Our Filthy Rotten System: My Experience Sitting in "I Don't Know"

Three years ago, I picked up a book at the Boston Public Library by Catholic worker, poet and reformer Dorothy Day. Later that afternoon while reading the book on a Boston public bus, I found a sentence that made me say  "mm" outloud (somewhat to the chagrin of my seatmates). Evidently there is some argument that Day did not actually write this herself, but for the purposes of this reflection I am choosing to believe that she did.

"Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system."
To my 23-year-old brain (not that my almost-27-year-old-brain is all that different... though a neuroscientist might beg to correct me), these words resonated deeply. At the time, I was living in intentional Christian community and soaking up every ounce of spiritual social justice theory and practice that I was being introduced to. This  still very much describes some of the ways in which I think of myself, except for one key characteristic:

I'm wrestling a lot more these days. In fewer words than can fully explain why this is, I have learned to acknowledge (and on some days, appreciate; on others, begrudge) that I, too, am a mixed bag. As much as I would like to, I cannot exempt myself from my complicity is systems of oppression, nor deny the ways in which I benefit from such systems because I am a white, cisgender, straight person.
I also tend to see myself within multiple viewpoints, wanting to embrace the truths that might be present in multiple perspectives. I think that comes pretty easily to my personality. This can make it a challenge to assert my own voice, or to vocalize the nuances that I might pick up on.

In my Practicing Justice course today, I found myself connecting with this familiar feeling of discomfort, of being torn, between these two places that both have pieces of truth in them. On the one hand, I hear my professor advocating for a creating systemic change that works from inside "the system," from within institutions of power and authority. And I don't necessarily think he is wrong, in the sense that folks from across disciplines and lines of work must work together towards collective liberation (if that is indeed what we are about). On the other hand, I hear the voices of my friends and classmates and mentors (and my own internal conviction) that no, this system cannot ever work. Borrowing a phrase I've often heard at protests, "Another world is possible." 

The system doesn't work. Its very existence as a capitalist, patriarchal agenda was and is dependent on the exploitation and enslavement of Black and Brown bodies and the Earth, regardless of any intention behind such activity.

And yet, as I alluded to above, my tendency to embrace multiple perspectives leaves me with, "So what now? What am I to think? What am I to do? Can I sit it both? Is it ok to just say, "I don't know?" Ultimately, I think the system I and others speak of must be dismantled; my faith and the theological resources I hold as authoritative deem it worthy of dismantling. And yet, how can I also humanize the reality that we all swim in this system? I am part of ordination process in a tradition that I think both possessive elements of justice and liberation, and yet that I can't deny tires and concerns me with its institutional baggage. I attend a university rich in research and opportunity, and yet one that perpetuates the marginalization and erasure of people of color on campus and whose response to climate change and fossil fuel divestment is less than prophetic. Is it possible to promote institutional change in the muck and messiness of the System-swimming institutions themselves? Can we say the same for our political parties? Is this two-party system, this 2016 reality of choosing "the lesser of two evils" really working--and yet can abandoning it altogether to embrace a new system accomplish the end goal of justice?

Obviously, I am full of questions. In this moment, I am choosing to say, "I don't know,' and to embrace it.