You know how some things take on a momentum and movement that nobody planned on. They way that the group spirit becomes a defining identity that was more than anyone imagined. It is inspiring to me to see what is happening in this light on Wall Street and in other “Occupy” locations around the world. I hear it as a call to stop the patterns of unexamined, unsustainable growth and greed. I don’t know the answers. These are deep issues. The dialogue feels very important.
Below are some helpful insights from friend and colleague Tom Atlee. His full post on this topic is on his website.
“So I realized: OF COURSE Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have “demands.” Demonstrations and protests have demands. But although O.W.S. LOOKS like a protest and a demonstration (and occasionally turns into one), it is actually something more, something else: It is a passionate community of inquiry acting itself out as an archetypal improvisational street theater performance embodying, in one hand, people’s longings for the world as it could be and, in the other, their intense frustrations with the world as it is. These longings and frustrations reside in the whole society, not just in the occupiers. The occupiers are behaving and reaching out in ways that release and activate those suppressed transformational energies all over the country and world. (Arny and Amy Mindell call such archetypal energies “timespirits” after “Zeitgeist”, the spirit of the times.) To think of Occupation Wall Street as primarily a demonstration or protest misses the profound novelty and power of what they are doing. All of us – they and we – are figuring out what it is they are doing as they do it. They are kinda building the road as they travel.”
