A Revolution In Values (M.L.King Revisited)

[Dover]

excerpt:


Thus the need for the "revolution in values" King demanded. The transition from a "thing-oriented" to a "person-oriented" society means that value would lie not in our possessions but in who we are, not in the power we wield over others but in the relationships of trust and affection we can build. Instead of seeing whole categories of people as other than ourselves and accepting existing patterns of domination and subordination, we could (or rather will have to) replace the foundations of the structures that create (and recreate) such divisions by those which would allow us to see each as akin to all.

King's "Breaking the Silence" speech was not given simply as moral exhortation -- it was offered as a contribution to the building of the movement to bring about changes that his indictment showed were so greatly needed. Linking his opposition to the war against Vietnam to the battles then raging against racism and economic injustice, King foreshadowed the organizing to follow in the Poor People's Campaign. That attempt to directly engage those who suffer most from society's inequities in a movement that aimed toward building an alternative is itself still relevant to what needs to be again attempted.

Such an attempt will only be successful when we see the systemic character of the seemingly discrete issues we each face as individuals. King's message spoke to this when he defined exactly what he meant by a "revolution in values":

A true revolution in values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called upon to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution in values will soon look at the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the sea and see individual capitalists of the west investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for social betterment of the countries and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the local gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution in values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This is not just." The business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

As it was, so it is, signs of the "spiritual death" King spoke of are all around us -- evident not only in the torture of prisoners, but the ease with which that torture is rationalized. The details may differ from Vietnam to Iraq, but the dying continues. Agent Orange or depleted uranium, death is dealt out with no remorse, no sense of responsibility, no accountability. The prerogative of empire is to wrap up its violence in a flag of glory. As with all empires, however, there is a cost that can be delayed by which must be paid. We see it in the fraying of our own society; we saw it vividly in New Orleans; we will see it in the costs our grandchildren will have to pay if that Jericho Road is not transformed.



cont'd

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/stand230106.html

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Please read
King's Speech in its entirety: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[Kurovski]

1. K&R.

"...True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution in values will soon look at the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."

[Dover]

2. A prophetic speech.....

We ARE making this shift in values. I hope we can learn new ways to inhabit them before the darker power destroys all beauty. Courage.