You are invited to speak to a large auditorium of people. Which of the following audiences would you prefer to address for an extended talk and question and answer session?
Two thousand people nearly all of whom would describe themselves like you describe yourself—or 2,000 who would describe themselves as uninvolved or as Trump voters or even MAGA members? How should one even think about such a choice?
For example, whatever size audience you would prefer, suppose they are nearly all largely with you. In that case, what might you say to them? Might you prefer to say things they all agree with or might you prefer to say things that you consider important but that you know they mostly do not yet agree with or may even disagree with?
Or, suppose you are a writer. Consider the same question. Do you want to write what your audience knows and likes. Perhaps with a little extra flair? Or do you want to write things they don’t know or may disagree with and not like?
Or, suppose you are invited to publish a piece on a site that has a well defined audience. Do you write a piece that ratifies that audience’s views, or do you write a piece that challenges whichever of their views you differ with?
Or, suppose you are a student organizer on a multi-constituency campus. Would you rather have as an audience a dorm known for having views very much like yours, or a dorm known for having views quite hostile to yours?
Let’s shrink your audience to five people who you meet over lunch, or to one person who you talk with over dinner. In each case, my many shaped question is what should we do when we communicate given our desire to win new policies, new social relations, and ultimately even new underlying institutions in society?
Should we want to address our allies, our opponents, or people who don’t agree with us? And if none of them, then who?
And should we want to communicate what will generate smiles and cheers from our audience, or should we want to communicate what will challenge them and hopefully generate critical thought and debate?
Feel free to permute the above options into lots of variants with detailed distinguishing feature. There are certainly many variables and lots of nuanced contextual components to mic and match. Sometimes one approach may make more sense and sometimes another might. Since there is no single always correct answer, what the hell am I asking about?
Well, I am asking about our agenda. I am asking about what we ought to try to do. And while there is no single always optimal answer, no one answer that is better suited to all situations, I think there may be an almost always applicable right way to think about making choices about who to reach out to and what to try to communicate.
Suppose we set aside the obviously germane issues of who we can actually reach given difficulties of access and limited means. We can still consider what we might want to or what we even ought to do in a few possible situations.
We are very upset by existing unjust relations and policies. We want to oppose war, poverty, racism, and sexism. We want to resist on-coming fascism. We want to reverse climate crises. But suppose we believe that we cannot accomplish very much to affect all that. We believe that our community of similarly upset people, and 4even all of us together cannot win very much. We believe there is no way to win much even over extended periods of active struggle. Deep down, regarding major features, we feel that whatever will be, will be.
In that case, we may reasonably deduce that our best bet is to seek only modest time-bound, issue-bound impact. If we seek only that, we may succeed. If we instead go for more, we know we will surely fail. So we try to reduce pain now but we don’t also promote long-term vision for new institutions. We try to mobilize now but we don’t also try to navigate the difficult task of organizing across different constituencies and priorities. We try to inspire allies now but we don’t also reach out to people who don’t agree with us or who have contrary views. The added interactions that we avoid would be uncomfortable. They would take time. We might make mistakes. We might not look good. Since we can’t win, why bother with fools’ errands?
So we search out a small circle of like-minded folks who are fun to hang with. We work together to have modest effects on some particular social problem we believe we can modestly impact. To think about more would pain us. To pursue more might even forego the modest gains we could achieve if we stayed narrowly focused. Conclusion? We communicate about only the immediate and the narrow. We keep only the immediate and narrow in mind.
Or, suppose, instead, more hopefully, we think we can collectively win a new world though not if we are too few. Not if we can’t that operate with cohesion and mutual support. Not if we lack continuity. Not if we seek some immediate gain and later we act again we always start over from scratch or just repeat the earlier steps. Given those beliefs we may choose a different agenda.
For example, we undertake immediate actions and campaigns but we also prioritize finding ways to unify all who want change. We seek ways to de-atomize our efforts. We reach out to those who don’t yet want to actively seek change. We work to increase our numbers, broaden our focus, and unify our energies. We work to ensure that our immediate actions yield new actions and then more actions and so on into a trajectory that leads toward fundamental change. We work to increase our effectivity. We develop shared vision and strategy to unify ourselves and to guide our immediate choices to foreshadow and fit our future aims. We deploy confident reasoning of resistance not defeatist cynicism of subsistence.
We don’t like what is. We want to do something to attain better. I claim if we believe we can win another world, even if not quickly, we should prioritize reaching out to increase our numbers, prioritize entwining to increase our levels of mutual aid and solidarity, and prioritize strategizing so our short-run wins pave the way for more gains to follow. We not only to momentarily mobilize, but also persistently organize. We share broad strategy and vision sufficient to keep our efforts growing and on track.
I am belaboring but it is because while simple, these observation are not always prioritized. I hope the contrast between the two stances is clear. But, what’s my point? Both “camps” or “tribes,” at least as I have described them, behave rationally. They calculate what to do based on their underlying beliefs, desires, and estimates of contending choice’s consequences. On one side, cynicism need not be ignorant or cowardly. It can be sincere. On the other side, confidence need not be macho arrogance or delusion. It too can be sincere.
That is my point. It turns out that the difference between reformism or even resignation that sees revolutionary zeal as delusional, and persistent struggle that sees episodic atomized and insular repetition as resignation, isn’t always a matter of courage or not. It is not always moral concern or not. Nor is it always rooted in delusion or not. The difference can and often is an honest extrapolation of different plausible perceptions of possibilities. And yet each tendency tends to regard the other as in some degree delusional or demented.
Okay, now suppose that like me you are in the revolutionary camp. You feel another world is possible. You feel another world is winnable. What do you do?
