The power we need now

Minneapolis, MLK and his band of stoics that changed the world.

I’d been looking forward to visiting The Painted Porch Bookshop, and to my conversation with Ryan Holiday for weeks because I consider Ryan to be one of the great intellectuals of the internet age. He’s a hyper intelligent student of history and he combs through it for wisdom that can make our lives more meaningful.

From the jump, our conversation mostly coalesced around power. As in the authority to shape the world. This is not a subject I spend a whole lot of time ruminating about, but it came up in the context of the magnificent Barton Springs pool in Austin, which I’d visited the day before. We discussed how and why ambitious public works projects like that were embraced then and aren’t now even though places like Barton Springs are revered, and we talked about the projects that were ambitious and reasonably pursued in the public interest yet produced problematic unforeseen consequences (like sealing the banks of the LA River in concrete). For the better part of an hour we kept circling back to this idea of power, which surprised me at the time, but really shouldn’t have.

Power is one of Ryan’s favorite subjects to think and write about and few, if anyone does it better. Whether he’s writing about Abe Lincoln, Elon Musk or Seneca, Ryan is interested in political, intellectual and financial power, but also in how these figures succeed or fail in controlling their worst impulses, and unleashing their best. The cultivation of power and mastery, internally and externally, this is Ryan’s domain. To paraphrase Ryan, those with self-control, who remain open-hearted, open-minded and brave in a brutal world, are the modern day stoics we need. Now more than ever.

I’ve been thinking a lot about stoicism and power these past days since Renee Good was murdered and Minneapolis has been overrun by masked ICE agents. It’s quite clear to me that the United States federal government is in the hands of authoritarians at the moment. People who clearly lust for power for power’s sake and are willing to wield it brutally to achieve their goals, which seem to include the reconstruction of American society, Global trade and the world map, upon which the players involved will almost certainly capitalize in myriad ways.

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But it wasn’t the loathsome Stephen Miller’s quips about power or the rapid expansion of ICE that got me tripping on power. It was the uprising in the Minneapolis streets—a burst of fear and rage that got me thinking about what the most effective and sustainable response to all this might be.

The most effective campaign of civil disobedience ever deployed on American soil was the Civil Rights Movement. And if you watch the tape of the movement’s young foot soldiers engaging with police departments and vigilantes on the streets you will not find a single instance of them raising their voices in anything but song. You will not see them taunt their aggressors or attempt to humiliate them personally. What you will see in their remarkable grace and composure, are seasoned activists trained in civil disobedience.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his team organized camps where high school and college students learned techniques used in India by Mahatma Gandhi to revolutionary effect. Remember, Gandhi took back a country without firing a single bullet and without raising his voice in anger. King’s activists were taught how to take their beatings, and remain stoic. They knew their cause was righteous, but the techniques they used had to be right too. They learned to lead with love and stoicism, and together they exposed the Southern power structure for all to see.

Although King was a dreamer, he was also a realist and deeply strategic. He wasn’t trying to turn the hearts of devout racists. His target was the silent majority watching on television. He courted their revulsion. He wanted them to see things plain and they did. And things changed. Not overnight and not in every way they’ve needed to, but things changed for the better. The enriching multi-cultural societies we enjoy today, all around the world, exist, at least in part, thanks to the courage and sacrifice of Martin Luther King Jr, and his love army.

Civil disobedience tactics were subsequently adopted by anti-war activists and eventually environmentalists. As a young eco-activist I remember an organization called the Ruckus Society (they still exist!) teaching the basic dos—how to chain yourself to a logging truck or to a tree, how to get arrested— and don’ts. Never let your inner fire burn out of control.

Of course, those fires often did burn out of control beginning with the anti-war protesters in the Vietnam War era. Even righteous anger can metastasize and turn violent because we are all subject to the unintended consequences of good intentions. Which is why when we are working on any goal—especially one that involves shaping our cities, our nations and our future (all of which is happening in Minnesota right now)—style matters. The process will always matter.

I admire those in the Minneapolis streets and I think monitoring the location and the activities of ICE is vital. It’s also perfectly legal. But resentment cannot be defeated with resentment. Humiliation, hate and violence only begets more of the same. In order to turn this tide, the silent majority must get involved, and for that to happen we need activists in the streets and ICE monitors too. We do need them to get in the way and expose brutality for what it is, but we need them to be modern day stoics. They must be rooted in love, and disciplined in emotion and action.

In these helter skelter days, so must we all.