Quaker Ben Pink Dandelion joined Friends because they were working for peace and shared values with anarchists. Then he had a spiritual awakening.
Resources:
- Subscribe to QuakerSpeak so you never miss a video
- Read Friends Journal to see how other Friends describe the substance of Quaker spirituality
- Learn more about the life and ministry of New England Quakers at NEYM.org
- Find out how Quakers are assisting military personnel stationed in 11 states
- Learn about the rich diversity of Quakers worldwide with FWCC.
- Work for peace with justice with AFSC.
Discussion Questions:
- Ben Pink Dandelion says that he came to Quakerism because it was a social change group working “from within the system” that shares some values with anarchism, including non-hierarchy and peace. What attracts you to the Quaker approach?
- Ben says that once he started having spiritual experiences, meeting for worship made more sense to him, and he realized that what Quakers don’t share in common with anarchists is that we’re being “spoken through.” What do you suppose he means by this? Do you agree?
Transcript:
I’m Ben Pink Dandelion. I’m a Quaker writer and teacher.
Well, I first went to college to study hotel management, but I was also very involved with a series of left-wing groups and ended up dropping out of college and going to live at an anarchist peace camp. Now, anarchism is an ideology which is very much in favor of individual power, that nobody should have power over anybody else. And we were a group of great individualists, in a sense, living at this peace camp. We had different colored hair, different hair styles. Eventually we would all change our names to something rather ridiculous, like “Pink Dandelion” as a protest of the way that the father’s name is always passed down.
So I like to be called Ben but my legal name is Pink Dandelion and this was a deliberate ploy to come up with something that was, again, pushing against other people defining who you will be.
Revolutionary Hope
This was in the early ’80s and it was a year of great revolutionary hope in Britain. We had a miner’s strike on. We thought we had Margaret Thatcher on the back foot. Life was about protest.
But after about eight or ten arrests, you know, and really not feeling like we were moving forward at all, I began to think that there probably wouldn’t be a revolution in England. And so at that point, you give up a revolutionary strategy. The anarchist strategy had been to hope that everyone would withdraw their labor from the labor market and the system would collapse. So I looked for groups that were working from within the system.
Similarities Between Quakers and Anarchists
I had known the Quakers because I had been to a Quaker school, and I found them again, as it were. And I saw there a group that was committed to peace, a group that didn’t take votes (just as was true of the anarchists) and who didn’t have any fixed leadership, just like the anarchists. And I thought, “Here’s a group that looks just a little bit like the anarchists but working within the system.” So I originally came along to Quakerism in terms of it being a peace group.
Understanding the Spiritual Dimension of Quakerism
And it was only later, when I had a powerful spiritual experience on a Greyhound bus, that I really understood Quakerism, that I could begin to see the spiritual dimension, that meeting for worship made sense for me, that meeting for business made absolute sense. So it was a different kind of process from the anarchist consensus. We were being “talked through” in Quaker meeting in a way that just wasn’t true in the anarchist campfire meetings.
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
The only thing wrong with this video is that it is so short. I found it fascinating. I would like to have heard more of this journey. I am not a Quaker though I have had a great interest in Friends for years. I am familiar with Ben Pink Dandelion through his various writings.
We all came to Quakerism from different paths. There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them . . .how has being a Quaker changed him, how has he made a change in the world? Not sure why this is on Quaker Speak, but happy for him that he found us. . .
I don’t know either Mika but it’s the first one that’s gotten me to click.
Sorry – clicked too soon on previous submission and didn’t therefore ask to get follow-up comments.
Please, please, if you’re lurking out there, Ben, share with us the spiritual experience on that Greyhound busride. I’ve had more than one long conversation with God during a cross-country journey. Something about the freedom from interruptions, and maybe the vehicle is such a good sound chamber that it makes it easier to hear that still small voice. C’mon, Ben, share your story with us!!
Blessings,
Mariellen Gilpin, editor,
What Canst Thou Say? — a journal for Quakers who have mystical experiences
Unclear Ben. What does ‘We were being “talked through” in Quaker meeting’ mean? do you mean their was a Spirit in business meeting not present in anarcho circles? I always felt that anarchism had a strong spirit of love and peace, expressed in unique ways. Quakers tend to be less angry, or certainly angry in different ways…. the similarities are close, but yes, its more difficult to connect with ‘the Spirit’ within anarchic communities when you are surrounded by an anti brigade. That’s not absolutely conducive to harmony, but it does produce its own imaginative processes that are certainly rooted in love, caring and in peace. Anarchism also has less formal processes and group hierarchy.
Since anarchism gives allowance for guided rules, but merely rejects a hierarchy of ‘rulers’, the question of ‘talked through’ brings the query challenge that perhaps rulers are applied at a subtle or hidden level.
I think that is not the case. But it is a consideration at each locality as to that being a possible embedding or infiltration. Many interests could apply attempted influence. As archony, the polar opposite to anarchy, governments are well known for embedding spies and provocateurs in many movements, particularly those forwarding peace agendas.
I don’t see a conflict between anarchism and Quakerism, and so the title here begs that differentiation. This really speaks to the process of consensus being one of mature cooperation and open discourse.
I traveled in the opposite direction, from Quakerism to anarchism. Ben’s description of anarchism is shallow. As an anarchist, I live by the Non-Aggression Principle: that the initiation of force towards persons or property is immoral and wrong. Hence, anarchism is about freedom from involuntary relationships, freedom from theft by the government, freedom from aggression within our families of origin. Quakers don’t take a stand against such aggression. That’s what he calls working within the system – not living by principles and being too polite to take a moral stand. Moral relativists perpetuate evil and call it a virtue. And the me-ism of Quaker beliefs is superstition and irrationality.
Hi Ben,
Well, what you presented as “Anarchism”, was far too puril and individualistic.
Please, take a deep look at Alan Ritter’s book, “Anarchism. A Theoretical Analysis”. In it, Ritter presents, not freedom”, but “communal individuality” as the goal of anarchists.
The community is not identical with the individual; the individual is not identical with the community. Nevertheless, they are mutually interdependent, and involve mutual aid, cooperation, and participatory democracy.
In stone age societies – hunters, gatherers, living in groups of, say, 20 people, forming tribes of 2-3000 people – people were living without hierachy. The highest value was “integrity”.
Cheers, Björn Lindgren
—
Quakerism is the opposite of moral relativism, yet it is strictly opposed to absolutism and universalism. It’s goal is to be objective.