And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
- “Changes,” David Bowie
Ah, change. It’s the only constant in this world; nothing stays static. Even the molecules in a stone are in constant motion. Some changes, often inconvenient ones, happen in the space of a heartbeat. Others, like evolution, are so long range that they evade our immediate perception entirely. In the middle are the changes that we can observe but that still take a while, which include many of the political and social changes that we cheer for or deplore. The rise of tyranny, the expansion of human rights and justice — neither of these happen in an instant, although events that contribute to them sometimes do. Yet they’re observable within the course of a typical human lifespan, especially when we look back over decades.
Heraclitus, Socrates and Plato all recognized that change is ever with us, which is one of the things that has stayed the same over the 2500 years since they were talking and writing on the subject. The climate in Greece back then, around 500 BC, was also much like today’s, in what’s called a “warm-wet” phase that lasted about 200 years; which proved quite helpful to agriculture. It was the end of the Archaic period and the beginning of the Classical, although of course they didn’t call it that at the time.
City-states had begun emerging during the Archaic period, and in 507 BC, the idea of demokratia — rule by the people — was introduced by an Athenian nobleman. Like the founders of our own United States, though, the idea wasn’t to include all the people. Women and slaves and people from other places were not invited to the direct-governance party; eligibility was restricted to free male citizens, but for the first time — at least in terms of written-down history — decision making wasn’t reserved solely for the aristocrats. Still, only about 40,000 of the 100,000 humans alive in Athens at the time were included.
Demokratia didn’t arise out of nowhere, or because the aristocracy suddenly realized that it would be nice. Cleisthenes, the magistrate who crafted the idea that political power should be connected to citizenship and not to being born into a particular family, realized accurately that the working-class men of the army and navy were getting fed up with the oligarchy. It was more a matter of finding a way to outwit other nobles than a sudden burst of altruism. (Cleisthenes had a lot to overcome; his family was publicly cursed thanks to his great-grandfather, who’d promised a rival nobleman’s followers that they were safe and then executed them, and people were still upset.)
Back then, “tyrant” (tyrannos) — meaning someone who’d seized power rather than been handed it by birth — was considered a legit job description and a neutral term. So was oligarch — a member of the exclusive, wealthy cabal who ran things to their own advantage and manipulated information to keep the masses in line. The root of the word oligarch is oligos, or few. The oligarchy ruling the city-state of Athens came to a swift, violent end right around the time we’re talking about, as monarchies have in the centuries since then. Inequality has consequences.
So how do we make change without the bloody, muddy parts, which tend to have unpleasant consequences for lots of non-oligarchs? Our current form of democracy, the one we’ve been taught to revere since grade school, looks on the surface to be considerably more inclusive than that practiced by the ancient Greeks; it’s hard to deny, though, that it lacks a little something, like resistance to being shanghaied by oligarchs, which kinda puts us back to Square One. We need evolution.
There are tactics. One way to get away from rule by the very few would be citizen assemblies, in which regular folks are randomly selected to come together to handle a specific contentious question. Once gathered, they’re given balanced, comprehensive material on the topic from a variety of perspectives, and allowed to interrogate experts. This helps the group gain a shared body of knowledge on the question, which they then discuss in small and large groups with the help of trained neutral facilitators and develop a recommendation that can be presented to the public at large. Citizen assemblies have gotten better results than top-down proclamations from elected officials in a number of situations around the world, and there’s really no reason we couldn’t have them right here in Kingston.
Making good changes happen is far from impossible, no matter how unlikely it may sometimes feel.
Making good changes happen is far from impossible, no matter how unlikely it may sometimes feel. Want some examples? You can hear about local success stories at Tilda’s Marketplace on October 23, when we’ll be hosting the Changemakers Dinner and recognizing four people who aren’t waiting around for a sudden outbreak of sanity: Frank Waters, whose founding of resource-rich My Kingston Kids has brought fresh ease and grace to the Herculean task of child rearing in our cacophonous times, is receiving the Economy Award. Stephanie Kearns, the president and CEO of United Way of Ulster County who’s brought a fresh slogan, “United is the way,” with its subtle yet impactful shift of perspective, will receive the Service Award. And longtime Hudson Valley Current board president David McCarthy and his wife Min Xiaobin McCarthy, both deeply embedded in the work of the KTD Monastery in Woodstock, will share in the Peace Award.
The evening’s menu is planned with transcendence in mind. Diners will feast on appetizers of Ukrainian pierogies paired with Russian borscht, a main course featuring Israeli hummus and Palestinian falafel coexisting deliciously in pita bread, and American apple pie paired with sweet Chinese dumplings for dessert. All who attend will take home a Tilda’s Peace Pocket full of Chinese dumplings, made by Min Xiaobin McCarthy in Tilda’s basement, and a fresh dose of perspective. We can break our hearts pushing against the powers that be, forming yet another binary, or we can find ways to do an end run around them and come together as if they aren’t even there, creating fresh new modalities — and that, my friends, may be our best hope for actual change.