The Stories We Tell
I am enthusiastically recommending The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives by David Mura to anyone I think will be interested. Here's my very long review.
An amazingly clear and cogent examination of the perspectives
of white American identity--and a deconstruction of them--as
communicated in literature, history, and current events. Complex ideas
articulated lucidly in a series of essays that complement each other,
layer and reinforce the main point with a multitude of examples.
That main point being: the white American perspective, as conveyed in countless implicit background narratives, is blind to race and racism. Willfully so. And rejects minority viewpoints that might say otherwise.
As Mura says in closing the book, the final sentence of the appendix:
Those on the outside, though, they know all about the world outside in the dark--plus they can see through the window. Their perspective allows them to see both experiences of reality, that on the outside and on the inside. What life is like for the privileged and what life is like for those without privilege. Their perspective provides a fuller, more accurate view of reality. They know more of the world and how it actually works than do those inside their brightly lit privilege. They are the ones who should be most trusted to really understand existence.
In many ways this book is a work of literary criticism, examining the racial perspectives captured in pieces of writing. But Mura includes film and other storytelling media besides literature, then puts those stories in dialogue with U.S. history and current events. Chapter titles run along the lines of "Racial Absence and Racial Presence in Jonathan Franzen and ZZ Packer," "The Killing of Philando Castile and the Negation of Black Innocence," "Lincoln Was a Great American, Lincoln Was a Racist," and "Psychotherapy and a New National Narrative." Mura is an academic and his writing definitely has an academic bent, but his thoughts never isolate themselves to an academic tower, as he always moves into everyday, relatable ramifications.
Rarely have I seen racial dynamics articulated so well.
I can see how this book might be a hard one to sell as appealing, but it is powerful, important, and valuable. Most highly recommended.
That main point being: the white American perspective, as conveyed in countless implicit background narratives, is blind to race and racism. Willfully so. And rejects minority viewpoints that might say otherwise.
As Mura says in closing the book, the final sentence of the appendix:
The assumed primacy of the white view of reality over the Black view of reality--the basic premise of white epistemology--is what binds the racism of the past to the racism of the present.Or, as I like to say, with a phrase I have borrowed from Marie Rutkoski in The Winner's Curse,
People in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.Rutkowski was describing a literal scene, someone at night in a brightly lit room able to see only their reflection in the window, oblivious to the world outside. Yet it implied a metaphor for privilege. Those who have privilege cannot see the reality of those outside that privilege in the darkness beyond the window--are generally not even aware they are privileged because they don't know that anything exists beyond the window--much less can they grapple with the idea of it. All they know is the brightly lit world they inhabit, and and those who say differently are clearly wrong.
Those on the outside, though, they know all about the world outside in the dark--plus they can see through the window. Their perspective allows them to see both experiences of reality, that on the outside and on the inside. What life is like for the privileged and what life is like for those without privilege. Their perspective provides a fuller, more accurate view of reality. They know more of the world and how it actually works than do those inside their brightly lit privilege. They are the ones who should be most trusted to really understand existence.
The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see. ― Akwaeke Emezi, PetMura explicates that same idea over and over again in this book. The brightly lit privilege of Whiteness prevents white Americans from seeing that their perspective is not the only one, that there's an entire world of racial experiences outside their own on the other side of the window that whites consider only a mirror. And that Blacks and People of Color on the dark other side of the window have a much clearer understanding of race, racial dynamics, and reality in America than they do.
In many ways this book is a work of literary criticism, examining the racial perspectives captured in pieces of writing. But Mura includes film and other storytelling media besides literature, then puts those stories in dialogue with U.S. history and current events. Chapter titles run along the lines of "Racial Absence and Racial Presence in Jonathan Franzen and ZZ Packer," "The Killing of Philando Castile and the Negation of Black Innocence," "Lincoln Was a Great American, Lincoln Was a Racist," and "Psychotherapy and a New National Narrative." Mura is an academic and his writing definitely has an academic bent, but his thoughts never isolate themselves to an academic tower, as he always moves into everyday, relatable ramifications.
Rarely have I seen racial dynamics articulated so well.
