The Editor: A Personal Note

 

Mic/me] Lerner

between moral judgment and compassion. I?d like

to tell you a little about the way I can sometimes
go astray. On the one hand, I?ve been advocating ?neo-
compassionism? as a political strategy. The key to success
for liberals and Democrats, I?ve argued, will be their
ability to help people understand that so much of our
self-blaming is unjusti?ed, that many of our difficulties
that appear to be ?merely? personal are often best
understood as the consequences of a world
dominated by the competitive marketplace. Whether it
be the loneliness of being single and not wanting to be,
or the disappointments that parents experience when
their children are not adequately respectful and ap-
preciative, or the seemingly irrational tensions that
suddenly pop up in relationships, or the sense that the
loyalty and commitment that used to bind friendships
are in decreasing supply, or the stress and lack of ful-
?llment in work, or the sense that one?s life doesn?t
have meaning and purpose?all these problems are
rooted in part in social dynamics that we have not
personally created. We can be empowered to change
our situation when we stop engaging in self-blame and
develop a greater sense of compassion for ourselves
and each other.

On the other hand, when it comes to Israel the objec-
tive situation sometimes makes one become judgmental.
Yes, I have gone out of my way to insist that we all under-
stand the impact of the Holocaust and
the legitimate anger that Israelis feel at Palestinians
who rejected a state when it was offered in 1948 and who
have engaged in inhumane terrorist attacks on civilians
for the past two decades. I?ve tried to acknowledge why
it?s hard for Israelis suddenly to trust the PLO or to be
open to a PLO state when for two decades the PLO
has talked of eliminating ?the Zionist entity? and even
now, after its supposed turnaround in Algiers, still has
some of its leaders speaking of using a Palestinian state
as simply a ?rst stage in a longer struggle for the ?full
liberation of Palestine.?

But no matter how much I acknowledge our justified
fears, its hard not to fall into a very judgmental tone
toward my brothers and sisters in Israel, in light of the
Israeli army?s daily killings of Palestinians. So many of
the confrontations, after all, derive from the Israelis?
desire to ?show who is boss? rather than from the need

I t?s not always easy for me to strike the right balance

to keep a minimal security presence to protect Israel. And
how can we be less than harsh when we see thousands
of Palestinians arrested and kept in inhumane prison
camps for months under ?administrative detention,?
hundreds of thousands con?ned to their homes for
days on end under arbitrarily imposed twenty-four-hour
curfews, some in West Bank settlements required to wear
badges saying ?foreign workers? that even some right-
wing Israelis recognize as parallel to the yellow star the
Nazis required Jews to wear in public, the~attacks by
settlers on random groups of Palestinians in a fashion
much resembling the pogroms we Jews faced in Eastern
Europe, Shamir?s refusal even to consider trading land
for peace? It?s very hard to keep an adequate tone of
compassion when the situation calls for moral judgments.

And yet I know how easy it is to fall into a misguided
and alienating self-righteousness. If I insist today that
we give greater primacy to compassion it is only because
I recall how destructive it was for me personally and
for all of us collectively when the liberal and progressive
forces in the late 19605 were perceived as critical
of the life-styles and values of American society.

I was reminded recently of how singularly judgmental
and stupid I was in that period because an article has
been circulating recently to Jewish newspapers that
selectively quotes some of the more outrageous things
I said and wrote in 1968 and 1969 at the height of my
most self-righteous period. In Judaism in 1969 I wrote
that the Jewish community is ?racist, internally corrupt,
and an apologist for the worst aspects of American
capitalism and imperialism.? Presumptuously adopting
the famous language of Isaiah, who told the Israelites
that God would prefer that they stop bringing sacri?ces
to the Temple if they continued 'to live corrupt lives, I
mused that the synagogues would have to be shut down
to give Judaism a chance to recapture its ethical roots.
With all the bravado and self-centeredness that so many
of us mid-twenty-year?olds had in the late 19605, I was
a?ame with hyperbole and angry judgment.

