Patriarchy and Permaculture: The Long and Short

As usual, I get on the internet, get distracted, click on click bait I hope is at least informative and uplifting, and I don’t get very far before some really stupid and mean (and bonus points for ironic) behavior smacks me in the face as a bystander with a big fat ball o’ bullshit.  This is why we can’t have nice things, and why I don’t get on the internet much.  Enjoy the rant.  For your convenience, it has both short and long versions.  The short version is complementary to rather than an abstract of the long.  So join me, will you, for a fun-filled fifteen minutes of puns, novel abbreviations, colorful language and  ample sarcasm?  And maybe an interesting point or two.

The short:  Toxic leaders

Here’s a brief summary of what I’m about to rant about.  Jack Spirko is some sort of minor celebrity in permaculture circles, I guess (ooh, I know, right?).  He did a blog post and a podcast, in which he basically describes unschooling without calling it that.  Then PRI distributed it.  Then this happened…[paraphrased for brevity]

Jack Spirko:  Ten tips on how to raise resilient kids in a world full of wussies [note: basically, ten principles of unschooling]
Woman 1:  Nice tips.  I’d like to share them if you please use a different word than “wussy,” since it refers to female genitalia.
Jack to woman 1:  Your parents raised you to be a wussy.  Learn to control your emotions.
Jack’s Deep Green Mini-Me’s to woman 1:  Here’s my overwrought rationalization on how you are what’s wrong with permaculture.  I’m basing all of it on the untested negative assumption that you’re just combing the internet for things to complain about to be a PC police troll.
Woman 2:  I felt triggered when he said it, too.
Jack to woman 2:  You’re a wussy.  Plus I got my wife to agree with me and she told me to tell you she thinks you’re an idiot and so is anyone who has a problem with the word wussy, so there.
Woman 3:  Whoa.  I appreciate the original post, and also find the word “wussy” problematic.  I’d like to engage you in good faith to discuss some of the dynamics occurring here.  First off, some background:  wussy is a portmanteau of “wimp” and “pussy” coined by a jerk in the popular movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” and many women from my era have a really negative relationship with that word, even if it has lost some of its offensive meaning with young whippersnappers.  Second, that word is also used to control and bully men.  Third, we need more respectful dialog.  There’s no need to respond with such hostility, and this is a learning opportunity for social permaculture.
Jack:  So basically, you’re a wussy.
—
HOLY SHIT.  I don’t care who you think you are, Mr. Spear and Co.  Either treat people with basic respect, or get the fuck out of the public sphere of discourse, because your behavior is stupid and counterproductive and toxic and immature.  It hurts people, and no matter what you think you have to offer, and what you actually have to offer, it ain’t worth it.  You, like all of us, are completely replaceable.  And somewhere, there is someone who knows more than you, and who does what you do, but does it better.  And in the process, they treat people with respect, and model emotional and social maturity.  Especially in disagreements.  Hell, they even understand the difference between observation and premature (let alone baseless knee-jerk negative) interpretations, and they use this capacity to observe to learn from this experience and build greater understanding rather than perpetuate the shitty status quo.  Such people respond to these situations by a. doing nothing (this is the easiest and least costly), oro b. learning more about the context they’ve suddenly helped create, which includes accepting feedback (sound familiar?  It’s a permaculture principle or something) and c. interacting appropriately based on this new knowledge and feedback about their context.

Maybe you’re capable of taking your own advice to “admit to and learning from your failure” so you can grow and become more resilient and do better next time around.  If all you can manage is ironic and hypocritical ad-hominems when someone dares to <gasp> provide a marginal or diverse perspective (another principle), you can take your fragile fevered ego elsewhere, because you’re just acting like any other establishment tool.  The permaculture (and any) movement is better off without this sort of shit.

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE MIC DROP

<ranty ethan exits stage left, a more calm and collected ethan enters stage right, and picks up the mic>
Would you believe me if I said I actually wrote the short-version rant last?  I even edited out some f-bombs (mostly for clarity, though I do lament the loss of alliteration).  Anyway, here’s a more detailed analysis including exciting things like male privilege and rape culture, culminating in social permaculture principles at the end.  Because I just know you’ll read straight through to the end, won’t ya?

The Long Version:  Deep Green Bullshit

(does that still sound ranty?)

A masculine-type “survival-prepper” with a foot in the world of permaculture recently posted on how to raise resilient children in a world full of “wussies.”  He made ten great points, such as let them have adventures, teach them to interact safely with dangerous tools / equipment, let them fail or get hurt, reward them for trying, incentivize self-directed learning, make them take responsibility for their own emotions and behaviors, etc.    He basically co-opted unschooling without reference to that practice and boiled it down to ten key points (the apparent lack of reference to unschooling a separate issue that needs addressing).