I can see how this book might be a hard one to sell as appealing, but it is powerful, important, and valuable. Most highly recommended.
Blacks cannot help but see whites as hypocrites and morally bankrupt--in light of white establishment and support of this racist society. The issues that white and Black America argue over may change over time--slavery, segregation, police brutality, unequal schools, systemic bias, microaggressions, kneeling NFL players--but what never changes is this: whatever Black Americans say about racial inequality, about the reality of their lives, about discrimination, or about white people, Black truths can never be considered or accepted by the whites of their time as the ultimate truth. Nothing that Black America says can make white people doubt this; white people must be the ultimate arbiters of reality. And this is the essence of white supremacy.
Extensive Excerpts:
We are left with this paradox: white America enacts and refuses to see what it enacts; it purports to believe in equality and refuses to see the ways its actions prove otherwise. That is why white Americans, even white liberals, are so often baffled by Black responses to injustice--by Black rage or by Black distrust or even Black culture as a whole. That is why white characterizations of Philando Castile, Michael Brown (New York Times: "not exactly an angel"), Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, or Sandra Bland ultimately cannot provide a context to judge these individuals in light of the experience of Black America. To repeat: white people cannot see Black people because white people cannot let themselves see what they have done to Black people--and thus to see who they, white people, actually are.-----That [in her book Beloved, Toni Morrison] does all this through a literary technique that goes beyond the bounds of social realism, that her Black characters acknowledge and live within a "paranormal" reality that the whites around them do not see or acknowledge is a conscious and in many ways a necessary aesthetic choice. The reality of Black life in American has always been very apparent to Blacks and has been shaped in fundamental ways by the powers of whites and white supremacy--but the white ability to see that reality has always been consciously and unconsciously repressed. What is "paranormal" for whites, what is fictional or nonexistent, what is "ghostly" are the truths Black people know about their lives--and the truths Black people know about white people. What Black people see are the ghosts and hauntings of the past; to whites, these ghosts do not exist; there is nothing to be haunted about.-----In 1991, in the incident that helped ignite the violence in Los Angeles, one of the policemen who beat Rodney King with his baton claimed that King's strength was "Hulk-like." Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri, policeman who shot the unarmed eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, claimed he saw a "demon," then added, "When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is that I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan." Implicit in these reactions is an attribution to Black men and boys of inhuman strength and capacity for violence and an inhuman capacity to ignore or feel pain. This is what a psychologist would call "projection," the casting of something inside one's own psyche onto another without recognition that one is doing so.Obviously, Wilson's implicit bias and racism factored into his shooting of Michael Brown; there was never a possibility of Wilson seeing Brown as a teenager or a "good boy," as young white defendants are so often portrayed in courts by their family-financed lawyer and by judges who let them off with probation or lesser sentences. Every Black person in Ferguson understood that Wilson viewed not just Michael Brown as a "demon" or a "hulk." No, that image--that phantasmagorical projection--characterized the way Wilson viewed all their sons, indeed all the Black residents of Ferguson.And what are the origins of this phantasmagorical projection but slavery? The slave was a beast, and so are the slave's descendants. White America has concocted this projection, and white America continues to allow this stereotype residence in its psyche.It is not just within the justice system that these projections affect the ways Blacks are treated in our society. How is the stereotype of inhuman strength and incapacity for pain related to the fact that in emergency rooms Blacks wait longer for pain medication and receive smaller doses than whites *for the same injuries and conditions*? This discrepancy is true even comparing Black children and white children.In this country, the racial stereotyping of Blacks starts automatically at birth.-----I examine a distinct difference between the way white fiction writers and fiction writers of color introduce their characters. In general, white fiction writers do not identify their white characters as white. If the characters are named, say Bill and Bridget, we are to assume tacitly that those characters are white. In contrast, fictional writers of color often identify their characters by race and/or ethnicity. By implications, white fiction writers assume that Whiteness is the universal--and unremarked or undenoted--default. It is writers of color and their characters of color who are an exception to this rule and this universality. Moreover, this practice of white fiction writers also assumes that they and their white characters do not see their race as essential to their identity. Their characters being white is not a significant factor in their experience or the ways they think about themselves.These are assumptions that few writers of color make about race and their characters--and also about white writers and their white characters. At the same time, white writers often assert that many writers of color substitute politics for art--that we write in ways that are overly concerned with politics.But this practice of white writers--that is, their avoidance of any question of what Whiteness has meant to their characters' identities and lives--is in itself a political position. It is a position much closer to a conservative take on race than a progressive position on race. Moreover, making whiteness invisible and the universal default leads to instructive differences in the ways white authors envision their work to be evaluated and the ways that work of writers of color are evaluated.