The Spiritual Side of Resistance Movements

For some time now I have been meaning to call attention to a post by Frank Pasquale called The Virtues of Resistance at Balkinization. Pasquale draws for one theme of his post the claim by Brishen Rogers over at Concurring Opinions that the Occupy Wall Street movement cannot be understood without recognizing its commitment to opposing neoliberalism. Neoliberalism refers to the reduction of politics and all spheres of human existence to economic rationality, bereft of moral values unless morality refers to the maximization of dollars or sometimes utility.

Pasquale writes in detail about how our politics and our culture are suffused with neoliberal thought and action. He rightly suggests that neoliberalism’s vices include “consumerism, selfishness, and a brutally calculative attitude.” But the twist that I like the most is Pasquale’s point that the Occupy Movement has not only been opposed to neoliberalism, it like many resistance movements has avoided means/ends rationality in its approach to social change.

It is easy to get discouraged in 21^st century America about the possibilities of progressive social change. We live with a government controlled by corporate elites. The government has the guns. The communications structure favors the neoliberals. Hundreds of billions of dollars of advertising alone feed the materialism and selfishness of the culture. How will change come about? The script is difficult to write. The Occupy Movement certainly had no illusions that it would quickly break the back of the economic/political structure. But Pasquale observes it is common for movements to resist injustice even with little hope of success. Pasquale thinks of this as a religious perspective though he recognizes that there is a parallel secular perspective. Coming from a Catholic tradition, he notes that the Catholic Workers continue “even when the struggle for peace or the task of feeding the hungry [seems] as massive and endless as sweeping the sand from the shore . . . .” Why do movements like the Catholic Workers so often struggle when they cannot win? Pasquale maintains that the “simple insistence on doing acts because they seem right or just or sacred, without regard to consequences, is part of the beauty, mystery – and, yes, frustration generated by a religious point of view.”

It is hard to write the script about how triumph over injustice comes. But we should not think like neoliberals. Whether religious or not, we have a duty to resist injustice.

 

Comments

[Clark West]

Great post, Steve. As Camus said, when we can imagine Sisyphus as happy, we've begun to understand something of the religious spirit (he doesn't put it quite like this, but its close!)

[Mary Jean Dolan]

Thanks for this post, Steve. Taught Citizens United Tuesday, and spent part of the afternoon discussing it with a student re his paper - really quite demoralizing. So, this take on the important spiritual aspect of continuing to speak/work for justice, despite all evidence to the contrary re potential for success, was a good antidote.

[Jimbino]

Yes, religious folks are famous for pursuing lost causes without regard for consequences. If the consequences--misery, divorce, maiming and death--happen only to them, we can give them the Darwin Award and move on, confident that the human race has been slightly improved.

But the problem is when the negative consequences from the stupid crusades of religious folks are visited upon their rational antagonists as well as innocent folks.

History gives us many examples, from the Crusades themselves, to the RC bookburnings and killing of Bruno and Hus, to extermination and enslavement of countless indigenous folks in the name of "saving" them, and nowadays to the abuse, sickness, death and divorce occasioned by misguided view of sex and "nature" and of a woman's rights over her own body.

Waiting for the Christianists all to be hoist by their own petards is too slow a process, which is why we atheists, scientists and humanists have to fight back in all sincerity.