Then a woman who liked the article voiced concern about the use of the word “wuss,” and asked if that word could change due to its reference to female anatomy.  Then SHTF, which is prepper-speak for SNAFU, which is military speak for fuuuck, why these dicks be trippin’?  A few women said, “meh, doesn’t bother me.”  The administrator had a somewhat-thoughtful dialog with the woman, and refused to edit the article and rejected the “obsolete” meaning of the word.  Several men — including the original poster — jumped down the woman’s throat, accusing her of being wrong (wussy doesn’t relate to pussy, apparently she’s just another hysterical woman!), and then they ironically called her a “wussy” representing “everything that’s wrong” with today’s society as already discussed in the original post.  Wowsa.

Another woman openly said she felt triggered where and how the original poster said “wussy” in his podcast.  More men jumped down her throat.  The original poster started handing out the word “wuss” like bite-sized candy at a Halloween party.  He said all woman were wrong because his wife agreed with him (wow, his wife can speak for all woman?).  A few mini-me men worked overtime to rationalize the womens’ “irrational” behavior.  One commenter accused women of “combing the internet looking for things that offend them.”  HA!  <sarcasm>Yeah, that’s a rrreeeall parsimonious interpretation of available data, dude…</sarcasm>

A third, brave woman tried to mediate and explain how the original woman was technically correct.  Ironically, on an etymological level, the original woman was right:  “wuss” comes from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where the main character calls meek men “wussies — a combination of wimp and pussy.”  It’s an insult that objectifies and weaponizes the female anatomy to target and pathologize “abnormal” male behavior.  And it has been used since then to confine men into narrow and rigid patriarchal gender roles, and contributes to the social destruction of women’s personhood in the process.

But no one wanted to learn or accept that fact. Ironically, we ended up with a bunch of adults — including the original poster — acting exactly like the immature, whiny little children the original post was supposed to help prevent.  I had had enough of this Deep Green Bullshit, so ironically, I stepped my foot smack-dab in the middle of it.  SPLAT.  Time to get our social permaculture on.  That’s not shit hitting the fan, by the way.  It’s compost.  At least, for those of us who actually leverage permaculture, it is.

Permaculture deals in appropriate technologies:  it’s both a toolkit of patterns as well as a when, where, how, what sort of guide.  What makes something appropriate is “context.”  We can’t understand context without observation, and we can’t observe effectively unless we understand the difference between observation and interpretation.  You simply can’t use permaculture effectively as a design tool if you can’t understand and operationalize this distinction.  An observation is an acknowledgement of an event or circumstance — the “what.”  An interpretation is an assumption or assertion about meaning, or the “why.”  It’s an observation to say, “whoa, that person asked me to change the language I used.”  It’s an interpretation to say, “that person doesn’t have a good reason to be upset [how do you know???] and therefore is just going out of her way to harass me and is a wussy.”

Here are some things I observed in this situation:  I observed a lot of people taking offense at a few people’s expression of hurt over the use of language.  I observed people who posture as permaculture experts demonstrate that they have no fucking clue about the difference between observation and interpretation, and, perhaps more destructively, they don’t seem to much care about social or personal context.

I also generally observe that most women I have ever met necessarily spend a lot of their time and energy fighting for their fundamental safety and bodily integrity, let alone their status as people deserving of consideration and respect.  Which appears to make some of them a bit more sensitive to things that never end up on most men’s radars, because those things have been used as a weapon against them (often but not always by men).  If, for example, you were made to watch while someone bashed your dog’s head in with a hammer, you will probably have a very different, difficult, and complex relationship with hammers for the rest of your life, yeah?  You might jump a bit if another guy whips out a hammer in front of you or Fido v.2.0 for whatever reason.  It becomes a part of your personal context.  And what seems appropriate for one person often feels inappropriate for another.  Hence, the difficulty of repairing the tattered remnants of our social fabric — our ability to relate directly to one-another.  It means weaving together and synthesizing our contexts through observation-based acceptance, learning, bonding, not dominating, homogenizing or marginalizing unique contexts or the diversities emerging from them.