I?d like to puzzle over how I could have gotten to
this point in 1969. Outrageous as my statements were,
they emerged from a deep sense of painful personal
disillusionment that I had while growing up in the
American Jewish world. Only a few of my contempo-
raries seemed to share the pain?most had disengaged
from the Jewish world by the time of their bar or bat

mitzvah; they cared less about its internal dynamics,
choosing instead to vote with their feet by walking
away. To most of my generation I was an anomaly?
someone who at the very height of the New Left ex-
perience was still claiming that there was something
fundamentally important within Judaism that should
not be abandoned, even though it should not be confused
with the kind of Judaism being put forward in the
Jewish world at the time.

perhaps it won?t surprise you to learn that I

grew up in a family deeply involved in the Jewish

world. Both my parents were committed and active
leaders in the Zionist movement, and my own deep
commitment to Israel was fostered by their wise educa-
tion. What may surprise you is that to be a Zionist in
the 19305 and 1940s was not to be part of the American
Jewish establishment; rather it was to be part of a
movement that had many similarities to the movements
of the 19605. Zionism was the national liberation struggle
of the Jewish people; but until after the Second World
War and the subsequent revelations about the Holocaust
had sunk in, many American Jews were no more anxious
to identify with a national liberation struggle than Ameri-
can Blacks were to identify with a Black liberation
movement when it ?rst emerged in the 19605. Many
American Jews still believed that the best strategy was
to assimilate and not make waves.

The quintessential embodiment of this consciousness
was the American Jewish Committee, dominated by the
wealthiest of American Jews, who claimed that they could
best represent Jewish interests by cuddling up to the
American ruling class and quietly whispering into its
cars a set of pro?Jewish messages. Only in the past decade
are we getting a full understanding of how the reliance
on this kind of strategy may have prevented American
Jews from mobilizing their forces more effectively to
save European Jewry from destruction. Historical records
now suggest that the Jewish plutocrats may have been
more interested in preserving their own credibility with
their ?friends? in the American ruling class than in
aggressively pushing for American policies that might
have saved thousands of Jewish lives.

The Zionist movement during this period was the
genuine embodiment of the best interests of the Jewish
people?and it tended to attract idealists, including
many who had been (for good reason) disillusioned
with the Communist party and with the anti-Semitism
that was never fully purged from the international left.
Zionists often perceived themselves as much in struggle
with British colonialism and the American ruling elite
as any lefty. And in conflict, too, with the ruling
elites in the American Jewish community. The fund-
raisers and bureaucrats who set up endless testimonial
dinners to commend their own generosity and wisdom

8 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 4

may have already dominated other aspects of Jewish
communal life, but they had 'not yet gained hegemony
in Zionist circles.

The Zionist movement was dramatically transformed
in the early 19505, once Israel?s existence was secured.
Those Zionists who did not actually move to Israel to
build a Jewish society began to rede?ne their political
tasks in America. The new goal was to seek power and
respectability in America so that they could court
political in?uence that would eventually be used to
help Israel. Making money (part of which could be
given to Israel) or getting political power was suddenly
de?ned good Zionist. From
challenging assimilation in earlier decades, Zionists were
now trying to in? and join the great American
self-celebration of the 19505. A convenient deal: Jews
could both ?make it? in America and feel that they
were doing so for the sake of the Jewish people. My
parents did their bit. Active in the Democratic party,
which was all too happy to exchange a few pious words
about Israel for Jewish money and political energy, my
parents were perceived by Democratic party leaders
as amongst those Jewish leaders whose support they
would have to seek, and they quickly moved up the
political ladder. My home was frequented by congress?
men, senators, governors, and former and future presi-
dents. I listened intently to the ?owery ideals, and then
was shocked to discover in the Congressional Record,
which I read every day, that these same men quickly
abandoned the struggle for civil rights, health care,
full employment?in fact, almost every liberal program,
allegiance to which was supposed to differentiate them
from the Republicans. In the name of fighting com-
munism they could vote for military authorizations that
then precluded serious funding for social programs.
The political hypocrisy of many of these national leaders 
was matched only by their intellectual vacuity. My parents
also saw that many of these people, who were being
lauded by the press as the embodiment of liberal idealism
and integrity, were empty and corrupt. Still, in my
parents? eyes, the tradeoff was worth it: after all, these
people were supporting Israel. Maybe their commitment
to liberal ideals turned out to be secondary to their
anticommunism, but their commitment to Israel re-
mained strong?and for my parents, that was the bottom
line. So what if the cost of supporting these charac-
ters was that the Jewish community would become
implicated in their compromises, involved in supporting
their ideologies to the extent that it would begin to
convince itself that Judaism and American liberalism
were simply indistinguishable? At least it was good for
the Jews.

