Cruelty
How we choose to treat each other in a group that is
committed to equality and justice goes to the core of
what we hope to accomplish as activists. If we hope to
bring about a fairer, more compassionate world we have
to start with our most basic interactions. The fact
that deliberate cruelty does not lead to greater
justice should be too obvious to mention. Yet in
collectives it’s very often considered normal, not
even worthy of a mention or of a raised eyebrow.
Tormenting someone mercilessly until they flee the
collective--or even the entire local activist scene
because they are so afraid of encountering further
abuse--is common practice. We’ve never heard anyone
speak up to say that it’s morally repugnant or to try
to stop it in any way.
Condoning and accepting cruelty as business-as-usual
is an attitude and a way of living. Its potential for
creating and promoting social injustice and a more
vicious, less tolerant world makes it a matter of the
utmost importance: it is our duty and responsibility
to vigorously oppose cruelty within our own midst.
The same behavior we saw as children in school
playgrounds, where an individual is singled out for no
other reason than he or she is an easy mark and is
then subjected to a gleeful campaign of abuse, is much
too often at work in our activist collectives. Are we
so conditioned by our upbringing in a society that
forces us to conform to authority that whenever the
mantle of established authority is removed (like it is
in an egalitarian collective and in a playground), we
can think of nothing better to do than prey on each
other with cruel name-calling and senseless attacks?
Another frequent consequence of new-found freedom is
to immediately establish and follow new hierarchies
based on who is more popular or stronger or the best
at manipulation versus who is unpopular, out of the
group's mainstream, the easy target, etc. It's just
like Lord of the Flies...
Individuals who believe they have been mistreated by
their fellow group members feel genuine pain. It is
not possible or appropriate, in our view, to explain
away somebody's pain by pointing to the group's
positive work or invoking regulations that the pariah
in question may or may not have properly followed. Do
you honestly believe that anyone deserves to have
cruelty visited upon them? Even if they’re a pain in
the ass, if they’re impossible to deal with--even if
they themselves are cruel--that is no reason to taunt,
torment, bully, slander with vicious lies, etc. As
activists, we hope to create a world in which
difficulties can be addressed and every attempt is
made to resolve them, not one where suppression,
intimidation, and violence (psychological or physical
violence) are resorted to if the group’s majority or
most vocal members do not get their way.
It is not possible, in our view, for the person who
feels pushed out or abused to simply be mistaken in
perceiving a sustained campaign of attacks and
vilification by the group (or a faction of the group)
against him/herself. The hurt that is expressed over
and over in situation after situation is undoubtedly
real, and it should not be dismissed, regardless of
whether or not the person experiencing it was
originally (or continues to be) at fault.
Regardless of the merits or faults present in each
situation, it's not okay for us to inflict emotional
pain on one another. That should be a basic tenet.
A commitment to compassion and justice and against
cruelty (yes, that's what it is) needs to be overtly
stated as the basis for how an egalitarian group
operates.
We only need to look at the current political
situation to see the wages of indifference and casual
acceptance of cruelty. Once we have relinquished our
moral compass, we can condone both small and huge
moral insults with logical arguments and pragmatism.
Where is the outrage of the American public at the
thousands of deaths and injuries of Iraqi civilians?
Even for those who believe the war to be politically
justified, how can ecstatic cheering be the
overwhelming reaction to death, suffering and
destruction on a massive scale? Wouldn’t the more
human reaction be sober regretfulness that sometimes
harm is done in order to achieve a purportedly
worthwhile objective?
Yet even among the activists who vehemently oppose
war, many do so for political reasons, because they
object to imperialism or other political forces they
believe to be at play in this conflict, not out of
moral outrage. And of those who invoke humanitarian
objections to war, many adopt that view as a
persuasive arguing position, not as a deeply held
revulsion to causing suffering.
The purpose of activism, fundamentally, is to create a
better world, one where there is greater justice,
equality, and harmony and less pain and hardship. It
is not to put forward a particular agenda. When we
overlook this basic truth and allow ourselves to act
with deliberate cruelty toward people in our own
collectives, then go on to justify our actions by
saying that we vilified or attacked our comrades
because they were interfering with important political
organizing, we have twisted our motives into an
indefensible moral pretzel.