Beyond Left and Right – A Revolutionary Approach to Social Transformation

In the previous article, we looked at the absurdity of the recent US election. A mere 31% of the eligible voting population chose Trump, and the whole system suddenly capitulated to this ignoble character. Much of the rest of the world seems ready to bend over, too.

Why would the progressive elements in the US appear to collapse so suddenly, as if exhausted by a struggle they know they cannot win?

Why would all those women choose a sexual predator? Why would those without a white skin choose a racist? How could all those poor people be persuaded that the economy was bad when it wasn’t? How were they convinced that what was really needed was to bring in the billionaire’s club to make everybody better off?
Why would a nation of immigrants whose economy has hugely benefited from immigration buy into the lie that “their man” will suddenly solve this lingering hypocrisy? The same man who overtly sabotaged a fix to this very question just to prevent his opponent from claiming any credit. He doesn’t care about immigrants, the poor, non-whites, or women…. These are all simply building blocks for his castle in the air.
Why would a nation that endlessly preaches to the world about democracy, God, freedom, and justice choose a criminal rip-off artist and sexual predator and their cult leader?
It is so bizarre that it cannot be explained by simply saying the democratic party had a messaging problem. Or that Joe Biden was old. Or the economy… or the migration situation….
Not to mention the fact that a similar trend is unfolding in many parts of the world.

We have to look at one obvious fact: people clearly do not believe progressive claims that they can deliver on their promises of a more humane world.

It then makes sense to assume that if the progressives can’t create a world where the shit doesn’t happen, then let’s get a strong man who perhaps can prevent it or who can at least deal with it when it does happen.
After two centuries of hailing the benefits of the “power of the collective,” the need “to organize,” of “solidarity,” and “we the people,” of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” of “workers of the world unite” – and where are we? Trump, Musk, and all the rest of the sycophants of the cult.
Not to mention his autocratic friends around the world like Putin et al.
Maybe after all this time, it is time for progressives to really listen to that skepticism and not try and dismiss it as “counter-revolutionary” rhetoric!
So, let’s ask the basic question: Why do people have no confidence that all these well-meaning progressives can actually change anything?

Yes. Why don’t the oppressed, the poor, “the huddled masses yearning to be free” not support the people who are constantly trying to make changes to help them?

The answer is a bit shocking: They know in their guts that all those efforts to help them won’t make much difference.
How do they know? They live mostly further down the slippery slope of the social hierarchy than those well-meaning saviors of the poor. They don’t have to wait for Elon Musk to demonstrate greed, they have relatives and friends like that. They don’t have to wait for Trump to show them what an autocrat is like, they have one of their own at home.
Which is exactly where the whole progressive endeavor falters.

Our histories are full of incredibly brave people who stood up against tyranny. Since forever, sensitive people have been outraged by the way human beings oppress other human beings.

Efforts to change the status quo in favor of a more humane world have been the basis of the political struggle, particularly in the last 200 years. It gave us Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and their attempts to free the workers of the world from their chains. There was Rosa Luxemburg and so many others who gave their lives fighting injustice. It gave us Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, Emma Goldman, and others who inspired the glorious efforts of a “real” revolution during the Spanish Civil War.
Since then, endless political parties on “the left,” populated by plenty of progressive politicians with good intentions, have been promising “change” – which never comes. Yes, of course, the whole system is a rigged money game that endlessly frustrates any attempt to tamper with the status quo in favor of the less fortunate people, but still, couldn’t we expect something?
Actually, no! And not just because the whole thing is a money scam anyway.
Look at the absurdity: the cost of living is a big issue in this US election. But according to Bloomberg, “11,000 Political Groups Spent $14.7 Billion to Influence the 2024 Election.” They confirm that there are “no legal limits on how much money can go into electing candidates to the White House and Congress.” As Greg Palast warned everyone over 20 years ago in his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Are you saying that the system cannot change?
Yes – and here is the reason.

The basic analysis of this whole progressive movement is wrong.

Osho’s explanation of this question can be paraphrased as follows:
The right claims that if they don’t police the masses, the people will murder, rape, and steal. In fact, they claim, it is only thanks to this oppression that what little evidence there is of civilization even exists.
The left counter this by arguing that it is precisely this oppression that causes people to murder, rape, and steal in the first place.
And that a real civilization is only possible when the oppression stops.
Osho points out that the right and the left are both half-right and half-wrong. Yes, the masses, as they are, will murder, rape, and steal without the forces of repression to prevent them. And yes, the left is also right that it is the repressive nature of society that causes people to murder, rape, and steal.
While progressives remain stuck in this conundrum, the pendulum will simply continue to swing from one side to the other – just as is happening today, with the upsurge of oppressive, right-wing values around the world.
The key mistake the progressives are making is this.
Yes, of course, having hundreds of thousands of people with no shelter in the richest country in the world is an obscenity. As is their lack of health care or access to the minimum resources for a human life in a civilized society. Racism, sexism, this-ism, that-ism… the list of ways we manage to torture each other is truly disgusting.
Naturally, we progressives will fight this tyranny.

Which human beings, with even a speck of decency and courage, could refuse that challenge?

So, here is the zillion-dollar question:
How are you going to confront that challenge? Once you have succeeded in the struggle for power, now what?
How are you going to confront the prejudice, for example, that lies behind sexism and racism and all the other ugly ways we persecute each other? Aha, you are going to make a law against it. Ok. Hate crimes are on the books. What about the greed of the employers, who are always doing their best to screw their employees? More legislation? Very good. And the lust for power of the owner over the owned? More legislation? And the abuse by landlords of their tenants? Ditto. And all the other social ills that plague our societies? Ditto, ditto, ditto.

