scammers can lure their victims overseas and place them in physical danger of kidnap or terrorist activities, this is rare, but it does happen.  Few governments will pay the ransom for kidnapped citizens, if this happens you are on your own.

Common Scammer Profiles. 

Primary studies show that in most online relationships the predators are males cheating on their wives.  The Internet has opened the flood gates on cheating in ways that may appear innocent.  Many scammers and cheats do not think they are doing wrong because there is no human contact between parties.  There are websites, chat rooms and messaging facilities that are devoted to making these connections easy and seemingly harmless and there are limited rules in place to protect users.   Scammers and cheats generally have no remorse and their relationships are very easy to conceal.

Some online relationships are genuine and they can take place out of need, that is feelings of inadequacy or downright unhappiness, but it is hard to distinguish the good from the bad.    Others can be instigated by a single or married person who just decides to play the field.

Most online connections start with friendship before becoming intimate and sexually explicit, but sexual stimulation and/or money seem to be the ultimate goals.  There have been occasions where the scammer has seen the error of his or her ways and a good friendship has been established, but this is very unusual because the scammer has an addiction and without the appropriate help, they rarely change their behaviour.

In almost all cases the women who enter these relationships are unsuspecting and vulnerable and they can get seriously and emotionally hurt, but this is not a sign of weakness.  Scammers do not just target those they perceive to be weak.  In many cases strong, independent, self-determined women have fallen head first into a scammer’s deception. Scammers are very good at what they do, they know people and they can easily find the soft links in a person’s personality.

Scammers will invoke the need to be needed.   Or, alternatively they will present as a person of strength and reliability. Scammers will talk a lot about trust and respect to captivate your interest and you will fall for it because you are an ethical and trustworthy person looking for a likeminded friend.

Online relationships always involve some form of emotional attachment often expressed in a deep sense of loving, caring or some form of admiration.  Common insecurities that occur in offline relationships are easily placated in the online environment because no one has to take possession of the consequences. Talk is cheap and very effective.  There are no secondary diversions so you are unlikely to tell anyone what is happening because you are feeling immersed in this new experience of love and caring, or perhaps you have shared more than you should have and you have a fear of being exposed.

Relationships can start and end at the click of a mouse and they usually do when the scammer has achieved what she or he set out to achieve. When this happens, the real emotional cost begins to set in.

The Emotional Cost.

The reality is this: The financial loses to scammers can be enormous, but the emotional costs can be much greater. I have been a therapist and counsellor for a number of years and I have worked with many people going through traumatic relationship break-ups, but the Internet has initiated a new kind of relationship breakdown where both the rules of engagement and the inevitable separation are very different.

Internet relationships can be equally complex and problematic as face to face relationships, but their termination can have longer and more devastating impacts, sometimes lasting months or even years.    Online breakdowns are often more severe than the psychological traumas encountered in person to person relationships, simply because they have left the individual powerless, embarrassed, ashamed and in a virtual void.  The victim is duped by a new medium, technology; over which there is little control and absolutely no recompense.   Further, because the virtual world is closer to fantasy, it invokes the deepest levels of human consciousness (and the unconscious), often triggering the memory of old wounds.

People who have had this experience should not blame themselves, effective scammers are highly astute professionals, but they are also people who may have desperate needs themselves and with no help available they transfer their pain onto their innocent victims.

Waking up to the realization that you have been scammed on the Internet is like drowning is a pool of thick liquid. Normally, you would hit the waters and swim, but you cannot move out of this feeling of being frozen in time. You have experienced a totalizing cybernetic abjection; in other words, you are lost in space.  However, blaming yourself or others never helps anyone! It is important to take stock and forgive. You can become back from this and forgiveness is always the best pathway to healing.

Importantly, those feeling the serious effects of scamming should seek help immediately. A broken online relationship can lead to depression and thoughts of suicide and there has been a rise in deaths across the world due to broken online connections.

A final word on scamming.   Being scammed can arouse feelings of anger and retribution, but like the rest of us, scammers are human beings with human problems.  Scamming is often the consequences of psychosocial issues that pervade consciousness and target those who appear better off.    While scamming as a growing practice needs to be called to account, we should do so knowing that scammers can and do become rehabilitated. Ultimately, the scammer bears the burden of his or her actions, whether in the present or in the future. Nature has its own form of justice. All you need to do is heal yourself.

Scamming is a global problem beyond the laws of jurisprudence and ethical standards and it needs a new and global response that goes to the deepest levels of the scammer’s psyche and the pain experienced both by the scammer and the recipient.  The world is a difficult place for many and it needs to be remembered that society creates its deviants and criminals. We are all partly responsible for the world we have shaped and manipulated and it up to each individual to change it.

 

Finally, I have finished my collection of twenty paintings on the Torah.

Thank you for your interest in my sacred art.

This collection of paintings is an attempt to trace my own Jewish identity through the wisdom of the Torah. The inspiration came at the end of 2018 when I gave up teaching to make Jewish scholarship my primary goal. Elements of my enquiry transported me back to my childhood in East London at a time when Jews were still being targeted with antisemitism.  It reminded me of the pain of the Holocaust, which still lingered in many a household and it brought back the memory of my grandmother who sought and gained her strength through reading the Torah, turning to prayer and trusting in the Lord.

I have been an artist, writer, philosopher and psychotherapist, but scholarship occupies much of my time.  I approach each aspect of my work from an interdisciplinary perspective. I trained as a painter in London with Kristin Berge, a pupil of Oscar Kokoschka and the Kokoschka School has had a great influence on my art, particularly in the use of colour. I also studied history and literature at London University before becoming employed in the production office of Sam Spiegel’s film company Horizon Pictures, where I gained patronage from the exiled Russian Baroness Maura Budberg.  In the 1960s I transferred to South Africa and worked as an art director for the British company Gestetner.  I exhibited my paintings in Johannesburg and taught at the local art school.  I came to Australia in the 1970s and worked in my own company Wicca Productions as a graphic artist specialising in posters.   Later I returned to university where I wrote my Masters theses in Psychoanalysis and Development and my Doctorate in Communications and Consciousness. I have since worked in art therapy and I have also produced a number of books on art, philosophy and mindfulness.

Currently, I live on a rural property, which I have refurbished as land for wildlife. I am an active environmentalist, an advocate of multifaith engagement and a worker for animal rights.  I have been greatly blessed and my sacred art allows me to share my joys with others around me.   I hope as you navigate this work you will gain the same pleasure from it as I have had in producing it.  Shalom.

Here are the paintings.

Shabbat Candles.

Bal Shem Tov taught that in the flame of the candle one sees three levels of light. The dark light corresponds to the love of Israel, which in turn   represents the soul clothed in a material body, the white light corresponds to the love of Torah and the aura corresponds to the love of God.

Every Friday evening, we gather in the sanctuary to welcome Shabbat with the light of God, the singing of our prayers and our hearts opened and filled with love.  We turn pain into comfort and sadness into hope. We praise God for His goodness and ask for His mercy. We emerge from the world of sorrow and transform it into blessings and joy. Thus, we are remembered, healed and strengthened for the week ahead.

The Hamsa.  

The Hamsa represents the Hand of God and it is sometimes known as the Hand of Miriam, a remarkable woman who is listed among the seven Jewish prophetesses. Miriam is a source of our strength.  She was a guiding light when she waited by the bushes to watch over her little brother who had been placed in a basket floating among the reeds: And his sister stood from a distance to know what would happen to him (Exodus 2:4) “And she stood” – with Divine inspiration resting upon her. (Midrash – Mechilta d’Rabbi Yishmael).

We can all search for Divine inspiration. When we look to the sky, we see clouds. When we look beyond the clouds, we see the mystery that is the universe. When we look beyond the universe, we may not see the creator, but we can feel His presence in the miracle that is manifest in life and the everlasting consciousness of the soul. To know God is to know the life of love and happiness.

 

The Giving of the Torah.   

Shavuot is a Jewish holiday which celebrates God’s giving of the Ten Commandments now contained in the Torah.  Moses, ascended to the top of the mountain to meet with God, who gave him the Commandments, a moral code which was inscribed onto two stone tablets.   The Torah has given us our moral code for a happy and fulfilling life.  Further, the Torah binds us and gives us strength to face the perils of an uncertain world. …and you will return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day, you and your children. (Deuteronomy 30 x 2.)

We are never alone.  When times are difficult, we can always turn to our maker for comfort and for those who say God does not listen to prayers, we are given the intellect to listen to our own voice and to be actors on our own behalf. God is everywhere.  God is manifest in the silence of every deliberation.

 

Genesis.