Yet I wasn?t convinced on that score either. I remember
Adlai Stevenson, having been told he could rest before
the political party that would soon begin downstairs,

sitting in my bedroom in his underpants, arguing with
me that America should put all its energy into trying to
reunite Germany, because doing so would help the
United States ?ght communism. I tried to talk to him
about the failure of the American government to engage
in a serious denazi?cation of German society after the
Second World War, but for him the issue of the Jews, our
fate and our fears, was largely irrelevant: for the cold
warrior, everything, all values, were subordinate to the
anti-Communist crusade. While viewed by millions of
liberals as the idealistic champion of democratic values,
in my bedroom Stevenson came across as a defender of
America?s corporate interests, an ?enlightened? cold
warrior whose primary concern was how best to preserve
the world for American investment. If the Jews were
helpful, ?ne; but if their interests needed to be sacri?ced
(as they had been a decade earlier during World War
II), that too was ?ne. Years later, when others were dis-
illusioned with Stevenson?s defense of America?s Vietnam
policy, I remembered that moment as an early warning
that when democratic values stood in con?ict with
American economic interests, Democratic party liberals
of the 19505 chose the latter.

he more I learned from the inside about Ameri-
can politics, the more disgusted I became. I
turned to Judaism to ?nd a language to articulate
my moral outrage.
Why Judaism? Because within its prophetic tradition
I discovered the voice of moral outrage at the corruptions
of an established order. That voice was embodied for
me both in the roaring articulateness of my own rabbi,
Joachim Prinz, whose experience at the hands of the
Nazis led him to identify with other oppressed groups
whose causes he championed as president of the Amer-
ican Jewish Congress, and in the gentler tones of
Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose works I began to study.
Yet the Judaism to which I was attracted ?ourished
more at Camp Ramah, at some Orthodox synagogues,
and in the sacred Jewish texts than it did in the
triumphant institutions of American Jewish life. I began
to understand why my grandfather, a Hasidic rabbi and
disciple of Reb achman of Bratslav, buried himself in
these sacred texts rather than deal with the daily realities
of American life in general or American Jewish life in
particular. So it was not long before I found myself part
of the community of Jews who found within Judaism it-
self not only a language to critique American materialism
but also a basis for a critique of the existing Jewish world.
Judaism, I learned, need not be an uncritical glori?cation
of the Jewish people. In fact, the very chauvinism and
self-intoxication that I found in the Jewish world, the
materialism and anti-intellectualism that dominated
many of America?s Jewish institutions, were repudiated
by the core of the Jewish tradition itself.

I had hoped to ?nd this kind of Judaism ?ourishing
at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I enrolled
in courses while pursuing my bachelor?s degree at
Columbia. Elected national president of Atid, the Con-
servative movement?s college organization, I began to
see the inner workings of the Seminary. I was saddened
to ?nd that the Seminary itself was far removed from
the prophetic spirit of Judaism. Scienti?c study of Talmud
and Bible, which often distanced students from the
ethical imperatives of the prophetic message, a rigid
attitude toward ritual, and a distancing from any sense
of responsibility for changing the world permeated the
Seminary.

