On civil society and advocacy

The way human rights and civil society advocacy works at this moment is flawed. We start from the wrong idea that we are obviously right therefore people should support and follow us.

We are arrogant and cocky in our righteousness and we become easily disappointed in the indifference or slower than expected reaction of the world that surrounds us. We justify our failures and intellectual laziness by claiming the much higher moral grounds that are at the basis of our ideas.

We rationalize obvious failures as success and we often refuse or avoid thinking critically about ourselves. We struggle or encourage lip-service within our small world while we are devastatingly critical towards many. We developed a language that is as meaningless and stiff as the language of the bureaucracies we are supposed to challenge and force to reform.  We actively discourage criticism, diversity of opinions and encourage and reward sycophants…