In the teachings of Ba’al Shem Tov every letter of the Hebrew alphabet exists in three dimensions; worlds, souls and divinity, otherwise the world as we know it, the spiritual as we experience it and God who oversees everything and every new beginning.  How does the artist capture the essence of every beginning?  We awake in the morning with a song and a prayer. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Psalms 119:105).  The artist makes art to be at the centre of religious thinking and believing.  In every stroke of the brush there is breath, and in every breath, there is life, and in every life, there is God the creator and none can truly deny Him, else the stars are an illusion, the sun fails to rise and the moon has fallen from the sky.

                                                                            Eden.

Eden.

The Garden of Eden is also called Paradise. It is the Garden of God described in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Ezekiel. A man was placed in the garden and he was free to eat from any tree in the garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the man and a woman were seduced by the serpent and they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge.  How we humans have eaten from the forbidden fruits!  How we continue to do so in mindless destruction!  We have killed the tree of life and we have eroded the Earth that sustains us.  Our planet was given in love and we have treated it with greed and contempt. Now we must seek redemption if we are to maintain human existence. In love, there is always redemption.

 

The Birth of Adam.

In his commentary on the story of Adam and Eve Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra states that Adam is the secret of the brain and Eve is the secret of the heart. Adam and Eve are the prototype forces of giving and receiving.

We are given bountiful gifts for which we must display ongoing gratitude and praise to our God.  To give to another stimulates the mirror neurons in the human brain from which we derive the chemistry of happiness.   To give and to receive are the rules of our co-existence, our sustenance and our satisfaction. Giving lengthens our life on Earth and assures our entry into God’s Paradise.  To give with love and to receive with gratitude are the fabric of peaceful communities. When one cannot give, the acquiescence of life is lost.  Life comes from life; love comes from love. Be at one with the universe, be at home with our God, be happy in giving and creating.

The Flood.

      “And the Rain was upon the earth for forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7-12). The function of water as a means of renewal is manifest in the Mikvah.  Likewise, when the purifying waters fall on the planet it allows for a cleansing and renewal of the Earth. As we bathe in the tears of angels, we cleanse the body and rejuvenate the mind so we must not pollute the waters, else everything becomes decadent and polluted.

       We are born from the waters of the womb and we connect back to the womb with our emotions. When life is a burden, we can renew our birth in the Holy waters.

Moses and Miriam.

When Moses was born, happiness and light filled the house for three months. Then the Egyptian officials came to Amram’s house forcing the family to put Moses in a basket and leave him floating on the Nile.  How God saves us!  As a young girl Miriam put herself at risk by waiting at the reeds, watching to see how God would keep His promise. We are reminded of the necessary ingredients for redemption.  Every day we must redeem our trust in God and move forward with courage and commitment. Every day we must consider those who are less fortunate. Every day we must offer a hand of friendship to those who feel displaced and who are floating in the abyss of unknowingness.

 

Zipporah.

Moses killed an Egyptian who was striking a Hebrew and was forced to flee for his life. When he arrived in Midian, Moses sat by a well watching as Reuel’s daughters came to water their father’s flocks. Other shepherds arrived and drove the girls away so they could water their own flocks first. Moses defended the girls, so their father gave Moses one of his daughters, Zipporah as his wife (Exodus 2:11-21). Why did Reuel give away his daughter? Is it not better to marry a good man who cares for a woman than to marry through impulse and infatuation?  Zipporah teaches us that life is a series of lessons learned over time.  She teaches us that love which grows like a small sapling becomes a strong tree.  She teaches us that wisdom does not come overnight, it must be acquired through struggle, pain and experience.  Without the difficult times we would never know the good. Torah guides us, but in the end, we are responsible for our own thoughts and actions. Think love.

 

Joseph and the Pharaoh.

In the Torah, Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, but he made good and rose to become the second most powerful man in Egypt next to the Pharaoh (Genesis 37-50).  What do we learn from Joseph? Joseph’s life was filled with untold suffering, but he stayed faithful to God’s Commandments and eventually found favour with his master, but this did not protect him. Joseph had to learn that doing the right thing did not always have the best outcome and only God can be the true judge of what is appropriate.

Joseph teaches us forgiveness, not just the need to forgive others, but also to forgive ourselves.  Forgiveness eases the pain of being hurt.  Forgiveness removes animosity and it channels the more acquiescent areas of the brain so our minds can think clearly and productively. God forgives us our sins and here is the lesson for us to forgive others.

 

Exodus.

The freedom of the soul is the daily experience of the exodus from Egypt. “Hear of Israel, the God is our God, the God is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). To hear is to understand and to transcend the confines of one’s own thoughts in the service of the Divine.  In doing so we are not the captives of our desires. We have laws to guide us, but the sincerity in carrying them out must come from our hearts.  We must know goodness and differentiate it from our habitual thoughts and longings. Goodness has its own unique dynamics and when we know goodness as a spontaneous trait, we fulfil our true aspirations.  A life built upon personal gain and competitiveness only is not a wholistic and satisfying life. Pray for goodness, pray for strength and endurance.  Our God hears us.

Miriam the Prophetess.

The Torah refers to Miriam as the Prophetess. She is viewed alongside  Moses and Aaron when delivering the Jews from exile in Egypt: “For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam”(Exodus 15-20).  Miriam is the music maker, the dancer and the creative force within all of us.  She sustains our need for attention and love through pleasure and creativity.  In creativity life blossoms.  Creativity provides us with mindfulness. It slows down the thinking processes, settles the mind, eases the breathing and takes pressure of the body’s vital organs. Miriam teaches us to lighten the burdens in our life and to take everything as it comes with careful thought, love and responsibility.

 

The Burning Bush.

God told Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3-5).  Moses humbled himself before God.  The flames of the burning bush never consume the plant.  This reminds us that the fire in our lives need not be disastrous.  Fire is energy with good and bad uses. Fire keeps us warm on cold winter nights, it can also send a signal of danger.  Fire reminds us not to be complacent.  We should never take things for granted. Everything can change in a heartbeat.  With trust in God change need not concern us. If we move forward with faith, life becomes a lot easier. “Those who know your name trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.” “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” … Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”(Psalm 19.10).

Prayer.

Prayer is the experience of the soul.  Prayer is our private sanctuary, we must honour it, keep it safe and use it as often as we can.  Prayer can help settle our mind and heal our pain and suffering. Prayer can happen in many forms and in many places, sometimes it is just a very private conversation with God who allows us to ask questions and to argue with him. In this way the dialogue is a process of building trust in God and in ourselves. The morning prayer lightens the day. “I thank you, living and enduring king, for You have graciously returned my soul within me. Great is your faithfulness”.   Begin the day with a prayer and happiness will find you.

The Golden Calf.

The Golden Calf was an idol made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai.  In Hebrew, the incident is known as ḥēṭ’ ha‘ēggel (חֵטְא הַעֵגֶּל) or the Sin of the Calf (Exodus 32:4). We are all prone to idolatry at times and it takes many forms.  The Golden Calf reminds us to take a step back and evaluate what is on offer and what is of value.  We must not lose sight of our trust in God.  Fear can cause us to make bad decisions. Be sure that God watches over us. Moses burnt the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. When Moses asked him, Aaron admitted collecting the gold, and throwing it into the fire, and said it came out as a calf (Exodus 32:21-24). Transform in goodness because when we put our trust in God we can move forward with a clear mind and sound judgement.

 

Rachael and Leah.

Rachel was Jacob’s first love and Leah was the first wife that Jacob actually married and the first to bear his children.  Leah, the unloved wife, took consolation in also bearing Jacob’s children and she had deep feelings of sisterhood for Rachel. Leah prayed for Rachael to have a child who is female so that she too had her allotted share in the tribes of Israel.  From this relationship we learn that giving has its own rewards. Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” ¹⁹ Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.”   So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.(Genesis 20.19).

Temple Dreaming.

The City of Jerusalem has a long history during which it has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed twice.  What can we learn from this?  Perhaps we learn that the subject always wants what the other has.   We must liberate from possessiveness before it takes control of our being.  We must curtail the ensuring violence. My Jerusalem Dreaming represents the desire for peace, knowing that the road is littered with many obstacles. The Jerusalem Temple serves three faiths and it stands in the realms of possibility that one day an interfaith movement will conquer prejudice. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16 ).

 

Who is Like You?

The Hebrew letter shin represents the Devine Revelation.  The three heads point to the eternal flame.   The three can also represent the two seeing eyes and the spiritual third eye, brought together in stillness and prayer. Who is like You O God among the gods that are worshipped? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, working wonders?  Your children witnessed your sovereignty, the sea splitting before Moses and Miriam, “Tis our God”, they cried, “Adonai will reign for ever and ever!” (Exodus 15:11:2:18).

 

The Holy City.

