The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Gil Scott Heron’s era-defining anthem accomplishes two divergent feats at once, something specific and something universal. Specifically, like a dog digging for a bone in the backyard, Heron scratches the dirt of his immediate territory when he journals the detritus of the emergent “color TV era” to contextualize the distracting bamboozling of pop culture. Universally, like a monk’s murmured mantra, his dogged immediacy catalyzes the breakthrough into a revolutionary transcendence. Theoretically, the dog digging in the backyard could eventually go so deep that she scratches through to the other side of the globe. Meditation is really not much more than scratching dirt if you substitute “sit” for “scratch.” Sit. Observe the litter of the mind. Sit some more. Sit tomorrow. Sit when you want to squirm. Sit when anxiety is through the roof. Sit. Watch. Accept. Submerge psychic litter. Merge (s)elf. Emerge (S)elf. Repeat. It’s called practice for a reason!

Whether you are a monk or you know nothing about it, you intuitively know that plugging away at a cause potentiates manifestation beyond what you could have anticipated, whether it is a solution, a break-through, or even a revolution. Heron’s repeated refrain drum beats our consciousness into hope all these years later, even if some are clueless about dated references to giants in your toilet bowl, Hooterville and Search for Tomorrow!

I regularly teach university students who constantly remind me not to assume. I love teaching but it can be exhausting for me since I seem to “read” not only their immediate presence in a classroom, I get flooded with an experience of how much pain and sorrow each soul brings into the room. I recently saw blank faces when I launched into James Baldwin this and James Baldwin that. Blank eyes made me ask, “Who has never heard of James Baldwin?” About three-fourths of the room raised their hands. I grieved that their miseducation deprived them of such a great mind. A couple of the evaluations of that lecture schooled me to better manage what I exude since some of the students misunderstood my sorrow for their miseducation as somehow being a dismay of condescension “that they were ignorant.” I detail that so specifically for you to imagine, if they don’t know James Baldwin, how many of the Gil Scott Heron references from 1960s pop culture could they possibly know? But does it even matter?

I write about an ad jingle from that era, “Winston Taste Good Like A Cigarette Should.” I reach back so far for such an ad because of the role the tobacco industry had/has in creating and sustaining rigged advantage for elites for 400 years. Since many people alive today never saw a cigarette ad on TV, they can YouTube that jingle. But even if they don’t, they can still understand that the tobacco industry, which brought us slavery, entices us to enrich them for something that will kill us. 

I use the Winston ad to teach critical consumerism – “Is it good for them?” vs “Is it good for me?” The context for critical consumerism is an exploitative system that rigs generational wealth. Rigged in a colonial construction of whiteness to politically align elite whites with a mass of exploited whites, whiteness uses white supremacy and anti-Blackness to inculcate white gang cohesion. The tobacco industry persists. Associated legacies of slavery persist.  We say smoking and racism are bad; but, we have yet to completely kick these costly habits. 

Gil Scott Heron’s brilliance lifts the fog from the emergent “color TV era” corporate titillation designed to sell but also to distract and opiate any potential for mass resistance. Like a monk’s mantra that the revolution will not be televised, he trains the soul to break through the bamboozling of these numbing externals. Then YOU will begin to see. 

“The revolution will put YOU in the driver’s seat.”

This resonates with me since I teach this in Twelve Steps for White America: for a United States of America, my twelve-step treatment plan for democracy. Literary Titan recently wrote an insightful review which said:

“The book’s approach to addressing societal issues through a lens typically reserved for personal recovery highlights an intricate connection between individual actions and systemic structures.” 

This “intricate connection between individual actions and systemic structures” is where Gil Scott Heron envisions the revolution – not in the bamboozling of external conditionings mocked as “a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.” 

Referring to today’s detritus, I can add: The revolution will not pay more attention to a throw-down between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, or Kat’s smack on Club Shay Shay than to SCOTUS rolling back our rights and suppressing our vote. The revolution will not coopt my righteous idealism to bamboozle me into voting against my own interests OR not voting at all. The revolution will not drain me frazzled over “this sh*t,” “those mofos” and “they done did again.”

