BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Determined Activism Verses Naysayers Pt3 - The Big Picture Gurus
August 7th, 2008
… and endless debators.
- No Impact Man posted a story today that ends with this moral:
But why this story gets told again and again in the Zen school is because of the sheer “just try, try, try, for ten thousand years only try” energy of Dae Soen Sa Nim’s approach. He started from where he was and just did the best he could, given the particular person he was. He had an idea that he thought might help, and instead of questioning himself, he trusted himself. He tried.
This story suggests that, instead of sitting around figuring out the best way to save the world, we should just start saving the world. It’s too late for more think tanks. We need do tanks. Thirsty people need water. Hungry people need food. It’s not any more complicated unless we make it so.
I responded
I have to say I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been saying the same thing to folks over and over again for weeks; who want to endlessly debate everything under the sun.
Even though my issues are apparently different than yours, it seems that we encounter the same naysaying even within our own ranks.
People like S—-n above will always think you have to execute a perfect plan to get things done, not realizing the obvious; that executing no plan, while teasing every detail to death, gets nothing done.
But we have these “Big Picture” people who pretense to believe that you can achieve a big grand ideal without addressing and correcting some of the issues under the umbrella. That you must wait until you have the absolute resolution, before you work to resolve anything. If it were up to they and their thinking, Black folks would still be on the back of the bus, since because a bus boycott was not going to change the over-arching big picture of ending racial discrimination in America across the board; addressing that specific problem wouldn’t have been worth while. They’d still be debating the perfect plan today, while Blacks continued to get lynched under Jim Crow.
Some whined and howled a year ago about the use of “Free The Jena 6” as a slogan. They pretense that those words somehow meant that we were saying there should be no punishment for those who were the perpetrators of the Justin Barker beating [ignoring the fact that they’d all already served jail time, even though some of them were likely not involved]. As if a slogan is meant to capture all the intricacies of a position. As if the slogan could be “Yes, the actual perpetrators should be punished for the crime, but the punishment should be just and fit the crime, and proof should be provided to ascertain who the actual perpetrators where; and the defendants should be provided with due process and fair trial in a court of law with an unbiased judge and jury”
How are you going to fit all that on a T-shirt? How do you walk down the street chanting that? What kind of title is that for a press release, petition, or article?
Certain language is used to encapsulate the issue, project it to people, and raise their ire.
If it were up to some people, we’d still be arguing over whether to use the Free The Jena 6 slogan, while the young men rot in jail for 22 to 100 years. Instead, many of us choose to act. And due to our fund raising, awareness raising, and generation of public pressure; Michael Bell is free, the racist judge got thrown off the case, and governmental officials have moved to crush the zealotry of the prosecution and have moved forward on new legislation regarding noose intimidation.
Let the talkers keep talking, let the doers do!
Certainly any action should be thought out and well discussed; but at a certain point it’s timeout for talking, and time for doing.
Any time you ask a “Big Picture” person for an action plan, they don’t have one. They spout off idealism of what they want done. At best you might get some action goals out of them - some outcomes they want to see worked for. But goals are not a plan. A plan is a set of actions, and a strategy to get from point A to point B.
Then, when you ask them how would they go about achieving their action goals, or better yet, ask them to take the lead on the initiative; they have nothing. They cannot provide one concrete step towards actually achieving the goal; nor are they ever willing to step up and do the work, even when you outline steps for them.
No, that’s not what they do. They have no interest in action. They just like the mental game. It’s all one big mental jack-of for them. They’d rather sit back and say everything that’s wrong with whatever someone else’s is doing, so that they can convince themselves that they are smarter and deeper; because they actually think they’re being more thoughtful.
Bottom line is, they have a lot of talk, and little action. Mostly they just have talk AGAINST your action.
Instead of poo pooing and naysaying everything that those who bother to act do; these “Big Picture” gurus should do something themselves, or shut the fuck up!
That’s my position.
But they won’t. They’ll have more good flowery words to justify their do nothing-ness.
You have to learn to ignore them and press on.
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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