The Many Dangers of Going Against the Culture of "The Group"

 This is a 2013 photo of the real Frank Serpico. He was 77 at the time

I'm pretty sure I'd never seen the movie Serpico until last evening.

Earlier in the week, when I was at the trusty Kitsap Regional Library, here in Bremerton, Washington, I decided I wanted to check out some DVD’s to view later at home. John and I don’t own a television. So watching movies and documentaries and such on my laptop is one of the few things John and I can do together at home that’s also something we can both enjoy. In addition to Serpico, I also checked out the final season of 30 Rock, Spike Lee’s, School Daze, and a documentary about the singer Sting, filmed close to the region he spent his formative years in The UK. Last night I finally got around to watching Serpico. Diversity baby!

This movie came out in 1973. I was thirteen years old back then. I remember hearing about this movie. However, I had no clear idea what it was about. I had a vague sense that it had something to do with life as a police officer. I also knew it was based on a true story and on the life of the real Frank Serpico. That was about it. I was completely clueless about the plot of the movie other than these two facts.

Serpico is an Italian American former NYPD police officer. He worked in New York City in the 1960s through the early 1970s. His testimony before the legendary Knapp Commission, changed New York police culture forever.

Serpico began his police life as a probationary patrolman. However, he always had aspirations aimed at becoming a detective. All through his childhood, the only thing he really wanted to be was a police officer. There was never anything else he wanted to be. So once he finally joined “the force” he believed he was well on his way to realizing his most enduring dreams. In reality, the biggest nightmare of his life was about to begin and his life was soon going to be completely transformed forever. You know what they say, “we make plans and God laughs.” God must’ve had a series of big ole belly laughs where the perils of Frank Serpico was concerned when it came to him being a member of the NYPD.

Without giving away too much of the plot for those who may decide to view this film sometime in the future, all I’ll say here is that Frank Serpico was the consummate “good cop” brimming to the top with integrity, human dignity, and a sense of duty and pride regarding the wearing of the badge. He viewed the community members (citizens) who were on his beat, as people, regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, etc. He believed his job was to serve and protect them. He was serious about that. He understood that there were “bad guys” in the community. He was dedicated to catching these bad guys and bringing them to justice. However, he was also dedicated to treating them with humanity and common decency.

The problem is, Frank Serpico unwittingly signed onto a job and onto a department and into a police culture that was rife with corruption—I mean big time, over-the-top, all kinds of ways conceivable corruption—replete with high ranking officers who were taking bribes, stealing evidence, framing people, officers who were outright, no holds barred racists and on and on. And this culture of corruption seemingly completely saturated the entire department.

And so, as a result, very quickly, Frank Serpico was tagged by his fellow officers as someone who was not to be trusted. He was seen as a liability. Once he began to talk about how disturbed he was about the corruption he witnessed, he was essentially told to go along to get along or else. Frank Serpico chose the, or else without, really fully comprehending just how extreme nor how serious his co-workers took that choice of “or else” to be.

Human history is cluttered with all kinds of individuals from every life domain imaginable who have tried to “do the right thing” in all kinds of situations and all kinds of environments only to be completely vilified for it or worse. Many have lost their lives in the process.

When I was twenty years old and in the catholic seminary, I was aware that a significant number of my fellow seminarians were gay. I also saw, very clearly, that we were in an environment that was clearly not supportive of this. As a result, there was a lot of unnecessary suffering experienced by many of the gay and questioning seminarians. So I started a semi-secretive support and gay affirming group for us, very similar to Dignity in the Roman Catholic Church and Integrity in the Episcopal Church, as a form of self-ministry to any gay seminarian that was interested in participating. I knew it was extremely risky and could even be viewed as completely scandalous. This was 1980. Everyone who joined knew it was risky and potentially scandalous as well. At the same time, it was overwhelmingly healing for all of us and very exciting for us too.

Then, one Friday evening—I will never forget it. It’s as if it happened just last week—a priest friend of mine who was a priest in the same order that ran the seminary--drove all the way to the seminary from the provincial headquarters (200 miles away), to come speak with me. He hadn’t told me in advance that he was coming. He simply arrived, found me, and in a very (uncharacteristically) serious voice said he needed to speak with me.

