Building a new world

Ok, I really do have aspirations of posting an occasional snappy blog post, as is recommended by marketing experts. Three easy cocktails for the holiday weekend, for example. Or what to do when you don’t have a shaker. Actually those are both really good ideas and I will do that. But for now, as an essayist and philosopher and artist at heart, I have another essay.

Perhaps this amalgamation of thoughts seems slow, late to the party (it’s not a party). Perhaps it does not. Surprised is the least of the things I felt with regards to the Supreme Court’s striking down of Roe v. Wade and the stripping of bodily autonomy from women, but like many others I still felt the waves of horror and grief tearing through my body. And still do. Not least because bodily autonomy is an important human right, and the idea that it should be removed just because it isn’t specifically referred to in a 300 year old document that doesn’t mention women at all (if women aren’t mentioned in the constitution, perhaps laws just shouldn’t apply to us anyway? And we certainly shouldn’t pay taxes. No taxation without representation.), but also and particularly because, let’s be serious, this decision by SCOTUS isn’t about abortion*. Banning abortions has been shown in multiple studies not to work. Banning abortion is primarily, and overtly, a tool to keep people of color and low-income people in poverty. That’s what this is about. That’s what the anti-abortion movement is really about. And it is – again, overtly – setting the stage to strip rights from other groups that are not cis-hetero-white males with money.

It’s important to check our urge to have an immediate response, and to make sure our responses are well thought out and truly crafted to help others, and help in the long term. For me, that means waiting through the fury and the desire to say many unsavory things about where various people can stick various objects. Anger has a place, and righteous anger can be oh so important to alert us to what is unjust, unfair, and in need of correction. But, action and speech taken while angry are brief and furious skirmishes. We need more to sustain us because this is a long, long haul. Always has been, always will be. And so I wait until I wade through the painful, icky muck and murk until I come back to a place of love. (Not pushover love though. Fierce love. Dogged love.)

And I say with love, we don’t have much money, we don’t have much power, but we will do everything in our ability to take care of others. At Vikre we believe that women’s rights, and BIPOC rights, and LBGTQIA rights, are human rights. To all who feel sad and scared right now, and/or have for years and/or for always, this a reminder that you deserve rights because you are in this world, you are human, you are unique and valuable and connected to everything else that is.

I’ve been thinking about and working on understanding power for years. In grad school, I studied the sociology of power under the tutelage of a wonderful Haitian sociologist (Hi Nesly!) He taught me about Bourdieu and the idea that power is culturally and symbolically created. He is also the first person who taught me about servant leadership (read Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf) and the idea of power-with, as opposed to power-over. You have power, whether you feel it right now or not. And with that power comes the power to grow power in others. I have a vision of a world where power always lights the power in others, abundant, instead of pie slices that people grasp. And a world where the more people we happen to lead, the more people we serve because that is what leadership is for.  

Because power and leadership on a grand scale are built through the repetition of patterns and interactions on a small scale, you can start your work in yourself, in your interpersonal relationships, and your community. In fact, that’s where you had best start. We get really tied up in the grandiose, don’t we. I know I do. And feel like if we aren’t doing something giant, we aren’t doing anything at all. But rarely do any of us have the opportunity to make change that is sweeping and has immediately visible results on a large scale. The forces that are working hard to keep systems of oppression in place have been working systematically throughout communities for a long time to get here - dismantling education and public services; placing their own proponents in school boards, then local government, then state; promoting disconnect and distrust in organizations, institutions, communities; promoting the idea that toxic individualism is an ideal to strive for and that toxic individualism is freedom, when actually freedom is the freedom is to be yourself and to see that your true self is intimately and indelibly connected with everyone else. In order to build a different world where we can actually be free together, we must be willing to work as systematically and as long. We need protest, we need civil disobedience, we need yelling in the streets and calls to our legislators over and over again, we need local elections, and more. And we also need builders and connectors, artists and healers. Take imperfect action. Follow people who have been doing this work for a while. We need to love and vision so deeply and ferociously that we can see and build a new world one twig at a time. A new world that burns so brightly that it straight up sucks all oxygen away from the old one so that old one sputters and fades away. We can hope we will get to see it. We might not get to see it. We have to work for it still. Personally, I find this really really hard. I like accomplishing goals quickly as much as the next person. But, I’m trying.

I’ve been reading the Chronicles of Prydain with my kids. They’re Lord of the Rings-esque adventures, a world trying to wrest its grip from the Lord of Death. They’re filled with wisdom, sadness, joy, and beauty. At the end, the main character Taran decides to stay in the earthly world of Prydain rather than journeying to an enchanted world. And this part of the book struck me so much. “Taran nodded. “So be it,” he said. “Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king – every person is a hero if they strive more for others than themselves alone. Once,” he added, “you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too must the striving count more than the gain.”

Anyway, I’m not an expert, and these aren’t instructions, they’re thoughts and observations, principles I try to explore and learn from and apply, even though I know our work will always be imperfect.  There are experts to look to and learn from. I especially recommend looking to the leaders, thinkers, and writers who are women of color. For me I also think it’s so important to take great inspiration for action by looking to the work of artists. In the words of author David Whyte, “A good artist, it is often said, is fifty to a hundred years ahead of their time; they describe what lies over the horizon in our future world…The artist’s sensibility is one that grants life to things outside of our normal human ken.”