A talk by Teresa Enrico


As an ally at the Young Adults’ Conference, it was inspiring to be with a group of young adults (YAs)—each of them brilliant, wonderful, and working to fight for themselves while reaching toward each other through the oppression. It was great for me personally to lead alongside Erin—to back her [support her] and assist her as she worked to heal her early struggles that are compounded by the active oppression facing her and other YAs now. Erin Huang-Schaffer is the International Liberation Reference Person for Young Adults. It was lovely to see the relationships the YAs already had and to watch them move more decisively toward each other. It made me look back at those struggles for myself and gave me clarity again about the powerful, smart human mind we have all had throughout our lives, including in our YA years. It is great to be close to, support, love, and grow with YAs while working to end YA oppression. Below is one of the talks I gave at the conference.

WANTING SOMETHING


I’d like to give you my picture of where we are as an RC Community, but also in the world at the moment. I want to talk to you as if I were already your International Reference Person (IRP). What that helps me do is remember that I want something for each of you, and I want something for us. I think it started with me wanting something for myself. 


Erin’s talk this afternoon about holding onto your hopes, dreams, and goals reminded me about when I was young. Things were hard in my family. There was not much resource in many ways. I have a big family and am one of the younger siblings. I became an auntie fairly young; I was seven or eight. I had two younger brothers, too. I was in charge of and close to a lot of younger people. 


My oldest sister was in a rough marriage. I was very close to and committed to her family, in particular to my nieces, and I took care of them a lot. They would get dropped off at our house for the weekend when their parents were having a hard time. 


There was one night when one of my nieces, who was probably about a year old at that time, was having nightmares. I was awake walking the floor with her, taking care of her because my mom had to work the next day. I knew that she was crying because there were many scary things in her young life. (Her dad was a good man, but he had been hurt by racism, classism, and lots of things.) That night I remember promising her that I would do whatever I could to make the world a different place for her, her sisters, and for my whole family. 


I wanted something. I decided then. And I wanted it for everyone.


I made my way, growing up through a bunch of hard stuff. I won’t tell you all my family’s problems. Like your family, they were good people, but they were hurt. And we were in a society that was harsh, especially toward poor people and brown people. 


I found Co-Counseling as a young adult. I latched on right away. I heard the theory, met the people, and never looked back [never reconsidered the decision to join]. I understood there was something in our theory and practice that meshed with that early decision I had made to make sure things changed. Something looked possible.


Our organization has never been perfect, but I could tell the people were good and trying hard, and that the theory was sound [rational]. And that is what it has always been and will always be. We are good people trying as hard as we can. We are moving toward as much clear thinking as we can with growing connection and caring between and among us. 


CAPITALISM AND THE CLASS SYSTEM


Growing up, I understood something about the class system and about capitalism. I watched my parents at various times working four jobs between them to make sure we had food, housing, and so on. I understood they were very good people and they were trying as hard as they could—and it was still really difficult. I knew it wasn’t their fault. Outside forces were pressing hard on us.


The way our capitalist society is set up, the vast majority of people do the vast majority of the work that keeps things running. That includes paid work but also a lot of unpaid, unacknowledged work, where lots of resources are generated—especially by women and young people. We live in a society that is based on extracting as much as possible from the environment and exploiting as many people as possible. This is the ninety-nine percent of the population we often talk about. 


The wealth that is created is taken by and given to a small number of people—the owning class, the oligarchs and billionaires. The one percent of the population. There are many names we call this group.


Our societies have been exploitative for a long time. Before capitalism, there was feudalism. Before feudalism, there was an economic system based on the enslavement of large swaths of the society. There are still harsh remnants and reminders of the distresses of feudalism and of slavery in our world. As economic systems they both became unworkable; the flaws were exposed, and at some point people could no longer tolerate the extreme exploitation.


Now our system is at a stage we call advanced capitalism. As in previous systems, there are internal contradictions that assure it cannot survive. There is a finite amount that you can extract from this earth and squeeze out of people. 