Long story short, he told me that high ranking “officials” in the order had become aware of my group, were drafting, even as we spoke, a plan to kick me out the seminary, and he told me that the only way this could possibly be avoided was by my giving him my absolute assurances, right then and there, that I would immediately disband the group. He then went on to tell me that this group of officials from the order had also obtained the names of every single other seminarian that was affiliated with the group—and he then proceeded (to my horror) to recite each of their names to me one by one—and he told me that proposals for the dismissal of each of these men were also being drawn up but that I would however, be listed as the “ringleader.” He then verbalized his crowning announcement. He told me I would be seen as being responsible for the ending of all of these young men's religious vocations and that I would have to hold that in my heart and conscious for the rest of my days. Because of this last revelation, I gave him my assurances that I would immediately disband the group, which I did later that evening with great personal inner conflict and copious amounts of tears among all of us as we met for the last time in order for me to give them “the news.” This priest friend then returned to the provincial headquarters the next morning. I never heard anything more about it. We remained friends. I eventually went on to postulancy and novitiate for the Order.

Sometimes you don’t even have to do anything against the powers that be and the status quo. You just have to express an opinion that is in direct opposition to that which the majority of your group believes or holds and that’s enough to get one of the feces list.

In 1995, after the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, in the murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, I was generous with my stated opinion that O.J. was guilty. I obviously stated that this was my opinion. I wasn't at the scene of the crime, nor were any of the people I shared my opinion with. I stated all the reasons why I held this opinion and left it at that. I was fine with people disagreeing with me and said so. I however, got enormous, absolutely enormous and downright vicious blow-back from various members of the local black community in the city that I was then living in. It was unbelievable. And then I got a death threat. It came through the mail with no return address. It was composed of various letters and words cut out of newspapers and magazines glued to a plain white piece of typing paper (just like in the movies). I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. And then I got a second and a third one—all done in the exact same way. I was like, “you’ve got to be kidding me.” I never reported these to the police even though I took them seriously. And I do often wonder, now twenty years later, just how many of those folks who virulently disagreed with me back in 1995, still do today.

I’ve been in the role of being the insider who criticizes or doesn’t go along with something or other that is considered sacred in the group, a number of times in my life. I know the drill exceedingly well at this point in the game. First, people try very hard to convince you that you’re wrong or bad, that you just need to “understand” things better or understand the culture of the group better. When this fails there tends to come some form of intimidation program of some sort, put into motion. This usually has several levels or degrees of intensity. Often this will include lobbing some regular types of insults at you. A common insult that we people who choose not to go along just to get along is that we are accused of believing we are somehow “better” than everyone else. People will continue to come up with endless ways of trying to discredit you by pulling this trope out of their hat. I have been accused of this. I have seen a whole lot of other people who have chosen not to go along just to get along get accused of this. It especially happens when ones choice of not going along just to get along can in any way be seen as coming from having a greater sense of personal integrity or including brutal honesty about the group’s activities and culture.

Ostracizing becomes one of the final ploys. Many people have discovered from time immemorial that ostracizing people in the group, in these types of situations, is a very powerful and extremely effective approach to use. Any social psychologist worth his or her salt will tell you that being ostracized from the group is one of the most effective weapons anyone can use against someone in the group who is acting in a way that threatens the cohesiveness of the group. This is true whether that threat is a real one that threatens to destroy something that is truly beautiful and contributing positively to the world, or if it comes from a member of the group deciding to not be as corrupt, or as selfish, or as immoral as the group culture permits or even strongly promotes. This is what happened to Frank Serpico. We humans simply do not like to be ostracized from the group. In this sense we very much are pack animals. We want to be part of the pack. We like that sense of belonging. We crave it even. Ostracizing is very effective.

In the end Frank Serpico left the police department and also left the United States of America because he absolutely knew he couldn't have any peace as long as he stayed affiliated with the NYPD or even if he stayed in this country—even with it being as huge as it is. At least he got out alive (he eventually returned to the USA and still lives in the US as far as I know). That’s more than many can say who have bucked the culture of the group. Many men and women throughout history who have bucked the group’s outrageous cultures of evil, or corruption, or craziness in one form or another have lost their lives because of it. And the group, for its part, often, simply goes on doing what it always has done.

My Initial Sacred Acticvist Manifesto

Click on the above icon to view all the symbols better.