So when I see someone who claims to be a “deep green permaculture” expert ironically going out of his way to create a complicated victim-blaming rationalization from a baseless interpretation that a woman is “going out of her way” to be a pain in his ass, to accuse her of exemplifying “what’s wrong with permaculture,” it irks me on several levels.  It’s ironic, it’s misleading.  It’s patronizing and ignorant.  It is teaching people through structure and process that permaculture is something that it’s not.  Permaculture is not polycultures.  It’s not swales.  It’s not greywater systems.  It’s not forest gardens.  It’s not humanure composting.  It’s bigger than all that.  It’s about whether when and how those sorts of things (patterns) fit together into a diverse, self-supporting and (contextually) appropriate or homogenous dysfunctional whole.  Due to the need to understand context, permaculture is more about listening than lecturing.  <Note I am aware of the irony here, which is why this post is a rant instead of a lecture.  Yeah?>

We can say the same for people in the social fabric.  Social dysfunction is the bedrock of authoritarian control.  Divide and conquer.  People do not need to apologize for their unique contexts — that only leads to dysfunctional homogeneity.  Rather, we need to do a better job of understanding diverse, unique contexts through observation, listening and acceptance of feedback, valuing diversity and marginal experiences and perspectives, and other various permaculture principles that have already been spelled out very clearly for us.

Personal context is not all relative.  In a patriarchy, men’s personal context differs from women’s based on ignorance of women’s experience, whereas women in my experience often have a pretty good understanding of (and sympathy for) the challenges men face in the same society.  Women are often in listening and caregiving roles, already.  However, men have a lot of listening and learning to do to similarly understand the challenges women and other gender/sexual minorities face.  We can say the same for any position of race, class, etc privilege.  But those opportunities do not arise until we challenge the system of privilege that allows (wealthy white straight) men, etc to sneak through life requiring everyone to know about and meet their needs without requiring the same of them.  When we challenge the privilege, the need to listen and learn arises.

Unfortunately, I also regularly observe men throwing hissy-fits when someone dares to suggest that something they did inadvertantly caused someone harm, because it attacks social privilege, which results in very real pain and even fear and panic — fight or flight responses where men with underdeveloped social and emotional capacities are supposed to “use our words not actions.”  It begins to unravel a lie of social inequity.  It upsets and destabilizes the status quo.  I have seen the context of unchecked male privilege (ref. hidden cost of patriarchy) do far more damage to movements than any other form of baggage, precisely because it so effectively maintains the status quo:  a bunch of people trying to get a leg up over one-another through conflict and domination, rather than lifting each-other up through cooperation.  And it reproduces the very thing that so many of these men claim to oppose: social control.  Simply put, we can’t have social permaculture (or other nice things) unless we address social privilege and power differences.

Ironically, everyone in this situation has legitimate points, based on their personal contexts.  The word-in-question genuinely offends some people.  And some guys are genuinely (albeit ironically) concerned about authoritarianism and PC bullying in the movement (and I want to note that here we are talking about the equivalent of male temper tantrums in response to someone calling them on their rhetorical manspreading while real people are dying from situations that permaculture can help prevent).   At some point, if we want to escape this mess, then someone’s gotta abandon their ego, recognize the learning opportunity and bridge the gap to develop greater mutual understanding, grow and move on.

I see men and masculinities regularly block, stymy and undermine this process.  We most need men at the table precisely because we generally lack their participation the most.  Or if you aren’t going to be at the table because you have “more important things to do,” don’t throw a hissy fit when those of us who have been working on this equally important but often devalued problem concerning the fundamental integrity of our social fabric graciously try to catch you up to speed.  Unfortunately, when (straight wealthy white) men do finally come around, usually the last to the table, they often get praised as “leaders getting things done” while the people (e.g., blue collar, women, racial or gender minorities) who worked for years to make this situation happen get ignored or chastized for the “problems” they caused (i.e., they rocked the boat and provoked hissy fits amongst men that eventually set the table for this very discussion, thankyouverymuch).

Social Permaculture Principles

Without exception, the first swales, the first rocket stoves, the first graywater systems all look, feel, sound, even smell clunky, funky and awkward.  The first designs have high rates of failure and low marginal success.  But more important, we keep trying, keep observing, accept feedback, and find things that work in the diverse margins.  And when we keep working with them, the context-appropriate designs evolve increasing levels of sophistication.  We can say the same for appropriate social technologies — they are going to feel weird and have high initial rates of failure (anyone who has uttered an “I feel” statement knows this).  But more importantly, they will work.  And get easier and less awkward and even more fun with time.  Unfortunately, I have encountered many people — mostly men and masculine types — who would rather work with little no appropriate social capacity and depend heavily on male privilege and entitlement than brave the clunky, funky awkward process of exploring emergent appropriate social technologies that might challenge, upset or transform the status quo.  And this creates a socially-toxic situation, far more fundamental than anyone expressing or explaining feelings of hurt or asking someone to modify objectifying language.  That’s one of the ironies of this situation:  the original use of the word and the request weren’t big deals.  The immature and hurtful response to it turned it all into one big stinking vat o’ anaerobic humanure.  If we can’t get it together in good faith and hash things out ourselves, then the authorities will gladly keep intervening in and controlling our lives for us.