We believe that God creates everything in the universe afresh in every single second. In the Uncertainty Principle, formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927 the position of a particle and its future location become less well known. Further, precise knowledge of a particle’s motion hinders knowledge of its present location.  How then do we locate God when God is simultaneously in one place as well as being everywhere else?   We locate God in our hearts and minds. We trust in his love and judgements. Everlasting love. You offered your people Israel by teaching us Torah and mitzvot, laws and precepts. Therefore, Adonai our God. When we lie down and when we rise up, we will meditate on Your laws and Your commandments. We will rejoice in your Torah for ever. (Mishkan T’filah,p32).

 

King David.

When King David ascended to the throne, he always kept his harp beside him. Every night at midnight, a slight breeze used to pluck at the strings and King David would wake from his sleep, rise from his couch and compose sweet, sacred songs in praise of God.  The songs are called the Psalms of David.  May

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¹ Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul.

² While I live will I praise the Lord: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

³ Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

⁴ His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

⁵ Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God:

⁶ Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever:

⁷ Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners:

⁸ The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous:

⁹ The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

¹⁰ The Lord shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord.  Psalm 146.

Shema

Sh’ma Yisra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

Barukh sheim k’vod malkhuto l’olam va’ed. Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.

V’ahav’ta eit Adonai Elohekha b’khol l’vav’kha uv’khol naf’sh’kha uv’khol m’odekha. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

V’hayu had’varim ha’eileh asher anokhi m’tzav’kha hayom al l’vavekha. And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart.

V’shinan’tam l’vanekha v’dibar’ta bam And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them

b’shiv’t’kha b’veitekha uv’lekh’t’kha vaderekh uv’shakh’b’kha uv’kumekha when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.

Uk’shar’tam l’ot al yadekha v’hayu l’totafot bein einekha. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.

Ukh’tav’tam al m’zuzot beitekha uvish’arekha. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

 

 

 

                                                                            

I have been having a heated discussion on Facebook over the demonstrations by Hasidim against the Eurovision Song Contest being performed on the Sabbath in Israel.   My view has always been that if you visit a country you abide by the laws and customs.  Pending the Eurovision event, the criticism of Israel over its religious laws by the west  has been astounding.

What really prompted the Facebook discussion was a picture of three  women who stripped down to their bras to cause the Hasidim to turn away.  The Hasidim did turn away, from my view,  as a mark of respect. From the view of others, they turned because of religious convention.  Both might be true, however, the point for me was how much respect did the women have for the Hasidim? None!  Moreover, how much respect did they have for themselves?  Modesty not being a popular trait these days!  Anyway, to cut a long story short, the discussion on Facebook turned one about the separation of powers, a discussion, which has turned into outright hatred for any form of religious belief.  Where is the balance? I ask myself. Here is my response.   To the writer of the post on Facebook.

Some time ago I would have agreed with you on the separation of powers, but now (…)??? Take a look at our secular world, where is the morality, where is the care for others? Even our language has changed from prose to outright assault. The more the institutions grow, the more power they have and the more likelihood of corruption and abuse, that applies to religions and secularism. We cannot say one is better than the other!

The argument for democracy against theocracy is skewed. How many wars have been fought in the name of democracy? Further, religion is defined as a belief system, hence atheism is classified as a religion, as is science, by many postmodern theorists. Today, thanks to Derrida we have different ways of examining things, instead of asking what is right and what is wrong with institutions we ask where is each institution right and wrong.

There are many good religious people. The fundamentals of religion are based on goodness. What people do in the name of religion is another issue. There is very little in secularism to unify people the way religious belief does and there is a very basic reason that this. Religion lifts us from the day to day experience in order to look at things from another perspective. The French philosopher Blanchot wrote that in language it is not the words that give the sentence meaning, it is the spaces in between. If we removed all the spaces then what we would have would be a language of confusion; gobbledygook! The same applies to the place of religion in the social order. It gives us space to reflect, to praise and to better evaluate. Religion does not need a figurehead (as in Christianity) to many God, Allah and Adoni are simply the force that created the universe and gave us a space to live within it, all others are prophets and teachers.

Don’t you think if we had more respect for this universal power, we might also have better respect for our planet and all the creatures that live on it? Religion provides hope and we cannot give up on hope.

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Space on Facebook is of course very limited for such a discussion, but I am dismayed at the way so much hatred is being generated against those who have beliefs extending beyond the personal or the political.  We need to believe that a better world is possible, if we don’t what else is there?  Those who condemn religion per se, have not looked closely at the demands of the New Age Movement, which in and of itself, is a religion and a signifier that some kind of transcendent is needed.

  Image: Extinction Rebellion. 

I feel well within my field of experience to write on the topic of revolution because many years ago I called myself a revolutionary.  As part of a youthful cohort of the 1960s anti-war demonstrations I and my fellow demonstrators were all revolutionaries, a name which may have been adopted, not from the struggle, but from the popular Beatles record that alluded to Revolution.

The fact is revolutions give rise to the same power relations that the Capitalist Revolution gave rise to in the first place, the roots of which were sown in the eighteenth century Enlightenment.  The internal logic of capitalism is deeply rooted in modernity and its ideology and the related problems are not just current they are historical.

The trend today, is peaceful protest modelled on the activism of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The demonstrations however, rarely end in peace.  Gandhi’s demonstrations led to the massacre of 400 innocent Indians by the British who sought revenge for the insurgent sit-ins.   Martin Luther King, had a vision, but it did not calculate the violence carried out against demonstrating black Americans, which escalated and continues to escalate, rather than being curtailed.  Brave leaders are often beguiled by the moments of elation, which seem to far outweigh the human costs. There is a price to pay for protest and while some say these costs are needed for progress, I believe there is a better way.

I am not against peaceful protest we have a democratic right to do so. However, if protesters break the law then they are dismantling the very legal system they need to make the specified changes.   When I trained in passive resistance many years ago, we were taught not to provoke the authorities. When asked to move on we moved on. Of course, people came back the next day and the day after, so on and so forth, but civil obedience and the law actually remained in-tact.  It was called middle class radicalism, because it made a point without tampering with foundations of the socio-judicial system.  Certainly, today those same foundations need to be changed, and they do slowly evolve, but they will not be altered with violent rebellion, on the contrary they are likely to be strengthened by the constant need to justify judicial authority.

I have attended recent protests as an observer and what I have noticed is an increase in violence on both sides.  Protesters aim for peace, but when they refuse to move, it allows the police to use reasonable force to shift them. Here is where the violence begins and it ends with numerous people being arrested. There is no sense to this, it simply works in favour of giving the authorities more weapons and more power to use against protesters.  Further, while most protest groups aim to cover the cost of court appearances and fines, this also reduces the resources of the campaigners.  Many a protest group has been undermined by having resources diminished this way, while others who may have secured government funding, under the democratic principle of having a voice, generally lose it.

As a long-time peace activist, I abhor violence in any form.  Violence is not civilized and cannot be passed off as such.  We have mechanisms for reform, they might be tedious, but there is a better chance of long-term change via the rule of law than from ongoing civil disruption of society.

The campaigners for civil disobedience today are generally focused on Climate Change.  My question here is this, how many campaigners actually work to reduce their carbon footprint when the focus groups are not around?  I would guess many do change their lifestyle and many more do not.  Similarly, research has shown that many people join protests for the connection not the cause.  This is not to say that protesters cannot glean knowledge from other protesters. Nonetheless, ongoing commitment is a hard road to follow.

We live in a mass consumer culture and Climate Change is as much a cultural problem as it is a consumer one.    Changing an embedded culture takes time.   We have little time to make the changes needed and I accept the limits of truly passive action.  It would appear we have two choices. Either, we take responsibility for our own consumption and ethics in relation to the world’s environmental dilemmas or we wait for the entire system to collapse.   A positive result requires commitment from everyone at home and abroad. Small steps like recycling plastics can go a long way if everyone participates and there are many more positive ways to help.  The mass movement has its place, but we all need to take individual responsibility.  Moreover, times are not going to be easy and we need to help others as well.  People matter, we should not be putting them at further risk.

 

 

 

 

My non-Jewish colleagues are often surprised at my defence of the Jewish people and they ask why?  My answer goes beyond my own roots to the medium of scholarship and integrity.  The Jews are much maligned and I believe, unjustly so.

Two comments were made to me this week and I shall call them misunderstandings rather than malicious and derogatory statements.  The first, was that all Jews are fascists. This was no doubt based on the perception that Jews are persecuting the Palestinian people.    I will not go into the arguments relating to the Jewish- Palestine struggle as I have posted these elsewhere. However,  I do take issue with the word “fascist”, which for Jewish people, who have endured so much pain at the hands of fascists, is a painful  and unwarranted insult.  Suffice to say, Israel is a democracy, fascists states are not.