The overwhelming majority, in my observation, of all of the world’s both conservative and progressive social justice activism is excruciatingly focused on a fundamentally dualistic approach to that activism. And let me be quick to add that unlike many people coming from various spiritual understandings of the world, I do not automatically view dualism as something to be demonized, as something “bad.” To the contrary, I believe dualism is an inescapable and important aspect of human existence. However, that being said, I am also aware of distinct places where it can become problematic and limiting depending on what ones goals are in a particular life domain or area. So another way of presenting my ideas around this is to assert that most of the words activists, regardless of ideological stance, are overwhelmingly focused on “the other” and further, this activism is primarily focused on what the other must or needs to do in order to make the world better. In other words, activism tends to be highly concerned with action. And most activism seems to be concerned with what actions the other needs to engage in or achieve in order for the world to be made better. I am going to call this the seemingly ultimate goal of what I am going to refer to as secular activism.

 

          Also, in my unique way of constructing my ideas about all of this, I am also going to say that even if an expression of activism is seemingly or professed as being grounded in a religious or spiritual tradition or awareness, yet is still heavily focused on the other, however the other may be defined, for my purposes here, I am still going to define that essentially as an expression of secular activism. So for me, and this may not be true for other sacred activists, the conceptual stance that distinguishes a sacred activist from what I am calling here a secular activist, is what I call the locus of principal focus. In other words, I view the principal locus of focus for a secular activist to be the other and I view the principal locus of focus for a sacred activist to be the self. So for me the ultimate work of the sacred activist is self-reflection and self-transformation.

This, for me, is reasonable for many reasons. However, the baseline reason this is reasonable for me is my understanding that the lion’s share of the spiritual journey historically, as expressed through all the wisdom traditions I have some degree of intimacy with and also in a contemporary context as well, is overwhelmingly concerned with one’s inner journey and process. And I view sacred activism as essentially being a spiritually based form of activism. 

However, because I cut my activism teeth on the teachings of Liberation theology (as expressed in the Roman Catholic tradition) and engaged Buddhism (as expressed in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s version of Zen and mindfulness training) and for various other reasons as well, I also have the understanding that one’s inner journey must then somehow be expressed through one’s engagement in the world in some concrete and meaningful ways. So the inner flows into the outer. However, it is still the inner journey that is running the show in terms of the inspiration for and the fruits of what might be seen as one’s outer activism work.

Now let me return to the fascination with the other that appears to underpin much of secular activism and to walk us through some of my current thinking about all of this just a little bit further. First I want to say a little more about who the other might be conceived as being. 

First, the other might be viewed as obviously being another person or a certain set or group of people. It is these people who are seen as being a major part of the problem. So, for example, in some conservative activism circles, the focus on the other might be expressed as a focus on the other in the form of LGBTQI people and the belief that such people are intrinsically problematic with regard to what is interfering with making the world a better place, according to the way the conservative activists who hold a critical gaze toward LGBTQI people think. In this case, either the people themselves or the behaviors of the people, depending on the virulence of the conservatism adhered to, would need to be eliminated in order to make the world a better place.   

The other can also be constructed as a system or a certain set of systems. So for example, many progressive social justice activists tend to be very focused on what are viewed by them as various systems of oppression—white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, cultural appropriation, racism, heteronormativity, the binary system of gender identity and expression, etc. And so with this type of conceptualization, it is often “the system” that needs to be subdued, changed, or eliminated in order for the world to have a real chance of becoming a better place for all of us to live in. 

The other might also be constructed as a particular way of thinking or what might be viewed as an intrinsic way of being and from this conceptualization flows the idea that this way of thinking or this intrinsic way of being is what is problematic. So, for example, some progressive social justice activists believe there is a real, scientifically provable thing called “white fragility” and that this is somehow an intrinsic trait of white people, in general (Otherwise if it wasn’t thought of as an intrinsic “whiteness” trait, it wouldn’t be called white fragility. It would be called something like intermittent or randomly occurring white fragility). And so it follows, for people who believe in this, that this way of being is what somehow needs to be owned, admitted to, addressed, shifted, transformed, and possibly completely eliminated in order for the world to become a better place for all of us, at least in some small measure.

There are many other constructions of the other as well, within the conceptualization of both conservative and progressive social justice activism. However, the ones I have listed give us a fairly good indication of the general way this form of thinking goes and is construed.

With each of these constructions it is the other, in some concrete shape or form that needs to be addressed somehow, in order for the world to begin the process of healing itself, making itself whole again or for the first time, and becoming a place that is better for us all. 

The one thing that screams out to me in all of these conceptualizations is that “the self” is rather conspicuously ignored. In other words, the gaze is always an outer gaze. These conceptualizations do not seem to have the capability of including a real inner gaze. There is always the seeming exercise of opening up one’s eyes up and immediately having one’s view fixated outward in order to identify both what is wrong with the world and who or what needs to be corrected in order for it to be made whole again or for it to be made better. 