 

My personal experience inside the
Democratic party and tlae Jean's/9 com-
munity was painful and 

 

My mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel, felt the same
distress. He repeatedly told me of his own isolation at
the Seminary?touted in public as a tzaalz'k, a prophet,
the most original voice in Jewish theology, he was in-
creasingly powerless to in?uence the Conservative move-
ment itself or even to attract followers amongst Seminary
students. Too many of these students found his passion
for God and his commitment to social justice far from
the skills they would need to function as ?successful?
pulpit rabbis. His involvement in the civil rights move-
ment was seen as quaint; but his identi?cation as a
leader of Clergy and Laity Concerned About the War
in Vietnam isolated him even further at the Seminary.
He told me that even though by the late sixties some
of?cial Jewish organizations were willing to pass resolu-
tions opposing the war, none of them seemed willing to
put serious energy or resources into that struggle. He
noted that the Jewish response compared unfavorably
with that of the Catholic and Protestant churches, which
had backed their antiwar resolutions with money and
considerable personal involvement.

In fact, a larger proportion of Jews was involved in
the movement than Catholics or Protestants. But mostly
we were not involved as Jews. So when I went to the
University of California to pursue a doctorate in philos-
ophy, I found a political movement made up of a dis-
proportionate number of Jews; but they were Jews who
had been alienated from the Jewish world for some of
the same reasons that had led me into Judaism. They
had been exposed to a Jewish life de?ned by gaudy bar
mitzvah parties and fundraising, a world in which lofty
ideals were rolled out on ceremonial occasions but
rarely played a role in shaping daily decisions, a world
in which those who had the most money seemed to
have the most communal in?uence and respect. Most

EDITORIAL 9

of these Jews in the movement had never had the
privilege of being exposed to the revolutionary content
of the sacred texts, had never known the intellectual
seriousness and moral sensitivity that shaped our tradi-
tion, and had never met the kinds of righteous Jews
whom I had been lucky to encounter. They had, quite
naturally, identi?ed Judaism itself with the materialism
and anti-intellectualism and narrow-mindedness they
had encountered in the organized Jewish community,
and rejected the whole package.

But when I tried to argue that Judaism really stood
for many of the moral values they supported, they asked
me to show them living examples of this kind of Judaism.
And that grew increasingly dif?cult in the mid- and late
19605. I myself was ?red from two jobs in the Jewish
community, each time explicitly because the rabbi was
embarrassed to have someone on his Hebrew School staff
who was being quoted in the local newspapers making
?unpatriotic? statements about the war in Vietnam.

later years our opposition to racism, sexism, and

American intervention in Vietnam would become

standard liberal fare, but between 1964 and 1969,
when our positions were ?vanguard,? the Jewish world
seemed indifferent at best, and usually overtly hostile.
It was no secret that some of the large donors to Jewish
causes were slum landlords, that other Jews bene?ted
from extensive investments in war~related industries,
and that still others continued to insist that the best
interests of Israel would be served if the Jews gave
blind support to the US. administration (even while
they privately knew that the Vietnam War was immoral
and a tragic mistake).

I could tell my friends about Heschel?s courageous
example, but Heschel himself was telling me privately
that he was ?nding it harder to function within the
organized Jewish world. A group of us at Berkeley tried
to keep alive a different vision of Judaism: we held a
Hanukkah service inside Sproul Hall during the Free
Speech Movement?s sit-in, we organized freedom seders
each year and brought hundreds of Jews together to
reaf?rm this aspect of their Judaism, we 'led high holiday
services and there rejoiced in the unequivocal statements
of our prophets (the traditional Haftorah for Yom Kippur
from Isaiah: ?Is not this the fast I have chosen: to feed
the hungry, to clothe the naked, to loosen the bonds of
the oppressed??).

