One person who has influenced my thinking and living across the board is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber (1878-1965), whose work was cited by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail (which was itself first published and widely distributed by the American Friends Service Committee).
I first came across Buber in an intro philosophy class at Marshall University, although that was only from secondary sources. The basic idea of his most famous book, I and Thou, is that the world is twofold to people depending on whether we relate to other beings in an I/Thou or I/it mode. The latter is instrumental and transactional, while the former involves real meeting and dialogue.
(He also acknowledged that in real life you can't stay in I/thou mode all the time with everybody you meet, say at a drive through window or toll both or in a serious struggle...but you could remember it.)
I started thinking more and more about Buber in my first year of working for AFSC on economic justice issues in WV. It struck me at the time--and still--that the line between organizers and exploiters could be very thin and often crossed in that both try to get other people to do what they want them to.
At one point, when I was driving down to Logan County in the midst of the Pittston Coal Strike (1989-1990), I had an intense experience that was almost visual. An image of a crossroads passed through my mind, probably when I was crossing a railroad track on Route 10.
The takeaway was that there were two roads to choose from. In one, people were seen as ends in themselves. In the other, they were things to be manipulated and one had to decide which way to go. I had the sense that the choice was fundamental, but one was free to change directions at any time.
Eventually, I went to the source and read I and Thou. It took three readings and a commentary by Maurice Friedman for much of it to sink in, but it felt like a shock of recognition, as in yeah, this is what I've been clumsily trying to realize.
I read further and came across another very practical idea that stuck with me in an essay called "Education" that I often try to apply when writing, speaking, or choosing or evaluating social action. The idea was "inclusion," which he described as "experiencing the other side."
As he put it, "Its elements are, first, a relation, of no matter what kind, between two persons, second, an event experienced by them in common, in which at least one of them actively participates, and, third, the fact that this one person, without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity, at the same time lives through the common event from the standpoint of the other."
My takeaway there is the idea that one should try to experience or anticipate how something we say or do would be experienced by others. He didn't go there in the essay, but I think it's a very important practice and even a needed strategy for people interested in social change. Too often, groups do their thing or drop their cargo without thinking through how that would land in the experience of others, including especially those whom they want to influence. Like one way radios. This could wind up alienating people rather than moving things along.
The great radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997), best known for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was also influenced by Buber. He spoke about the vast difference between issuing directives or communiques versus engaging in dialogue and relation.
I think it goes back to the crossroads.
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