Daniel Pinchbeck has posted a stimulating analysis on how we could and should approach social change. His longish posting is well worth a read. Here, I’m posting the conclusion, as he proposes a non-confrontational approach which “engages and absorbs the enemies”.

My own contributions to a renewal of the emancipatory tradition have been posted here by Robin Good.

In the ensuing discussion, there is an intriguing reposting of the description by Dr. David Martin (M-Cam) of a scenario for a coming financial meltdown, slated to start with Christmas and culminating in a crisis in March 2008.

Daniel Pinchbeck:

“The immediate need for the progressive community is to articulate a positive agenda, along with tactics and strategies for bringing this agenda to fruition in the shortest time possible. The main thrust of the “Left” in the last decades has been criticism and complaint. This has failed to create a powerful attractor or an organizational infrastructure for social transformation. As the Dalai Lama put it, everyone wants a better life. If you can show them how to get there, they will follow. The Left has failed to achieve this simple task. Regeneration of the movement requires a new visionary paradigm that integrates the spiritual shift made by the counterculture since the 1960s with a compassionate and egalitarian program that has tangible solutions to offer to a broad spectrum of the populace.

Considering the proponderance of military force, there is no hope for violence as a tool of social transformation. Any radicalized program should focus on an absorptive strategy that neutralizes its potential opponents by engaging and transforming them – a Tantric approach, that sees no dualities nor enemies. If we are going to save the world situation from pitching over into the abyss, the media – especially the mass media – has to be intensively repurposed to beam out a new paradigm that integrates sustainable practices with inner transformation. The mass media could be used for the “production of subjectivities” focused not on the toxic “American Dream” of omnipotent ego, competitive greed, and endless material abundance, but on sustainability, interconnectivity, community, and psychic development. By my reckoning, this unlikely reversal has to happen in the next few years.”