But it became increasingly dif?cult not to share some
of the anger that my friends were feeling at a Jewish
world that seemed more interested in achieving respect-
ability than in embodying a moral vision. There were
people around me who seemed to rejoice in ?trashing?
every icon of their past. Doing likewise held little joy
for me. I still deeply respected my parents and their
commitment, and I had met some very profound and

10 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4

wonderful people in the Jewish world. I had fought
against assimilation and had insisted to my friends in
the movement that there was a valuable Vision within
Judaism from which they could learn. So it was very
painful for me to see the Jewish tradition being appro-
priated by apologists for the status quo?all the more
so because by the late sixties many of us understood
how oppressive and hurtful that status quo really was
to American Blacks, to women, to the poor, and to
many people still suffering from the impact of economic
and political domination. Like so many others, I rejoiced
at Israel?s triumph in the Six Day War of 1967, but then
grew deeply troubled when, instead of using the occu-
pation of the West Bank as an opportunity to negotiate
with the Palestinians?now ?nally free from Jordanian
rule?the Labor party leaders denied the existence of a
Palestinian people and began to set in place the mech-
anisms for a prolonged occupation. And I was dispirited
to see signi?cant numbers of American Jews, frightened
by some anti-Semitic elements that had emerged within
the Black liberation struggle, suddenly turn their backs
on the struggle for Black equality now that it was moving
from a focus on political rights in the South to a demand
for economic equality in the North.

It was at this moment, in the late sixties, that the local
B?nai B?rith chapter offered its ?Man of the Year Award?
to San Francisco State President S. I. Hayakawa, the man
who had won national fame for his use of massive police
force to break the back of a student?faculty strike. (He
went on to become one of the most reactionary members
of the US. Senate, though pro-Israel.) The strike centered
on demands for increased enrollment of Blacks and the
creation of a college of third world studies. To the
three hundred young Jews who demonstrated against
the Hayakawa award, the B?nai B?rith presentation rep-
resented the worst elements in Jewish life. But in the
eyes of most of our young Jewish friends, the award
was not an aberration but the quintessence of Jewish
life. Shortly after this event I wrote my diatribe against
the Jewish world at the request of the editor of Judaism,
the magazine of the American Jewish Congress.

Looking back, I still believe that much of the funda-
mental criticism of the Jewish world was based on a
correct reading of the distorting effects of the desire to
?make it.? The tone of that criticism re?ected in part
the radicalization of the late 19605 and the spirit of
ruthless critique of all existing institutions and social
arrangements that we in our midtwenties felt empowered
to make. At moments it seemed as though the antiwar
and civil rights and women?s movements were inspired
by a prophetic sensibility?and the world is a better place
because those movements existed. Those struggles were
quite a bit more than a generational rebellion against
parental authority; they addressed fundamental societal
problems and proposed solutions that have made the

world a better place. If only such a spirit would once
again emerge and become a social force in the 19905.
Twenty years later I still think that there was something
fundamentally valuable and life-af?rming in our willing-
ness to speak truth to power?even if that meant raising
very uncomfortable issues and pressing potential allies
into facing issues they would have preferred to avoid.

ut when I took that same spirit of critique into
the Jewish world, my criticisms were too global

and lacking in nuance. I did not adequately
acknowledge the many principled and idealistic people
working in the Jewish community who shared my values
and my distress. Moreover, the principles I was enun-
ciating came from the Jewish tradition and had been
taught me by Jews active in the Jewish world. Even if
the Jewish world wasn?t living up to its own ideals,
shouldn?t it still be given considerable credit for articu-
lating those ideals and teaching them to its young? I
also had not acknowledged the incredible pain of the
Holocaust and the role that event played in making
survival so fundamental a concern of the Jewish people
that other moral concerns might take a back seat. So
what, I might have asked myself, if the organized Jewish
world was somewhat obsessed with self-interest, defense,
and survival? Twenty years after the Holocaust it would
have taken a miracle for any group to be different!
Good enough that this same community had produced
a new generation of Jews who had captured enough of
the spirit of the Jewish tradition to allow themselves to
be led by its moral imperatives to ?ght for civil rights
and against the war.

