I've been dismayed by the recent events in Ukraine, where I believe the United States is in the process of getting outsmarted once again by Russia. As a U.S. citizen, this is disturbing and I want to shout out our folly to all my friends and family and community. But that would jeopardize many of my personal relationships, and I've been persuaded by my friend Steve Randy Waldman to pursue a more positive and focused path -- Dreams and kindness are all we have:
Nothing is broken in the world without something else being born. Any creature’s death at the very least yields a corpse, which yields succor for some other’s hungry mouth, or soil upon which new life may grow. If we do slip the chain of our outworn institutions, perhaps it triggers civil war, famine, holocaust, or autocracy. But it is also possible that we jump to something hopeful, a revision of our constitutional order that is more capable, more democratic, both...
Much of what I do as a writer is propose speculative blue-sky social arrangements, on the theory that with the passage of time or in a time of crisis things that once seemed ridiculous or unthinkable become possible, even inevitable. Please consider joining me. It’s fun! There has never been a better time to imagine and promote any of the huge variety of arrangements that would be more virtuous and functional than our own, but that for reasons of practicality and inertia seem unachievable. We need to build a portfolio of dreams, each one unlikely, but from which some few will perhaps draw us away from cataclysm and destruction as familiarities unravel...
Unmediated, outside of the temptations of commerce, the humans are mostly remarkably good to one another. It’s people being awful that goes viral on the apps, but those videos are absurdly unrepresentative. When our imaginations and conversations are dominated by salacious, mediated events, we become tempted to override our own gentleness, to prosecute cruelties in the service of an imagined cause with little connection to actual humans here and now. The result is rarely just. If we do start killing one another en masse, the killers will be electric with self-righteousness. Don’t be. Be kind.
So that's my message today. Thanks Steve!
Update: The obvious problem with this attitude is that does not fight against the powers that threaten to do massive harm. There's not much that the average citizen can do in this regard, but a part of constructive resistance is to find allies and promote alternatives. And the first alternative is to focus and direct one's voice of resistance, rather than to shout in an overly tribal or nihilistic manner.
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