All wonderfully well-intentioned, but now we are smothered in red tape, and a little voice chirps up: Wasn’t all this designed to make us free?

Reaction sets in, and the pendulum swings off in the other direction again.
Why? Because you cannot legislate to end greed or to prevent the abuse of power or any of the other examples of pathological behavior we see all around us.
Osho cuts through this persistent misunderstanding again. He explains that the only solution is for the oppressed masses to raise their consciousness so they don’t murder, rape, and steal – at which point all the forces of repression, from the local cop to King Donald, will find themselves unemployed and will have to go and get a job.
Why won’t this happen?

Because “the left,” the progressives, refuse to even consider the obvious fact that you cannot change society unless the people in that society change.

Yes, you have spent the last couple of centuries trying to prove that all we have to do is to change the outer structures of society, the outer conditions, and then people will change.
Suppose you are wrong, and the truth is exactly the opposite as Osho insists? And only if human beings change their own internal milieu can the outer structures of society also change.
After so many failures, including this last US election, would you be open to considering a different approach?
If so, the challenge is totally different.

Now the key question is to discover the science of inner change in human beings.

Now you are going to have to find out which of these pathologies we inherit and which we acquire from those around us.
Then you won’t be defending something as toothless as “woke” values. You will be offering the possibility of humanity really waking up from this nightmare we call normality.

Instead of marching to this endless tune – left-right, left-right, left-right – for the first time in human existence, conscious change can happen.

What does this mean in detail?
First you would have to accept that we are the recipients of an incredible amount of social conditioning, brainwashing, whatever you want to call it, on a variety of topics. The most pernicious is that most of the madness we see around us is due to something called “human nature.” When, in reality, it’s the conditioning that kills, stupid!
That is a totally different hypothesis. This means that people may not be born racists, or misogynist, or nationalists, or sexual predators, or full of feelings of inferiority that can only soothed by gaining power and domination and control over others…. And so on!
Then you would have to consider the ancient understanding from the non-Western half of the planet that proposes the following:
“The yearning for a utopia is basically the yearning for harmony in the individual and in the society. The harmony has never existed; there has always been a chaos.
“Society has been divided into different cultures, different religions, different nations – and all based on superstitions. None of the divisions are valid.
“But these divisions show that man is divided within himself: these are the projections of his own inner conflict. He is not one within, that’s why he could not create one society, one humanity outside

“The cause is not outside. The outside is only the reflection of the inner man….”

And:
“There have been attempts all over the world to make a harmonious human society, but all have failed for the simple reason that nobody has bothered why it is not naturally harmonious.
“It is not harmonious because each individual inside is divided, and his divisions are projected onto the society.

“Unless we dissolve the individual’s inner divisions, there is no possibility of really realizing a utopia and creating a harmonious society in the world.”1

Exploring these very different hypotheses about the potential for a society that we might dare to call civilized totally changes everything.
Instead of well-meaning progressives marching up and down for another two hundred years, when they are not being mown down by the recurrent fascist momentum, they could look to a totally different set of options.
Or they could look at the state of the world, with a set of catastrophes looming down on us, making any thought of “another two hundred years” totally fanciful. The species is under serious threat already. Might you consider the situation sufficiently dire to agree to at least trying a truly radical approach?

Then only a real revolution can begin.  

Osho:
“Who would not like to become more conscious, more alive, more loving, more compassionate? Just models are needed. People are needed who can create a tremendous urge in others that they can also have the same joy, the same dance, the same song and the same fragrance.
“The politicians and the priests are still not on their deathbed. We will have to put them on their deathbed. They will resist, but what to do? Either they have to become part of an evolutionary process or they have to disappear from the earth.
“No more crucifixion can be allowed. We have done enough crime against the potential growth of humanity. It is time that it should be stopped. But the only way to stop is: begin with yourself. You should become an example – that you are neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, that you don’t believe in God, heaven and hell; that you don’t believe that you are American, Russian, Indian, that you claim the whole earth to be yours, that you claim the universe to be yours.
“It is our home. There is no need to divide it. Division brings war, bloodshed. Politicians want it to remain divided.
“In an undivided humanity, politicians will be out of employment. An undivided humanity…. – then what does the Polack pope have to do? Go to Poland and become really what he is, just a Polack.

“Humanity is the greatest flowering of existence. And existence has given you a responsibility; it has trusted you that now you will carry evolution further.

“But for ten thousand years or more there has not been any change at all. It is very shameful. It is ugly, disgusting.
“My people have to free themselves from all conditions. Meditate deeply. Move beyond your thoughts, emotions, and search for the center of the cyclone. There is a center in each of you – the very source of your life. It has to be found.
“It should be the goal of your life to find it. Once you are there, everything will go through a revolution. 
“All the revolutions that have happened before – French revolution, Russian revolution, Chinese revolution – are not revolutions, just changes of power gangs, changes from one mafia to another mafia.

“The real revolution is only one, and that happens within you, within each individual.

“And it has to be done really fast, because the idiotic politicians of the world are preparing for a global suicide by nuclear weapons.”2
END

1. Osho, Light on the Path, Talk #30 – Utopia Is Possible
2. Osho, From Bondage to Freedom, Talk #10 – Struggling for the New Man

You can read Part 1 of this article, titled “The 31% Landslide – The Great American Descent Into Authoritarianism” HERE

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The post Beyond Left and Right – A Revolutionary Approach to Social Transformation appeared first on OSHOTimes.