The system is driven by the patterns installed on us. They come from thousands of generations of distresses being passed down, particularly when resources were scarce and our existence was threatened. Our history has left us with deep-seated fears around survival and scarcity—distresses that are now built into our society. They are built into our relationships with each other in the form of oppression. 


There are greed and hoarding distresses that fuel the exploitation: it never feels like we have enough. There’s nothing else we can extract from the water, the plants, the animals, the soil, and the earth, but human patterns continue to try and do just that.


The system has over and over again come close to collapsing. It goes in these cycles where there is a depression or recession and the economies almost collapse. Or they do collapse in one place, but then people figure out how to prop them up just a little bit longer—trying to give us the illusion that the system is workable or could be changed to be workable.


A HARSH AND BROKEN SYSTEM


The problem isn’t us as people. The problem is that there is a broken system that is held in place by many distresses. It is a harsh, harmful system that does not work for any human on the planet. No one. It is built on exploitation and extraction, using us and crushing out of us the inherent, connected, caring people that we all are. 


Oppressions are the major ways that distresses are installed on every single one of us. Every oppression has been created to reinforce and keep this whole class and economic system in place. 


Young adults’ oppression is about training you to be a part of that system. And that cycle of almost-collapse-and-then-prop-it-up will keep going until it finally actually collapses. It is going to collapse. And they, the top one percent, will keep trying until it does.


It’s good to talk about this, to understand that this has happened before. It has been expected. In that sense, there’s nothing “wrong” happening. In nature, things actually do have to break down before something new can come up in its place. We are watching things break down.


It’s been helpful for me to think about that. What we need to do is prepare for that collapse, to think about the people around us and how best to navigate the collapse together to minimize the damage to as many of us as we can. We need to think about what we want to replace the system with. Connected, flexible human minds will be important.


The system cannot be tweaked or fixed. We actually do want it to fall down. Except that it’s going to take out a lot of people in the process. There have been many attempts at changing the system, and it’s good to learn about them. There are lots of places where people have actually been able to figure out something that could help bring us to the next stage of society. This will happen when humans decide as a group that we will not tolerate the exploitation anymore. I think we are fast approaching that moment. I heard Tim Jackins say recently that he thinks the system may collapse in his lifetime. 


THE ILLUSION OF COMFORT, 
EASE, AND SECURITY


One of the illusions that capitalism feeds us is that we should all be able to expect or hope for a life of comfort and ease, particularly those of us living in the West and the Global North. The promise of comfort and ease feels like security to us. 


We have a big illusion around this stuff. We have been told that somehow we should be able to continue to use the resources the way we’ve been using them and that we should raise the rest of the world up to our level of consumption. We’ve been told having these resources will give us good, secure, comfortable lives. After all, this is the best you can hope for—even as you are alone, separated, struggling, and on your own [alone].


Consider deciding to have an interesting and challenging life that may not feel comfortable. As Harvey Jackins said, “Our fears and hurt patterns may long for stasis, but our real human nature likes to swim in strong currents, harness moving forces—likes to feel challenged by fresh complexities.” 


That can be a good life, where people and connections are the main resources you have. Our only true long-term security is with each other.


We all have to work on what the lack of material comfort is going to feel like for us. Depending on what your class background is and how you were raised, you might have a different picture of what an easy life looks like. I’ve been trained in the U.S. North American system and have my frozen “needs” for comfort to discharge on, but I didn’t have an easy life when I was growing up. Losing certain material comforts might not feel so hard on me. 


THE BIG JOB AHEAD 


How do you feel about doing hard work? For a lot of poor and working-class people, we know exploitation is hard, but we also know working hard is a great thing to do, especially with other people. We know how to put in the effort, to work together to get a job done. And we have a big job ahead of us.


In Co-Counseling, facing hard distresses from your early life is part of doing hard work. The hurts were so harsh back there and there was no discharge (or not enough) available to us. Most of us wanted to get away from the hurts and stay away from them. 


So deciding to take yourself back there—to do the work of healing those raw places—takes courage. We have to learn to face what the actual situation was back there, contradict and discharge the hurt it left on us, and do what it will take to heal from it. And we have to help each other do it. 


