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Revolutions which occur overnight usually succeed in instating someone new in power, but do not cause an enduring change. Supports of the “Occupy” movement should not expect a quick change, but rather consider this as a long-term commitment towards a cultural change.

For this change to occur, it has to be in every level of life. It needs to be reflected in your daily dealings as you travel to work, the way you treat your co-workers, your superiors and inferiors, strangers on the street. It needs to be everywhere. Even in your mind. The way you think about things.

I saw a lot of people talking about how Occupy Wall Street is spreading to the world on Saturday. They mentioned Madrid. Wrong. Demonstrations in Spain have been going long before OWS began. Occupy Wall Street would not have started if it were not for millions of Arabs taking to the streets and demanding change. Change begins with the way we think: everyone is excited to see Americans rising for change, because corporate America has been exporting and spreading its wrong values of consumerism for many years now. But that doesn’t mean it began on Wall Street. If Americans think that success of OWS is measured in numbers, and in the way the world is copying them, they are replicating corporate ways of thought. They are, inadvertently, being part of the problem, not the solution.

Forget American exceptionalism. “Occupy” is about changing corporate culture, so accept you have something to learn from the world. Reappropriate “globalism” so it embraces dialogue and cultural diversity, rather than restricted to monetary gains of high-cost export (software, films) and low-cost import (textile, and every other production-line object).

Abandon cool/uncool binaries. American consumerism thrives on things falling out of fashion to drive people to buy the next cool thing. Defy this way of thought by refusing to discuss whether the protest is cool or not, and by declining to comment on specific photos of protestsers, as if a person can be reduced to being “hot” or “not”. Talk deep ideas of values, rather than shallow designations.

Financial inequality is a major problem in the US and around the world, but money was never an end in of itself. Money is means. The force driving corporate greed is much stronger than the actual money they have, and if you seek to change that, you need to begin by changing that way of thought in your own life. Don’t judge people based on what they have or how they look. Embrace diversity of tastes, appearances, styles. As long as it is not hurting anyone, it’s not bothering me.

That being said, you should have a taste for aesthetics. Corporate culture has compromised America’s architecture and public landscape. Look at maps and photos of 19^th century, early 20^th century New York. Look at buildings from before 1900 and after. Envision Main Street as it was before the gigantic label malls. Yes, one had less choice in the only fashion store on their hometown’s Main Street, but they knew their seller. They had a more comprehensive experience than when buying at a megastore, being no more than means of transport of their cash, taking it out in one ATM machine, and depositing it again with another cashier. Times Square is ugly, dominated by glistening signs and billboards asking you to buy. It has no sense of beauty, no hint that it is aware of all the beauty in our world. Defy this. Denounce it. We want to live in public spaces with art. Created by humans, for the pleasures of the human eye. Not oppressive ads keeping our body-image low, and telling us how better our lives would be if only we bought this or that product.

Money can be used to create such art. It can be used to improve the transportation system and the education system. Tom Friedman wrote a few years ago:

If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

That is what is wrong with corporate culture. Not the statistics of how many people have how much of the money, but what it is being used for. Corporate culture has driven down American public life to compromise on quality for the sake of quantity, to accept deteriorating standards of all basics of infrastructure: a decrepit transportation system, a sub-functional health system, and a deteriorating education system. Improving these is by far more important than making a handful of rich people a little less richer.

“Occupy” needs to focus on these themes. People need to feel free to share their demands, and voice them on the street, on the virtual street of the Social Networks, in their homes, and through the media. This is true democracy, exercising freedom of speech and demanding equality and justice for all.

At the same time, Occupy supporters must find ways to abandon corporate culture. Avoid numbers, discuss values. Denounce those who refer to your age, your looks, your clothes, as they are oppressed and oppressive entrapped in a culture of shallowness.

Celebrate dialogue, listen respectfully to those who oppose you, and see if there is any room for common ground. Israeli Social Protest movement, organized a community even in Tel Aviv, of discussion tables. All tables were diverse by age, social class, religious beliefs, political party. Everyone listened respectfully to others, as they shared with total strangers their hopes from the movement. Occupy would do well to organize such events across major cities and small towns in the US.

Change will come if you change your own life-style. Reject corporate news, reject sensationalism, substitute consumerism for buying things you need, when you need them. There are plenty of websites with good tips on how to change this, and these should be made available and promoted to all supporters.

Eventually, in order to achieve enduring change, Occupy will need to play the political game. Hopefully, we will see change in politics, in US policy towards pollution and Global Warming, towards nuclear weapons, regulations and taxation of corporates, dissolving the legal fiction that corporates are individuals with rights, and much more. But that is extremely long-term. Very far away. Until that happens, and before that happens, we as individuals need to dissociate ourselves from corporate culture of reckless consumerism.

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