Striking
at the Root: Why I Joined NSP
by Stephanie Carrow
I joined NSP earlier
this year—in time to attend the national conference in Washington,
DC in May—after hearing Rabbi Lerner on the Tavis Smiley Show. He
made points that appealed to me, not only as a spiritual person, and not
only as a life-long activist, but as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist
as well.
In fact, I would have to say that it is
my clinical perspective more than anything else that ties me to this organization
and that underlies my activism. As a psychotherapist, I see a strong relationship
between individual mental health and a sane, peaceful, compassionate world.
And like many therapists, I see a strong relationship between the goals
and principles of psychotherapy and those informing and expressed through
spirituality.
Among these shared goals are the development
of empathy, or compassion—the capacity to put oneself in the skin
of others; and the development of inner peace—a combination of self-understanding
and self-acceptance, a kind of compassion for oneself. It seems to me
a fundamental principle of both psychotherapy and spirituality that empathy
and inner peace together are the source of peaceful actions in the world;
and that the absence of peace in the world -- or worse, the presence of
hostility, violence and oppression—can be traced to a deficit in
both empathy and inner peace. Psychotherapy views interpersonal conflict
as the externalization of unconscious, often repressed, intrapsychic conflict—which
is another way of saying that whoever is not at peace with him or herself
cannot be at peace with the world.
It can be virtually guaranteed that those
leaders and others who foment violence in the world, or who pursue material
gain and power to the detriment or deprivation of others, cannot be at
peace with themselves, nor can they put themselves in the skin of others.
It also can be guaranteed that they are unconsciously projecting and enacting
all kinds of intrapsychic conflicts onto the world. It is the function
of both psychotherapy and spirituality—albeit using very different
approaches—to address these underlying causes of conflict, pain and
destruction.
Which brings me back to what initially drew
me to NSP. What appealed to me about Rabbi Lerner's perspective was his
attention to the underlying causes of the vast array of issues confronting
our society, and our world—whether war, poverty, hunger, environmental
degradation, torture, or any of a multitude of other ills. This perspective
appeals to me as a psychotherapist, because psychotherapy views outward
problems as symptoms of underlying and interconnected causes (the problem
of alcohol abuse might be seen as one symptom of an underlying depression).
It appeals to me as a social worker, because social work views problems
within the context of systems, holistic, dynamic and interacting (the
problem of alcoholism might be viewed within the context of imbalanced
social and economic systems). And it appeals to me as a life-long activist,
because it offers a far more effective, efficient and economical way of
addressing a vast array of interconnected problems than having to pick
and choose causes, since it gets to the heart of the matter.
Thoreau wrote, "For every thousand
hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root."
This seems to me to describe the state of the progressive movement today.
I have been an activist since my youth. But in the past few years, I have
been dismayed at the fragmentation of the progressive movement—quite
obvious to anyone who receives dozens of e-mails weekly from a seemingly
endless line of political, environmental, human rights, animal rights,
civil liberties and other activist organizations requesting "just
a moment of your time" and/or a monetary contribution. The causes
propagate like rabbits—and they are all worthy and worthwhile. However,
the fragmentation seems counterproductive, for several reasons. One is
that it splits the finite resources of time, energy and money that may
be more effectively used in mobilizing us all behind one primary and overarching
purpose; another is that so many demands for those resources can ultimately
induce compassion fatigue in its supporters. But most important, such
fragmentation misses the bigger picture, and thus the opportunity to create
lasting solutions. The actions or goals of these disparate groups are
often reactive rather than creative: they are geared toward stopping a
symptom, rather than solving a problem. It is artificial and therefore
ineffective to split these symptoms into individual problems or movements,
because they are all interconnected. Striking at the root, as Thoreau
put it, is far more effective at bringing down a diseased tree than hacking
at its leaves.
Viewing problems from the perspective of
underlying causes strikes at the root. The more we are able to understand
the dynamic interrelationship between economic, social, environmental
and psychological forces—between war, hunger, poverty, disease, depression,
materialism, greed, child abuse, terrorism, pollution, global warming,
racism, wildlife extinction, and so on—the more chance we have of
finding lasting and far-reaching solutions. We need to ask ourselves,
"What do all these problems have in common?" Without trying
to simplify the complex, both psychotherapy and spirituality answer that
it begins with the person, with his connection with himself and the world—with
empathy and inner peace. Any society, any world, is only as healthy as
its individual members. I joined NSP to promote that focus on underlying
causes, to emphasize the importance of empathy and self-understanding
as key to conflict resolution and problem-solving, and to promote the
development of these two vital elements of a healthy world. I believe
that the community that NSP seeks to create, as it expands a dialogue
between people of diverse yet equally soul-searching backgrounds, can
be a highly effective way of promoting the deeper, more holistic perspective
that we need if we are to strike at the root of the problems we need to
solve.