-----Whiteness remains invisible so its power can remain invisible, camouflaged, undetectable. At the same time, the invisibility of Whiteness allows whites to ignore what whites have done to create the racial disparities and injustices that exist in our society, just as the invisible bubble of white-defined social reality allows whites to ignore what the actual lives of Black people are like in this country.In contrast, Blacks understand that the negative stereotypes of their race continue to shape white attitudes and behaviors toward Blacks, in many cases determining the conditions of Black life. Blacks and other people of color understand that their membership in a racial group shapes their encounters with whites. The also understand that whites' resistance to see themselves as white, as members of a racial group, is part of the way individual whites and white America deny the existence of racism, consciously and unconsciously.-----Fiction investigates subjectivity, yes, but Franzen never questions the subjectivity of his white identity or that of his characters. A writer of color understands that they are always in a position where their knowledge is regarded as subjective and open to denial, that she or he always stands in opposition not just to white knowledge but to white knowledge as the objective standard.The epistemological roots of America's white supremacy are embedded in these contrasting racial approaches and positions in creating fictional characters--even if the white author believes him- or herself to be free of racism. On one level, white characters are supposedly raceless--and thus universal. On another level, their Whiteness is not to be subject to interrogation or examination and requires no explanation or contextualization. The meaning of the character's Whiteness ought to be apparent to any reader, whether the reader is white or not--again it is the universal.Only the character of color requires categorization, contextualization, explication, and interrogation in terms of race; only the character of color requires the author of color to assume this is necessary; only the character of color is a question or, to use W. E. B. Du Bois's term, a problem. Of course, Franzen is not alone in making these assumption; he shares this epistemological stance with almost all white American authors who present their white characters with no racial designation.-----For America to move to a new story, that story must be able to allow facts that are now kept out of the national narrative, which remain in various ways unconscious in our national psyche. There are a myriad of such facts--from Jefferson's slaves and defense of slavery to Lincoln's racism to the genocide of Native Americans and stealing of their lands to the racial backlash of Reconstruction and the establishment of Jim Crow. A national psyche that ignores these facts will be, to use Kurtz's words, brittle, insecure, fragile, defensive. But it is not Black Americans or Indigenous Americans who cannot accept these facts; it is white America. And it is white America that cannot ask itself: in what ways is present-day America still connected with the slave owner's ontological assumptions about the difference between the White Owner and the Black slave? That is the psychological work white America has yet to undertake in order to tell a true story of our mutual racial past.-----The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 with Chief Justice John Roberts falsely claiming there was no longer a need for it, that the racism that existed at the time of its passing was a thing of the past. Robert's views were quickly proved wrong by measures all over the South and elsewhere to restrict the voting rights of Black Americans and other people of color, supported by the Trumpian surge in white nationalism and white hate groups.-----While whites charge people of color with a clinging to "identity politics," one could argue that it is actually white people who are far more tied to their particular racial identity, that is, to an identity where Whiteness is defined as the majority, the universal default, the center, and source of all validity. That is why more and more whites are freaked out by the possibility of losing the majority, while people of color are long used to such a status. Moreover, most people of color would readily entertain a vision of society where their racial identities actually and truly meant nothing--the so-called Star Trek vision of the future, which is far different from our present society in which racial identity of people of color has a marked effect on their lives and their reality even as they are constantly told that is not the case.-----[If a white individual is to change,] you must entertain the proposition that when it comes to race you do not know what you do not know. . . .[I'm excluding a section that brought to my mind The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skill in a certain area causes them to overestimate their own competence, followed by . . . ]When it comes to race, almost all whites are C students who think they are A students. If you have been getting As all your life, it is difficult to realize the true nature of your ignorance, your lack of competence. It is hard to see the reality of that C or D grade, and the fact that you have a long way to go, much longer than you think.