But worst of all, I had fallen into the same spirit of
intolerant judgment that pervaded so much of the New
Left of the 19605. We articulated good moral ideals but
then were furious when others did not immediately
respond and become the perfect exemplars of those
ideals. In our twenties, we believed that there was no
obstacle other than sel?shness to the moral lives we
professed. So we condemned everyone??rst
the conservatives, then the liberals, then the American
people themselves. Finally, we turned on each other,
?nding in ourselves the unmistakable signs of egotism,
racism, sexism, and all the other perversions that we
had so ruthlessly critiqued in others. Despairing that
we were similarly ?awed, we began to treat each other
with the same intolerance that made the inner life of
the movement seem almost as inhumane (in its backbit-
ing and sectarian squabbling and accusations about
who was less sexist or racist or egotistical than whom)
as the society we had come to critique. Our inability to
accept our own weaknesses and limitations was of a
piece with our inability to accept the limitations of the
rest of American society, and with my own inability to
accept some of the limitations in the existing Jewish

world. Eventually, the spirit of self-destructive intoler-
ance led most people to abandon the movements for
social change.

Many who left the of?cial organizations of the move-
ment stayed committed to the movement?s best ideals. As
we tried to make sense of how we had defeated ourselves,
I found myself looking to the Jewish tradition?and to
the history of a people that, like the New Left, saw
itself as a vanguard in the struggle for social trans-
formation (tikkun). Throughout history the Jewish people
had screwed up. Yet the Jewish tradition also teaches us
that human beings are inevitably ?awed, that the task
is to serve God even with the yetzer bara (the evil
inclination), the ?awed and self-interested self. In other
words, what I had forgotten or not yet adequately allowed
myself to hear was the message in the Jewish tradition
that would tell me: ?Of course people are going to be
screwed up, sexist, racist, egotistical, self-centered,
needy?but that?s who we are, ?awed human beings,
and that?s who will have to change the world. Moreover,
it?s not only the people at large who are ?awed, but also
the leaders and organizers, the vanguard. And these
leaders and organizers must be willing to accept their
own inadequacies rather than ruthlessly trash themselves;
otherwise they will never be able to accept anyone else.?

 

Compassion is not meant as a
replacement for moral sensitivity
There must still be a place
for moral outrage.

 

I began to recognize that what was missing in our
politics was a sense of compassion for ourselves. The
problem wasn?t that we were too egotistical or too
sexist or too racist?though these aspects of ourselves
must certainly be struggled against?but rather that
we had somehow expected that human beings would
magically transcend all these problems, that the very
fact that we were part of the movement meant that we
must immediately embody the ideals we sought for a
future society. And it was this same utopian expectation
that made it impossible for those of us who were Jews
to accept the inevitable limitations and distortions in
the Jewish world.

It might be a wonderful way to start to train ourselves
to become effective in politics if we would counter our
own tendencies to be unfairly judgmental of our own
people, our own families, and ourselves. In this sense,
the development of ?Jewish Consciousness-Raising?
Groups by Tikkun?s Committee for Judaism and Social
Justice (CJSJ) might be understood not as leading anyone
away from politics but as leading them toward a way to
be deeper and more effective in mainstream American

EDITORIAL 11

politics. It?s only by learning how to replace self-blaming
with compassion in our own lives that we will have the
necessary skill to help others in American society do
the same for themselves. And a liberal/progressive
movement that does help people develop a sense of
compassion for themselves will be a movement that
finally gains the credibility it needs to heal and repair
this society.