The other issue pertains to the belief that because the Bible mentions the Jews as the Chosen People, Jews themselves think they are above the rest.  Nothing could be further from the truth,  the Chosen People statement has been grossly misinterpreted.  The Jews were given the Torah and more laws than most could hope to abide by,  316 I recollect.   The Jews made it their aim to spread goodness to others because God had been good to them. He liberated them from slavery.  In history,  this liberation is a direct result of the agreement with God. Notwithstanding, this agreement appears to have rendered Jews the victims of an intense jealousy and hatred and I have met many Jews who believe this is because they have sinned and not lived up to the Commandments.   What a sad state of affairs!  We all know the debilitating affects of a perceived failure.   Jews are not the evil people they are made out to be in the rank propaganda and speech hate that prevails such accusations of being fascists and above others.

No nation has ever been hated more for being bestowed with a system of laws and justice than the Jewish nation.    Yet, most Jews continue to give of themselves in ways that few know of or acknowledge because giving is an integral part of being Jewish.  Concomitantly,  in giving to its neighbours, Israel has found itself in a position of having to continually defend its borders against hostilities because any concessions have been treated with contempt by a population whose leaders serve their own interests.    Jews are not hostile to Arabs,  indeed  Israeli Arabs appear to  live better than those in Palestine.

It is public knowledge that some people want to see the end to the Jewish State and, in some cases,  the Jewish people; this is nothing new.  The Jews are survivors and I am sure that irritates some of Israels’ enemies, but those who protest against Israel and the Jews might consider some of the great Jewish minds and creators that have given much to the world.   Jews have achieved in science, medicine, the arts and much more and the world has benefited.

It is a fact that those nations that embrace the Jewish intellect  tend to thrive and they do so because next to God Jews value integrity, learning and giving.   There are good and bad people in every race, nation, group and community, but to single out Jews as fascist and thinking themselves above the rest is anti-Semitic and racist.

I hope I have made my point!

 

 

                                  Picture courtesy of Reform Judaism.org.

With elections in Australia pending, I was prompted to think about what it means to live in a country espousing national self-determination. Taking the American Declaration of Independence (Australia’s nearest facsimile on Rights) as an example one reads, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. This Declaration assumes that all men (and today, all women) are rational human beings, thus they can create any form of government they wish, be it Communist, Fascist, Christian, Islamic, theocratic, whatever.  This doctrine has set out the principles of normal democracy and political freedoms, but not all governments share the same meaning of normal democracy.  Thomas Jefferson, for example, understood the Declaration as containing certain norms that also enabled governments without consent, to govern over ethnic groups in a manner that denied self-determination.  This brings to mind the view held by John Stuart Mill in his work On Liberty, Mill writes:

“Despotism is a legitimate form of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement and the means justified by actually effecting that end”. [1]

Few people would agree with this today and it follows that for some governments the right to self-determination is not absolute. A case in point being Israel, a nation that has been accused of preventing self-determination to the Palestinians and hence invoking an ensuing struggle over who has rights to the territory known as the West Bank. Once again, some clarity is needed since there is a significant Arab vote in Israel that keeps the system in play. Why? Because most Jews and Arabs want peace.

The West Bank is the Biblical land of Judea and Samaria. When the First World War ended, thus ending the Turkish Empire, the allied powers signed an international treaty known as the Mandate for Palestine.  In the context of the League of Nations (now the United Nations) this Mandate was recorded as international Law.  This document formalised in the Balfour Declaration,  acknowledged the Jewish people as the rightful descendants of Palestine, which in turn, provided grounds for establishing a Jewish homeland (Jewish State).  Civil and religious rights in Palestine were still guaranteed to non-Jews, but at no time were Arabs, Christians or any other non-Jews recognised as having rights to any part of Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine remains valid in International Law today.

Following John Stuart Mill’s definition of normal democracy and the International Mandate,  Israel’s  government is fully within  its rights  to govern over all of Palestine and it might have done so following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War.  However, this was not the case, Israel chose contemporary normless democracy leading everyone to believe that the democratic principle should allow Palestine the right to independent statehood. The problem is the Arab states do not believe in democracy.

Israel faces a double bind that harks back to the words of the prophets.  Isaiah prophesies that in “the end of days”, Israel will be ruled by fools, by a government so deranged that it calls evil good and good evil (3-4, 5-20, 44-25).  Both the Mishna and Talmud concur with this view. The Middle East is wrought with the clash of civilisations and a scenario that is not new.  We have seen the massive destruction of ancient buildings and cultures across the Arab world, to what avail?  What if Jerusalem was to be once again levelled to the ground?

For devout Jews, the news is not all bad.  According to Rabbi Akiva, the destruction of Temple Mount will lead to Redemption, (the three most important components of Judaism are Creation, Revelation and Redemption).  However, we as global citizens should view this as a serious dilemma.   This struggle is much more than a squabble between brothers.  The destruction of people and places is part of a much bigger picture pertaining to what, we as humans are doing to the planet and its treasures.   War is the greatest form of pollution and the ultimate form of global destruction. Before any kind of self-determination comes unity. Without unity there is little hope of survival, be we Jews, Gentiles or Arabs,

[1] John Stuart Mill  On Liberty

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                                                Extinction Rebellion Rally.

The Social Movements: A Slippery Path to Change.

Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman.  [1]

Abstract.

Historically, direct action and political radicalism have been perceived as the major characteristic in social change. The common mantra has been no gain without pain, but how much pain should be endured?  And, is there anything is to be gained by public protest?

I have been involved in social movements since the 1960s. Today, I am a reformed activist, in this paper I will outline the reasons why I think social movements fail to create long term change and why I believe them to be dangerous in the current mood of nationalism and entrenched conservatism.

Social Movement Theory 

Social movements are generally understood through social movement theory where conflict flows from a general or particular grievance into a collective of like- minded people or those with shared experiences.   It is crucial to understand the differences between the current levels of protest and previous social movements; the temper is different and there are different aims and objectives. However, historical movements have a great impetus on current political and social activism.

First, I will outline social movement theory.  Social movement theory is represented by the various schools: Functionalism, Behaviourism, Political Process, Interactionalism, Collective Theory, Conflict Theory, Resource Mobilization and the New Social Movements.   Historically, the two key factors at the core of social movement theory are liberation and constraint. There are also moral and material implications in political activism.   In order to bring about an end to social constraints and to create the landscape for liberation one needs to understand the workings of these two key factors, or to put it crudely, how the master/leader/manager constrains   the subject/worker/slave.  It is the latter who must struggle constantly for liberation.

Importantly, not all social movements are dissenting, many social movements are designed to promote and maintain the status quo and many social movements hide behind a façade of false images and prefer obscurantism.   In addition, some social movements might simply be recreational, and some will combine culture with acts for creating social and political change.

The new social movements have changed the dynamics from mass social campaigns to single issue protests and the most furtive of the current movements is the environment movement, which is focused mainly on the degradation of the planet and climate change, but we must go back in time and examine social movement theory to fully understand this post-modern movement.

Social movement theory is a vast topic that has generally followed the historical lines of a sociological and psychological understanding of society’s perceived social misfits. We can separate these movements into three main categories:

1. Macro-structural explanations of social movements.
2. Class, culture and conflict theory.
3. New movements, aesthetic and anti-capitalism; and/or anti-globalization.

Social movement theory is also implicated in the social and political changes that take place within normal (or acceptable) society.  Recent examples of this are wars, elections, political and policy changes, increased rationalism, institutionalization and the purported ‘end of ideology’ or what Fukuyama [1992] called the ‘end of history’.[2]  Against these changes there are mass mobilizations taking place across the world including the new forms of fundamentalist terrorism and the events of the 99% Occupation of Wall Street, which spread to cities elsewhere, also, the Arab Spring and the latest British movement, Extinction Rebellion whose activists climb  on top of vehicles, block traffic, glue themselves to buildings and attempt to bring normal city  mobility  to a standstill.  Most of the social movements aim for non-violent protests, but many end up in violence.  Each of these groups fall under the heading of the new social movements otherwise known as single-issue groups.

I will focus first on the latest group Extinction Rebellion. The purpose of this group is to draw attention to climate change.  Extinction Rebellion has had a meteoric rise in Britain as well as having has influenced protests elsewhere.   It has brought chaos to the streets of London and large numbers of people have been arrested.   Their primary formula for action is to break the law and to continue breaking the law until the group’s demands are met. These demands are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by “citizens” assemblies on climate and ecological justice”.[3] The movement is now present in 49 countries, and attracted high-profile supporters from US intellectual Noam Chomsky and actress Emma Thompson to young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

On its British website, the Extinction Rebellion claims to receive “small donations” from individuals and “larger sums” from organizations like the Berlin-based Guerilla Foundation, which donated 18,000 euros ($20,000) for its launch.[4]  The movement follows the model used by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., which was non-violent direct action. However, the definition of non-violent is open to question and certain levels of violence seem to be justified, for example self-harm.

Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March in protest against the colonial government’s monopoly on salt production. The salt laws taxed the production of Indian salt so that the country had to import British salt.   Gandhi’s defiance of British colonial laws over the empire’s salt monopoly began in March 1930 and it sparked a wave of civil disobedience that contributed to ending the British empire. Gandhi and his supporters began a long, expanding protest march in order to produce salt and transport it without paying tax.  It did not stop the practice: the British suppressed the march, arresting tens of thousands of people and refused to make any concessions. The march was not supported by Muslims and it failed to effect any immediate changes. [5]

What did people gain from the salt march?  First, it was inspiring for those taking part, since many had never been organized before. Second, it announced to the world that the Indian masses were a serious force to be reckoned with.   The British authorities were forced to negotiate with the campaign leader. Third, it stimulated further waves of civil disobedience. However, what started as a peaceful protest turned into a massacre. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre which took place on April 13, 1919 saw British troops fire on a large crowd of unarmed Indians in the Amritsar, Punjab region, killing several hundred people and wounding many more. It marked a turning point in India’s modern history, [6]  but the cost to human life was horrendous.

The Salt March had a tremendous influence on the thinking and strategy of other insurgents, such as Martin Luther King, whose peace-oriented rallies also ended in extreme violence when the Ku Klux Klan upped the anti against America’s black population. There were long term legislative gains, but black people in America are still persecuted and treated as second class citizens. Seemingly, it is far easier to change laws than it is to change peoples’ attitudes.

The social movement literature reflects the various changes in groups and movements, but it is not without serious questions and controversies.  A number of theorists analysed the merging of multiple issues into single groups and some  have complained that blurring the boundaries of social movements is a way of indiscriminately ‘extending the meaning of concepts’, that is, offering only socio-historical contexts rather than focusing on the activities of the movements. [7]  Other writers insist that movements should be analysed in relation to culture and the inherent power relations.[8]   One thing is clear, most people join dissident social movements because they feel they are victims of social injustice not because they are altruists.  Many people join groups through feelings of disenchantment, but may have no concept of what is required for social change, they rely on leaders who often do not have a clear plan for the future because their focus is on becoming a leader.  Indeed historically, many leaders have been shown to be self-absorbed and narcissistic.  In times of difficulty people seek out empathy and like-mindedness, but neither are concrete formulas for appropriate social change.

The early studies into social movements follow Aristotle’s warning against the tyranny of mob rule.  Hobbes used this idea to suggest that ‘society is a war of group against group’ [9]  This has led to the view that social movements are generally pathological and contagious.  For over a century social movement research has been focused on investigating incidents of behavioural contagion because it so often leads to unpleasant consequences.  Contagion appears to occur at all levels of society, but it is believed to be more problematic within the political or dissident groups. [10] This should come as no surprise, but such a discovery is not neutral, the study of dissident behaviour coincided with the need to protect the Enlightenment’s bourgeoning capitalist system and the rising middle class.

Gustav Le Bon [1841-1931] took up the idea of behavioural contagion in two major studies, the ‘law of the mental unity of crowds’ and ‘the operation of the unconscious instinctual forces’. Le Bon based his ideas on the discoveries of physiological psychology.  He believed that conscious acts are the outcome of an unconscious sub-stratum and largely due to hereditary factors, he also suggested that the individual characteristics were absent in the group. [11] Later Wilfred Trotter created a law of ‘gregariousness’ in the Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. [12]

Sigmund Freud was influenced by the work of Le Bon and used his investigations of ego-psychology to hypothesize the ‘super-ego’ and its roots in the individual’s object relations. The theme of this work is the ‘irremediable antagonism between the demands of instinct and the restrictions of civilization’.[13]  Freud believed that if we were not bound by convention the world would simply fall into barbarism and chaos.  He also saw convention as a process of evolution and a natural transitioning. [14]  Following Freud’s investigations, we know that change is never free of anxieties, which does not make social activism a stable ground for long term change.

Freud followed Le Bon’s ideas and further developed the notion of a group mind.  Freud argued that when the individual becomes a part of the group dynamics s/he is less aware of her or his behaviour.   Freud elaborated on this idea to suggest that ‘in a group the individual is brought under conditions, which would allow her or him to throw off the repression[s] of the unconscious, instinctual impulses. [15]  Freud’s work differs from that of Le Bon’s in that Le Bon’s unconscious was premised on the deeply buried features of the racial mind; also, the notion of the repressed is not present in Le Bon.

Le Bon and Freud have had a profound effect on the study of groups and social movements, particularly in the attempted understanding of disaffection and dissidence. This has led to the tendency to reduce individual/group problems to some kind of personality defect, which, in the case of psychoanalysis is said to be brought about by ‘maternal deprivation’ (this view has been discredited in recent years).   It is an idea that was widely accepted in the 19^th and 20^th centuries and became the core factor in the processes of a ‘scientific education’. [16]  Freudian theories underscored a variety of tests said to measure ‘order’ and ‘control’ in the population. [17]  Post-Freudian theories are still used today in the ‘talking cure’ otherwise psychoanalytic therapies; as well as dynamic and narrative therapies. Modern narrative therapies have also been transformed into the cognitive behavioural therapies, mindfulness, linguistic programming and a host of other related methodologies for alleviating anxiety and disaffection (as well as more serious mental and behavioural conditions); all encumber the notion of changing the individual’s behaviour.  Ironically, this knowledge has also been used by the social movements, namely the Transition Towns Movement, whose focus has been grounded in changing social behaviour.[18]   Notably, the Transitions Towns Movement withdrew from all forms of political protest and focused of small pockets of social and behavioural change.

Controls and Constraints.

In the 1950s social movement theories developed as an outgrowth of Le Bon’s and Freud’s collective behaviour theories with the distinct aim at controlling hostile crowds.  They rested on the idea that when traditional order breaks down the shared experience manifests a shared excitement or anxiety and this leads to elementary forms of collective behaviour, these in turn, evolve into integrated structures and newly established norms; reforms or revolutions.

The idea that groups are formed around human anxieties still stands. Every transitioning comes from an internal narrative that aims to placate some form of   anxiety, as already mentioned the current fear is climate change, perceived as a coming apocalypse.

Some social movements have been viewed as the adaptive responses to societies already in transition. [19]  This can be said of the current environment movement, which has transitioned to become embedded into a general green economy.  This process usually develops around an individual social identity, which later becomes, in the context of the group, a collective identity (or as Freud might have put it, the introjection of the leader’s ego into that of the group).   In other words, social movements evolve out of the structural, cultural and social cleavages within society and while structure and culture do not overtly impinge on politics societal cleavages usually become politicized and become political cleavages. [20]      

In William Kornhauser’s [1959] work titled The Politics of Mass Society, the social conditions necessary for a democracy are explored by identifying those elements that create the opposite; that is large scale protest and totalitarianism.   Kornhauser made the distinction between the democratic movement and the mass movements, perceiving the latter to be considerably more dangerous to society.    Kornhauser suggested that mass movements mobilize people who are alienated from the mainstream system and who do not believe in the validity of the established order.[21]

For Kornhauser the working class had the weakest ties to the social order because they received the smallest benefits.    Kornhauser believed ‘the rise of the industrial order… held out a promise to the working class of full participation in society’ but this failed.   As a consequence of ‘the gap between the promise and fulfilment, members of the working-class flock to mass movements in greater proportions than do members of other social classes’.[22]

After analysing the conditions that favour mass movements Kornhauser moved to what it might take to maintain a liberal democracy.   He noted there are two camps. The aristocratic view stresses the independence of the elite. The democratic view stresses the independence of non-elites and is based on the premise that constitution of liberty above all requires safeguards against the accumulation of power by any one group, especially the elite.  The two groups are not incompatible for Kornhauser; in fact, he believed each was strengthened when it was combined with the other.     Kornhauser suggested that ‘civil liberty’ required considerable social autonomy of both the elite and non-elite and he believed liberal democracy was strongest in those societies possessing the highest per capita output of industrial energy and personal income.[23] This liberal view of the social movement is the foundation of most political action today. To this end, there is no longer the desire to eliminate the elites, rather to become equal to them.  Today’s buzzword is “equality”.

The question of dialectics.   

We live in a world of duality, which is self-perpetuating, to use a Hegelian term we live with the Master-slave relation.[24] The worker needs the boss and the boss needs the worker.  The circumstances of this can only be changed at a micro-level.  The mass movement will always leave some disenchanted folks behind who form the seeds of another mass movement. Society then falls into a culture of protest or revolution, not a culture of reform.

The research shows that demonstrations that are passive and attract over 5% of the population are likely to succeed in creating small, (but not necessarily permanent gains). This means the opposing forces must up-the-anti, whereby peaceful protests usually do not remain peaceful for long, they escalate.  Under 5% and movements fail so there is a constant demand to boost the protester numbers, which can get in the way of actually perfecting change at any level at all.[25]  The fact is this, the protest groups must corporatize and assimilate into the capitalist system in order to fight the capitalism system, they become in and against the state.  This methodology did lead to a number of reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, but the reforms were soon cut back or curtailed.