If you can't see race, you can't see racism. Only white people can't see race.
While not a key thought in turns of conveying the contents of the book, I really love this quote that Mura pulled from James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son:
It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are; in light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them will all one's strength.
I'm guessing from the way it's presented that Baldwin perhaps moves on from embracing that feeling by book's end, but I've resonated with--and embraced it--for as long as I can remember. You must constantly try to hold the two contradictory feelings of acceptance for things as they are and desire to make things better as equally true and valid.
(For examples, among so many (often more academic) others, see Longing and Tranquility from 2010 or Embrace Contradiction and Paradox from 2009; or for a version of the feeling in a more frustrated moment, the first part of this post from 2023:
There are not two wolves inside me.No, inside me are two musk oxen butting heads, forever violently ramming into each other in a battle for dominance.Their heads are built for this clash, so neither will become injured or suffer actual defeat, they'll simply take turns gaining and losing ground without end.One is characterized by despair. It fights with anxiety and insecurity and frustration. It is misanthropic, sees only the failings of myself and others; sees us as worthless. It wants to be a hermit.The other is characterized by love. It fights with empathy. It sees beauty and connection and value in everything. It is a feeling of contentment. It wants community.Both urge acceptance. One wants to accept that everything is awful and there's no point in trying. One wants to accept that everything is sacred and every moment should be one of gratitude. Where they meet there is no acceptance, only the struggle, the constant push and pull toward one or the other.And so it goes.
end parentheses
While I didn't get as excited about it, I also just read Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice by Sonali Kolhatkar that conveys the other side of Mura's coin. My review:
A brief, fervent argument for changing how we talk about race
and racism. The first two chapters compare the racial narratives told
in mainstream media versus independent media; the middle two look at
traditional Hollywood narratives compared to more recent diverse
representation; and the final two delve into social media, collective
narratives, and personal narratives. While good, this examination was
too cursory and surface for my tastes, and I would have preferred a
lengthier, deeper, more nuanced consideration of the topic.
Nevertheless, this is valuable for its consideration--for the frame it
creates for looking at race and the power of underlying, background
narratives that we're too often unaware of. For how we can shape
perspectives and identities with them.
More than for my review, I mention the book because of a few quotes and narratives I pulled out:
Racist narratives are generally based on stereotypes, while racial justice narratives are based on our complex humanity.-----The work of promoting truthful stories grounded in our humanity is a critical, often ignored tool for achieving racial justice that we all can participate in as individuals.-----How strange it is that to mainstream media outlets, racism--the treatment of human beings as less than human based on their skin color and national origin--is considered an opinion, not an affront to our modern-day understanding of human rights and equality.-----As acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said, "The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make the one story become the only story."-----Not only is shifting the narrative an increasingly critical part of racial justice organizing, it is central to changing the nation's collective consciousness in the long term. "More and more institutions working to eliminate oppressive systems and build inclusive ones are coming to understand that stories and storytelling are the backbone of an inclusive society. . . . How they're told defines whose lives are valued and whose are not, and that narrative power shapes all other types of power, such as social power, economic power, and political power."
I liked that last quote so much I found the article it's from for full context. A bit more:
More and more institutions working to eliminate oppressive systems and build inclusive ones are coming to understand that stories and storytelling are the backbone of an inclusive society, and how they’re told defines whose lives are valued and whose are not, and that narrative power shapes all other types of power, such as social power, economic power, and political power. And so the growth of this field is instrumental in defending democracy and building genuinely inclusive societies over time, and it’s been the critical efforts of communicators and organizers, whether they call themselves that or not, whose work is rooted in understanding and centering the challenges, and experiences, and insight, and wisdom, and stories, and knowledge of everyday people who are experiencing domination and exclusion, that have changed the hearts and minds of people that have set political agendas, and that have transformed culture to create a more equitable society. . . .We believe that our job is to be a conduit for grassroots communicators, to disseminate radical frameworks for strategic communications into more mainstream and academic spaces, and to train people up in narrative power strategies that democratize our field, that put people closest to oppression at the center of our efforts, as opposed to marketing or marketing strategies, which in many ways are antithetical to true freedom and liberation.We believe what sets us apart is that we don’t sacrifice principles or ethics for strategy, but that the most important role that we can play is to build narrative power for social movements.
