Editorials

 

Michael Lerner

The Destruction of the Planet

xperts in ecology are increasingly convinced
that the survival of the human race, perhaps of

all life on the planet, hangs in the balance. If
we do not immediately and decisively shift our entire
relationship to nature, there is good reason to believe
that after another ten years have passed we will have
done irrevocable damage to the life-support systems of
the planet.

Piecemeal solutions are wildly inadequate?they serve
more to soothe our frayed nerves than to seriously con-
front the issue. So the media select one of the innumer-
able ways that we are destroying our natural environment
(the destruction of the ozone layer, for example), and
eventually governmental ?gures acknowledge that there
is a problem.

Yet even when one such issue gets attention, the solu-
tions are too little, too late. Afraid to challenge existing
methods of production and consumption, government
regulators delay for years the target dates for addressing
the problem, set unconscionably high ?acceptable? levels
of environmental damage (poisons on our apples and
other foods, as well as poisons in the air, thus get
de?ned as ?safe?), and make exceptions that guarantee
that even when the speci?c problem is being addressed
it is not .being solved. Meanwhile, we focus all of our
energy on two or three explosive areas that have caught
the media?s attention this month, and the damage pro-
ceeds apace on dozens of other fronts.

The irrationality of our relationship to nature simply
boggles the imagination. In the twenty-?rst century
people will look back and picture this entire age as one
of pure self-destructive frenzy, as though we had all
become Neros ?ddling while Rome burned. It?s not as
though we can claim that we don?t know what?s happen-
ing. Every night?s television brings new information
about toxic wastes for which there is no acceptable
method of disposal, rain forests in the Northwest and
in Central America that are being destroyed, animal
species that are being wiped out (elephants, we are told
now, may soon be gone?killed for the ivory in their
tusks), waterways that are permanently polluted and
oceans that are being stripped of all ?sh, food that can
no longer be eaten because it is covered with poisonous

 

chemical additives and preservatives, and air that is
increasingly dangerous to every form of life that is
exposed to it.

Nor are we much reassured by the minimal legislative
efforts to combat the problem.? The Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA), allegedly created to institutional-
ize our concern about the environment, may serve more
as one of the many ways that we pretend that somebody
is doing something, that the alarmists must be wrong,
that there?s somebody in charge who knows what?s hap-
pening and will eventually take care of business. So we
are not totally shocked when somebody like Henry
Waxman, an environmentally courageous congressman
from Los Angeles, reveals in March 1989 that the amount
of poisons being poured into the air wildly exceeds our
worst fears, or when he charges the EPA with total
failure to do its job adequately. Yet even Congressman
Waxman gets restricted to very piecemeal solutions
because he can?t count on a social movement to raise
larger questions and push for larger change.

The numbing process by which we distance
ourselves from the possible consequences of nuclear
weapons, from the meaning of world hunger, and from
the pain that is a consequence of the unfair distribution
of the world?s resources is manifested in our attitude
toward the environmental crisis. Overwhelmed by the
scope of the changes we might need to make in order
to guarantee the earth?s survival, each of us makes the
choice to avoid thinking about the issue, to go about
our lives as if there were someone else in charge. The
media contribute to this mind-set by framing each
particular story as though it had no relationship to all
the other environmental horror stories. Not only do the
media fail to give us any sense of the depth of the disaster
we are facing, but their very inability to remember and
include in this week?s story what was happening last
week colludes with our own desire to believe that last
week?s problem has been solved.

The environmental crisis is a crisis of moral leadership
and is a direct result of the breakdown of a moral
community. The breakdown of any larger community
of shared meaning and purpose leaves each person to
fend for him- or herself. The competitive marketplace

9

 

 

 

rewards us to the extent that we develop personalities
that are adept at using and manipulating others. Absent
a shared moral community, the person who puts time
and energy into saving the planet seems a bit kooky or,
even worse, a holdover from the sixties.

ne part of the solution is obvious: we need an
0 international system for rational planning of

industrial production, farming, ?shing, mining,
energy resources, and the like. The human race could
pull together, decide to prohibit all forms of interfer-
ence with the natural environment that are destructive
to the long-term survival of the human race, and enforce
its decisions. But for this plan to work, we would need
a moral revolution: a reiectiogn of the self-interest
ethics of capitalism. We would also need a powerfully
decentralized democratic process so that we could all
participate in the discussions and the decision-making
processes, as well as a democratically elected and ac-
countable body that could coordinate the various local
decisions.