It occurs to me that this is also an extraordinarily convenient way to conceptualize things. How wonderful it is for the one doing the gazing outward if everyone that needs to address or change something in order to make the world a better place is somehow always someone other than oneself. How wonderful if everything that needs to be changed to make the world a better place resides completely or mostly in someone else other than oneself. 

I am also aware, because I was not born yesterday, that almost everyone who holds these views and has them underpinning their activism work also probably has many readymade rebuttals to this where they will quickly try to convince both themselves and us that they really do in fact understand that they, obviously, eminently understand that they too need to work on themselves. However, if one were to read a transcript of their recorded words and rhetoric—either through their own writing, recorded lectures, recorded other public appearances, social media posts, YouTube videos and such—one would likely see that any real evidence of this understanding in them was probably conspicuously missing, in most cases. 

So for me, it is the inner gaze, the openness and absolute thirst for inner reflection, confrontation, work, analysis, and transformation that for me is that which distinguishes the sacred activist from what I understand as the secular activist. And so understanding my motivation for why I may have a tendency to want to place my principal attention on the other needs to be addressed and looked at. Obtaining the deepest understanding possible what wholly and deeply lies underneath my anger, rage, need to be right all the time, need to make people who disagree with me bad or wrong all the time, understanding why if someone disagrees with me I feel triggered, why I need to always understand their disagreement through the lens of something being somehow wrong with them—needing to believe that there is always some limitation that has to be housed in them instead of being fearlessly and fiercely open to discovering if there is indeed something within myself that needs to be honed in on, looked at, confronted, admitted to. And simultaneously while all this inner reflection is taking place I also have the courage and the hutzpah—I love that word--anyway, I have the hutzpah to also encourage this same inner reflection to be taken up by my fellow secular activists.

Further, beyond my simply reflecting on my own motivation, I’m also dedicated to looking deeply into how I am when I am engaged in my activism work. How do I engage the Brahmaviharas, for example? Am I always looking for new ways to construe or tweak them that allows me to justify my anger, or my experienced pain, or my experienced trauma, or my lashing out at those I consider to be “the problem?”

How do I apply or not apply the golden rule in my activism life? Do I only apply it to those whom I like or those I see myself as being the most strongly in alignment with? Why am I always drawn to what might be viewed as revolutionary or “radical” expressions of activism? Is it because it gives me an excuse to be unmindful, overly aggressive, bullying, mean, snarky, impatient, belittling, harsh, cold, unfeeling, insensitive, rude, unkind, a jerk? 

How much does my unacknowledged, disowned, unresolved, unhealed, or projected onto others pain, hurt, trauma, anger, rage, grief, and feelings of loss play a role in my activism work? Why does it play whatever role it does play? Should it? Does it have to? Do I need to be in therapy around some of this stuff? Can I go into therapy around some of this stuff and simply admit and gently and lovingly and consciously surrender to the possibility that I am broken in some important ways without having a need to simultaneously blame my potential brokenness on my family of origin, on the fact that I was sexually assaulted or raped, on “the man,” on the fact that I am a gay black man and I am sometimes scared shitless that I am going to be stopped one day by a law enforcement officer and that my body is going to end up in the county morgue as a result of our encounter? Do I have to project that fear onto all people in law enforcement? 

Can I simply want to be healed for the sake of wanting to be healed—for the reality that I want the world to be healed without always making my decision to be healed and my desire for the world to be healed be a passive aggressive action and exercise against someone, some group of people, some thing, some generational oppression, the fact that my great, great, grandparents were slaves, some fucked up system that exists on the planet, some potentially evil and thoughtless God, something, something, something, anything that is wrong? Can’t I see and engage my desire to heal both myself and the world as being motivated by something that is right yes right with the world and go with that for a change? 

Oh my Jesus, lead me, guide me. Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum. Et exultávit spíritus meus: in Deo salutári meo. (My soul magnifies the Lord. And my spirit rejoices in God my savior). Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru. Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. Hail, hail Lion of Judah! How wonderful You are! Hail, hail Lion of Judah! How powerful You are! Gate, Gate, Pāragate, Pārasaṃgate Bodhi Svāhā (Hallelujah!).

This, for me, is the work of the sacred activist. 

And so it is! Soli Deo Gloria, (To God Alone the Glory.)