Where Will We Stand?

What World Do We Want To Live In?

When horrific things happen, I often find it hard to write, in part because I tend to be a slow writer. I like to mull things over, write a draft then let it sit, go back to it after a break, and meanwhile one horrible thing after another keeps happening so quickly that I’m still mulling the first thing when ten other awful things have happened. we invade a sovereign country to kidnap a leader and his wife, after bombing a slew of fishing boats, murdering survivors clinging to the wreckage, all for drugs that don’t come from there or maybe for oil that even the oil companies don’t want to develop. Then an ICE agent shoots a woman in cold blood, and then Trump and Noem and all do exactly what your abusive ex-boyfriend always does, lies so blatantly its insulting and tries to make it the victim’s fault. Bad enough she’s dead, shot in the face—the face! This beautiful young mother, with stuffed animals spilling out of her glove compartment, and the authorities don’t even respect us enough to lie plausibly! Meanwhile ICE shoots two more people in Portland, drags a young teenager out of his workplace, ignores his cries, “I’m a citizen,” beats him up and dumps him in a parking lot. They shoot pepper balls at protestors, taunting, “Haven’t you learned from what happened to Good?” They burst through locked doors with rifles in hand, lawless, out of control.

I was born in the Twin Cities. My father’s family is from there. My father and his brothers were radical activists in the ‘30s, trying to make the world slightly more fair and just. They went off to fight fascism in WWII not because they believed in the military or the US government, but because joining the army or in my uncle Hi’s case the Navy, was the best way to fight fascism. My uncle Hi always said, “I joined the Navy because they said it was a clean life, but I never knew who cleaned it until I got in!” I don’t know what my father would have said because he died when I was five, so I’m feeling some kinship with Renee Good’s now orphaned son Emerson.

I know what it’s like to lose a parent at such a young age. It’s something you never completely get over. It’s not that you go around weeping and mourning every day for the rest of your life, but such a major loss shapes who you are in deep and profound ways, determines what you think about the world and what you expect your place in it to be.

From a very young age, I knew that life is finite, that it can change in an instant, that really terrible things can happen to people, not because of anything you’ve done or left undone but simply because of the way life is. And that’s without a gang of armed thugs deliberately making misery.

I may have spent more than my fair share of time thinking about life and what its purpose is. During this last week, I’ve been struggling to pull together the final chapter of the book I’ve been attempting to write for the last year and a half: The Movement We Need. In particular, I’ve been writing the chapter that addresses one of our basic, human needs, for a sense of meaning and purpose. If we don’t have faith in a religion or an overarching culture or a group identity that provides it for us in a healthy and affirming way, we’ll find it in conspiracy theories or toxic belief systems or simply by identifying some other group to hate and blame. We suffer from this syndrome right now here in the United States.

But writing, I find, also necessitates reading. Among the things I’ve been reading this week is a wonderful book called Sand Talk: How Ecological Wisdom Can Save the World, by Tyson Yungaporta, an Australian Aboriginal writer. Pulling myself away from endlessly doom scrolling or to read Yungaporta’s words feels a little like coming out of a filthy dive reeking of stale cigarette smoke and old urine into clean, fresh rain-washed air. And Yungaporta is very clear about what the world means:

“In our world nothing can be known or even exist unless it is in relation to other things. Critically, those things that are connected are less important than the forces of connection between them. We exist to form these relationships, which make up the energy that holds creation together.” P.149-150

Yungaporta, Robin Wall Kimmerer, many other indigenous writers frame the world as a web of relationships in which we are embedded, and to which we are responsible. That world view sees us as mutually responsible for one another, bound together in networks of reciprocity and generosity. People are here for a purpose—to take care of one another, of land and community, practically and spiritually.

As Yungaporta says, “Some new cultures keep asking, “Why are we here?” It’s easy. This is why we’re here. We look after things on the earth and in the sky and the places in between.” P.96

Yungaporta also offers a clear diagnosis of what’s wrong with the world today.

“Emu is a troublemaker who brings into being the most destructive idea in existence: I am greater than you; you are less than me. This is the source of all human misery. Aboriginal society was designed over thousands of years to deal with this problem. Some people are just idiots--and everybody has a bit of idiot in them from time to time, coming from some deep place inside that whispers, “You are special. You are greater than other people and things. You are more important than everything and everyone. All things in all people exist to serve you. This behavior needs massive checks and balances to contain the damage it can do…” p25

We are really suffering from this damage today, and yes, we all do have a little bit of it in us. Hence the appeal of someone like Trump, who exemplifies such complete and utter narcissism that he makes the idiot in all of us feel somehow affirmed and validated. Without some countering ideology, we can easily fall into that trap. Indeed, we have a gang of billionaire narcissists attempting to persuade us that we are not linked, not connected, not responsible for anything beyond our personal gain, and any feelings of empathy or compassion are simply weakness--the very ideology that motivated the Nazis. We hear Stephen Miller assert that power is its own law, and Donald Trump proclaim that there are no restraints on his actions—only his own morality, (notably lacking), and his mind, (visibly failing).

And in the streets of Minneapolis, we see ordinary people standing together, forming webs of connection and care, facing down the bullies at risk of their lives to protect and care for their neighbors. In Chicago, in Portland, in Los Angeles, in New Orleans and Charlotte, everywhere the thugs go they generate webs of opposition and protection. And in cities and towns across the U.S., in Iran and Hungary, In Ukraine and Gaza, we see people rising up to stand against the tyrants, to say that we do care, that we believe in compassion, in our mutual responsibility for one another, in love.

Now is a good time to choose what you believe. Are we here to tend the webs of connection, to care for one another and our beautiful earth, as the core of not only indigenous but every major religion would tell us? Or are we here to maximize our material gain and destroy all who might somehow get in our way? Consider what world we would live in, if that second view prevails. Envision the world we want.

Decide where you will stand.

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