      The other reality is this, change, however it is brought into effect, often only lasts for one generation. The changes that have lasted, such as the vote for women, were brought about out of a need for bigger social changes, such as the use of women in the workforce to build the national economies.

In the 1960s the social movements reached their peak.  They had been highly influential in promulgating left wing politics and posed a significant risk to conservative elites.  Neil Smelser [1962] attempted to build on Kornhauser’s views to further understand the processes of how the social movements offset human anxieties. He identified a six-point system of conditions necessary for the development of social movements:

• General structural conduciveness – organization of society can facilitate the emergence of conflicting interests.
• Structural strain – conduciveness of social structure of potential conflict – gives way to a perception that conflicting interests do in fact exist.
• Growth of a generalized belief system – ideology, a shared view of reality that redefines social action and serves to guide behaviour.
• Precipitating events – triggering events found outside or within social structure.
• Mobilization of participants.
• Operation of social control, response of others in society, e.g. counter movement or government authorities. [26]

Smelser believed that not all social movements were the same, they differed in the economic status of members and in some cases in member values, which sometimes makes it hard to reach a consensus and produced a greater likelihood of anarchy and chaos.     

The Collective Behaviour Approach.

The collective behaviour approach to understanding social movements is embedded in the sociological traditions and represents the works of the Chicago School between 1920 and the 1940s in the writings of George Gissing, Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Louis Wirth and others. They studied the urban conditions and mass disenchantment. Gissing was greatly influenced by his personal experiences of extreme poverty and domestic difficulties in London and Chicago in the 1870s. [27]

One concept used for social analysis was that of ecology.  Ecology is the term, which describes the symbiotic relationships of living organisms and their adaptation of living things to their environment. Nature has feed-back loops where the conditions of one event can impact on another. We also see this manifest in human behaviour.

The Chicago School formulated the idea that urbanization did not spring up at random, but as a consequence of changing environments and displacements.  What takes place afterwards is orchestrated on a kind of natural selection basis or the competition experienced between groups. Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian elaborated on this idea. They showed how the breakdown of traditional patterns of social ordering could create elementary forms of collective behaviour that led to social movements.

Talcott Parsons and Chalmers Johnson also took to the ecology view and thought societies were self-regulating systems that worked in much the same way as the human physiology. This enforced the idea that any breakdown was pathological.  Hence, Johnson’s ‘disequilibrium’ was the condition required for all revolutions.[28]

These structural functionalist responses were rooted in ideas of the ‘rational’, which was in opposition to the ‘irrational’.   Political action then, only took place amongst people who were perceived irrational.  It is a view still maintained by conservatives today, and of course rarely do conservatives see themselves as irrational. From a conservative point of view, if the individual is unhappy, unsuccessful or disenchanted there is something wrong with the individual, not the system. The very action of mass protest dances to this tune, which sees protesters responding to triggering factors.

Neil Smelser noted how ‘the anxieties and strains within society are addressed by charismatic leaders’, which may or may not lead to the mobilization of social movements depending on the appropriate ‘triggering factors’. [29]

In the 1960s Frank Parkin researched Middle Class Radicalism and the Social Basis of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [1968] and revealed the following insights:

CND is not to be understood wholly as an expression of protest against the Bomb, but as a somewhat complex affair… Much of the movement’s attraction derived from the fact that it also served as a rallying point for groups of individuals opposed to certain features of British society which were independent of the Bomb…Organisations which swelled the ranks of CND such as pacifists, the New Left and communists and anarchists, the Quakers, the Labour Left and so on, were generally less committed to unilateralism as such than to an array of quite distinct aims that were thought to be furthered by support for the campaign. [30]

Parkin goes on to say that alienation is the key characteristic of individuals recruited into the mass social movements, as well as the motivating force beyond the attraction to extremist politics (he cited the communist and Nazi movements as examples).  Whatever differentiates the supporters, they appeared to share a social estrangement from society.  (Parkin argued this was not the case for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) which was led by members of the establishment).

Parkin noted that generally, the involvement in social movements provided a sense of purpose to life by creating a feeling that one was helping to change the course of history. He believed there were two distinct categories driving the participation in social movements, one was material need and the other was moral gratification, the first is inherent in the working class movement and the second in middle class radicalism.  Parkin believed that 83 percent of the 1960s CND supporters came from the professional and white-collar workers. [31] In this particular campaign, the focus on social cohesiveness was just as important as nuclear disarmament and more to the point, nuclear disarmament did not argue the case against conventional wars.

Doubtless the new social movements were aiming at mass democratization, but this was to favour the middle class. Hence, middle-class radicalism would not eliminate the poverty and hardships.  Rather, it would act as a buffer against the angry working class.

Totalitarianism.

The trend has been to directly link the mass social movement to the analysis of totalitarianism.  First accounts were related to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR], also Maoist China and Nazi Germany. Hannah Arendt [1966] is perhaps one of the best-known commentators on the Nazi driven Holocaust.  In Arendt’s view the mobilizations of the 1920s to 1940s were a social pathology brought about by the breakdown of the status quo (the middle class).    This includes the destruction of the nation state, the collapse of class identities and racial/national identification as well as a socio-economic crisis.  To put it another way, mass politics occurs when people engage outside the normal political procedures that govern change.  People form identities in poverty, oppression, wealth and hardship.  Loss of identity causes panic and it serves to pushes people into groups in order to re-establish their sense of being.  There are a number of difficulties with this view, mostly because it contains its own authoritarian prescription aimed at maintaining the status quo and it invokes an identity politics.    Importantly, sociology assumes a grounded rationality in the status quo, which in today’s environment makes up the political spheres and the bureaucracies that social movements are challenging, while at the same time social movements are engaging in the bureaucracies.  Let it be clear, any protest against capitalism requires that one engages in capitalism.  This is part of the internal logic of capitalism and its totalizing structures.

Given the history of authoritarianism and violence one might contend that bureaucracy constitutes the strongest threat to social pluralism and liberal democracy, especially in highly industrialised countries. Notwithstanding, social movements create their own bureaucracies, which can be totalizing and they cannot avoid violence, which becomes predicated on the momentum of the groups and the perceived threat to opposing forces.

Totalitarianism is said to violate the boundaries between public and private spheres by politicizing all areas of daily life in the community including those which, according to liberalism, are regulated to the private sphere and regarded as the domain of individual freedom of choice.

Totalitarian regimes are both rational and irrational.  They are irrational in the sense that they appeal to quasi-religious sentiments to gather mass support for policies.   Regimes are also irrational because they act contrary to the interests of the individual as well as to the supposedly ‘rational’ community.  They are deeply rational in the sense that they are scientific. The community appears scientifically rational because on the one hand it appears natural and inevitable, and on the other because it gains authenticity through the authority of science.

The historian Hannah Arendt has suggested that totalitarianism is the consequence of ‘a loss of world’ brought about by the desire for emancipation.  This view is deeply implicated in the Enlightenment’s liberalism, which in turn creates a secularization of the life-world.   David Halberstam [1999] is an interpreter of Arendt and contends the ‘loss of world’ leaves human beings without a meaningful view, and therefore without an identity or place to belong. This is referred to as the politics of place. This is vivid in the social movements and like all forms of relativity it actually makes social movements authoritarian and potentially very dangerous.  The biggest danger comes in the challenge to the Rule of Law.

Halberstam strongly reiterates the view that totalitarian movements are a reaction to the loss of world and they seek to restore the meaning to the world artificially. In this sense, reality is distanced (transcended).

In social movements people reinvent meaning by providing new realities through sharing experiences, they construct a shared consciousness in support of the new social forms and transitioning. [32]  We like to assume that social movements and communities are homogenous, but they are not.  The tremendous moral failure of totalitarian movements gives expression to a lot of ambiguities in the social movements per se. We are faced with a double articulation.  On the one hand the modern loss of world threatens to provoke a response on the part of the oppressed and alienated often leading to paternalism.  On the other hand, meaning cannot be restored without reneging on the modern commitment to freedom of the individual and self-determination. [33] This is a double bind because the more rights people demand the more authoritarian the state must become in order to police them. Rights and demands then become the constraints of the future not the freedoms that were originally sought.

For a person to feel free there must be a meaningful relationship with the world as it appears in everyday experience.  Therefore, any politics of freedom cannot be reduced to economic or political factors, nor can it be reduced to a notion of simply being part of a localized community or group or a mass demonstration.   There is no freedom to be had in mass protest, one is bound to the implications and expectations of leaders and group rule.

