Engaging our values, choosing our freedom

By Kermit (borrowed from Slingshot #99)

I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that I choose to value and what those values actually look like as they interact with each other in my life. Ideally, the things I believe in are not like objects that I acquire, and set on a shelf, but things that I continue to pick up, turn over in my hands and engage with in some meaningful way.

Too often it seems like shared aesthetic tastes become a kind of shorthand for shared values. Rather than getting to know the people that we interact with, we rely on superficial codes to identify allies. The world that we want to live in often becomes defined as one that looks like our vision, rather than one that feels like our truth. It is easy to understand the appeal. When we express ourselves with the same language and interact in a similar cultural mode it is easier to avoid conflict on the surface of things. This is helpful on days when it is all we can do to put one foot in front of the other. The problem is that it is also easier to avoid the passion and processing that is attached to conflict, to decide that it is not possible to find a point of connection with those whose words and actions trigger us.

When we assume that someone else's truth should look like ours, we become grotesque -- we begin to build a system of morality that separates 'right thinking' people from 'wrong headed' ones and inhibits our ability to understand people who are not like us. This is true among conservatives and reactionaries, but it is also true in radical circles. The vast majority of mass social movements, whether political or religious, have worked to deny or minimize facts that don't conform to their Truth. The channels of power put in place to do this, no matter how well intentioned, almost always lead to abuse and the dehumanization of people defined as enemies. When we state, as radicals or anarchists, that we want to create a better world, free from domination, and begin to build an aesthetic vision of what that world looks like, we run the risk of falling into the same trap.

If everyone in the world decided to become like-minded in regard to revolution, or pacifism, or anarchy, or whatever else is held up as 'the way', but the quality of their relationships and the way that they interact with and use power in their daily lives remained the same, the world would only be made duller and more grey. Trying to think intentionally about the essential elements of my values while continuing to grapple with and reassess them as I grow helps me focus on my goals and build relationships and structures in my life to support those goals in ways that are not loaded with aesthetic judgement.

FREEDOM

One of the values that I think about a lot is freedom. So many people use this word in so many different ways that it's meaning tends to fall apart when you look at it directly. One of the ways that I think about freedom is in terms of the autonomy each individual should have to construct/conduct their life as they see fit; that there is no right way to be in the world and that no person's reality is more valid than anyone else's. The implication of this statement is anarchy -- it is what gives people the strength to cast off the bonds of received knowledge and defy power hierarchies that do not acknowledge their own humanity. It also means that I am not able to stand unreservedly behind a unified vision of a revolutionary society. If I believe that there is no one right way to be in the world, then no program or plan can be applied to all people.

Another definition of freedom that I find compelling is the existentialist view of freedom as an internal process connected to choice, responsibility and passionate engagement. Choice, here, is not the choice between products or political leaders, but choosing how we react emotionally to the world. We exercise our freedom when we choose how we are going to react to and be a part of the situations that occur in our lives, most of which lie outside our ability to control. This allows one to claim their freedom and embody it as they negotiate and create systems of meaning in the world, rather than to view freedom as a state that is to be achieved only in some distant future, after irksome struggles. Taking responsibility for these choices makes one aware of their own power. It is not something that can be done for the sake of others, or for all time, but that must be claimed and maintained by each person as they make their way through the world.

The ramifications of radical autonomy are not safe or easy, they are at the heart of what people fear about anarchy. Without rules and powerful hierarchies looking out for society, what prevents everything from just falling apart? What will compel people to recognize any responsibility to themselves and others? For me, the answer is obvious, and grows out of the way that I think about the nature of my relationships.

RELATIONSHIPS

At the heart of feeling alive and engaged with the world is feeling connected to oneself and to others. When I decided to become a radical and build my life in an unconventional way in order to escape the quiet desperation that I associated with a conventional life, I thought, on some unconscious level, that changing what my life physically looked like was equivalent to changing the way that I emotionally engaged with the world. What I discovered was that even though I had found people whose lives more or less matched the broad strokes in my mind, I was still aching for a life I was not living. What I ached for was easy intimacy and shared trust, the ability for two people to expose a bit of their vulnerability to each other and come away stronger from the experience.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in a community with other wingnuts and radicals, and sometimes a similar aesthetic can lubricate the process of building intimacy, it's just that the emotional work of building sustainable intimate relationships is hard, even with people who dress and act and talk like me, and it is possible, even with people who don't.

