Cannabilizing your own

At the recent Progressive Conference I witnessed a phenomenon I thought I'd left behind in my early days of young and clumsy activism: preaching to the converted. I literally couldn't walk across the room without being stopped half a dozen times for donations, petitions, or leaflets. They followed me through the food line, accosted me whilst waiting for session doors to open. One woman approached me no less than five times, usually while I was already seated somewhere, asking me for a donation.

All worthy causes, yes. But sometimes we seem to get a little too carried away. At one point, someone passed around last-minute copies of a petition for MoveOn.org itself, one of the organizers of the event. Someone was asking MoveOn to take a stronger stance on a particular issue. I passed. My first thought was, "Why didn't they just ASK MoveOn? It's not like they're hard to talk to." My second thought: why waste this passion fine-tuning a group who's already doing good work when we have so many bigger targets out there?

When the woman next to me noticed that I wasn't "Nancy", she confronted me on the issue, challenging my lack of interest. Fortunately, the speaker took the podium shortly after, so I didn't have to burn mental energy on a pointless debate.

The whole issue brought to mind all the myopic groups with which I've identified. Vegans bash ova-lacto vegetarians for eating animal by-products. Macrobiotics castigate vegans for eating non-regional food, or cooked food, or non-cooked food, or whatever that particular macrobiotic happens to believe is right. And I would think to myself, why aren't you all talking to the steak-eaters?

It brought to mind a gay activist I once knew in Dallas who spent 100% of his volunteer time attacking OTHER gay leaders, calling them on perceived hypocrisy or for not being radical enough or active enough. He had such intense passion, albeit driven by rage, that I mourned its misdirection. He spent so much time attacking his own that he ignored anti-gay legislation, attempts to quarantine AIDS patients, and other heinous attempts to criminalize the entire community. Even worse, his relentless attacks distracted true leaders who were working to unite ALL people, gay, straight, and everything in between.

It brought to mind churches I went to as a young, wide-eyed Protestant. The Baptists gossiped about the Methodists. The Presbyterians clucked at the Lutherans. And everyone attempted to convert one another. I remember reading about Southern Baptists taking a road trip to Utah to go door-to-door converting Mormons. Being a spiritualist, I thought "aren't they splitting hairs"?

I constantly ask myself, "What's the best use of my energy?" I have 24 hours a day, just like everyone else. Where is it most effectively spent? Where can I make the biggest impact using the talents I have?

One thing I know for sure - I'll make far less impact discussing peace with an anti-war activist, even if we disagree on minor details, than I will discussing peace with my war-hungry family in Texas. If it is even possible to convert someone through debate, which seems highly unlikely, then why waste that energy on fine-tuning? I can imagine the rate of return on a graph - large gains with someone on the opposite extreme, ever-smaller gains as those opinions approach my own.

Life's too short to cannabilize my own. They're not as tasty, anyway.