Culture

Where Is The Exit Out of The Trap?

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Back in the day, I had a quote from Wilhelm Reich* over my desk:
The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP? It was the resonant wisdom of this sentence and not the cult of its author that drew me. As a young activist I had already observed progressives’ delight in analyzing the life out of ideas, to fall into bitter conflict over differing interpretations of the causes and effects of social injustice and their remedies, and often to invest more energy in conversation about such things – in the dimensions, decor, origins, textures, and other characteristics of the trap – than in getting out. Reich made the obvious yet often ignored point that “to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison.” I had already seen how easy it is to normalize captivity with distractions, rationalizations, creature comforts.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Matching Resources to Needs: Learning to Receive through Participating in “Money Piles”

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The concepts of “deserve,” “earn,” and “owe” are so deeply lodged in our way of seeing things that they appear almost natural and it’s hard for many people to imagine en economic model without these concepts. I am committed to restoring a flow from where resources exist to where they are needed. In this piece, I describe my experience with a process for doing this on a small scale, embodying principles that another economic system could be based on.

Empathy

Do Unto Yourself: The Power of Reciprocity

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How do you treat yourself as compared to your habitual ways of treating others?I’ve been thinking about the dangers of self-exploitation. I’ve always thought my radar for being exploited was keenly sensitive, even hyper-sensitive. I always attributed this to the way my young self was used by my family, constantly urged and deployed to live for others as I was entitled to no needs and desires of my own. I thought I was over that form of self-punishment, that I could no longer fall unawares into situations that made me feel used. But not long ago, I found myself talking about my own life-choices – particularly my proclivity to stick where I am needed long after it serves me – and the voice of my mother came into my head.

Culture

Goodbye to Time

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As Jewish families continue to wade through the trauma of the Holocaust, one must wonder what sorts of lasting consequences immigrant family separation at the border will bring.

art

The Uses of Appropriation

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Audre Lorde famously said it, “[T]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” She went on: “They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” The essay was based on a 1979 panel presentation responding to a feminist movement dominated by those who opposed sexism but benefited in other ways from the existing social order. She warns a liberationist movement against reproducing the racial, economic, and other privilege-based operating assumptions of the dominant society, lest it fall far short of its potential to catalyze a more loving, just, equitable, and vibrant society. Sometimes I like to adopt an alien view, to pretend I’m watching from outer space as we humans scurry across the face of the earth, billions of intelligent two-legged ants.

Immigration

Suffer the Little Children

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Through the lens of Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy, Michael Bader examines how we can channel our pain and empathy that are “fueled by feelings that originate in the deepest recesses of our psyches and find expression in a progressive political campaign.”