First off, you don’t think the worst of others who don’t share or who even attack, ridicule, or ignore your view. You don’t assume they are unfeeling, immoral, or irrational. You try to discern the factors that cause them to be cynical about prospects and you try to overcome those factors.
That is not a small observation. If you really believe not only short-run gains but also long-run fundamental change is possible, then when possible you will want to address people who are undecided or even hostile and to urge others to do likewise. You will want to try to get atomized progressive efforts to support one another. To those ends, you will consider why so many people, even among those who already want change, nonetheless believe that fundamental change is impossible. What causes that doubt? How can you successfully address its causes?
If cynicism persists because many people doubt that a better society with better institutions is even possible, then we need to communicate and inspire vision sufficiently to overcome that belief. If cynicism persists because many people believe that though a better society is conceivable, we cannot win it, then we need to communicate and inspire strategy able to overcome that belief.
This is a simple argument. No fancy calculations are needed. Is it wrong? If so, why? Is it right? If so, what does it mean for you and for me?
I will answer, at least as I see it, for me. I think it means that to the extent I am able to do so, whether by talking, writing, or demonstrating, I should feel motivated to try to conceive, curate, and present vision and strategy able to overcome cynicism about the possibility of winning a fundamentally better world even as I also try to inspire and assist efforts to win immediate necessary changes including to stop Trump, to prevent ecological suicide, and generally to win short-run gains that foster more change later.
Okay, I how can I apply that claim to my work on RevolutionZ? I have done 390 episodes. The argument causes me to ask if the episodes have accomplished what roughly 390 hours of communication ought to accomplish. Being honest about this, I strongly doubt it. I have felt I was doing exactly what the above argument says I ought to have been doing, but, well, how much has it accomplished? Not so much, I think.
So, now what? Is the argument itself wrong? Are the tasks the argument deems desirable, worthy, and even essential, instead unimportant, misconceived, or literally impossible? I honestly don’t think so.
Okay, maybe it is just that the implied tasks are really hard. But if the argument is right that they are essential and that without accomplishing them cynicism will persist and victory will be unattainable, then at least to my mind to accept that they are too hard isn’t acceptable. We have to accomplish them or we will lose, and to lose is too catastrophic to accept.
But, it is also hard to ignore that as the adage goes, to do the same thing over and over and expect different results is a near surefire indicator of cognitive collapse.
So, in my case, the above argument means what? I have to keep communicating, keep trying to make vision and strategy compelling and effective antidotes to cynicism. But I should not do the same thing over and over and expect it will suddenly bear more fruit than in the past.
My conclusion is that I need to keep talking, keep writing, keep supporting immediate change, but also keep seeking shared strategy and vision able to sustain persistent struggle and to foster unity—but I should do these things differently. Might that be true for all of us?
In any event, that sentiment birthed the book that’s coming out shortly titled The Wind Cries Freedom. In it I try to do what I have long tried to do, but differently. I hope it gets read and assessed. I hope it helps counter cynicism and inform activism. For parts found wanting, I hope it inspires creative correction. But for any of that to happen the book will have to get read. Will those who doubt the efficacy and even the sanity of long-run collective aims and methods read a seriously long book about the possibility and worthiness of long-run collective aims and methods? Will cynicism bend a bit, and then maybe a bit more?
And what should I do differently for RevolutionZ and likewise for others who do other podcasts? One obvious possibility is to get all manner of new guests or go on other people’s shows, but for the most part that advice while sound is not really going to help much. I have invited others and I accept all invitations. Other podcasters do too. There is not much more I or they can do to get better results on those fronts. So I need offer podcast episodes that address broad vision and strategy even while they also address current situations and efforts, but each in new ways.
I also write articles. What works in written texts? Few of us can write in mainstream outlets. They won’t have us. So we write for familiar left venues. What new approach to writing may work? What won’t just repeat what is familiar, just look for applause, but be more effective? Shouldn’t all writers—and also publishers—think on that?
Let me be blunt. I and countless others write for progressive and left outlets. Of all the piles and piles and piles of pages that we produce, what approaches make a difference? Not an academic difference regarding some arcane dispute, but a difference in what people feel, think, and do?
We live in a daily deteriorating insane asylum. This is probably true elsewhere, but certainly true in the U.S. except, of course, that the word “true” has itself become a nearly empty term meaning that someone somewhere said something and it may be an actual person, or an AI, or a combination of the two, and it may have some resemblance to reality or be entirely fabricated to appear to be real when it actually isn’t.
Do you use YouTube often? If so, then like me, you are often looking at reports, analyses, or entreaties that aim to collect payment for junk they seek to sell you or to collect fees paid by advertisers for access to your eyeballs and personal information. This, like much else nowadays, is different from earlier mainly in its level of alienation. Fabrications and scams are now so normal they are literally unavoidable. They are almost entirely accepted. And of course mass media abets it all. Trump sets the pace. He threatens to destroy civilizations and even blow up the world and mass media says either nothing at all, or “ho hum…how do we make a buck off that?”
So the problem of how to communicate as a revolutionary is complexified a step beyond my above ruminations. For example should we use click bait titles or not? If we do, we are lying and manipulating. If we don’t our words are less likely to be read. Should we attack in every direction, preferably personally and to degrade? If we don’t, our words are less likely to be read. In fact, in both cases without these ugly aspects, our words are less likely to even appear. So, what is a wannabe revolutionary communicator to do in a world like ours?
It is a serious question. To get better we have to try to get better. Athletes understand that. Actors and singers understand that. Script writers and novelists understand it. Cooks understand it. Scientists understand it. Hell, little kids first learning to ride a bike understand it. Do activists understand it? Do revolutionaries?
