I’m angry – a generative anger, a way of feeling which pushes to action. We are witnessing fascists overthrow the state. The draw of fascism is destruction made manifest, the ideology that we must cut out what is wrong in order to keep what is good, that humanity is divided between those who are pure and those who are not. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what sort of future I want to create, not only for my community but also for myself. I think that, in imagining futures collectively, we can find paths forward that are not bordered by blood.
Once a better future has been imagined, we must build the steps toward that future within community. The revolution is not a solo project, definitionally. In order for our world to revolve toward something better, the process of doing so must be undertaken by everyone, by all of humanity. In the spirit of ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ and ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’, I argue that until every human understands the inherent value of each human life, our work is not done. This doesn’t mean that each person in humanity must together have this understanding before the revolution begins. The revolution is now – by fact of our shared global culture, each action we take either advances or hampers the movement toward that future. There is a political dimension to each action we take. The phrase ‘all art is political’ comes to mind. When studying phenomenology for my thesis, one of the terms used to explain this is ‘orientation’. Phenomenology scholars use the word orientation to describe the way that people, objects, and systems can have certain directed cultural tendencies toward other systems, people, and objects. Much as a person might have a specific romantic or sexual orientation toward other humans, they can have orientations toward other things. Similarly, an art object can have an orientation of its own. Orientation, in this way, is a word phenomenologists use to describe the invisible cultural relationship between two things, in the broadest sense. This is similar to the ‘machinic desire’ that Deleuze and Guttari discuss:
“A desiring machine is therefore the outcome of any series of connections: the mouth that connects with a breast, the wasp that connects with an orchid, and eye that perceives a flock of birds, or a child’s body that connects with a trainset. … Desire is connection, not the overcoming of loss or separation; we desire, not because of lack or need, but because life is a process of striving and self-enhancement. Desire is a process of increasing expansion, connection and creation.” -- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze
In this same sense, each action we take is political: politics encompasses the totality of efforts to change culture; culture encompasses the totality of interconnected human action; each action we take prefigures those we take when connected with others. It is genuinely difficult to imagine an action I can take which is itself disconnected from other human action, since, as some are want to say, “we live in a society”. The act of picking food from my garden not only implies certain things about my position within an economy but also reduces my dependence on systems of exploitation (slave labor/prison labor is used to produce a large percentage of food grown in California). When I go to the library, I am affirming the existence of that institution. When I close my eyes and rest, even if I am entirely alone, I am unlearning the exploitative capitalist framework which equates our value with how much we produce. There is no action which is not political. In each step along the road to liberation, there is the potential for new understanding to calcify our frame of being, to lull us into inaction. To me, this understanding of each thing as political has the same potential. If everything is political, what’s the point? Why should I try, when simply by surviving under a system of oppression, I end up reinforcing its value? If each time I take the car to run errands or go to work, I contribute to the destruction of our climate, how can that not simply make me feel more guilty for doing what I need to do? The reframing that I think is necessary here is to de-emphasize the role of the individual. Truly, if there is one connective thread throughout all of the liberatory learning I’ve taken on in the past few years, it is this: There is no human who, alone, can change the world – for good or for ill. The idea that exceptional individuals exist for whom the world bends is part and parcel of fascist ideology. Think of how much, throughout our lives, we have been taught the histories of ‘incredible leaders’ who did ‘what nobody else could’. Sometimes it’s easier to think of the world this way. If there are exceptional individuals, then perhaps I could be one. This story fits the narrative of self we have been taught to hold within us. When tech bros philosophize about simulation theory, they are flirting with the idea that, since they have agency (and they can’t prove that others have agency) – perhaps they are truly the only free agent in the world. Perhaps they are pure and others are not – perhaps others are less than human. The idea that exceptional individuals exist can wear down our sense of community, can numb us to suffering, can drive us to complicity with genocide.
But what about your friends? Surely they are human too. Think of the people you care about most dearly in this life. Do you put them on a pedestal, sometimes? Do you sometimes have the creeping feeling that you are not as human, as fully realized, as pure as they are? How could they be friends with someone who is so impure, so wrong, so often broken? What if none of us are real? What if we are only agents of a simulation, what if each choice we make has been determined ahead of time by an unfeeling algorithm?