Rational planning sounds boring and unimaginative?
it conjures up pictures of do-gooder bureaucrats making
decisions for people with whom they have no contact.
People have good reason to be suspicious of these
kinds of bureaucracies?which is why a program to
save the planet must be part of a larger program of
democratization. Moreover, the energies mobilized in a
massive struggle for democratic control over the environ-
ment provide the only basis for combating the incredible
power of the second major obstacle to planning: the
multinational corporations. and those governments that
think they can best serve their own people by providing
a hospitable business climate for these multinationals.

Rational planning, however, runs counter to the
ideology of the free marketplace and the logic of cap-
italism. Equally important, it runs against the interests
of the richer and more powerful countries which can
impose their will on economically and politically de-
pendent nations.

But when production decisions are made on the
basis of who can get rich, the collective costs to the
planet are not factored into the equation. The consumer
gets what he or she wants and the producer makes a
pro?t; but nobody speaks for the interests of the human
race. The continued adherence to the primacy of the
?free marketplace? ensures that every environmental
reform will be limited. The fear of challenging the
sanctity of the marketplace, the deep belief that any
larger system of planning must necessarily undermine
human freedom, guarantees that any attempt to protect
the environment through centralized planning will be
dismissed as communism?or at least ridiculed as
utopian or messianic.

10 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

Ironically, this is the very moment in history when
the cheerleaders for the West are yipping it up about
the triumph of capitalism and the demise of socialism
throughout the world. The failure of the planned econ?
omies of Russia and Eastern Europe and the introduction
of market elements in those regions are seen as proof
that rational planning will necessarily be less ef?cient
than free enterprise.

Ti/ekun has little sympathy for the Eastern European
systems of government that are wrongly called socialist.
Using the language of socialist visionaries who described
a society in which working people, through their control
of the means of production, would exercise power over
all of society?s institutions, the ruling elites of Eastern
Europe have actually managed to impose bureaucratic
dictatorships that organize the masses to serve the needs
of the apparat._The demise of this system is welcomed
by all democrats. Far from proving the failure of a
system in which the working class controls the society,
the erosion of the bureaucratic dictatorships puts genuine
socialism on the Eastern European agenda for the ?rst
time in many decades. If the people of Eastern Europe
choose capitalism instead, it will be a testimony not to
the failure of democratic planning, but to their legitimate
anger at decades of totalitarianism.

 

Overwhelmed hy the scope
of the changes we might need to rnahe
in order to guarantee the earth?s
survival, each of us make: the choice
to avoid thinking ahout the issue.

 

Ecological planning will work only if it is done fairly,
which requires substantively democratic procedures so
that people can participate as part of a community
debating and deciding how to use the world?s natural
resources. The people who must be stopped from cutting
down rain forests (many of whom believe that they need
to continue their work in order to survive economically)
cannot be convinced by appeals from North Americans
who are economically well off, any more than the work-
ers at defense factories will vote for disarmament
programs advocated by upper-middle-class suburbanites
who would not have to face the economic dislocations
that disarmament might engender. It is not unusual for
people in these circumstances to say something like
this: ?You so-called rational people ask me to worry
about the long-term consequences of what I?m doing;
that?s easy for you, because your short-term survival is
ensured. But unless I can ensure my own short-term
survival, I refuse to take seriously the long-term issues

 

 

 

 