Without further ado, I offer an incomplete early list of awkward appropriate technologies (some are patterns with appropriate contexts, some more universal principles) for social permaculture:

1. Observation vs interpretation:  strive to thoroughly understand context before you interpret what it means; allow interpretations to emerge from prolific observation vs imposing interpretations on scarce or anemic (sometimes even non-existent or imagined) observations.  Accept and use feedback.  Value diversity and the marginal…Crikees, I’m just parroting the standard permaculture repertoire here!  I’ll do better, I promise…
2. Describe the behavior, not the person.  Smart people sometimes do stupid things.  Caring people sometimes say or do mean things.  Focus on the behaviors, not the person.  This helps with both giving and receiving feedback.  Jack acted like a jerk.  Jack is not (necessarily) a jerk.  That (often) involves too much interpretation to be helpful, and it boxes people into a static identity.
3. Prioritize impact over intentions.  I often see people of privilege hide behind intentions to avoid accountability for the actual impact of their actions.  Their logic goes, “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt you, so I have nothing to apologize for and nothing to change, and therefore will probably hurt you again in the future as I keep doing what I do.  Get used to it.  Ignore my impact and focus on my intent.”  What a consummate mindfuck.  Imagine if we applied that twisted logic to landscape design!  At the end of the day, only impact matters.  If someone truly intends to do no harm, they will willingly and openly seek feedback and re-evaluate their actions.
4. Trust early and trust often, until someone or something gives you good reason not to.  Strategic vulnerability breaks the ice, gives others opportunity to reciprocate, creates connection and also protects the vulnerable by giving early warning when people can’t be trusted further, before we accidentally trust them with something that really matters.
5. Stay with and trust observations more, and question and table interpretations to bring them into balance.  Observations in a design process are like the primary producers and the soil life of an ecosystem:  they need to exist in far greater numbers and diversities in order to reliably support life higher on the trophic chain (consumers; interpretations).  Identify and verify the accuracy of any interpretations before using them as a basis for further interaction.  This allows us to explore a much greater diversity of accurate and relevant interpretations, which expands both toolkit and design possibilities.  It also makes it easier to identify inappropriate decisions, behaviors, etc.
6. Recently, an argument between the virtues of “calling out” behavior (not people) vs “calling in” (people, not behavior) has emerged in “social justice” circles.  Following and rationalizing the advice of a very thoughtful friend:  It’s not either. It’s both.  Permaculture teaches us that each has its appropriate context.  We need the accountability of calling out people on their bullshit behavior and harmful impacts, and people need to learn to accept feedback (sound familiar?).  Likewise, we need to call each-other in to talk with and listen to each-other more and better understand what people mean.  A lot of room for miscommunication and misinterpretation exists, especially among people who (mistakenly) believe they speak the “same language.”  Even amongst long-term committed trusting relationships, let alone strangers interacting on the intertubes.  Clearly, “wussy” means different things to different people.  Had the original poster the courage to take his own advice, he could have simply called in the women to ask, “what do you mean?” and listened and observed and learned about their context, and in doing so expanded his appropriate social technology toolkit.  He may have found a better word to describe what he means in the process, gotten wider distribution for his piece (pun intended).  Instead, he chose an immediate, unnecessary combative response and interpretive frame, and so lost an opportunity.  The appropriate response to a call-out is often a call-in, which involves a lot of active listening — a synonym for careful observation.  Without thoughtful, protracted observation-based interactions, we quickly fill that empty space with negative, toxic baggage.
7. Work with what you got (obtain a yield?):  Most of us have plenty of knowledge and social resources.  Rather than spending time interacting with strangers on the interhive, evaluate and prioritize your existing real-world relationships.  Which ones seem appropriate to your context?  Which ones can you work on to strengthen and improve?  What can we do to better optimize our existing tools and relationships and context?  If we are the average of our five deepest relationships, let’s make sure those relationships really count for something.  Rather than complain about what we don’t have,  how can we better engage and proceed with what we do have?  The problem is the solution:  Why didn’t the original poster ask the women, “What word do you suggest I use instead of wussy?”  He could have outsourced the problem to them to find a solution and built trust and goodwill in the process.  If he had deigned to apply permaculture to his social interactions.  Which he did not.  Instead, he tried to impose his “solution.”  That’s a big no-no in permaculture design process.  Someone who values the content could likewise still share it with a caveat and educational opportunity explaining the irony of the use of “wussy” and Jack’s immature reactivity.
8. Hold clear, firm boundaries against harmful behaviors and impacts, regardless of intent.  Likewise, clearly, accurately and honestly state your needs.  Doing so, along with strategic vulnerability, allows social cohorts to emerge and self-select, without imposition.  Every social cohort will have a shit sandwich, and it becomes easier to determine whether and what you want to stomach.  I personally don’t like drum circles and dancing earthmuffins and holding hands and stuff.  Don’t assume you can change others’ contexts to meet your needs if they don’t already, or aren’t already heading in that general direction.
9. Focus on process (how), not product (what).  Reward honest, effective, hard work, not some magical definition of perfection.  Let go of perfection.  It’s not whether someone sticks it out, but how.  Not whether they talk, but how.  Not whether they listen, but how.  Not whether we fight, but how.  Disagreements will happen.  People will get hurt.  When we observe vs interpret, listen actively, accept feedback, talk honestly, focus on impact and behavior vs intent, etc on the frontend, we will learn to fight well and acheive effective results in shorter time with less inputs and fewer ouchies on the backend (pun probably intended).  A lot like doing the design work up front.  Make your mistakes on paper.