This is good practice for facing the current challenges in the world and thinking flexibly with others to find solutions and move forward together. The biggest challenge facing humanity is distress—the effects of distress on every human’s mind. Still too many people don’t understand that and don’t know how to get rid of it. 


GROUNDWORK FOR THE TRANSFORMATION


It is inherent in us as humans to want to make things right.


I want a complete transformation of society. Many people in the world are working on this. The chance we have now to completely shift society is different from earlier moments in time. We understand the effects of oppression on us. We are beginning to understand how isolated and separated we have gotten from each other. We are getting a picture of what it’s going to take for us to come back together. We are developing as leaders.


It seems like we’re not ready to push for the transformation yet because there’s a whole bunch of work we’ve got to do to get people working together. To get people to understand and face what we’ve been up against. Showing people that humans can work together. That we can change the society we live in, changing both ourselves and our relationships with each other. This will require changing the institutions, the infrastructure that our society is built on. 


But we don’t have to wait until three billion people are Co-Counselors, because not everyone needs to have a session every week to understand the value of what we’re saying. Of course, the more of us there are, the faster and better things will go. Tim estimates that there are probably half a million people around the world at this point who are doing some form of RC. We’re off to a good start. 


You can notice how things have shifted here in the last couple of days at this workshop. We are closer, more connected, having fun while we change basic things about our picture of ourselves, the people around us, and how we relate to one another.


We get to figure out how to do this in every group we’re in—every family gathering, friends’ outing, workplace, meeting of activists, and so on. How to be yourself openly everywhere you go. 


A PERMANENT REVOLUTION


Revolutions and other attempts at changing things have happened, and there is a lot to learn from those efforts. But what has also generally happened is that, because of undischarged distress, systems have reverted to something involving an owning class and exploited classes.


What I think we have a chance to do this time is head for a permanent revolution—a chance to create a society that’s good for everyone, including all living things. That revolution is going to involve big shifts in our relationships with each other, deepening the caring, closeness, and connection that we know is part of being human. These will have to be built into any structure we create as a society. 


A lot of organizations are doing a lot of good things. And because of how zestful, intelligent, and dynamic you are, a lot of people and organizations will want you. Maybe that’s already the case. It’s great for you to be involved in other organizations. See where it is that you would like to get closer to people. It’s challenging to figure out how to do things—how to have a family or be part of a family, have friends, and do the work you want to do. You get to choose where you are going to put your energy and attention.


The RC Community is a place for you to try things out—to try and build relationships and Communities and to try out the kind of leadership that makes sense for you. As we get a chance to discharge and clear things out [reduce distress] for ourselves, we start thinking better about how to make change in the world around us. 


Up until now, oppressions have defined for us what our relationships and connections can look like. They have left us very limited, based on misinformation and hurt. But we know that as humans we have so much more in common than we have differences. We get to challenge the oppressions and figure out what we want our world to look like and how to be with each other. 


TO BE YOURSELF


We’ve learned a lot in the last seventy years about what is possible for us as humans. We can imagine people being thought about from the time of conception to the time of death—no matter what age they are, no matter where they were born, no matter what language they speak, no matter the color of their skin.


What I want is for you to get to be yourself as completely as you can, and to show yourself in whatever ways you can with whomever you choose. Are you willing to face anything and everything necessary to make that happen? 


We often talk about living a big life. In my mind, that big life is about living as far outside of your chronic material [distress] as you can figure out. Outside of the limitations imposed on you that took away your discharge, and where you weren’t seen as a fully powerful, zestful human. 


This is your future IRP talking now. I invite you to think about all this for yourself, discharge about it, and consider joining me and a host of others. Consider that there could be no better life than deciding to get all of your mind and humanness back for yourself and assisting other people to do the same, while making what we want in the world happen. 


We have this oppressive system. It’s falling down. It’s collapsing. This has been expected. It is harsh. It is hard. It is restimulating for everyone—and powerful, zestful you gets to decide what you want for yourself.


I can guarantee you that we’re going to live challenging, exciting lives together.