.. . .. -

you raise. Moreover, I can?t take seriously your moral
tone, which urges me to worry about the long-term
'3 . -
consequences, when I know very well that you in the
industrialized countries of Europe and North America
have been responsible for creating most of the pollution
and most of the raping of the resources of the world.?

he major obstacle to rational planning is not

Third World countries or the economically mar-

ginal, but rather the multinational corporations
and the governments that serve their interests. The
current environmental crisis requires that the common
good take precedence over private interest and over the
unrestricted freedom of corporations to make investment
and production decisions. There?s no way to be serious
about saving the planet without facing this broader
issue. And precisely for this reason it?s important that
we challenge the current belief that socialism has died
and capitalism has triumphed. Of course, within the
constraints of an internationally functioning economic
plan, market mechanisms become the most ef?cient
way to organize important sectors of economic life. But
without these constraints, the free marketplace has led
us, and will continue to lead us, to the brink of eco?
logical disaster.

We must build a movement that does not force people
to narrow their political frame of reference and accept
minor victories. In fact, only by being visionary and ho-
listic can such a movement energize the American people.
When social movements have framed their goals in ways
that awaken our collective yearning for a morally centered
community, they have been most effective politically.

Yet there remains a major problem. Once we begin
to talk about transforming the world, many people
tune out. ?It?s too big for me to handle? is a typical
responsej?I have enough trouble keeping my own life
together.? Precisely for that reason, anyone who wishes
to save the environment must empower people so that
they can overcome their ?surplus powerlessness.? In
the past we?ve argued that transcending the dynamics
of self-blaming and building communities of compassion
are essential to this process?and hence we?ve called
for a new kind of liberal or progressive movement that
would pay attention to the of daily life
and that would speak to people?s fundamental spiritual
and ethical concerns.

You may not think we have time to create such a
movement. In fact, nothing else will succeed without it.
Until people feel empowered to address the big picture,
they may commiserate about the terrible destruction
of the environment, and be genuinely shocked at the
changes in the climate and the frequency of cancer and
the disappearance of forests and streams and animals;
but they will still vote for candidates who advocate the

most minimal and piecemeal changes, and still watch
the demise of the planet with the same detachment that
characterizes the rest of their lives. Therefore, building
a nEw kind?o?f political community?far different from
the hollow shells that parade as the major political
parties in America?is a major priority for anyone who
wishes to save the planet.

Vz'ctz'mology

11 an important article on the women?s movement

in the March/April 1989 issue of Tikkun, Jessica

Benjamin describes the way various groups use
their past and present suffering to try to legitimate
their current aspirations and demands. ?What we have
learned,? says Benjamin, ?is that there is a tremendous
moral capital in suffering, even if you aren?t suffering
any more.? It?s all too easy to have every political argu-
ment resolved by someone referring to their own or
their group?s suffering.

Of course, one of the reasons why, if forced to pick,
we feel closer to the left (with all its problems) than to
the right is that the left seems to care about the suffering
of others. While the right celebrates the pursuit of
self-interest, the left insists that we pay attention to the
ways that poverty, oppression, and ?underdevelopment?

 

 

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letters of recommendation.

 

EDITORIAL 11

 

 

are the direct results of the unrestricted pursuit of
self-interest by the rich and powerful.

Yet there are many dangers to this focus on suffering.
For one thing, victimology leads to destructive competi-
tion about who is most oppressed. From the standpoint
of the suffering of group X, group Y?s oppression is
insigni?cant, and a focus on it is pure self-indulgence.

 

The most fundamental and pervasive
pain derives from the frustration
of our fundamental human capaa'tzes.

 

The fact is that there are many different kinds of pain
and suffering generated by repressive societies?and
each kind is important and legitimate. In our estimation,
the most fundamental and pervasive pain derives from
the frustration of our fundamental human capacities:
for mutual recognition, intimacy, and love; for creativity;
for community and solidarity; for a life that has ethical
meaning and purpose and spiritual depth; for under-
standing and intellectual stimulation. While the speci?c
way that these capacities get blocked varies in different
historical periods, and is shaped by the impact of sexism,
racism, anti-Semitism, and other organized forms of
oppression, this sort of suffering is virtually universal.