Many other practices and principles around land care permaculture already apply:  accept feedback, value diversity and the marginal, the problem is the solution, work from patterns to details, etc.  We just need to start manifesting them in our social interactions.  Easier said than done, especially when we still, generally, suck so much at more rudimentary applications on land.  I still see many so-callled “permaculturalists” whose idea of “permaculture” involves a cookie-cutter inappropriate imposition of patterns and technologies onto a largely-unexamined context, as if the patterns themselves had some intrinsic magical power to solve problems and make our lives better.  A lot like calling people who disagree with you “wussies.”  I suppose if all you have is a hammer…

Our egos still often result in rejection of very clear feedback, and likewise prevent accurate, relevant and timely observation.  But our social and ecological capacities mirror one another.  As we get better with one, we will get better with the other.  Likewise, anything that stalls or undermines progress on one will do the same with the other.  Social and ecological relationships are so intrinsically-tied together.  Social permaculture and tedious (or fun??!! anyone…?) discussions of privilege aren’t a distraction from caring for land and people.  They’re an intrinsic part of it.  As time goes on, I see less and less difference between how we relate to the land and how we relate to other humans (or animals) in the landscape.  People who expect the earth to comply with their narrow ideas of how it should behave often leverage the same approach with others.  And then throw hissy fits when, gee, it doesn’t seem to work.

Unique contexts create diversities of perspective and proficiencies.  When we help these diversities emerge and co-exist instead of suppressing them, they can create truly-resilient cooperative social systems based on strong horizontal ties resistant to social control and authoritarianism.  Conversely, when we demonize and discourage unique contexts and reject feedback, it creates homogenous social dysfunction that forms the basis for authoritarian regimes and ecological slavery, which arises both from lack of diversity as well as an increase in the compulsory work needed to maintain the system.  As a result, everyone spends much more energy spinning their wheels in the muck, getting nowhere and feeling worse for the wear.  Sound familiar??  It sure does to me.  Relationships with land or with people (human and otherwise), it’s all hard damned work up front, and it’s totally worth it for the rewards we all reap.

In conclusion, here’s a two sentence summary that no one will ever read because no one ever read this far anyway (I don’t care, I wrote this mostly for myself anyway):  Observation and active listening mandatory.  Interpretive dance optional.

LONGWINDED ANALYSIS MIC DROP (is this thing on?)

End(stagecapitalism)note:  I really mostly want this post to become a cult classic and most-remembered for coining the two onomatopoetic abbreviations, ZAMD and LAMD.

Monetizing Justice Work

I try to assume best intentions when I hear people say they want to “make a living” doing social justice work. I think, “Oh, they want to meet their basic needs (food, clothing, shelter) while doing liberation work. Cool!” But when I inquire further, they often correct me: they want to make money doing social justice or liberation work.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to seek to meet our basic needs doing justice work. I wouldn’t call it easy, by any means, or without risk, but certainly possible, even probable. For example, squatting in any of the huge number of empty houses amidst the artificial scarcity of this ruinous economy is a perfectly acceptable way to obtain shelter and isn’t really more difficult or risky than renting or buying.  It just entails different difficulties and risks — ones that many of don’t have much experience or familiarity with.  Doing so also doesn’t endear us to dominate culture.

However, when people say that they want to make money doing social justice work, I hear them saying that they want to monetize social justice as a commodity for economic trade. Social justice to me means the destruction of all social hierarchies so that we can acheive a fair distribution of accountability and responsibility in society. Social justice requires, in part, the destruction and disappearance of our current, commodity-based for-profit economy because the economy requires social hierarchy to function. So I hear those people saying, in other words, “I want the systems whose destruction I ostensibly seek to provide for me while I work to destroy those systems.”

