The Answer Is Surrender

White supremacy is ubiquitous in the US. It is part of the medium that nurtured the growth of this country. It has woven its way into every public institution, and into our very minds. And it is a symptom of a deeper problem.

White supremacy is a symptom of the same deeper problem that gives rise to misogyny, the oppression of the LGBTQ community, rejection of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, disdain toward people of indigenous heritage, and destruction of our ecosystem. The deeper problem is the basic human inclination toward dominance. For various reasons, we seek to dominate those around us. We seek control over our surroundings.

This inclination to dominate has been called ‘egoism’, because it springs from the experience that we are isolated from our surroundings and engaged in a fight to the death. Of course we know that we are not isolated from our surroundings. We are interdependent on networks of connections with humans, animals, plants, microorganisms, oceans, weather systems, and stars. We cannot survive for more than a few minutes without breathing in nourishment from our environment. But the lingering Newtonian idea of the world as composed of discreet, individual, independent entities has fueled our social ideas about individualism and self-reliance.

Add to the Newtonian idea of separateness the Darwinian concept of ‘survival of the fittest’, and we have a society built on competition and the illusion of a meritocracy. We pretend to ourselves and each other that those who have access to more power and resources deserve it because they fought the hardest. They won. It’s like the slaveholder sitting on his porch sipping lemonade and complaining about his lazy slaves wanting freedom that they aren’t hardy enough to handle.

In a world where we are isolated and engaged in a fight to the death with our surroundings, the obvious response is to seek domination and control. But this world is an illusion. Like race, we have thought it into existence, but it does not actually exist. The real world is a collaboration, an orchestra seeking harmony, a grand, inclusive, collective artistic endeavor. And as long as we live as if it is not, we will be in conflict with it.

Every one of our collective problems can be solved with our collective intelligence and care. When we care enough about ourselves to care about each other, we will build a generative, holistic society where love is the life force, the prana that circulates throughout the collective body. We won’t cling to mine at the expense of yours, we won’t hoard or steal.

We can fight against white supremacy, unleash our  rage and hatred toward the oppressors, dominate and subjugate them so their ideologies cannot define our society. But until we look squarely at the deeper issue of domination, we will find no victory. We will just recreate different systems of oppression and suppression.

The antidote to the inclination to dominate is surrender to the most expansive wisdom. We must surrender to each other, to the higher intelligence of the collective heart. We must surrender to the whole that we are when we stop fighting and join hands. We must surrender to the Earth itself and the higher intelligence that animates her body. We must surrender to the wisdom and living heart of the cosmos, and the heart that exceeds the manifest universe.

Surrender is embodied in humility, self-offering, generosity, compassion, and sincerity. Surrender is not something that we do once and then move on. It is a way of life that must be re-enacted each day, each hour, with each breath. Surrender is not an abdication or a collapse. It is a courageous, active occupation of our life in a way that honors the collective life that we share. In surrendering, what we lose is loneliness and fear, and what we gain is infinite strength and joy, belonging, wholeness.

One specific implication of this, is that we will need to face ourselves deeply, even more deeply than surfacing and understanding our learned relationships to racism. We will need to face our relationship to domination, the visceral human impulse to push someone else down to increase our breathing room and access to resources. The gut-level fear of loss, of vulnerability, of death that motivates our domination of our neighbors and the earth will need to be the focus of our investigation.

Another implication is connected to the way that we think about and talk about the movement to end white supremacy. If we are in a battle, fighting an enemy, even if that enemy is the abstraction of white supremacy itself, then we are engaged with domination. A battle always has a winner and a loser. If we are harnessing the power of anger and rage, then we are engaged with control and domination. Anger is a means of escaping the experience of helplessness that we will need to face and pass through in order to live surrender.

If we want to build a movement that transforms domination into equity, then we need a language and a structure that supports that vision. The ends cannot justify the means. The means will always manifest themselves in the end. To form a comprehensive movement that incorporates all of the major issues that we face today, we need a language of love, respect, and personal responsibility.

So let us today, in the midst of all that we face, commit to this movement toward surrender and love. Let us have the courage to root out all within us that opposed love and lay bare the hiding spots of self-delusion. Let us support each other in digging deeper, and use all the tools and methods that have been created throughout human history as supports and lodestars. And let us carry on until we have build a society on the foundations of truth.