Individual Transformation, Social Transformation
What is individual transformation without social transformation? Recognizing your privilege and deploying it—through philanthropy, by lifting up the voices of others who don’t have it, learning more from those on the frontlines of our world’s crises—is certainly about individual transformation. But if you stop there, if you don’t use your resources, or as my friend and colleague Tracy says “your time, treasure, talent, and testimony” to advance a redistribution of power and transformation of society, your individual transformation makes no difference. I hope to meet people where they are, so that they don’t shut down to the message I carry about the need to radically redistribute wealth to address extreme inequality we face. But this is a tough balance. It’s simply not enough to learn more and search yourself. You must actively engage and work toward power redistribution, if you are truly going to be part of the change.
It can be hard for people to recognize what their privilege affords them. Privilege makes your life “frictionless”—you not only get what you need in the day-to-day but you understand how to make systems work to get you and your loved ones even more than any one person or family needs. Those with these advantages employ a lot of justification about individualized reasons why others have less, rather than accepting the systems-level analysis. But at this point in our late-capitalist system, there are more than enough sources to read/watch/hear to understand how inequality has been baked into our global history, certainly from colonialism forward. To not acknowledge how those benefits trickle down to you as a person with resources is to excuse yourself from accountability.
The discomfort of self examination is real. If you thought about what it means for you to own two or three or five homes when others can barely pay rent for one living space, the shame might overcome you. So you don’t process that. You try to look forward, try to find other ways of being a good person. Or you lament the system that allows you to amass so many resources for yourself, without taking significant action towards changing it.
You must do both. Beginning with personal transformation is an essential step. I embrace anyone who is committed to that personal searching and change. And I hope the people who meet and connect with me see also that the social transformation that must follow is absolutely critical. It might be uncomfortable at first, but the rewards can be powerful individually as well. The yield: a shared and true solidarity with people on the frontlines, a connection in community with others who are are undertaking the work of building the world we want to see—and the satisfaction, at the end of it all, that you did everything possible to be the strongest link you could be in the chain of justice.