If I identified with or as the system, I would consider this to be a completely unreasonable request and enticing. “You want me to help support you as you work to destroy me? Fat chance!”

Yet, even though the request makes no sense on your part, I would gladly accept the offer. Here’s why: If I provide for you, you become dependent on me. If you become dependent on me, it means, rhetoric aside, at the end of the day, you affirm your allegiance to me. When talk becomes walk, you walk with me, not against me. Your revolutionary rhetoric starts looking a bit more reformist in practice. You file down your fangs (or they fall out from malnutrition). I have pacified and provided for you; you pose no threat to me. Plus, I provide just enough (artificial scarcity) to help keep you competing and fighting amongst would-be allies for my handouts and breadcrumbs. Your work for me becomes all-consuming, because I control when, where, how much. And if you complain, or organize against me, I simply replace you with any number of other people willing to work harder and longer than you for less. While you preoccupy yourself with horizontal aggression against would-be allies, I continue strengthening and expanding the base of my pyramid scheme to further ensure your obedience and entrapment.

In other words, people who want to “make a living” in this way have already internalized an allegiance to the very systems of oppression they say they want to challenge. All the system has to do is say, “yeah, sure.”  And then it will provide for you, on its terms. And you will work for it, on its terms. You may not know it or feel it, but the sociopaths in charge do.

I see this sentiment often come from well-meaning people raised in the system and dependent on it, who refuse to question or break their dependency on the economic privilege it affords them. But such a sentiment leads to a life of misery, alienation, self-destruction.

So, what’s the alternative?   When we identify and connect more directly with our basic needs, we increase our likelihood of satisfying them in two ways:

• First, it opens up a greater range of possibilities. For example, I can attain food through the vernacular economies of mutualism, reciprocity and barter, or I can beg/borrow/steal. Or I can forage, or produce. Or I can purchase. Just off the top of my head, a nine times increase in ways and means. Developing those skills leads toward personal growth and greater perspective and ultimately, a richer and more resilient life. However, if I am dependent on money, then purchasing remains my only option. The other options listed above require skills we must develop.
• Second, money will never satisfy many of our basic needs, and only partially satisfies others (e.g., most of the “food” for sale is complete crap in terms of quality, taste and nutrition). Money can’t buy us love and connection. It can’t buy us a sense of meaning and purpose. Increasingly, it can’t even buy us shelter. When we funnel our life’s pursuits through the pursuit of money, we buy into the myth that money provides, and it monopolizes our time. Without time, we cannot develop the skills necessary to break our dependence on the commodity economy. In fact, over generations, we have lost and continue to lose those skills. When we come home from our soul-sucking (social justice?) jobs and turn on the TV or video games or break open the bottles to cope, compensate, and numb ourselves to the existential agony we feel, we lose more time and opportunity to break the cycle.

So, to meet our needs and achieve self-actualization, we must break our dependence on the commodity system. Breaking our dependence on the commodity economy doesn’t mean complete disengagement from it. It means engaging on our terms — a complete reversal of the current power dynamic.

The commodity system and the sociopathic elite whom it serves will fight against this power reversal, even violently so, to retain or regain control. Here we see the battle lines with the system: squatting is illegal not because it can harm (yes, it can cause harm, but so can any number of legal things, like guns and hammers), but because it is an affront to the system’s ability to maintain dependency and control. And that’s what turns us into activists: because we love ourselves, we love one-another, we love the land, we seek to live fully-realized lives. And our attempts to live threaten the current system, which responds with coercive control. And, so, we, out of necessity, become activists. Not because we want to blow shit up or seek the destruction of things, but because the system threatens our liberation and prevents us from living fully-realized lives as long as it exists intact.  As Jennai Bundock says, “We didn’t pick the fight.  The fight picked us.”

And it all begins when we see money as simply one of many means to a greater end of meeting our basic needs.

Welcome to the Race War (please enjoy your stay)

Here’s a headline I’ve kicked around in my mind for a few days:

White people everywhere declare themselves “not racist” in response to black churches burning

Inspiration for that headline came from the below picture, which I now see circulating on Facebook amongst white people at ever-increasing frequency and popularity in the wake of the Charleston Massacre and string of additional white terrorist arson against black communities:

reads, “I don’t judge people based on color, race, religion, sexuality, gender, ability or size.
I base it on whether or not they are an asshole.”