Often, political identities encourage people to ignore the health of their relationships. By shifting our focus to things very large and removed from our reality, political discourse runs the risk of allowing us an excuse to neglect the responsibility we have to be present in our own lives. If we are constantly aware of the abuse of governmental power but are unable to approach or confront the way that power operates in our relationships with the people we love, how are we ever going to be able to create beautiful realities in the lives we have been given? If people you know and are connected to began to heal themselves and learned how to talk to each other -- about power and pain, passion and death -- and became confident and aware of the ways in which their words, actions, and relationships shape the world they end up living in, how much more vibrant and less despairing would your existence be?

The charm of authoritarian systems is often in their ability to act as a surrogate for real connectedness. They pacify people by giving them simple answers and something they can easily hold on to. The ugliness of these systems is that they require shutting down our ability to recognize the humanity of people whose truth differs from the one we have connected ourselves to. Building substantial relationships in our lives that are based on trust and maintained through a mutual understanding of each other's particular truth gives people a sense of security that is certainly more appealing to me than anything authoritarianism has to offer.

CONCLUSION

Having a sense of yourself and your own power, as well as the ways that you depend, in so many ways, on your connections to others is not about the music you listen to, the food you eat, how you dress, or how you dress your children. I believe that people best relate to one another when they can see their own humanity reflected in the other person. This is not saying that everybody is really the same, but that no one is wholly 'other'. A direct implication of this is that I put much more stock into trying to understand how another person sees their world than I do in categorizing people. I deeply question whether the model of identity is the best way for people to talk about their differences and similarities; it can often obscure more than it clarifies. Only by placing ourselves firmly in our bodies right now and taking responsibility for our power and our freedom, even when that process is painful, or seems impossible, are we ever going to create engaged communities of strong and beautiful people who are connected to each other in healthy ways. The trick, for me, is figuring out how to be in deeply intimate networks of relationships with people while still maintaining an individual sense of freedom, finding a way to hold autonomy and mutual aid in my hands at the same time without reeling from the cognitive dissonance.

The Open and Close Effect: Big Cities to Small Towns

Big Betty Jo comes from where the cows roam, and Big Slick Dick roams where the girls come. One is raised to believe in religious fundamentals, factory work, and wal-mart. The other is born into sin, apathy, and with a wal-mart no more than fifteen minutes away.

These are stereotypes to the conscious, but inevitabilities to the naive.

So why does this matter? When you turn eighteen you are free to go as you please. However, what will you choose when your mind is wired to commit to only that in which you know.
After living among both demographics and lifestyles I realize the truth in our society’s eventual flux to cities of moderate size or greater.

Think and consider as to why this is so.

In a small city/town, you are subject to the conservative lifestyle. No matter how far you can stretch to pull yourself out, it is an unavoidable formality. Naturally there is the traditional upbringing of God and family first. Your work is either a family custom that is yours to uphold, or to choose one of the factory/production/labor jobs that middle of nowhere America offers.

If this is the way to be for you, it's your right and I wish you the best. On the other hand, perhaps you were not so fortunate.

The planet's population boom is not being just felt in the big cities where complexes housing a million people are now being constructed, but in those obscure places that are not so small anymore. Poverty has hit these places full on, and sadly some of these folks have it harder than city slickers in contrast.
Say that you are living in the projects, and much as you may love some of the things and people that make up the best of what is there, you realize that something or someone is too much to bear and leaving the area is the only reasonable alternative. It isn't too much to ask to move maybe twenty to thirty minutes down the road in another part of the city. After all there are likely better quality jobs, businesses, and residences to choose from. But what if you had to move hours away to find that release. You are stuck with what is there and what that entails you to be. Unless you have an outlet that can "save" you so to speak, what else is there but drugs, teenage sex, more drugs, teen pregnancy, and probably selling drugs too. You can find some dead end job and maybe God as well, but the damage is already done, and honestly what choice do these kids have. What creative outlets are there for those that don't have it figured out yet after high school?

