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<h1>Preface to Part I</h1>
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<p>In November 1987, when <i>Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics for Liberation</i> was due for its third printing, I eagerly reworked Chapter 13 before it went again to press. I had come to believe that the reason Chapter 13 was the most misunderstood portion of the book was because the concepts in that chapter had been the least clear to me as I wrote.</p>
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<p>But I had recently completed a three-month, thirty-city book tour that had included at least fifty speeches and a tremendous amount of talking about my theory of change - personal and planetary. So much excellent on-the-spot thinking had compelled me to understand better, to expand, to make new connections, and to find more comprehensible ways to explain the phenomena I was decribing and the activism I was advocating. So as I began to rewrite, I was reeling with excitement at the new possibilities that were opening up in my mind.</p>
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<p>But in the middle of it somewhere I became aware of the by-now-familiar feeling that something was out of tune. As I searched inside myself for whatever it was that was not in harmony, I found the discordant note almost at once.</p>
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<p>In the Preface of <i>Going Out of Our Minds</i>, I introduced the idea of "process theory" - theory that reveals not only the thinker's conclusions but also the journey by which she arrived at them. The case for process theory is based on the assumption that the journey is as valuable as the destination and that they cannot be disconnected without diminishing both; but more than that, that the journey <i>is</i> the destination.</p>
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<p>I realized that because Chapter 13 truly represented the stage of thinking I had reached at the time of its publication, it must stand as it was. If I had anything else to say, to honor my own development I needed to begin a new record that demonstrated the continuity and dynamism of both theory and process. I needed to be certain not to seem to be repudiating either of them by revising.</p>
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<p>So <i>Wildfire</i> opens with the material I originally wrote to replace Chapter 13 but that was never published in <i>Going Out of Our Minds</i>. Though Chapters 1 and 2 refine the theory I outlined in the former book, they do not begin where <i>Going Out of Our Minds</i> ends. Instead, they overlap it, in a couple of instances looking at the same material from other perspectives.</p>
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<p>Chapter 3, the logical extension of Chapters 1 and 2, is completely new material. The basic idea of it came to me one night during the Q and A session after my speech as I was trying urgently to clarify my point of view. As I grasped the idea and began to use it, light broke over the faces of the audience, brows unfurrowed, and heads nodded. I knew from the response that I had stumbled upon something important and probably true, something that would advance our understanding of how women are first brought to out knees, then how we are kept there, and finally how we can stand up straight again and walk away free.</p> |