I don’t have a problem with the picture, per se.  I have a huge problem with the fact that I see it with ever-increasing frequency among white folks in the wake of white supremacist terrorism against black communities.  I even see groups of white people using the above picture to band together and declare themselves and one-another “not-racist” in a perverse sort of white ego circle jerk.  I give exactly four fucks about this trend:

• It deflects from the real issue of black safety and liberation and institutionalized / systematic white supremacy, and makes it about the egos and insecurities of white individuals.  When white people “respond” to events relating to black liberation by defensively declaring themselves “not racist,” it creates a comparison and equality between black lives lost and terrorized on one hand, and hurt white egos on the other. That seems highly problematic to me: Such a comparison minimizes and marginalizes and delegitimizes black lives, even implying that fragile white egos matter more than black lives.  It’s similar to how many people compare a broken windows to a lost life and try to make the discussion about the broken window.  This is exactly why “Black Lives Matter!” has risen as a central slogan and even the name of the current liberation movement: it’s, in part, a very succinct and constructive way to say, “stop delegitimizing, marginalizing and minimizing us!” while affirming at the same time that Black Lives do indeed Matter (esp. when compared to hurt white egos and broken windows!).  Consequently, this also factors into Arthur Chu’s observation about (mostly white?) people changing #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter:
  

  Arthur Chu’s insightful observations about structural racism in white discourse on black liberation

  Why do white people so often feel the need to “correct” the language of black people?  Why do men feel the need to “correct” (#mansplain to) women?  It’s difficult to interpret intention and motive — especially claimed vs real motives, inasmuch as understanding real motives requires full and thoughtful honesty on the part of the actor — but both the above examples represent ways in which white people continue to dominate, marginalize, minimize and delegitimize black voices, people and lives even as they seem to engage in discourse on the issue, constituting a form of white supremacist micro-aggression.  It also exposes white (or male) privilege as the factor behind why white people (or men) can do such things to black people (or women) in the first place, regardless of motivation.

• Individuals use “I’m not racist” as a way to excuse or hide their passivity:  white people claiming they are “not racist” often use such claims to remain on the sidelines, as if this isn’t “their fight.”  Or by virtue of declaring themselves “not racist,” they have no work to do.  How convenient!
• Just as problematically, the white supremacist status quo uses the above-mentioned passivity and micro-aggressions of white individual defensiveness as a type of implicit apology for or endorsement of the current racist regime.  It’s a type of wink and a nod.
• Also, you’re racist.  Get over it. I’m racist.  We’re all racist.  In a racist society and culture, everyone is racist by default.  Only when we actively do anti-racist things are we not racist…and even so, only partially and temporarily.  As Jennai Bundock reminds us, “Don’t tell me you are [feminist, anti-racist, BMX biker, runner, poet, anything, really].  I will know based on how you behave.” (paraphrasing)

In other words, you can’t stay neutral on a moving train, folks (thanks, Zinn).  This is a great example of structural racist micro-aggression, and shows how subtle and entrenched racism is in our society.

When institutionalized, systemic and systematic oppression brutalizes and terrorizes people in your community — perhaps people you know — how do you react or respond?  How will you behave?  Do you, for example, support black armed self-defense or other forms of black agency and empowerment?  Or do you try to police black behavior through the lens of respectability politics?  Such micro-aggression has huge — even deadly consequences for oppressed groups:

Hanley shows how respectability politics can manifest among white liberals as micro-aggression and then within black liberation movements as internalized oppression, ultimately putting more black lives at even greater risk. In this sense, respectability politics plays out as a form of victim blaming, shielding the perpetrator(s) from accountability by ignoring them or rendering them invisible while placing responsibility for the attack on the victim.  More insidious, it also direct attacks and undermines the legitimacy of any victim’s consideration of self-defense at the same time.

Well-meaning white people need to get off the sidelines, stop insisting they are “not racist,” realize its not about them personally or their own insecurities, and join in solidarity with the anti-racist resistance and liberation movements.  This can take a literally-infinite number of forms, big and small (help make signs, publicly condemn the race terrorists, talk to friends and family about what’s going on, take some initiative to educate yourself, etc).  To help establish some parameters, here’s what it DOES NOT look like:

• selfish individualism:  defensively making it all about you, e.g., to claim or prove you’re “not racist”
• passivity: refusing to say or do anything in support of and solidarity with anti-racist activists and victims of racial aggression.
• victim blaming:  wondering silently or out-loud what the black people “did to provoke” their attackers
• deflecting: using your privilege to judge and change any black-led anti-racist discourse and action that makes you feel uncomfortable
• taking control:  assuming you know the path to liberation better than those who struggle for their liberation, reproducing the very power dynamic the liberation is supposed to free us from in the first place!

