Parallel Cultures

I've been reflecting lately on my other blog about how difficult it is to stand against the predominant values of our culture. An article I read recently (it's an old article, but new to me), talks about Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright, dissident and subsequently president of the Czech Republic, and the story of how he and others like him brought about the end of Communism in Eastern Europe.

So Havel and other dissidents began to ask, "How can we live the truth in a culture based on a fundamental lie, especially since the lie is in our heads? How can we begin to live into the truth? We desire so much more than just things. We want something to hope in, a reason to believe."
So in his country, as in other iron-curtain countries, people began to set up what he called "parallel cultures." They had underground study groups. They studied Plato. They had drama. They had music groups. They wrote novels and poetry, and published them underground. He called this a "parallel culture." It was not a counter-culture because, he said, it was impossible for us to live totally outside the system. You cannot live outside a culture. But you can create within it zones and spaces, where you can become who you really are. It is in such places that one can speak the truth, where one can gather with others who share that truth.
This went on for years, not without difficulties, but for years. Over time, the truth became stronger and stronger, and at a certain point people began to walk in the streets and to say to the system, "We don't believe you anymore." And the system fell. It fell, not because of the power of Western nuclear equipment, but because the people said within the system, "We don't believe you anymore." It was a vision that had been nourished within those parallel cultures.

It struck me today that part of what we are about is creating a parallel culture for those involved in our business. The fundamental lies we are challenging may not be insidious as the ideology of Communism, but then again, they may be just as damaging to the human spirit.

The first area we present a challenge is in the area of health: We challenge the idea that the so-called health care system is the repository of all wisdom regarding health and wellness for us. Put another way, we are about encouraging people to take responsibility for their own wellness, through nutrition, healthy lifestyle choices, etc.

If you don't think there are fundamental lies about health and wellness being promoted in our culture, just look at the next commercial for a fast-food establishment that comes on the TV. Or, if you dare, get out your reading glasses and read the fine print behind the magazine ad for the latest pharmaceutical product. An industry that makes its money on managing illness rather than showing the way toward wellness hardly deserves the name "health care."

The second challenge to our culture comes from the business model. Instead of pursuing economic security through trading time for wages, we're building a business that has the potential to deliver residual income, even when we aren't working at it. That's the power of network marketing, of building a team of people who can support each other. Again, it's about taking responsiblity for our future and that of our families.

There's probably lots more to be said about both of those aspects, and I invite your thoughts on them. Two implications strike me right away, though.

First, part of the reason the process of bringing others on board may be slow at times is that we're having to educate people into this "parallel culture" that we are at one stage or another of coming to participate in ourselves. I know it has taken me years to integrate things I learned at Mannatech events a decade ago.

Second, one important part of staying connected with each other is that we are creating those zones where a parallel culture can be fostered. We might be reading Paul Zane Pilsner instead of Plato, and coming alongside friends battling various health challenges instead of writing plays, but working together we reinforce our beliefs in this alternate view of reality. That's one reason staying connected through calls and training events is so important; even calling an upline leader for a three-way call is part of that zone where your ability to live into the truth will be strengthened.

Who knows what change for the better can happen when enough people are ready to say, "We don't believe you anymore"?