One of the reasons that liberals and the left have
been so ineffective in the past two decades is that in the
course of acknowledging the suffering of Blacks, women,
gays, and some Third World peoples they have seemed
to deny the importance or legitimacy of the pain ordinary
Americans who do not belong to these groups feel. The
compassion that the left has for whoever gets identi?ed
as the primary victim is often too thin to spread around?
so many people are left out and feel unrecognized in
the process. The breakdown of family life, the feelings
of isolation and despair, the sense that ?nobody cares
about anybody anymore,? the stress and disrespect that
many people feel at work, the sense of powerlessness that
pervades so many people?s lives, the dif?culty in building
friendships and relationships that will last, the fear that
no one cares about values Other than self-interest, the
disrespectful way people treat each other?all these
things dominate the daily life experience of many
Americans. These problems may not seem signi?cant in
comparison to the sufferings of the homeless or the
hungry, but many Americans feel terrible about their
lives, and until their pain is acknowledged and dealt
with they will be unwilling to listen to stories about the
pain of others. Social movements stuck in victimology
are unable to respond to the needs of average Americans,
and therefore those movements don?t get a serious hear-
ing from people who might otherwise support them.

12 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3

Victimology is also bad for the Jews. We have every
right to demand that the world compensate us for the
history of oppression we have suffered. When the
Romans took Judea by force, renamed it Palestine, and
expelled us they began a long process of Jewish pain
and suffering. Just as we support the principle of
af?rmative action for Blacks and women, so too do we
support Zionism?the national liberation struggle of
the Jewish people?in its insistence on the right of
the Jewish people to the same kind of national self-
determination that is granted to every other people.

But past suffering can be used incorrectly?as a war-
rant for oppression toward others. Suffering and pain do
not always make one noble: they often distort our per-
ception of the world and the way we treat others. While
the most oppressed may be the best authorities on what
their oppression feels like, they are not necessarily the
best judges of how to understand or overcome it. Liberals
and progressives understand this point with respect to
the Jews in Israel: it?s easy to see that past suffering has
generated a certain paranoia that now makes Israel
unable to recognize opportunities for peace. The 
legacy of past suffering may contribute to creating a
present reality that will generate future suffering for
our people. But the left ?nds it much harder to apply
this same insight to the Palestinians?or to women,
gays, or Blacks. One sometimes gets the sense that people
on the left believe that critical thinking should be sus-
pended when discussing currently oppressed groups.
But this attitude is a disservice to the oppressed.

Pain and suffering are central to the 
legacy of the human race. One of the most important
things that we can do is to help create contexts in
which people can ?tell their stories,? can understand
that much of the pain they experience is not their own
fault, and can see that the insensitivity of others is often
a manifestation of their own pain. Political strategies
that ?nd effective ways to acknowledge and speak to
the pains that dominate the daily life experience of
many Americans?validating people?s right to feel anger
at the ways they have been oppressed, victimized, or
kept from actualizing their human capacities while simul-
taneously showing them areas in which they can take
the initiative to change their situation?may be the
most effective way to overcome the passivity, random
acts of violence, and self-destructive acts sometimes
associated with a ?victim consciousness.? Suffering need
not be a club that one group uses against another. It
can be a vehicle for linking people through mutual
compassion. In fact, developing this kind of mutual
compassion based on a validation of each other?s pain
can be a powerful vehicle for overcoming surplus power-
lessness and establishing political community.

 

 

Taking Note

0 According to a poll conducted by Market Facts and
released by researcher Steven Cohen, 58 percent of
American Jews said Israel should be willing to talk with
the Palestine Liberation Organization as long as it recog-
nizes Israel and renounces terrorism (18 percent said
no, and 24 percent were unsure). Forty-seven percent
said they believe the Palestinians have a right to a
homeland on the West Bank and Gaza as long as it does
not threaten Israel (23 percent disagreed, and 30 percent
said they were unsure). Thirty-?ve percent said they
were ?morally outraged? by some of Israel?s actions.
The poll data also indicated that the more active Jews
are in Jewish organizational life, the more hawkish they
tend to be.

