Learning from those who came before us
Their words of wisdom offer comfort and principles by which to guide us
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass
through the valley of the shadow of death again and again
before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
– Nelson Mandela
Many of us are still reeling from electoral results that have thrown our nation into crisis. Over the course of our history, we have faced many such crises, including a Civil War. The first one erupted in 1776 when people throughout the colonies were fast losing faith in our fight for independence after General Washington had lost one battle after another to the British. Thomas Paine, who watched and worried as morale and momentum evaporated, penned a pamphlet aptly called The American Crisis. He opened with words that continue to speak to us today:
"These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
The pamphlet went viral, its initial printing selling over 100,000 copies distributed throughout the colonies. After receiving a copy, General Washington required his dwindling troops to read the pamphlet before crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776. Afterwards, though outnumbered seven to one, Washington and his troops went on to beat the British at Trenton and Princeton, turning the tide of the war.
Many before us have walked paths at least as dark as the one we now face. Nations from Poland to Argentina to South Africa to Ukraine have faced — and continue to face — similar crises.
In making my own way forward, I thought I would find and share the wisdom of those who have faced crises at least as dire as our own. Some of their words may be familiar, others new. But all of them speak to where we are now. May they comfort and guide you.
Abraham Lincoln
“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year, since [The Kansas-Nebraska Act] was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” (from Lincoln’s House Divided Speech 1858)
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
Nelson Mandela
“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”
“People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
“Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.”
Vaclav Havel
“[Jan] Patočka used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is that we carry it with us everywhere. That means that responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place in time and space where the Lord has set us down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else, whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel polis.”
“By accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game… he has himself become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place.”
Viktor Frankl
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. . . Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
"All life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Vice Admiral James Stockdale
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
James Baldwin
“Well, I am tired. I don't know how it will come about. I know that, no matter how it comes about, it will be bloody. It will be hard. I still believe that we can do with this country something that has not been done before. We are misled here because we think of numbers. You don't need numbers. You need passion. And this is proven by the history of the world.” (From the documentary “I Am Not Your Negro”)
Parting thoughts
Three principles, derived from these leaders, can guide us as we chart our course forward:
You cannot find your way to a better future using a moral compass distorted by hate. Hate only begets hate. We must search for and build on our common humanity.
Fighting for a better future with others is more powerful than simply fighting against someone or something. You need both.
Nonviolent movements are more effective than violent ones, especially when they leverage the 3.5% rule. Look it up.
I hope we bring these principles to our analyses and actions as we move forward. I hope we come to understand that we are all responsible for eroding the trust upon which all democracies depend. I hope we come to see our own role in damaging our relationships with each other and with our government, for being too quick to ridicule and too slow to understand the legitimate needs and interests of people different from us.
Most of all, as Ben Rhodes suggests in his stellar article in the New York Times yesterday, I hope we take a page from one authoritarian’s play book and redirect it toward reinventing our multigroup democracy, so it serves all, not just the few.
After he lost an election in 2002, Mr. Orban spent years holding “civic circles” around Hungary — grass-roots meetings, often around churches, which built an agenda and sense of belonging that propelled him back into power. In their own way, the next generation of Democratic leaders should fan out across the country. Learn from mayors innovating at the local level. Listen to communities that feel alienated. Find places where multiracial democracy is working better than it is in the rest of the country. Tell those stories when pitching policies. Foster a sense of belonging to something bigger, so democracy doesn’t feel like the pablum of a ruling elite, but rather the remedy for fixing what is broken in Washington and our body politic.
Damaged trust can only be rebuilt from the bottom up by demonstrating, not espousing, that we can count on each other to care about one another’s problems and to work alongside each other to find solutions.
The bad news is that this is hard, long term work. The good news is that it is already underway across the country. To learn more about these efforts, see Remaking the Space Between Us, its website, and past and future posts here.
I am really curious what this post made you think and/or feel, so please let us all know in the Comments section below.