In a month of posting, day 5
Dec. 10th, 2014 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexAs Pirke Avot says, “It is not yours to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
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beah quoted this in response to discussion around ursulav's essay "Unfixable". This essay addresses some of what I have been fumbling around in my last point on my day 4 post about my voice, one among many.
So this is what I'm going to talk about today, doing some of the work. And by "work" I mean "the work of making the world a better place" and maybe also "the work of fighting against the craziness and vile evil of things right now", too. This scares me, not least of all because I'm a white dude with white dude privilege oozing all over him who has a hell of a time controlling his own *isms. I open my mouth and the most awful things come out - sexism, racism, ableism, you name it. It scares me that I'll do or say the wrong things, offend people, speak out of turn, silence someone else by my speaking. My privilege shield means I don't have to fear for my safety except in rare circumstances.
Most of what I think I'm doing about this involves the people around me, as well as working on me. I am trying to raise kids who will have some awareness of this privilege soup we're swimming in. I've built a gaming guild whose main rule is "no harassment" and made it stick. I try to clean up my own act, and I try to put my money where my mouth is. On the other hand, there's the fallacy of "something must be done; I've done something; therefore, something has been done."
I remember a clip shown recently on some news compilation of an older black woman crying by the side of a post-Ferguson march. She told the camera that she had marched so you (meaning us, we, this generation) wouldn't have to. I felt her sorrow and at the same time I remembered the words we say at Seder each year, that not just once but in every generation evil has risen up. The arc of progress may bend, however slowly, toward peace, justice, and freedom but there are always forces and people who try to push that arc back. Thus the work is not (never?) finished, and each generation is called to carry on the work.
In her essay, Ursulav laments the fiction that portrays individual heroes as the problem-solvers and vanquishers of evil. Reality isn't like that. Sure, there are great and exceptional people who lead and carry on fights. But the real change happens, I think, in the crowd. At the ground level, one person at a time. If my voice becomes part of the chorus advocating change, bending that arc, then that's the work I'll do.
(After some waiting and some revising this post still feels unfinished. That may be because my thoughts are likewise unfinished. Hitting 'post' now or I'll stew on this for a long time. Oh, look, here's me editing the thing again.)
beah quoted this in response to discussion around ursulav's essay "Unfixable". This essay addresses some of what I have been fumbling around in my last point on my day 4 post about my voice, one among many.So this is what I'm going to talk about today, doing some of the work. And by "work" I mean "the work of making the world a better place" and maybe also "the work of fighting against the craziness and vile evil of things right now", too. This scares me, not least of all because I'm a white dude with white dude privilege oozing all over him who has a hell of a time controlling his own *isms. I open my mouth and the most awful things come out - sexism, racism, ableism, you name it. It scares me that I'll do or say the wrong things, offend people, speak out of turn, silence someone else by my speaking. My privilege shield means I don't have to fear for my safety except in rare circumstances.
Most of what I think I'm doing about this involves the people around me, as well as working on me. I am trying to raise kids who will have some awareness of this privilege soup we're swimming in. I've built a gaming guild whose main rule is "no harassment" and made it stick. I try to clean up my own act, and I try to put my money where my mouth is. On the other hand, there's the fallacy of "something must be done; I've done something; therefore, something has been done."
I remember a clip shown recently on some news compilation of an older black woman crying by the side of a post-Ferguson march. She told the camera that she had marched so you (meaning us, we, this generation) wouldn't have to. I felt her sorrow and at the same time I remembered the words we say at Seder each year, that not just once but in every generation evil has risen up. The arc of progress may bend, however slowly, toward peace, justice, and freedom but there are always forces and people who try to push that arc back. Thus the work is not (never?) finished, and each generation is called to carry on the work.
In her essay, Ursulav laments the fiction that portrays individual heroes as the problem-solvers and vanquishers of evil. Reality isn't like that. Sure, there are great and exceptional people who lead and carry on fights. But the real change happens, I think, in the crowd. At the ground level, one person at a time. If my voice becomes part of the chorus advocating change, bending that arc, then that's the work I'll do.
(After some waiting and some revising this post still feels unfinished. That may be because my thoughts are likewise unfinished. Hitting 'post' now or I'll stew on this for a long time. Oh, look, here's me editing the thing again.)
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no subject
Date: 2014-12-10 08:30 pm (UTC)I went to some interesting (and I thought, wonderful) library related panels on Occupy. Panelists discussed the library that existed AT Occupy in NYC for the protesters, which was confiscated and destroyed by the police (they requested the return of the books and received an absurdly small number which were badly damaged; reports indicate the rest of the books were discarded -- last I heard, they were trying to pursue legal action, but that was a couple years ago). I also have seen a number of librarians and archivists trying to document and preserve things like websites, social media, images, recordings, etc., so that people can learn more about this in the future. I look at the interviews with the librarian in Ferguson, and the ways that people are trying to contribute and participate and disseminate information, and it's bigger and stronger and (I think) better than Occupy.
Clearly, something is Happening. People are doing shit; *I* am doing shit, that I have never done or tried to be a part of before. I think it's too soon for these group narratives to have affected art broadly, but I suspect that that will happen. I think that's part of the experience that people are literally having, and I think that will eventually express itself in art of all sorts. (I have some theories about places it might be showing up already, but that's more than I have time to write about today.)
I also think that the concept of "rugged individualism" is one of the worst things we could hang onto, but I think it's also part of our internalized national image. I've been thinking about this for a few years now. Not sure how to change that situation, either.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 12:12 pm (UTC)In specific, I think many in our circle are trying to do shit. It's just (as Ursula wrote) nearly overwhelming to think about what one person can (can't) do.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-11 02:36 am (UTC)(I try to take comfort from various Buddhist practices, but in the face of so many, so deeply-broken people - it feels like bailing with a teaspoon. And, yeah, I try to fix what I can… but I live in brogrammer hell and that feels like the same sort of exercise in futility…)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 07:47 pm (UTC)All hail King Bubble, I guess… as if everybody will be graced with gentle and feather-soft landings when this one collapses. (yeah, iz cranky this morning. sorry for venting all over your journal instead of mine own…)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-13 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-13 02:07 am (UTC)i moved here in '87, and I wonder if part of this is just that I'm getting too old for this shit/if the City is done with me. (I know i'm certainly "too poor" - it's only by the grace of a rent-controled apartment that I've lasted as long as I have and if I have to move for any reason, it'll most likely be out of state and probably back to the midwest).
no subject
Date: 2014-12-11 07:57 pm (UTC)I come back to that quote a lot lately, as well as the Neibuhr one about how the things worth doing take more than a lifetime to complete. (Which when I quote it usually causes lots of people to list all kinds of worthwhile things they've completed in their lifetime.)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 12:22 pm (UTC)