0 March?s ?Solidarity Conference? of Shamir?s Amer-
ican Jewish loyalists, attended also by dozens of well-
intentioned but politically naive community leaders,
was appropriately staged on Purim. The contrast?
between the biblical Queen Esther?s willingness to risk
her in?uence and power, perhaps even her life, in order
to speak truth to power, and the fawning sycophants
who call themselves Jewish leaders but cannot bring
themselves to declare publicly to Shamir how destructive
Israeli policies have become?had all the elements of
an ironic ?Purimspiel.? Those who seemed most foolish
were the dozens of American Jews who actually believed
there would be space for a dialogue in which Shamir
would be forced to hear and respond to their criticisms?
and those who thought that making statements to the
press would offset the larger impression conveyed by
the mass media to the Israeli public that American
Jews are willing to line up behind Shamir. Apparently
oblivious. to the way mass media function, some of
these American Jews seemed unaware that they were
being used to validate Shamir?s refusal to change his
West Bank rejectionism; this is only one of many reasons
why these leaders couldn?t win a democratic election
for positions of leadership in the American Jewish
community. Israeli peace movement activists helpfully
provided props for the event: they handed out kits to the
participants which included earplugs, mouth gags, and
blinders?the perfect assortment of items for American
Jews who didn?t want to see that their very presence at
this event helped prolong the agony of the occupation.

- Norman Podhoretz pulls the predictable 
in his ?Lament from the Future? (Commentary, March
1989). Writing from the perspective of the twenty-?rst
century, Podhoretz states that the destruction of Israel
was inevitable once peace activists had managed to
push Israel into peace talks. Similarly, the New Republic

in its April 10, 1989, issue presents Steven L. Spiegel
arguing that a Palestinian state would be an insuperable
military disaster. Yet no one can come up with a militarily
plausible scenario for how a demilitarized state, whose
demilitarization would be internationally supervised and
backed up by the Israeli army, could constitute a serious
security risk. The biggest military risks come from
Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia; and these
risks can be effectively countered only if Israel has
access to the latest in US. military technology. Yet that
access is threatened to the extent that Israeli intransi~
gence begins to erode American political support. Israel
would be far smarter to develop a plan that provides
genuine self-determination to the Palestinians in ex-
change for a renunciation of all claims to the rest of
?Palestine,? supervised demilitarization, and ironclad
military security guarantees (including a defense treaty
with the US).

Those Americans who advocate that Israel ?hang
tough? on the territories belong to the same school of
thought (and are often the same people) that supported
the war in Vietnam and that endorse aid to the contras.
In each case, the one thing these people never factor in
is the moral outrage of the American people at those
who deny others the right to national self-determination.
Thus, the ?realpolitik? strategists who ignore these moral
considerations are always astounded when their other-
wise perfect plans for American foreign policy get
rejected by the American people. These purveyors of
hard-nosed realism, who ?ll the pages of the New
Republic and Commentary, are actually crackpots whose
schemes continually lead to defeat and disaster for the
US. Israel can?t afford the kinds of strategic miscalcula-
tions that these ?realists? endorse. By ignoring the power
and force of ethical appeals, these ?realists? ignore
reality. That?s why Israel?s only hope is to regain the
moral high ground?by offering genuine Palestinian
self-determination, but with conditions that are guaran-
teed to protect Israeli security.