And… what if that’s not the case? What if we’re all real? What if each human you see suffering on the street is just as beautiful, just as interconnected, just as caring as you? What if the people you think of as committing atrocities could be your friends under different circumstances? What if they often feel broken? What if they often feel guilt? What if they have friends who they put on a pedestal? What if you are a part of the world just as much as they? What if?
What if there are no exceptional humans, people who have the sole power to change the world? By necessity, when we refer to ‘the world’, we are referring to a sense of the truth of our world as seen through a lens of culture. Culture, being the totality of interconnected human action, being so learned and ingrained, being something we’ve been marinated in since our birth, then informs each observation we make, each new idea we accrue. We’ve been soaking in these histories, tall tales of incredible humans who do incredible things, the ‘chosen ones’ of fiction. As stories, they are fantastic – and yet as a way to understand the world around us, this story falls short. The literary tradition of having main characters who use their specialness to save the world somehow – it prompts us to either take action without consulting others, or to leave action to ‘those who can’. What if, instead of at the behest of ‘special’ individuals, the world changes when enough people decide to change it? Culture is the totality of interconnected human action. Each action we take is political. Fundamentally, that also means that each action we take actually changes the world we live in – changes the culture we are a part of. Each action has an orientation toward a particular future, toward a particular reality.
Yesterday, I stood up at my neighborhood block party and called everyone in to a meeting about issues in our community. The moment before I spoke up, I was filled with anxiety. Not only was I doing something new, speaking all at once to a crowd of people I know as individuals, but I could feel myself pushing against the dominant culture. I could feel the incentives to stay quiet and just enjoy the potluck, to make friends by fitting in. None of my neighbors have (at least in recent history) organized the collective in order to discuss their living situations. We are not taught how to discuss difficult topics. In a system that benefits from our continued exploitation, in which discussing systems of power helps to overthrow them, those discussions are heavily incentivized against. Silence is what allows continued exploitation, is complicity, is death. To be clear, I am not condemning those who choose not to engage heavily in ‘activism’. There are no exceptional humans, leaders of peaceful movements who by power of their charisma alone changed the world. Every action is political. Every moment we push back against the dominant narratives of how to live our lives, we are resisting occupation. Our cultural understanding of activism is one which often ignores the bodily needs of those we put on the front lines – but every action we take can be a form of activism, can be resistance.
I had sex recently, which is… unusual for me. And there was a point where I was feeling bored and tired (I’m asexual, it happens) and so I just… stopped – and told my partner that I wanted to watch anime. It’s interesting how, despite the fact that we don’t really talk about it (we still live in a culture dominated by Protestantism), the sexual is such a site of struggle against exploitative naturalization. The ability to pause, to consider, to be truthful with others about each one of our feelings – these skills are not taught to us. (One of my favorite phrases to use with respect to emotion is “One of the things I’m feeling is ___”) In fact, in that moment of stopping – in that moment of considering where I was at, of taking stock of my own state, I could feel a sense of expectation. Not from my partner, mind you, but from the culture I’ve been marinated in since birth. An expectation that the only reason to even consider stopping sex is if it’s abusive. Our culture is effusively heterosexual, still. Even now, writing this, I feel the need to explain the nature of my sexuality, to pander to those of you who I know have not been immersed in queer culture. I am a survivor of sexual abuse.
There is an idea that Paulo Freire constructs, that in the act of oppressing others, one becomes less human, that you sacrifice your humanity for power. It does not feel good to hurt others. Cops who have built a path out of their profession, out of their indoctrination, and toward liberation, have told not only of their deep regret, but also of the traumas that that system inflicted on them in order to push them to violence. (To be clear, this is not a call to sympathize with police, just an understanding of their potential for humanity) It is by escaping an abusive context that we find our humanity. As a culture, we are in an abusive relationship with capitalism. When we don’t follow its obscure and impenetrable rules, we are punished. When we try to get away, it promises to do better (and then doesn’t). It will take time for us to learn to stop, to consider, and to speak truth. Thankfully, every action is political. It gives me joy to know that every moment I subvert the oppressive limitations of this culture, I am deciding that along with all my friends, we can decide to change the world – and then it happens.
I’m angry – a generative anger, a way of feeling which pushes to action. We have been immersed in stagnancy and separation our whole lives. The ideology of good and evil, of pure and impure, is no longer enough. I do not seek the destruction of my fellow humans – nor their indoctrination into my mode of being. I seek their differentiation, their liberation, their humanization.