how silencing oppression and silencing the silencing of oppression are different

i recently finished the show about race episode where they were discussing the election, the press, and race. it reminded me of a point that meant to write about a while ago, but forgot.

there has been an obvious backlash in the country. the direction things have been going for the last 8+ years has been, for many marginalized people, a good one. i’m not saying that the government has been doing good things, but the political leadership has made it safer and more acceptable for some things (issues of being oppressed) to be heard and less acceptable for other things (oppressing) to be heard.

what’s happening in the backlash (or the white-lash as van jones put it), is that people who have felt like they’ve been silenced for the last few years are acting up and acting out. the most explicit version of this to me is the backlash against political correctness.

now, anyone with any sort of justice analysis is aware that pretty much anyone who is opposed to political correctness is usually covering (unconsciously or not) up some sort of oppression (chescaleigh nails this in her video: is pc culture anti-free speech?). people in positions of power were just used to saying shitty things and don’t particularly like being called out about it. lashing out against political correctness a tactic to preemptively shutdown getting shutdown themselves.

what i feel like is left out of many of these conversations is that the major difference in these two shifts is that in one of them, people are afraid of being silenced and not being allowed to say what they want to say… in the other one, people are afraid of being hurt or killed. we’re just not talking about lobbing ideas back and forth on an even playing field. one side of this table has been able to use words to disregard and dehumanize people. and i don’t think that it is actually important that we give equal credence to voices on that side of history. should we write them down? probably. but only so that we remember how to not let it happen again. 

imo, this is parallel to the gun conversation when obama was elected. many people who were pro-gun were worried about someone taking their gun away. people who are anti-gun are worried about people coming to kill them with a gun (citizen, neighbor, paramilitary, police, whoever) and there being no consequences.

there is a serious difference between these two sides of the table.

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writing: 15:15
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why is it that impactful people seem to have bad relationship outcomes over time with the people closest to them?

my friend, jonathan, and i have a shared theory about the lives of big figures in society. basically, it’s that people who have significant impact on the world also tend to have really difficult relationships with the people closest to them.

i don’t know where jonathan lands on this, but i think it’s a resource flow problem. when you are continuously focused outwardly, the people who love you and are around you work really hard to support you. unfortunately, because they’re focused on supporting you and you’re focused on supporting the world, the flow of care is just in one direction.

i’ve seen it repeatedly with the leaders of social change organizations. they work all the time and their family life suffers terribly. children feel neglected, spouses are frustrated, friends are annoyed. there are tons of historical examples (presidents, political movement leaders, etc.) of this, too.

the result tends to be that the lives of the people doing the support get burned up… often to the point of being detrimental to those relationships in the long-run.

i think, in some ways, the potential to create this pattern exists in everyone. there are just some people whose life pathways make it more likely.

i don’t really know where to take this, but i guess i wonder if it’s a necessary pattern. do social change leaders have to have this effect on their families? is it a requirement of being an important societal figure that your relationship with people closest to you turn sour in the long run? i want to hope that it’s not, but the evidence definitely makes it seem that way…

writing: 11:20
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the benefits of staying in place/focus

as i’m reading this book of letters from seneca, i’ve realized some things. 

1. there is so much good and simple stuff here that i could write a post per letter (sometimes more). 
2. there are recurring themes and that it might serve me to wrap thematic insights together. 
3. while the stuff in here is good, i really want to get back to reading more strategy stuff (even though i’m increasingly understanding how important internal personal work is for strategy) and also more work by people in oppressed groups (black, indigenous, queer & trans, women, colonized, etc.).
   

all that aside, this post is about two letters that all discuss the importance of staying in place and focusing.

the first, letter ii, is about focusing. on developing strong friendships and how “people who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships” and how reading a single author to learn deeply is more important than reading one book by everyone and learning broadly.

the second, letter xxviii, is also about how traveling doesn’t necessarily solve one’s woes. it basically says that sometimes people who want to travel think it will be a cure for their discontent, but what they’re actually running from is internal. once one figures out how to deal with one’s internal problems, traveling is nice but everything needed can be found wherever you are.

all of those points are basically made without saying much more, but it definitely is adding fuel to my “stay in boston” fire.

ps - so great that i found all seneca’s letters online!

writing: 11:50
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i’ve changed my mind about reading fiction

earlier in 2016 i wrote about why i don’t read fiction. i’ve since changed my mind. that’s allowed, right?

i’ve been influenced by several things:

1. working on #the4thbox (with danielle, felicia, and angus) as it relates to the political imagining we need to do collectively.
2. my friend erin’s response to my piece about why i don’t read fiction (is this what public discourse looks like? lol)
3. octavia butler predicting the rise of trump in parable of the sower (h/t miriam mack!).
4. conversations with cyndi suarez about her interest and work in bringing gamification and play into social change spaces.
5. conversations with kate balug and her interest in utopia(s).
   
6. grant williams’ fiction master’s (masters? why can i never figure that out…) thesis.

there are probably some other influences, too, but those seem like the most poignant ones. over thanksgiving break i read giovanni’s room by james baldwin and i’m still reeling from it. i’ve started several others (mostly octavia butler) and now i’m working towards holding an event on imagination in february within colab.

bringing fiction back into my life seems like just another manifestation of how important play and imagination are. where will all this end up? i don’t know, but i’m going there anyways!

writing: 11:05
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on shaping your life according to nature and not people’s opinions

after a recent big talk[link coming someday], i started reading letters from a stoic by seneca because someone quoted him extensively. there’s a lot of good stuff in there so i’ll probably write a good bit about what sticks with me. this is the first.

for a little context, it seems like seneca is an upper-class older guy who has taken to mentoring this younger guy, lucilius. they write letters back and forth where seneca shares some insight and advice about things lucilius has said in his previous letter. seneca ends each letter with some quote from some other philosopher.

the types of quote he ends with are usually short, seemingly obvious, but dense and important. anyway, the first quote that’s a goody is:

“if you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor. if you shape your life to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.”
— seneca quoting epicurus, letter xvi

i don’t know why i have never thought about nature as an alternative frame to society for evaluating the quality of my life. i think about eating seasonally and even sketched out an idea for a digital seasonal eating calendar tool (sketch 1, sketch 2. i try (mostly fail, but try!) to plan my year so that it follows the energy of seasons: lots of activity in the spring and summer, calmer in the fall and winter. using a natural frame for evaluating my state of being seems so obvious and yet i’ve never have.

in addition to thinking about my life in the context of planetary well-being (lesson learned from infinite growth), when i do my annual retreat in jan 2017 i think i’m also going to adjust my weekly calendar schedule based on seasonality (i.e. larger number of things per week during the spring and summer, and fewer in the fall and winter) instead of trying to minimize the amount of social resistance i face.

this framing has come up in some other areas of my life:

• having conversations with my friend caroline about “enoughness”
• living at 40 cottage and talking with my housemates there (especially annemarie) about what it meant to be truly wealthy – it usually involved good company and good food

+1 seneca.

writing: 13:48
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