When Relationships Become Tools
I spent many years in the nonprofit/changemaker/systems change world and exited stage right with the birth of my son. That felt like much more important work/play. I continue to think about this space and from outside it feels clearer than it ever did when I was still swimming in those waters.
I believe many of us want to do our part to create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. I have also long believed there are a million ways these longings get thwarted, distorted, or made impossible under the system we all live within. What’s new for me is the recognition that even for those of us who thought we’d found “the way,” in hindsight the way often seems misguided and in some cases, even harmful.
For example, let’s focus for a moment on relationships. Being in right relationship—to ourselves, our fellow humans, our community, our more-than-human kin, and the Earth herself—is the whole point. And in a beautiful way, it’s both the means to the end and the end in and of itself. To get there, you simply have to be there. Come into right relationship and there you are, already living in a more beautiful world.
One glaring problem is that almost all “change work” is framed and organized around an issue, whether it’s climate change, polarization, poverty, inequality—the list goes on and on.
A quick note: using quotations because everything is change. As Octavia E. Butler reminds us, change is not something to be managed or fought against, it’s simply the nature of life herself:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God is Change.
— Octavia E. Butler
Organizations then rally people, mobilize resources, and leverage, utilize, and control relationships to solve these issues. But notice what happens in this framing:
The issue itself becomes the center of gravity.
Relationships and communities become tools, valued only insofar as they serve the “fight.”
The work becomes oriented around what we don’t want, rather than what we do.
Not only does this set up the issue as the north star, the direction we’re always looking and heading, but it also creates an inversion of values. The thing that makes life worth living—relationship—is bent, managed, and controlled in service to problems or even the all-pervasive “systems change.” Relationships are treated as tools to be used.
At Edge Collaborative, we refuse this logic. Relationships are not a strategy to get somewhere else. They are the end itself. And by coming into right relationship, the issues shift as a byproduct. When we focus on the issues, relationships get sacrificed.
At Edge this means the work starts and ends with relationships.
This critique is just the beginning. I’m working on a larger piece that looks at how the nonprofit and systems change world not only misses the point but often does real harm to the very relationships it claims to serve. Stay tuned.
