1.1 Decide what's right for you
Most people hate politics, and why wouldn’t they? It’s hateful. And hurtful. Even brutal.
But this is a problem, because…
Politics is how we do our collective moral decision-making.
It’s how we decide to take care of each other. Or not.
It’s how we decide to save ourselves. Or not.
If our way of doing politics fails, our species will fail.
We need our politics to work for us, and right now it’s not working. It’s not making the kind of difference we need it to make.
And the one thing that would help us most is if we could get…
A hell of a lot more people to step up and become political activists.
The kind of activists who are dedicated to making a loving and sustainable world.
We need a lot more people, but we don’t need everyone…
So you get to decide what’s right for you.
You get to decide if you want to engage in politics at all.
And even if you’ve been an activist for decades, you get to stop and reassess. Has it been right for you in the past? Is it right for you in the present? And do you want to keep at it on into the future?
But choosing activism is…
A dilemmic decision.
On the one hand, politics can be too hard on activists. It can hurt them. So it would seem like the smart thing would be to have nothing to do with politics.
On the other hand, there is in us this deep desire to contribute to the people around us, to our community. A desire that’s in our genome. It’s that deep in us.
For tens of millennia, about 98% of human history, we were hunter-gatherers living in small bands within relatively small tribes and in those days…
Everyone was a political activist.
Really? Yes, because here’s what it meant to be political…
You contributed to the welfare of your group all day every day without fail.
That was your way of life. And it wasn’t selfless service. It was based on…
Mutual nurturance and mutual advocacy.
Back in our hunter-gatherer days, it was expected that you would contribute to your group, and you wanted to contribute, you were happy to do it, it gave you pleasure, because…
The better your group did, the better you did.
So now you can see the dilemma. In order to make the deep, meaningful political contribution that we’re primed by our history to want to make, you have to go into the ugly arena of today’s version political action. A place where you can get wounded. A place where you can get your heart broken.
I’ve seen too many activists burn out and turn bitter. And if saving humankind means we take good people with good hearts and wreck them, then…
Screw salvation.
It’s not worth it at that price.
So first things first. And what comes first is…
You.
Because without activists, there is no activism. Such an obvious fact, but it gets forgotten.
To make activism sustainable, we need you as an activist to take the best possible care of yourself.
And guess what, there are three levels of self-care, and you get to pick all three if you want.
Treats.
I’ve read blog posts which recommend that on Friday night at the end of a hard week, you go get a massage and take a hot tub. Okay, I like that.
But I spent twenty years coaching nonprofit leaders who were doing full-time activism, and I saw that some of them were using that massage and that hot tub to refresh themselves just enough so they could go back into the office Saturday morning and work through the weekend. Dedication, yes. But as someone who worked through too many weekends myself, I think it’s more accurate to call it obsession. And it’s definitely not self-care.
Still, in general, treats are great. Like spending a three-day weekend in a cabin out in the woods where there’s no phone service. Or binge watching your favorite videos two days in a row. Or diving in to the new book by your favorite romance author.
Fundamentals.
There are workshops for activists that tell you how important it is to practice the basics—eating a healthy diet, exercising every day, getting plenty of sleep, and making time for loved ones. They tell you to remember that all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.
Of course lots of activists will ask you, just exactly how, given the demands of my work, am I supposed to find the time to do all those good things that I already know I should be doing and want to do?
I get that. But still it’s important to do as many of those things as you can as often as you can.
What used to mess me up was that I felt pressured to play savior. So I’d work long hours, then at 9 o’clock at night I’d get a dead cellophane sandwich from the gas station behind our office and eat it on the drive home.
Here’s the mindset I prefer now: Put in a full day of focused, effective work, then stop. You’re done. Go home. Eat something not just healthy but delicious.
And here’s what’s really cool. When I switched from burn-out mode to self-care mode, I discovered that taking time out for self-care, didn’t steal time from my work, didn’t diminish it. Quite the opposite. It made me more effective. Both the quantity and quality of my work improved. Which gave me a deeper sense of satisfaction.
And if you’ve got a family you’re coming home to, and you’re bringing that satisfaction with you, you come home happier, and ready to really be with your loved ones, instead of being half at home and half still at work.
Deep self-care.
Now we come to a second dilemmic decision…
How deep do you want to go?
You can engage in activism in the standard ways: door-knocking, phone-banking, sending emails, getting out to protests, working for candidates you believe in, developing better messaging, doing movement building.
All good things, but you can also…
Go deep.
Meaning…
You go down to the bottom of the human operating system to deal with the source of human behavior.
Including political behavior.
Why is this a dilemmic decision? Because down there it’s treacherous territory. It’s where you come face to face with the source of human evil. Which can be so painful it shakes you to your core.
So why would you even think about going deep? Because down there…
You find special powers.
You find understanding. You get to see exactly why our politics is the way it is. You get to see why it’s so relentlessly adversarial. You get to see why people vote against their own best interests. And why people remain loyal to leaders who are hurting them. And why tens of millions of people are losing their minds.
There are many things that are mystifying in our current politics that become perfectly clear when you understand the basics of the human operating system.
I’ve spent decades studying human evolution. I fell into this by accident, and as I said, it can be painful to go deep, and it was for me, very much so, but it paid off.
If you want to, you can invest a lot of time doing an in-depth study of the long history of our species, but you don’t have to.
Here’s the good news…
Just knowing the basics, can make a world of difference in your mood and in your work.
And that’s the sprit in which I’ve designed this site. I want to help you understand the basics so you can deepen your activism. And improve your effectiveness. And surprise your opposition. Which is very fun.
Please know that going deep asks a lot of you, but then…
It gives back way more than what it asks.
It allows you to…
Take the best in being human and make it better.
But let me say again….
You have the right to decide what’s right for you.
Please don’t let anyone lay a should on you. Don’t let anyone pressure you or guilt-trip you or finesse you. It matters that going deep is your decision. Really yours.
I’ve become passionate about going deep. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But that’s me and it might not be you. Don’t let my enthusiasm sway your decision.
There are many happy benefits that come with deep political activism, but it can also be challenging and difficult. And some days too difficult.
So if you decide to go for it, please make sure your decision comes from the deepest place in your heart. That’s what will make it sustainable for you.
As a species, we’re in deep trouble. Which means that as a species we need to engage in deep political work. We need to…
Transform our politics.
We need to make of it something so much better than what it’s been. We need to fix what’s wrong with human behavior at its source. Which is why we need at least some of us to go deep with our activism.
In my experience, going deep is in and of itself…
Self-care.
Because you get to understand what others find incomprehensible. You get to be smarter and more strategic in your work. You get to become a force to reckon with.
And in the process…
You’ll find yourself deepening your self-love.
Such a sweet pleasure.
And one final thing. What if you move the hyphen? What if you decided to do…
Deep-self care.
Which means caring for what’s deepest in your heart.
What would it give you to love yourself in that way?