 

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EDITORIAL 13

 

Callz'zag Shamir? Blu?f

ur editorial in the last issue (March/April 1989),

?Shamir: New Packaging, Old Intransigence,?

turned out to be too optimistic. Most of us
who sat in the East Room of the May?ower Hotel in
Washington, DC, on April 6, 1989, listening to Shamir
talk to an assemblage arranged by the American Enter-
prise Institute, realized that he had not even bothered
to change the packaging. Feeling little pressure from
the of?cial representatives of American Jewry who had
danced to his tune at his Solidarity Conference a few
weeks earlier, facing no serious opposition from a Labor
party whose capitulation to Likud?s foreign policy de-
mands had led to its own political demise in local
elections in March, and greeted by a Bush Administra-
tion anxious to avoid any appearance of an open rift
with Israel, Shamir had clear sailing.

Once again Shamir rejected the very concept of
trading land for peace (he called it ?deceptive"?his
written speech called it ?a hoax?), insisted that the
Palestinian state already exists (Jordan), refused negoti-
ations with the PLO, and suggested that the solution
lies not in self-determination for the Palestinian people
but in their being resettled as refugees in Arab lands.

The old packaging was the Camp David proposal
of elections for a team of ?interlocutors? who would
negotiate an interim autonomy arrangement (stage one),
after which these same representatives would participate
with Israel in negotiations about the ?nal status of the
West Bank (stage two). But Shamir made clear that this
second stage of negotiations could lead nowhere: while
the Palestinians would be allowed to put anything they
want on the table, Israel was committed to opposing any
plan that involved the ceding of land to the Palestinian
people. Presumably, such negotiations could go on for
decades?Israel would be willing to send representa-
tives to a talkathon, but would concede nothing. Shamir
rejected any notion that the elections could be held
under international supervision; and even if he were to
agree to international ?observers? the continued presence
of Israeli occupying forces?with their censorship of
newspapers, bans on public assembly, and arbitrary
arrests?makes a mockery of ?free elections.? No Zionist
would have accepted such an offer in the l945~48 period
had the British offered us municipal elections as an
alternative to independence and self-rule.

Even though the PLO rejection of this insulting offer
is perfectly reasonable and understandable (hundreds

I4 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

of Palestinians killed and thousands wounded or jailed
did not make their sacri?ces for the sake of municipal
elections), we think that the Palestinians should call
Shamir?s bluff and accept this pathetic proposal. The
majority of Israelis, despite recent changes in the PLO
position, do not believe the PLO is sincerely committed
to peace. Though the Palestinians are ?within their rights?
to point out that they have already taken some signi?cant
steps this past year, the issue isn?t whether it?s fair to ask
them for more, but rather what will be most effective
in achieving their rights. Without any serious pressure
on Shamir from either Bush or Peres, the most effective
thing Palestinians can do right now is to.take further
steps to undermine the demonization of the PLO in the
consciousness of Israelis. The PLO should take the fol-
lowing steps: first, change the PNC Charter to eliminate
the parts calling for the destruction of Israel; second,
stop all offensive military actions against Israel?they
are militarily ineffective and politically counterproduc-
tive; third, unequivocally announce that the PLO will
accept a demilzltarz'zed state and will, as part of the
treaty that sets up such a state, renounce all claims to
the parts of Palestine outside the West Bank and Gaza;
and fourth, accept Shamir?s offer of elections? provided
that Israeli troops are withdrawn from all West Bank
population centers for at least three months prior to
elections and for as long as the interim negotiations are
taking place, provided that there is international super-
vision of elections, provided that there are no restraints
on who can run for of?ce, and provided that Israel
allocates a ?xed amount of time on every Israeli radio
and TV news broadcast from the time of the elections
until the time of the completion of the second stage of
negotiations for the elected Palestinian representatives
to present their perspective on the negotiations to the
Israeli population.

Just as we have called on Israel to change its poli-
cies (see the inside back cover of this issue for the text
of the advertisement that we placed in the New York
Time: the day before Shamir met with Bush), we call
upon the PLO to take these steps which could greatly
strengthen its own credibility and the power of the
peace forces within Israel. Meanwhile, as our advertise-
ment made clear, Tz'kkun is communicating to Shamir
and to the American people that a substantial percentage
of American Jews, still loyal Zionists, unequivocally
reject Shamir?s policies. El