Halberstam furthers his argument by suggesting that historical concrete community and its practices are understood as continuing the identity of the particular human subject, from which the individual cannot escape without a loss of world; this places the world as the trajectory of a mass human consciousness, not the world as an independent sphere upon which we humans must depend.  There are obvious dangers in this form of anthropocentricism.

When the cosmos (or order) in which things and persons have their proper place is a given, or it becomes a guiding force in the life of the particular historical community, the society lends itself to a transcendence or mass human consciousness discourse and this in turn leads to the possibility of nihilism.  The original notion for this stems from Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man.

The turn towards the aesthetic approach is a critique of the rational, Enlightenment formula and aims to replace it with a politics that focuses on the experience of the senses. Halberstam argues that aesthetic approaches to decisions can work where reason fails, but the senses are far more closely associated with the emotions, which must be harnessed appropriately.

What Halberstam posits can also be traced to the eighteenth-century Romantic Movement that opposed the modern Enlightenment project. This rightfully puts environmentalism into a position of challenge with respect to the modern Enlightenment, which created both socialism, capitalism and the social movements and which makes the mass protest movements an oxymoron.    Halberstam’s ideas side-stepped questions of identity politics, but Halberstam does raise some pertinent questions in relation to nature and change:

What is the nature of social and political reality?

How is it related to our conception of the world as an intelligible order and our conception of our place as human beings within it?

                           What kind of social and political order promotes human flourishing?

What is the relation between identity of the individual and his/her social situation?

How does this relationship figure in justifying in a given political ordering of society?   [34]

Halberstam has drawn on Karl Popper’s and Hannah Arendt’s turn towards Kant’s model of reflective aesthetic judgement that seeks to preserve a more moderate humane version of the Enlightenment ethos, but it also leaves the task to a civil society, which historically has failed to bring about anything but disparity and disenchantment to the masses.

The New Social Movements.

The new social movements emerged from the New Left, which has spanned eco-fascism to the new market environmentalism and where politics can appear to be an organized and harmonious business that blends social justice, greening and social activism. Historically, the social movements have contributed to a general decentring of mainstream polity, the Labour movement, the womens’ movement, the black power movement and gay rights are good examples of the challenges to institutionalism and unformed polity. These movements raised the visibility of disenfranchised groups, but the most obvious asset of these movements has been the caring factors that have led to personal growth. In terms of changing the political landscape they have failed miserably. Black people are still discriminated against, women are still abused and murdered, gay and lesbian people are still misunderstood and condemned by a large sector of the global population.  Why do groups fail?  In the womens’ movement for example, the personal was the political and the movement had a very grass roots basis, but it was largely middle class and it failed to encompass many of the women who needed it most.  The environment movement brought with it a different dynamic and a slightly different meta-narrative. It also brought tensions between the lay person and the environmental scientist. The Environment crises saw the need for scientists representing all sides of the debate to be pragmatic, so in polity it was pragmatism that prevailed.  This in turn created a cultural and political fragmentation that had not occurred in the previous social movements and it has become difficult to resolve.   

Radical political activism of the 1950s and 1960s was a revolutionary force with two targets, the ‘moral and the material’.  Its protagonists  called for peace and rational thinking , but this was mixed with irrational violence and cries of ‘burn the system down’. [35] Of paramount importance was the right to protest, this in turn led to the collective and the feeling of solidarity. What transpired was more than simply a series of angry protests, large numbers of people expressed previously stifled emotions and groups fulfilled a range of social needs.  Seemingly, for a brief moment in history the lid was lifted on the oppressed workers of the nineteenth and twentieth century industrialization, they were reborn into an understanding of the capitalist relations that exploited them and they found a voice of dissent. The awareness and activism was predicated on the dialects of orthodox Marxism and an overwhelming faith in revolution as a panacea for all the world’s social problems, it was messianic in character and a delusion.

The 1960s solidarity was akin that of the early Christians apostles whose chosen vocation was to save the world’s sinners from Jews, Muslims and pagans and install a new Christian God. The point of reference for the copy-cat socialist and/or communist improvements were those nations who had already stood their ground against the western imperialist domination; Russia, Cuba, China and the countries of the Eastern European block.   A significant portion of the world had stood hard against the foundations of capitalism and this was destined to spark paranoia in capitalist countries, especially the United States and minor governments like Australia who quickly invoked anti-communist campaigns of extreme repression and the erosion of basic civil liberties.  The anti-communist fever also gave impetus to the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The fear of socialism and communism experienced by the capitalists was equal of Biblical proportions.  This was not a new phenomenon. Karl Marx had his own messianic view, he predicted that the domination of nature by science would enable individuals to develop a totality of capabilities within their work that would be realized through the richness of the individual. Marx believed there would be a general reduction of labour within society and workers would be free to seek satisfaction outside work.  The predictions of Marx were calculated as a failure of modernism and the death of nature, which in turn was viewed as a discursive construct of historical and philosophical meanings that were blamed for bringing humanity to the point of near disaster.[36]  We have been near to disaster many times, but humanity continues on the path of mass destruction, which protest and revolution will not resolve.      

Bahro and Gorz revisited Marx from the economic perspective and Deleuze and Guattari linked capitalism to schizophrenia. [37]  The New Left was designed to rejuvenate the moribund Left by reviving the idealist, humanist, cultural and critical elements of socialism with policies that focused on decentralization and self-management. [38]

The cultural turn.   

In the 1970s, when Ronald Barthes offered an analysis of everyday language,  it inspired  Baudrillard to look for the gravitational centre of the political economy as an extension of culture and the focus of exchange value of the commodity rather than the exchange value of the labour.    Here historical materialism theory was no longer of use for understanding political structures. Scholars had to turn to post-structuralism.  Structuralists separated the terms of language into three components, the signified, the referent and the object to which the signifier directs the message to be conveyed. Baudrillard noted the abstraction between the signifier and the subject (the signified) and from the social world of objects.  He argued that the essence of the political economy operates in the same way, that is to say, there is precisely the same separation manifest in the increasing autonomy in the signifier, not simply in the realms of language, but also in all aspects of social change.  To this end, everything becomes an abstraction because the original signifier is lost.  Hence, we live in a world of lost reality.

In the political economy the signified and the referent become obsolete to the sole benefit of the signifiers. With no point of reference back to the subjective of the objective reality it is motivated by its own form of logic. Hence, the signifier becomes its own referent and the use of value of the sign disappears to the value of the profit only of its commutation and exchange value [39]

      The mode of production has given way to the mode of commodification while the sign no longer designates anything at all, it is superfluous to the entire process. The disappearance of the material substratum means products become more and more abstract. They are engulfed in what H. M. Enzensberger calls The Mind Industry that sells moods, ideas and representations. What is on sale is not so much a product, but an existing order, which is impossible to dissect. [40]

Rejection of Marxism.

The rejection of Marxism was most strongly influenced by the works of Michel Foucault and themes of power and domination.  Foucault (1980) defines his studies of genealogies of discourse. ‘attempts to grasp in its power of affirmation…the power of constitution domains and objects.  [41] Foucault examines the ‘reason’ that gives shape to the discourse and practice in which the reciprocal interplay of reason and action is presumed, reason which Foucault insists is always present in history.  Whereas Marx maintained that reason is determined by class history, Foucault suggested that the dialectic of reason moves through history by way of a class struggle, it excludes the present perspective and is therefore a privileged agent of history. [42]

By the 1980s and into the 1990s there was a distinct shift weakening the labour movements that saw the strengthening of the New Social Movements.  The prototypical social movement had appeared in 1960 with the American Civil Rights Movement, then came Second Wave feminism and the movement against the Vietnam War.  By the 1970s there was the gay movement built on the 1969 Stonewall demonstrations, then came the green movement that also included the   ethnic rights.   Each group was organized around the social category of the other, rather than by class.  Implicit in these movements was the new idea of individualism, posited as post-modernity.

The new individualism was rejected by radical feminists because it failed to identify male domination as womens’ main adversary. Radical feminism became completely opposed to postmodernism and claimed it concealed the issues of rape, incest and domestic violence. [43] Black feminists also claimed that individualism was a continuation of white middle-class patriarchy.[44]  There was an exception called French feminism, which followed Derrida’s deconstruction and Lacan’s symbolic order, both of which, in light of post-colonialism, became useful tools for decoding the metaphysics of global social movements.   It was anticipated that the class and racial conflicts could be overcome by liberation from colonialism and a consumer cornucopia, but that failed because consumerism undermined itself with over consumption.      

Changing Social Categories.

