Supplementary > June 21, 2005

The Pig People Dont Talk to the Chicken People

By Peter Teague

It was three years ago, when I first came to work in a New York foundation, that I learned that the pig people don’t talk to the chicken people. “You guys are working on the same problems, with the same root causes,” I said. “So why don’t you work together?” The challenges they were tackling seemed similar: factory farming, mountains of waste, the domination of little guys by the big guys. But that’s not how they acted. I soon learned that the pig people and the chicken people don’t talk to the cow people either, and the cow people have never talked with the people worried about over-grazing, or breast cancer or the war in Iraq.

And so it goes in progressive America today. We are oriented towards problems, issues and complaints. Our politics are defined by fragmentation rather than unity. To the extent that we think beyond what and who we are not, we tend to focus on the things that separate us: issues, identities, demographics and geography. We then organize ourselves into ever-narrower fragments with rigid categorical boundaries.

Why? I’ll venture to name a few reasons:

• The mistaken belief that things get more manageable the more narrowly we focus on them.
• The mistaken belief that people act in their rational self-interest (as we define it) if given appropriate facts.
• Hostility to new ideas.
• Failure to question basic assumptions and orthodoxies.
• Fear of imagining plausible alternatives.
• We have forgotten who we are.

We have a pretty great story to tell. The country was founded by progressives and it is progressives who have struggled to make it better. They fought to abolish slavery, enfranchise women and end child labor. The progressive impulse brought down the original robber barons, and reined in corporate greed. Progressives came up with an authentic response to the Great Depression and coaxed the country to confront the dangers of institutionalized racism. Even now, in our weakened state, we are the ones pressing for an economy that works for everyone; a democracy that honors equality and respects human rights; a foreign policy that values global interdependence over unilateralism and peace over war; and for vital communities and the right relationship to the earth that sustains us.

But somehow we’ve lost the narrative thread that ties it all together. We have to learn to tell a better story. We have to be bold and inspiring, to shift our orientation from problems to solutions. We have to understand that the values environment in which we are operating is increasingly hostile to the progressive project. And we have to learn how to navigate in that environment as we seek to transform it over time.

We need a politics in which the current parties’ agendas become irrelevant and both Democrats and Republicans are forced to govern as progressives, in the same way that both parties are now forced to govern as conservatives. Electoral politics are ultimately an expression of underlying cultural dynamics. Long-term cultural transformation, therefore, must be the first priority, with electoral politics as one vehicle we can use to achieve that goal.

This is all achievable, but we don’t have much time. Scientists roll out one horrifying scenario after another about the imminent collapse of natural systems. And we can’t wish away the fact that a growing number of lunatics have weapons of mass destruction.

What’s really amazing is that current political discourse—and the media that promote it—carries on as if these facts don’t matter. The world could end and we’d still be talking about which politician is more God-fearing, whether Michael Jackson is a pederast, or what GM’s share price is on the Dow Jones.

And there’s the opening. We have the chance to be relevant because no one else is being relevant.

When we stop worrying about a lot of seemingly separate problems, we begin to realize that there are people out there who are thinking seamlessly and brilliantly, taking action to transform corporations, coming up with whole new ways of conceptualizing problems and imagining solutions.

Civil rights leaders in California, for example, are proposing public investment in a clean energy economy as a solution to the mass imprisonment of young African-American and Latino men and other deeply rooted problems affecting our inner cities. A small but growing number of corporate leaders are coming to understand that the whole system must be turned away from its blind and mechanical drive for profit. And we are building a critical mass of progressives who are re-orienting their work, appealing to shared values, speaking to aspiration and offering solutions instead of problems.

Something nascent and powerful is happening out there. We need to keep watching, trusting our intuition and nurturing it as it opens.

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• Reader Comments

  I found this article really worth reading. At least it rises above fragmentation, specialization, classification, division and sub-divisions, political tendencies described in degrees to the left or to the right,national or local issues and all the abundant talk to say nothing of the really important.
  Let me remind you that no matter where you were born, the importance of your country in world decisions, and the lot of gadgets you may have access to compared to a member of a poor tribe with no electricity, we are all members of the human race, and the use we make of nature will sooner or later influence our possibilities of survival so, while as the author says “many people out there are trying to find answers for a more intelligent way of using the means we have at our disposal” the rest are simply letting themselves be carried by trends, slogans and life without a high purpose.
  We have to cease being this or that, and try being just a human being with problems common to all. Intuition is far more intelligent than cold intellect, considering the root of things is the only way we can get to grasp their meaning, the rest only brings about more pain, more confusion, more division.

  Posted by Mariluz on Jun 21, 2005 at 4:58 PM

  Criminal investigators “follow the money” when things don’t make sense.  Mr. Teague’s article ignores the obvious, that the numerous, diverse groups provide livelihoods for a number of people who don’t want to risk losing their jobs in any consolidation.

  Also, there is the apparently insurmountable problem of people not wanting to appear to be racist by discussing the effects of human population on the environment.  Even though human population is the root of most environmental problems.

  Posted by Robert James on Jun 22, 2005 at 4:09 AM

  2 LONG COMMENTS

  FIRST:

  I would suggest that Teague’s reasons for ‘stove-piping’ are the manifest reasons for the rivalries that have evolved in the environmental movement specifically and on the left in general.  “Special interest” liberalism and all non-cooperative interests arise out of much deeper sources that plague us all in all areas of our lives.  Following his line of thought would take us away from the root causes.  And for a good reason, a very good reason: to avoid despair and feeling overwhelmingly impotent. A major root cause is our virtually universal drive to solve our basic problems of feeling secure and adequate by feeling right and/or better than others.  I cannot imagine a more entrenched and unyielding problem in human relationships.  This leads either to warfare or wrapping ourselves into cocoons that seem protective and reassuring.

  It is utterly rare—at least for me—to see political analysis that brings this in as a central issue.  As a result, we keep following the cycle of tearing down the old to build new structures of cooperation that carry the rivalrous seeds of its own destruction.  Yes, this is an ancient problem, and many assume it is human nature.  Maybe it isn’t.  Or, maybe it is part of our current evolution as a species.  If this is a useful assumption, then all our democratic initiatives, projects and strategies should take this as their context.  With all due respect and deep understanding, Teague along with all of us on the Left do not do this.

  I see democracy as the political manifestation of our cultural evolution.  Its anti-thesis is the drive for authoritarian control, such as—pardon the oversimplification—‘Corporate America’s’—relentless concentration of more power and wealth in the hands of a few.  The synthesis of this dialectic needs to be our long-term goal, and it should frame all of our short-term and medium-term thinking.

  SECOND:
  Telling a better story means selling a better story, and this is as it should be in partisan politics.  And politics has to have partisanship.  And I want the kind of stories Teague, et. al want and are busy developing.  And I want the policies these stories will promote to prevail.  However, this is all middle-term changes.

  I am a progressive who is convinced that our democracy requires one thing that transcends partisanship: the ability of many ordinary citizens to become informed, proactive, and compassionate in their voting.  That is, voters who can discern partisan stories and then choose well for the public interest.  That is our monumental weakness as a democracy.  Changing this is the “long-term cultural transformation” we need.  Conservatives, moderates, and progressives who value democracy--and we need all of them--need to embed their partisanship into this long,long-term effort.

  Posted by joncehart on Jun 22, 2005 at 11:59 AM

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Also by Peter Teague

• The Pig People Dont Talk to the Chicken People