Back in the day when I used to say, “I’m an activist,” there were always a number of people who interpreted that to mean: confrontational. A lot of people would expect me to be really harsh towards people who don’t share my beliefs. They would react with surprise when I wasn’t spoiling for a fight, but was more interested in creating understanding.
I get it, there are a lot of people calling themselves activists when their behavior is really just pouncing on people they disagree with. Especially online. But the ones who actually do the work have a catchphrase: “Hard on systems, soft on people.”
This means that when you are talking to a regular joe, you do what you can to offer grace. You save your rage for the systems that inform us. We’re each products of our environment and conditioning, and nothing can change without recognizing that. If we are more interested in creating change than winning an argument, then our energy is better spent offering our fellow humans whatever compassion we have to offer, and fighting like hell to address the systems making the mess we’re all trying to get by in.
When people talk about systems in this way, it refers to any group that determines “How Things Are Done.” A system is any group that behaves as a unit by working towards a common goal and living by group rules. The government is a system. Education is a system. Religion is a system. Your Neighborhood is a system. Your Family is a system. Your Economy is a system. Corporations are systems. Medicine is a system. Food Production is a system. Every institution you participate in is a system.
Our society, particularly American society, loves to teach us that we should each take individual responsibility for the conditions of our lives. People are freaking out about modest student loan forgiveness and arguing that they shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s financial “mistakes.” We don’t have universal medical care in America because we have a cultural myth that sickness and disability is a moral failure that society shouldn’t be responsible for. The “virtuous” solution offered to every struggle we face is another product to buy and more work to do. Always an individual solution to a collective problem, very rarely an evaluation of the system that brought the individual to this point.
I see a lot of health and wellness people talking about setting habits as if the reason we’re not caring for ourselves is a lack of discipline, and not an entire society built to exploit our bodies. As if drinking water and taking a nap will make up for an entire media system that works to infect us with shame, an entire economy built on making us convinced our freedom lies in making more money for people who are already rich, an entire society that believes some bodies deserve to be exploited for the benefit of other bodies. They talk about “keeping your word to yourself” as if the reason you don’t wake up and hit the gym is because you’re untrustworthy, and not that you’re overworked and denied the medical care you need.
The truth is that most of the factors that influence our health are out of our control. They’re systemic. It’s a justice system that doesn’t care about violence towards women, a medical system that is biased against marginalized groups, a governmental system that doesn’t prevent climate catastrophe, or polluted air, water, and foodways.
“Social Determinants of Health” is what researchers call all the circumstances people live in that can influence their health outcomes. The neighborhood they live in, their economic stability, the social support they might have, what kind of education they had access to. What kind of danger they face at their job. Whether there was fresh food at the grocery store – if there even was a grocery store – and if they had to cook it in contaminated water.
Researchers debate how to define and describe Social Determinants of Health, but the one thing that is crystal clear about them is that individual responsibility is a drop in the bucket when it comes to ensuring public health. One person’s willpower can’t make parks and walkable cities spring up from the ground. No amount of Booty Boot Camp workouts will compensate for living in a house with toxic mold. A positive attitude cannot absolve abuse.
Over and over again, in ways large and small, in commercials and in bedtime stories and in prevalent cultural attitudes, we are taught that our health and quality of life is up to us alone, so any dissatisfaction or disability we have must be in our selves. But that is a lie. It is a lie at our expense, in order to protect How Things Are Done.
Because the thing is: Systems protect themselves. Without mindful intervention, the goal of a system isn’t to help the people it serves, it’s to keep existing. Universities are more concerned with their endowments than the quality of life they provide their students and staff. The medical system is more concerned with its profits than the care it provides. Individuals WITHIN the medical system care a great deal and are getting chewed up and spit out for their trouble. But individuals alone don’t have the power to change the system.
What changes the system is collective action. It is when enough people realize their commonalities and join together to move the system in a new direction. Or refuse to participate in it. Or demand accountability. Or demolish that system and create a new one in its place. Individuals within a system are limited in what they can do, but when individuals join together, it creates a new system, united in common purpose, that IS powerful enough to make change.
Which is why it is so important to be “Hard on systems, soft on people.” If we offer grace and compassion to each other, stumbling along in the dark on this journey, we create networks. If we refuse to allow divisions we keep our focus on making change where it matters. I have the conversations to bring people along, but I save my anger for the system that created the problem.
And all of this is that much more true when directed at ourselves. We have been taught to hate our bodies because it makes us deny our own humanity. If we hate our bodies we hate our needs, and then the systems that govern our lives can shirk all responsibility for meeting them. If we spend our days with a toxic sludge of self hate narrating our efforts, we will never stand up to be treated with the dignity we deserve.
You don’t have to love your body to start making a difference, but you will make a difference for your body if you start treating yourself with some softness.