The recent rash of anti-black arson in the US are acts of physical aggression — continuations of the Charleston massacre — targeting a minority population who has become increasingly vocal about the inequalities and injustices they still face at the hands of white supremacy.   These are acts of war, perhaps even white supremacists’ efforts to provoke an explicit race war in the US.  Until then, these acts of war constitute a reactionary, race-baiting, white-supremacist backlash against black liberation to overcome centuries of entrenched oppression — a type of scorched-earth white terrorism targeting the hearts and peoples of many black communities.  These overt, hyper-aggressive attacks stem from and depend on ubiquitous micro-aggressions like those I describe above.

Liberation requires the destruction of white supremacy.  Anti-racists wage war against white supremacist identity while white supremacists wage a war directly against people who seek to escape the racist confines and terrors that white supremacist identity imposes upon them in the first place.  There’s no mistaking the aggressor in this race war:  anti-racists don’t want white people to die, they want the ubiquitous white supremacist threat to disappear.  In contrast, white supremacists seek to terrorize and silence the actual voices and lives all black people (and, to a lesser extent, their allies) who necessarily threaten white supremacist ideology as they seek liberation from it.  In this way, the struggle for racial liberation echoes the struggle for domestic liberation:  abusive, controlling people tend to be most dangerous when they think a victim wants — and is trying — to leave.  The closer we get to racial liberation, the more dangerous white supremacy becomes.

I stand in solidarity with the people of black liberation movements and against institutional and systematic white supremacy, including its more subtle manifestations as individual defensiveness, passivity or micro-aggressions.  Easy to say, difficult to do:  I struggle to find ways to do this in my daily life.

Showing solidarity sometimes gets tricky, uncomfortable and even scary.  It gets more and more difficult to “other” the perpetrators of hyper-aggressions when we begin to see the more subtle transgressions that form the fabric or foundation of the status quo.  The perpetrators of passivity or micro-aggression start to look an awful lot like friends, family, even ourselves.  Talk becomes personal.  Intersectionally-speaking, mansplaining (and other forms of solidarity-destroying privilege posturing) can rear its head.  I think this is a good thing — a journey we must make to confront and dismantle oppression in our lives and relationships.  It’s not that we remove focus from the terrorists of racism — we remain focused on them, and start dismantling the cultural and social basis of their social support system.  It starts with us, but does not end there, as we learn to turn white (or any other privileged) fragility into courageous imperfection:

If white people want to belong to the beloved community, if we want to be part of the tide that is turning thanks to people of color-led movements like #BlackLivesMatter, then we have to show up as bold and genuine and imperfect…Dismantling centuries of dehumanizing institutions and practices — both in the world and within ourselves — can’t be a simple process. The good news is that transforming your fragility into courageous imperfection is the beginning of a lot more joy. It’s the beginning of a lot more connection. It’s the beginning of the end of racism.

The rest of the above-linked article is well-worth the read for anyone from the perspective of owning and effectively dealing with the emotional fragility of social privilege.  We all benefit when we work to convert our privileged fragility into courageous imperfection toward greater solidarity.

For a different perspective on this same subject, read I, Racist by John Metta.  Some pullout quotes:

“The only difference between people in The North and people in The South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”

Black people think in terms of we because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people.

White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.

The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.

people are dying not because individuals are racist, but because individuals are helping support a racist system by wanting to protect their own non-racist self beliefs.

Here’s what I want to say to you: Racism is so deeply embedded in this country not because of the racist right-wing radicals who practice it openly, it exists because of the silence and hurt feelings of liberal America.

That’s what I want to say, but really, I can’t… [read it all in context!]

The unbearable whiteness of being

I wrote this post as a direct response to a white trend I saw.  A few people shared it in support.  Facebook automatically picked up and displayed the first picture in the post, the one that inspired the critique begin with.  Even though people shared this post and linked to it, the vast majority of white people who commented did so without ever reading the post.  Instead, they simply looked at the picture and agreed with it (why not?  it affirms and comforts vs challenges their worldview), ignored the critique and went on with their day.  I directly asked those people whether they had read the actual post or just looked at the picture.  No response.  So, there you have it, proof in the pudding:  more black lives rest in power so that white liberal egoes may rest in comfort, free from any consideration of their role in the deaths and terrorization of black people.  I believe we need to keep hammering away at these people until their defenses crumble.

However, a few people responded and engaged thoughtfully.  These thoughtful few seem ready, willing and able to grow and remain accountable.  In time, the numbers of the thoughtful few will grow and challenge existing social norms.  All but the most intractable of white ignorance will acquiesce and rise to the occasion of liberation.

Thanks to Choya for contributing resources to this post.