Still, compassion is not meant as a replacement for
moral sensitivity, and there must still be a place for moral
outrage. Certainly when we see Israel engaging in activi-
ties that are not only morally inappropriate but actually
self-destructive, we must cry out in anguish. Taking
strong stands against Shamir?s policies, for example, is
not inappropriate?though blaming the entire Jewish
people or every Israeli or all of Zionism for what Shamir
does is precisely the kind of globalizing that is destruc-
tive. Looking at my own mistakes in the 1960s, and
knowing how easy it is to fall into these traps once
again, I feel that I need to keep careful check on my
judgmental tendencies. The task, I believe, is to mix
that sense of outrage at injustice with an adequate dose
of compassion so that we don?t begin to turn on the
Jewish people and judge ourselves too If I
personally don?t always achieve the right balance, at
least it?s to articulate the goal.

Editorials

Revolutions:
France 1789, China 1989

or a moment in May of 1989 hundreds of millions

of people, watching students and workers rallying

in the streets of China, allowed themselves to
hope once again. No matter how hard the ideologues
of every form of established oppression try to convince
people that the way of the world is is immutable, over
and over again the indomitable spirit of the human race
reasserts itself, struggles for change, refuses to accom-
modate. And that?s why we are convinced that the brutal
repression of the Chinese students by the Communist
government will ultimately fail, though there may be
months or even decades of further suffering before that
?ultimately? is reached.

The legacy of the French Revolution is this: every
ruling class knows at the bottom of its heart that its
time is limited, that there are human passions and
human needs that cannot be extinguished?no matter
how hard the established order tries to convince people
that they live in the best of all possible worlds, that any
change will lead to anarchy or self-destruction, that

12 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 4

dissatisfaction re?ects personal defects or character flaws
or a misunderstanding of the complexities of the world
or a failure to apprehend the inevitability of evil.

The need for freedom and self-determination, the need
for community and solidarity with others, the need for
creativity and understanding, the need to be recognized
and af?rmed by other free and self-determining beings,
the need for purpose and meaning in life, and the need
for connection with the spiritual dimension of reality?
all these needs are so fundamental to what it is to be
human that they can never be ultimately extinguished.
The forms that these needs take are shaped by the
social, economic, and historical realities of any given
time and place. For example, the need for freedom and
self-determination may be structured in a capitalist
society in such a way that it is typically channeled into
a competitive marketplace, so that people feel that their
needs are being realized through their ability effectively
to compete for money, recognition, or consumer goods.
Yet people who shape themselves to succeed in this way
have a hard time ful?lling their needs for solidarity,
community, and loving relationships.

The good news is that because every system of op-
pression represses at least some of these needs, no such
system can ever last. Ever since the French Revolution,
almost every ruling class in the modern world has known,
deep in its heart, that its days are numbered, that it
cannot hope to pass on to endless generations to come
the power and privilege that it has temporarily managed
to amass and defend.

The bad news is that this very recognition may in
part explain why ruling elites have been so reckless,
so willing to risk destruction of the entire planet in
order to preserve their current advantages: they have
no faith in their own future, and hence they recklessly
disregard the consequences of their actions (shown most
dramatically in their willingness to destroy the earth?s
resources and life-support systems in order to increase
their own material gain).

The turmoil within most contemporary societies is
largely a reflection of the fact that no existing social
order adequately promotes our human capacities or
allows us to ful?ll our fundamental needs. The Western
media may rejoice in the manifestation of contradic-
tions within Communist societies, thinking that ?the
free marketplace? has suddenly triumphed as the secret
answer to the meaning of human existence. But they are
unable to see the vast human suffering and unhappiness
that exist within their own societies or to conceptualize
how a competitive market society has generated its own
set of contradictions. Their obliviousness would be
almost humorous if we didn?t know the painful conse-
quences of their attitudes.

This wrongheaded approach is evident, for example,
in the media?s and politicians? approach to who will