Occucrats—Notes on a future that looks different from today

Occucrats are your friends, at least today they are.  As for tomorrow, or in twenty years? Who’s to say?  As a history of movements have—Occupiers will grow, morph, change, and evolve in to different beliefs and practices.  Don’t we all know more than a few hippies, that traded in their workin’ class denim for a smart pair of khakis?  You know, “Nimbie”s who protected their suburban backyard, while the “Pibbies” got overlooked.  I mean, how did we become a more conscious nation, with a greening attitude, meanwhile asthma rates shot through the roof in Harlem’s backyard?  Nevertheless, we are making progress.  

Take a look at our two most common political platforms.  One used to hold the values of the other… they swapped.  Who knows where the ripples of the Occupy Movement will take us in a few decades?  It could fizzle in five, or be the messy and chaotic beginnings of something grand, or grandly disastrous.  Who knows?  The women’s suffrage movement faced improbable odds of validation, yet they fought on not knowing how they would touch the future.  We could be looking at an Occupy Movement, or moment, or the future party of Occucrats.  Do we recall the NWP?  The National Women’s Party was a force in it’s day… it certainly inconvenienced a Nation, and a political system that left their best interests out of its majority initiatives.  

What’s that stuff called?  Primordial ooze!  We came from that, and my don’t we love our eco-friendly cars, and iPads, and political beliefs.  A lot can happen over the course of billions of years.  I seem to recall when I was just a little boy learning about politics and the constitution, coming home and excitingly sharing with my parents what I learned. My mother telling me that she only had the right to vote for the last fifteen years. What?    That places her in her mid-thirties before she was able to have a voice and vote of influence in this country.  

The point is, we have two things going on here—we have a process, and we have perspectives.

Now, I don’t need to focus on how that is so wrong, rather, I can choose to focus (not blindly) how far we’ve come.  And yes, look what we have done—here, here.  The point is, we have two things going on here—we have a process, and we have perspectives.  

The process is as good as any one’s beliefs.  Sure, there is a set (or multiple) of political theory that say generally what this Occupy movement is, and where it may lead.  But the truth is, the future is anyone’s guess.  Some theorists will be proven correct, and others not.  So what do we have, if we don’t know the future?  We have today. 

Movements of the past… began without popular support, and inconvenienced an entire nation

The Occupy Movement is very valid.  Everyone is talking about it.  And otherwise validation comes from its national foothold, and global roots.  Whether it is helping or harming, we simply don’t know.  What seems valid today,becomes passé tomorrow. What is seen as reason in Colonial Rule, is deemed an atrocity in post modernity. What is now seen as morally unacceptable today, only became so over time.

Movements of the past that began without popular support, and inconvenienced an entire nation, eventually led to greater freedom, and expansive, inclusive autonomy for, in this case, an ethnic group—under colonial, post-colonial, and modernity’s rule—whose interests, and well being were far from being a concern of political parties and business leaders.  Take that scenario, and place it in several key points in American history that opened our Nation into greater unity.  Why the unity?  Because more people were awakening to what was morally acceptable.  What did these people do?  Well, if you have all of your freedoms, and you’re living on the plus side of life, all you have to do is vote.  Whereas, if you’re among the oppressed, you fight.  The fight doesn’t necessarily mean fisticuffs, it simply means standing up for your beliefs.  And you don’t do that by staying in your own neck of the woods—you occupy the center.  

When black folks were being hung from trees like a sport (another scenario that happened at more than one key point in history), did you see the likes of Frederick Douglas or Martin Luther King Jr. hit cruise control on the crusade for freedom?  No.  That’s when you PUSH!  But we’ve gotten comfortable, we’ve gotten intimidated, we’re waiting for someone to do it for us.  We’ve fallen into a state of disbelief, that there’s no way we can change things.  Gosh, what if Harriet Tubman would have thought that?

We don’t even have to risk our lives, in the same way, to get our perspectives heard.  So what’s our big deal?  Why would it take us until the point of our lives being threatened before we commit to some action?  Not to say that is what we’re delaying on. We’re all responsible for what’s going on in this country, and world.  Let’s get over the guilt and shame.  Let’s surpass the degenerative nature of blaming.  

The other thing we’re talking about is perspective.  

These are steps towards taking action.  There are many processes happening within a larger Universal process, at any point we a free to create a new one.  But be sure to give it time to unfold, and always challenge your moral integrity in way that is prolific.  The other thing we’re talking about is perspective.  

Why do I example these instances that have taken place over a wide swath of time? I believe that a conditioning effect of American culture is this sense of expectancy.  We expect a return on investment almost immediately.  Our focused perspective, is concentrated, narrowed, impatient.

Can you imagine being born into slavery? How about being a 5th or 6th generation slave, but never letting go of your dreams of freedom?  And then one day the opportunity strikes, and you go for it!   

We’re no different, in that we were born into a particular perspective.  But when we realize that we are dissatisfied on an honest to goodness moral level, its not that there is anything wrong, it is just that consciously we are outgrowing our perspective. You could see it as a good thing, we could still be living in a time when people lost their lives for stealing a loaf of bread.  We were born into this way of life folks, and it will take an extreme amount of courage to see our way out of it, into new unchartered territory.