Havel - Power of the Powerless 1

In Havel's classic essay, "The Power of the Powerless" he articulates the meaning, aims and basis for hope of the dissident movement in the Soviet Bloc in the years when hope seemed, well, farfetched. 

Along the way he makes a statement that strikes me as a fundamental political concept that strikes at the programs of both right and left.

"A genuine, profound and lasting change for the better...can no longer result from the victory (were such a victory possible) of any particular traditional political conception, which can ultimately only be external, that is a structural or systemic conception.  More than ever before, such a change will have to derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of the people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the universe.  If a better economic and political model is to be created, then perhaps more than ever before it must derive from profound existential and moral changes in society.  This is not something that can be designed and introduced like a new car.  If it is to be more than just a new variation of the old degeneration, it must above all be an expression of life in the process of transforming itself.  A better system will not automatically ensure a better life.  In fact, the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed."

We live in a political age.  We are convinced that our solutions are political.  We think in terms of making changes by elections, parties in power and laws enacted.  The truth runs a little deeper.  Elections and parties and laws can enforce changes that have already occurred in the nature of a people.  They can't create those changes.  The American Revolution worked because it was fought to protect changes THAT HAD ALREADY OCCURRED among the American people in their two hundred years of separation from the motherland.  The French Revolution failed to create "equality, fraternity and liberty" because it was an attempt to CREATE A NEW SOCIETY from the top, by legislation and enforcement on a people who had neither the experience nor even necessarily the desire to live in the manner expected of them.

Alma's retreat from the Chief Judge's Seat in order to devote himself to the preaching of the word (Alma 4:15-19) seems to me to be to be based on the recognition of the priority of social change over political change.  When has society reaches a certain point (and I think in the United States we may very well be approaching it) the solutions are no longer political.