“What we need is nothing less than a transformation of consciousness. That transformation threatens historic -- almost mythic -- concepts, but it promises liberation for us all.”
Our Quote of the Week pushes us to explore new and creative ways of seeing reality, so that we may challenge the status quo and act to shape a more free and just world for all of us.
Sargent Shriver spoke these words during his Address at the Women’s Leadership Conference Luncheon. The year was 1975, and he was campaigning to be the Democratic presidential candidate at the time.
Shriver’s focus in the speech is on equity between women and men. He says:
"[T]he women’s movement must be America’s movement, the changes you seek are changes needed by us all. They must become the new agenda for America. Present policies and non-policies hurt men and women alike, starting from such repressive measures as [...] faith in non-government -- non-government for the oil companies, the plutonium breeders, the wheat exporters, the food processors, and the defense industry.”
He goes on:
“There really is no such thing as a ‘women’s issue’ that isn’t also a ‘men’s issue’. [...] Real equality would be as liberating for men as for women -- and don’t I know that. Men are imprisoned by the very stereotypes that oppress women. The economic rat race and the macho model are the other side of the male dominance coin. What’s involved in this struggle is no less than the most profound of all questions -- what does it mean to be a human being? That’s why I intend to discuss these issues not just with women but everywhere. That’s why equal pay for equal work, and aggressive enforcement of rules against discrimination, are everyone’s issues. And that’s why I suggested this Thursday, not to a women’s group, but to a mostly male group of union leaders, that the long-standing and total exclusion of women from our highest financial institutions, from the Federal Reserve Board on down, might have something to do with our anti-human economic policies -- and with the feeble Fed regulations supposedly intended to broaden the availability of credit to women.”
Shriver is bringing up issues that go to the very heart of creating a more diverse, inclusive, prosperous, stable, and healthy environment for all of us. And the appeal he makes in the Quote of the Week underlines that to bring about any significant and sustained progress to create such a world, we must transform how we think. We need to be more open than constrained, more resourceful than complacent, more focused on solutions than on problems. Sargent Shriver embodied this openness and a capacity for embracing change, and as a result, he proved to be a powerful changemaker of his generation.
Shriver’s words are a muscular call to transformation in a way that challenges the status quo, allowing new possibilities for collaboration and empowerment to be born. Day to day, this can mean a variety of things, from joining a community group who is working on issues you care about, to engaging with local political leaders to hold them accountable, to volunteering with a program that benefits your neighborhood, to simply getting to know neighbors you have not yet met.
Today and every day, may we find new ways to engage in the critical work of seeking liberation for us all.
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