What postmodern revolution looks like

What does it take to make lasting, fundamental change?  Joining nonprofit organizations that have been around so long they’ve become part of the establishment?

As I work with our two Copiosis Demonstration Projects, I get to see first-hand how challenging being a postmodern revolutionary can be.  It’s not glamorous.  It is inspiring sometimes, and often it’s stepping in areas you’d rather not go.  The postmodern revolution, which is going to take humanity into the future, requires courageous acts in the face of overwhelming psychic and emotional pressure to not act.

By psychic and emotional pressure I mean the inertia of learned, habitual behavior that maintains everyday life.  It’s pressure based in fear-reality, which says if you don’t spend every moment being productive, you can’t make your rent or mortgage or put food on the table.  It’s the pressure that has us neglect activities that enrich and inspire us, where we interact heart-to-heart with people we don’t even know well.   The word “community” comes to mind.

I’m not talking about interactions between family members or friends.  I’m talking about forming bonds with people you live near, your acquaintances, strangers in your neighborhood.  Here is where the postmodern revolution is waged—not on the streets in protest, not online, and certainly not in the nonprofit industrial complex.

Here’s what the postmodern revolution looks like—organizing as a group to clean someone’s bathroom or floor or kitchen, sharing food you prepare at home, offering something that is a stretch for you and that will benefit another, sharing something you have in abundance, helping to make your neighbors more resilient, working as a group committed to take steps that rebuild community in ways that lead to a new paradigm.

The postmodern revolution means challenging yourself to do that thing you don’t do because you’re too busy, have to work, are tired, or would rather veg out watching Master of None.   The postmodern revolution relies on people moving into our DIScomfort zones if we really want to change the world.  Change is uncomfortable at first.

I’m inspired by people in both Kenton and Chico committing courageous acts such as these.  They are the leading edge of the revolution.  The revolution that will ultimately change the face of the planet.