From Lone Wolves to Counterculture

I watched "A Hidden Life" recently. On Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler and Third Reich. What was interesting to observe was how the village community pressurised him and his family to capitulate, how the general trend became that Franz was a traitor and a bad husband and father.

And the many times, I sensed myself saying -- Franz, let it be. Say yes and move on. Live, live.

Franz didn't. Crazy man, I thought. Driven by his personal values in the face of death. He was executed. Forgotten for many years till his actions were rediscovered. And he was beatified by the same church that had been scared to stand by him.

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch

I wondered. About other lone wolves I know of. Barking alone in the woods. And the times in my heart I have said, "Don't. You are going to be hurt." Even when I know they do the important work of belling the future.

The times I was a lone wolf myself. Barked and done.

About George Batesons's double bind applied to social structures that I read recently. About how structures demand us to lie and we know it is so. Not just structures far out there, but structures in our immediate cultural groups, in our fields, in systems we ourselves invent. How they become the "only pathway to wisdom."

"In our dealings with the world, we have simply come to accept that there’s an unbridgeable chasm between what we are told and what’s really going down."

and further,

"This is why Bateson’s work is so useful. He understands that getting angry and demanding the honest truth from someone in a double bind is a futile effort."

And then this article by Nora Bateson on letters by her Dad:

"At the peace table, at the change-makers conference, at the climate convention, and at the dinner table with your children, how much are we all looking to establishment to provide the path to a new perception? But it will not come from the institutions. Notice that these letters are all about Gregory resigning, ducking out, and retreating from taking part in these institutional processes. Why? Should he not be trying to produce change from within the system? No. Harsh though it may sound these letters are a call for us today to look to one another and create a context from which to discuss the context. That means the possibility for the survival of our species is with you and me, not any ministry, or organization.

The liminal realm in which we live is where the shifts are. Our integrity from one moment to the next, from one conversation to the next is everything. To take the risk of trusting each other is revolutionary, and evolutionary. Are we trustworthy?"

From lone wolves to counterculture...