Daniel Lev Shkolnik
I have admired Martin Luther King, Jr. since I was a boy. And yet, for years I've wondered why I find it so hard to fully support the modern social justice movement. In many ways it is an extension of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But at its core it seems to be missing something essential...
This week, I was asked to respond to the following question for my multicultural counseling class:
"How would you respond to someone who said counseling shouldn’t be political?"
The framing of the question implied that counseling should be political. And that the right side of politics is the side of social justice.
I n principle, I agree with many of the points it makes about equality and supporting those who have been hurt and continue to be hurt in largely unrecognized ways. Yet at the same time, in my bones I've felt a deep discomfort with the spirit of anger, shaming, judgement, and righteousness that I've felt emerge from the movement over the last ten years.
And yet, what's the alternative? — The equally reactive and protective Right?
Below is my response to the prompt; it is my first attempt to give voice to a "third path" that is neither politically Left nor Right — and neither is it in the middle. Instead, it is guided by love, which I believe was the essence of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy, and the guiding force for all true healing.
In response to someone who says "counseling shouldn't be political" I would respond differently depending on whether they mean that at an "apolitical" level that ignores political dynamics, or at a "transpolitical" level that both recognizes and transcends those dynamics.
The essence of healing is wholeness — a repair of broken-off or separated parts. If our aim as counselors is healing, we should seek to repair what is broken and separate within us and between us. In other words, we should aim to heal all interconnected systems for the sake of greater unity.
Politics, however, is dualistic in nature. It is fundamentally about opposition, not wholeness. Just like parts of the psyche attempt to balance one another within an individual system through opposition, political parties and ideological positions attempt to balance one another in political systems. The issue with this is that engaging in dualistic power struggles — even for apparently just ends — is that it perpetuates the dualism itself. Engaging in struggle never ends struggle, it simply perpetuates it.
As Albert Einstein put it (speaking both socially as well as scientifically) "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
As counselors, if our goal is truly to engage in healing then we must ultimately go beyond political dualism in a way that contains and acknowledges the reality of the political struggles themselves. In short, we must work toward genuine wholeness. This wholeness is not about ignoring distinctions (right and left, or black and white for example); rather, it is about discerning distinction while simultaneously recognizing underlying unity (e.g., right implies left, and black implies white—neither could exist without the other).
Justice on the other hand relates to law. Law is predicated on a moral distinction of "right" and "wrong." Love however refuses to accept this fundamental distinction. Rather, unitive love recognizes and accepts that each side in a polarity has truth in it. Love recognizes that each side feels that it must take on an extreme and reactive stance in an attempt to maintain the balance of the larger system. And Love also recognizes that this dynamic of polarization for the sake of a larger balance is itself not wrong; it is how systems at all levels of the natural world maintain equilibrium while also containing sufficient energy and variety to perpetuate change and avoid stagnation. (Consider the endless wars of immune cells vs. bacterial cells in our bodies: on the level of the cells we may see conflict, but on the level of the total organism we see balance.)
Ultimately, if our goal as counselors is to be healers — individual, communal, and beyond — we must be able to recognize the reality of the political dynamics taking place within and around our clients as well as ourselves, without fully buying into the politics itself. Rather, we must recognize that true healing is ultimately an act of love that recognizes the fundamental siblinghood of all beings and works to join what is broken and hurt within us as well as what is broken and hurt between us. Neither politics nor justice will achieve this end, no matter how convincing their positions. The only solder for healing our brokenness is love.
An Addendum:
Seeing Through the Illusion of Race
In response to a fellow student arguing in favor of a social-justice approach to counseling and the importance of self-advocacy.
Hello C., thank you for your response.
I agree with you that self-advocacy is a healthy and necessary part of individual and communal life. Asserting our perspective and advocating for our needs are crucial for individual wellbeing as well as social wellbeing.
Too often, politics is not talked about because it is one of our society's biggest taboos. We are uncomfortable to discuss the workings of power dynamics because, if we did so, it would illuminate the artificiality of those power dynamics and ultimately dissolve them. Staying silent is to the advantage of those who benefit from the established power dynamics — this is true within a couple, a family, a group of friends, or a whole nation.
However, I believe there is also a way in which we can speak "past" politics without getting trapped "in" politics, and which may lead to transformative healing more effectively and holistically than conventional political approaches. This would first involve a recognition of the existing power and resource inequalities that exist and affect all our lives. But it would then go on to recognize that — on a spiritual level — these inequalities are based upon illusions. From the perspective of Love, there is no different between the value of one child and another. There is no difference between true brothers and true sisters. And even more broadly between elders and youth — who are simply the same human beings at different stages of the cycle of life. Or between "rich" and "poor," who are both equal inheritors of the same world and the same gift of being alive.
This perspective does not intend to cover up the distinctions or ignore their importance, but instead to connect a person with a higher level of awareness from which to view the circumstances of our shared existence. From that higher place, it becomes easier to recognize the dynamics of power and also easier to step up and speak up. But when we speak from this higher place it is not in opposition and conflict to another person, but in a way that beckons them to awaken from their own illusions that any being or way of being is "better" or "worse" than any other.
When we bring spiritual truth — and the love it contains — into our every-day reality, we bring healing and wholeness both to the individuals we touch and also into the systems that those individuals sustain.
Comments