Insiders and Outsiders

    How do we effect change in our communities, in different levels of government, amongst our peers and our families? There are certainly legions of books, articles, and Today Show interviews dealing with the issue of positive change. I still struggle, like many others, in figuring out what it means to pick your battles and your methods. It seems to me as though there are two main issues to overcome; whether to be an insider in institutions of power or an outsider criticizing them, and what issues one should champion.
    As to the issue of what side of the institutional line to be on. In reading Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual, both positions include a dangerous and counterproductive extreme. On the part of insiders, the type of promotions, benefits, awards and accolades one can receive for towing the party line can tempt even the most steadfast of critical thinkers. This is the whole “change from the inside” school brought to an abrupt end. Material success and renown can be that opiate, which once experienced, has the ability to stifle the critical mind.
    On the other hand, is reveling in being the outcast, cultivating a poisonous hate of all things institutional. This is not only where the idea of bringing down a power structure supersedes laying the groundwork for pragmatic alternatives, but also where a disdain for the establishment precludes any sort of cooperation or at least dialogue with those representing that establishment. Present political and social realities should not be though of as some sort of Paradise Lost, where our only recourse is to bemoan the loss of an ideal, the corruption of what “the founders” intended.
    Nor is any institution good or bad on its face. Every institution is a sociopolitical artifact, shaped by its participants, and more essentially, by its leaders. It is not only inaccurate, but problematic to judge the moral value of an institution en total, particularly in an age of asymmetrical and civil conflict. The purpose of this meditation is not to encourage being wholly indecisive, or lacking convictions. It is more important at this time, when information is relatively more democratized, that we look out for appealing to either extreme.