The diversity that a large city can offer are few and far in between. Of course I am not saying that this level of damaging neglect doesn't happen when you are among a bustling community, but either way the same result will occur. The majority of kids are going to get whatever is shown to them, and this is the seed from which conservative values grow.

What program and culture can you get your child in to keep them clean and off the streets?

The vast living area gives people a chance. To quote Robert Heinlein "The freedom to choose is the only real freedom anyone has. For the others that opportunity is lost.

The grand environment of a city is a practical escape in today's world. An endless sea of options are around every corner, maybe too many. The condensed country atmosphere creates a fantasy world where life is limited to the traditions that are well established and not to be questioned.

THAT is no longer the sequence of success on planet Earth.

It is easy to see now how the weakness in this system has been exposed.

People are stubborn. They don't like the unknown, most fear change. Whether it is the political landscape, the environmental backdrop, the let them deal with them public schools, or how God's will and money's necessity rule above the need of human’s mutual interactive communications.
Why do conservative’s minds feel the need to shelter their children from the daily grind of life? Television and school are not exactly the wholesome entities they once were. Little do they realize this compounds and creates more problems than they solve.
Today's youth learns far more and has a greater chance of becoming immune to the hardships surrounding them if they get out and participate in the interests they have as opposed to going with the flow their life dictates. Take a bus on a Saturday night and you will probably cross something you would rather not. Walk home after closing time and it is a guarantee you will uncover your humility.

Part 2 of this series: Escapism.

Looking back at the tipping point

By Compost (borrowed from Slingshot Zine #99)

I had a revelation recently that we are beyond the realm of "politics" and more into "evolution", that the scope of what is set in motion is beyond our human wills to turn around. And yet of course, it still seems relevant what we do; as the day of action, the decision what to eat, the words sung, may be the straw that carries a species through.

I find myself strangely at peace to accept the larger cycles of life that include extinctions. Nothing breaks my heart more than to imagine the disappearance of such beautiful and amazing creatures as Sand Hill Cranes, Sea Otters, Checker-spot Butterflies, all the birds and salamanders, insects, fish flowers; life people know so little of as it disappears forever. Are we alive on the planet with the last pair of Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers? How many other species will we see the last of? How many will we not notice?

And yet. These are the generations of Mother Earth. She has three times already raised a planet full of amazing beautiful species that have come to cataclysmic ends. And some species made it through and new life came again. It seems we are in the third major species die-off on the planet. Now. Kinda a lot for a mere human psyche to wrap around. But hey, I remind myself, there are lots of agents for mutation that will hasten new life to evolve and fill the niches; chemicals, radiation, biotechnology, nano-tech. And whatever does live, I was reminded by Dan, "will have a lot of available carbon."

So just try not to be so attached to the beautiful world we know now.

And then there are the humans. I have to say some days I'm rooting for us but other days I feel this foolish species has caused enough trouble. 'Spose it'll be determined by if we can wake up and adapt or not. Humans sure are fascinating and creative. What other creature has come up with tapestries, orchestras, ipods? Thousands of unique languages. Cathedrals, plastic, poetry? What would it all mean without us?

And what does a human do with the precious day in these times? Enjoy it? Try like hell to save wild places? Awaken the Brethren? Grow gardens? Carry on like we don't see?

Seems to me it would help if we would wake up and protect the diverse life on earth and that which sustains it. Stop using anti-bacterial soap for goodness sake and all those toxic chemicals in our "products." Simplify. Slow down. Walk. Reconnect with the earth, with food, with community. Wash with water. Detach from stuff. Sing. The adaptation required is profound. People lived for a long time without all the toys that surround modern Americans. Make decisions in light of the whole, and listen to your heart. Care and Share. We children of the changing times, surf the waves of change with beauty. Adapt. Can we tip human consciousness?