The revolution will play a long game of love’s righteousness and radical acceptance that fortifies me, escalates my spiritual unfolding, and trumpets my clarion call to justice, then liberty, then peace, then prosperity – the sustainable order of democracy – an intricate connection between individual actions and systemic structures. Since I am writing this article for a non-profit faith-based publication with a mission to dismantle structures of systemic racism, let us now plum some related spiritual depths and go further into the ultimate spiritual implications of 

“I AM: the revolution.”

The theoretical dog’s digging can break through to the other side of the globe. The monk’s meditative discipline deconstructs the illusion of a lone self floating amid the vastness of the ocean in order to reconstruct the truth that “I” and the ocean are one.  The teaching of the sanatana dharma, “Aham Brahmasmi” beholds a glorious expanse and concludes “I am that.” Taught across ancient religions from the Vedas to the Gospel, “I and the Father are one.” “I AM the light of the world.” “To all whom have believed has He given the power to become sons of God” who are one with the Father. 

The historical Christian church constructed a vested interest in our original sin.  In that condition, others are needed to procure our salvation. The historical church controlled and profited from cornering that market! Conversely, whether I AM a theoretical dirt-digging dog or a mantra-murmuring monk, if I break through to the other side and discover that I AM extended divinity itself (a child of God), not even the Roman empire or crucifixion or the United States of America, (a plutocratic empire relying on white supremacy and anti-Blackness but masquerading as a democracy) can control me. 

“I AM: the revolution.”

Much of what root-binds our beings starves the ultimate revolution, which is our power to actualize justice in the quest for own liberation. That revolution of our individual repentance, atonement, and redemption, en masse, becomes a nation’s truth, reconciliation and renewal. 

The Buddhist Lotus Sutra teaches the parable of the Jewel in the Robe. A poor man visited a good friend of means. The poor man was soon drunk and fell asleep. Before he wakes in the morning, his host did something of great compassion before leaving for his business trip.  He left the poor friend a priceless jewel by sewing it into the lining of the poor man’s robe. When the poor man woke up, he left before his host returned and resumed his life as a struggling mendicant, never knowing what treasure had come into his life. Much later, after regrettable continued suffering, he saw his good friend again who shockingly grieved the persistence of his poverty. He showed the poor man the jewel which had been sewn into the hem of his robe. Amid abundance, the poor man continued to  suffer because of ignorance. 

What happens when we wake from ignorance? Why is “woke” such a threat? Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is like the merchant who, when he found a pearl of great price, sold all he had to purchase it.  That is why “woke” is such a threat. When we wake up, we not only can no longer wait for the revolution to be televised, but we also realize we had the revolution in us all along. That is how close to revolution we are today. We may be even closer. I argue that, like an alcoholic early in recovery who feels like they are falling apart, our nation feels like we are falling apart because the revolution is already underway. 

Like recovery from alcoholism, structures so powerful as to override the will to survive (or the will of the people to fulfill the American experiment with democracy) must deconstruct to be replaced. It is reasonable that such reconstruction will come with disruption. We have what we need. But, too often, we wander poor, bamboozled and beaten, barking like junkyard dogs guarding Massa’s junk – advantage historically rigged for white men, which relies on white supremacy and anti-Blackness. 

As an aspiration, “a” United States of America, where race no longer predicts outcomes, is a jewel hidden in the rags of slavery and its extant legacies. These legacies may still prove too embedded to overcome. One way to ensure the status quo is to bombard us with “this sh*t” “those mofos” and “they done did again.” We will continue to wander as mendicants commodified and bamboozled, trained to wait for the sweet by and by revolution on TV or X or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok, or Instagram or Reddit . . .   Those many years ago, Gil Scott Heron brilliantly prophesied that: 

“The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.”

Now, may we rise up

out of our disoriented

bamboozled poverty

to claim that jewel

sewn into the legacies of

our ancestors’ wildest dreams,

and take our place in the

driver’s seat of the revolution,

here, now, yoking that arc bending

toward justice, then liberty,

then peace, then prosperity.