The New Social Movements have been crucial for valorizing the changing social categories. What has occurred is the disbursement of more highly educated people across the social movements, especially in the green movement and this has created a new category of protester who makes nature the object of human gaze.        The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has intimated that such groups function as part of the rate of exchange between economic and cultural capital within the dominant class.[45] Featherstone notes, as Baudrillard does, that the semiological development of commodity logic entails some idealist deflection to Marx’s theory of class by way of a ‘material’ emphasis to a ‘cultural’ emphasis.[46]  Fredric Jameson also argues that this is the reification of Utopia via a mass culture, which implies a strong metaphysics at work in the internal logic of capitalism. [47]

The theory of reification in Jameson’s view is an overlay to Max Weber’s rationalism, which describes the way in which, ‘under capitalism, the older traditional forms of activity are instrumentally recognized and analytically fragmented and reconstructed according to various models of efficiency, and essentially reconstructed along lines of differentiation between means and ends’.[48]  Jameson stated ‘this is a paradoxical idea that cannot be properly appreciated until it is understood to what degree means/ends split effectively brackets or suspends themselves – hence the term instrumentalization’.[49]

The significance of changes also lay in the way they are perceived. Perceptions are dependent of substrates.  The decentring of identity means domination through the sign.[50] This in turn sees identity contingent on material goods such as fashion and lifestyle, both significantly postmodern.  It only serves as a reminder that postmodernism is an extension of modernism not a replacement for it.

The same contradictions are rife in the green movement whereby desire is juxtaposed to the culture and the economics that are still contingent upon capitalist consumerism and the use of natural resources. As Ben Agger states

What is revealed is the heightening of a consumer culture. What is hidden is the continuum of the old version, the formulation of Mill, Lock, Coolidge and Frederick Taylor and their assertive anthropocentricism, fully inclusive of the western rationale. The only difference is the degree of affluence within capitalism.[51]

Liberalism has always argued for the disappearance of class, the argument is generally conveyed in the form of an ‘empirical observation’, but it can take other forms, for example a unique way of life, as in western culture.  As Jameson has argued, on closer inspection today’s demands are distinctly class based and subversive and all rights and social movements are inherent in the Enlightenment, which means nothing changes because the problems rests within the Enlightenment.

By implication the environment movement (or any other political movement for that matter), has not broken with its historical roots, which are inherent in liberalism and socialism.   Protest operates fully within the liberal capitalist principles. In Marxist terms any collective would simply be called a neo-bourgeois social group.  In other words, the New Social Movements are always already inscribed within the ideology of capitalism itself and are part of the internal logic of any perceived transition.  This is the constructivist model, which is predicated on the existing system, but which uses ways of redirecting it though a new kind of technical politics.  The key theoretical formation comes from Foucault’s critique of the social limits of rationality, where he suggested that ‘the imposition of a rational order gives rise to particular local standpoints from which the dominated perceive aspects of reality observed from a universalizing standpoint of hegemonic sciences’. These subjugated knowledges are said to offer the basis for progressive change.’ [52]

Where the Left has had influence in issues of race, gender and the environment, identifying them as ‘other’, today’s apolitical movements are dispersed across traditional boundaries of the political, social and the personal. Against the realities of capitalist growth and western materialist reforms, the political structures will make small interventions that modify the structure without directly confronting the state or the forces that drive capitalism.  This approach is what has been called ‘micropolitics’. To this end, technologies produce technical landscapes challenged by clients and consumers asserting their perceived consumer rights.  [53]

Conclusion.

The social movements are significant in history, they teach us much about culture and human psychology and they serve many needs of humans. However, they have achieved very little in terms of improving the lives of the poorest of the poor.  Further, the changes are not guaranteed to last in the long term.

Humanity faces the same problems today as it has faced many times before in antiquity and beyond, there are just more of us and life is faster and perhaps a little more sophisticated.

Protest across the world is becoming more violent and far riskier in terms maintaining peace and social harmony. The likelihood of a collapse into civil wars is more prevalent.  In the west we tend to discard serious civil uprisings as a possibility. We put faith in our systems, especially in our law and order. However, law and order are breaking down.

In this work I have tried to outline the history of social movements in order to reveal their divisions as well as their attempts at unity and to show that modern movements are grounded in history while the modern landscape is changing.

Change does not require mass movements, it requires awareness, education and a commitment from each individual who wants to live in a better world.

I withdrew from protest in 2011, because I felt I could achieve more by helping individuals the cope with the changes that were happening, rather than trying to fight them.

[1] Timothy Morton (2009) Ecology Without Nature. New York, Harvard University Press.

[2] Francis Fukuyama [1992] The End of History and the Last Man NY. The Free Press. 

[3] The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/extinction-rebellion-tells-politicians-to-declare-emergency  Retrieved 1^st May 2019.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jallianwala Bagh Massacre | Causes, History, Death Toll …

https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre.  Retrieved 2^nd Mar, 2019.

   [7] Pakulski J [1991] Social Movements: The Politics of Moral Protest. Australia,  Longman Cheshire, pp iv. Melucci A [1983] Nomads of the Present London, Hutchinson p6 and 1989.   Sartori G (1970) Concept misformation in comparative politics in the American Political Science Review vol. LXI4 4 December, pp1033-53.

[8] P, Bourdieu (1998b) Acts of Resistance Cambridge, Polity Press.

[9] Ibid

[10] Tarde G [1903] in Nye R.A. [1974] The Origins of Crowd Psychology. London and Thousand Oaks Sage.

[10] Freud S [1916] Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp182-325.

[11] Le Bon [1895, 1903] The Crowd. NY Viking Press.

[12]  Trotter W. [1916-1919] Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War Oxford, Oxford University Press.

[13] Freud S. [1916] Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp182-325.

[14]  Ibid

[15] Ibid.

[16] Karier C.J. [1976] Testing for order and control in the corporal liberal state in Schooling and Capitalism: A Sociological Reader. Dale R, Esland G MacDonald M [Eds]. Milton Keynes, Open University p23.

[17] Freud S [1916] Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp182-325.

[18] Hopkins R. Transition Towns. (1994) UK Green Press.

[19] [19] Kriesi H, Koopmans R, Dyvendak J.W.G. [1995] New Social Movements in Western Europe –A comparative Analysis, Social Movements, Protests and Contention Vol 5. Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press p3.

[20]  Ibid.

[21] Kornhauser W. [1959] The Politics of Mass Society. The Free Press NY, Collier McMillan Ltd., pp212-227.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Hegel G.W. [1977] Phenomenology of spirit. Oxford, Oxford University Press, p59.

[25] Peaceful protest is much more effective than violence for toppling dictators By Max Fisher November 5, 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/11/05/…Retrieved 1^st May 2019.

 [26] Smelser N. [1962] Theory of Collective Behaviour London, Routledge and Kegan Paul,   pp 8-22, 313.

[27] Giddens A. [1989] Sociology, Cambridge, Polity Press p153.

[28] Ibid

[29] Smelser N. [1962] Theory of Collective Behaviour London Routledge and Kegan Paul p 364.

[30] Frank Parkin [1968] Middle Class Radicalism. Manchester, Manchester University Press.  p5.

[31] Ibid p15

[32]  Halberstam M. [1999] Totalitarianism and the Modern Concept of Politics, New Haven, NY Yale University Press.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid

[35] Saul Alinksky [1972] Rules for Radicals. NY Vintage p xiii

[36]   Gorz A.[1994] in Thomas Docherty, (1994) Postmodernism NY London, Harvester Wheatsheaf.  p344.

[37]  Mark Poster [1984] Foucault Marxism and History. Cambridge, Polity Press, pp17-18.

[38]   Rainbow S. [1993], Green Politics; Critical Issues in New Zealand Society, Auckland and Oxford University Press, p4

[39]     Mark Poster [1975] in Introduction to Baudrillard (1975) Mirror of Production. Cambridge.  Polity Press, p7.

 [40]  Enzenberger H.M. [1974] The Consciousness Industry: Our Literature, Politics and Media. NY Continuum Books, Seabury Press, pp10-11.

[41]   Foucault M. [1980] Power and Knowledge, Select Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon NY Pantheon,  p181

[42] Ibid.

[43]  Bell D and Klein R. [1997] Eds. Radically speaking: Feminism Reclaimed.  Melbourne, Spinifex.

[44] Hooks B. [1994] Feminist Theory: From the Margins to Centre. Boston south End Press.

[45] Bourdieu P. [1977] Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press  pp183-179.

[46] Featherstone M. [1991] Consumer Culture and Postmodernism.  UK Sage Publication  p15.

[47] Frederic Jameson [1992] Signatures of the Visible. NY Routledge  p400

[48] Ibid

[49] Ibid.

[50] Lash S. and Urry J. [1987]  The End of Organized Capitalism Cambridge, Cambridge Polity Press p288.

[51] Ben Agger [1990] The Decline of Discourse:Reading Writing and Discourse n Modern Capitalism. Cambridge Polity Press, p5.

[52] Foucault M. [1980] Power and Knowledge, Select Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon NY Pantheon,  p181

[53] Feenberg A. (1995) Alternative Modernity. The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory. LA University of California   p26