And the same for the Chimamanda Adichie quote, which comes from an excellent TED Talk.
So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. . . .Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. . . .The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. . . .I've always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. . . .Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity. . . .When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
That reminds me of a quote from Rachel Hartman's book In the Serpent's Wake that I like so much that I've made it into a tiny scroll that I carry everywhere with me on my hat.
The world was too vast to fit into just one mind; it needed millions of them to consider itself from every possible angle.The difficulty with minds is that each perceives itself as a separate thing, alone. And so the minds spin stories to bridge the gaps between them, like a spider's web. There are a million stores, and yet they are all one.
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Millions, from every perspective.
This is wisdom to live by:
If you want to understand someone, figure out the narrative they tell themselves about themself.If you want to change your behavior, change your narrative. If you want to change someone else’s behavior, offer them a more compelling narrative they can tell themselves.
From Farnam Street.
I've been trying to find a good way at my place of work lately to communicate to administration and upper management that a recent organizational change we've made to our staffing structure has struggled to find staff support because it has lacked a compelling narrative. A good story has values, purpose, and humanity in it. A good story makes the listener want to be part of it.
I also just wrote an article for our staff intranet about an event I helped host. Because it was cool, I believe in it, and it's something that should be shared; but also as a way to demonstrate, I hope, how to tell a compelling story about our work.
Building Connected Communities with American Public SquareWe take pride that libraries are institutions at the center of our community that welcome all.Everyone is accepted here, regardless of age, race, background, income, or belief.* The library has no requirement for admission or use, no cost, no qualifying criteria. The library is a free public place for everyone. On any given day, you’ll see a wide range of patrons using our spaces at the same time for a wide range of purposes:
- Parents with toddlers here to play
- Entrepreneurs learning how to start a business
- Genealogy researchers discovering their ancestry
- Language learning classes
- Grandparents checking out movies to watch with their grandchildren
- Young teens checking out video games
- Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s gathering with instruments to create the music of their youth.
- High schoolers working on school projects.
- The homeless in need of a safe place to exist.
The list goes on.It's not every day, though, that you see those last two patron groups mentioned—high schoolers working on school projects and the homeless in need of a safe place to exist—using the library together, in the same room, talking to each other as part of the same event.
On February 27, [my library location] hosted an event by American Public Square that brought students from eight metro-area high schools together to continue their school-year-long exploration into the topic of homelessness. We have a long-standing relationship with APS, a local organization that brings people together to build stronger, more connected communities. We champion the ideals of a civil society—where citizens engage respectfully, collaborate on shared challenges, and pursue their aspirations with purpose. The previous Civic Engagement focus area leader brought a new request to our team: to host an APS Civics Education Initiative day. From the APS website:At the High School level, we offer a custom-created learning series called “Reimagine the Square,” taught in the Fall at participating schools across the Kansas City community. What students learn in the Fall semester is then applied to a project-based learning (PBL) experience in the Spring semester, which gives all participating students the opportunity to work together to build their own APS style program.The APS educators asked that we help them coordinate a day for the students to focus on homelessness in [our] County. In addition to gathering the program’s 80+ students, they . . .
- arranged to have Leah Wankum as the keynote speaker. Wankum is the deputy editor of [our local newspaper], regularly has articles picked up by KCUR and other local news sources, and has been covering the topic of homelessness in [our] County since 2019;
- brought in Bill Mattox, Senior Direction of The J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom of The James Madison Institute, to close the day with a presentation on “Counter Speech” and the protest tactics of the Civil Rights movement;
- and invited [our] Regional Librarians to give short presentations on [our library's] resources available for researching homelessness and on our experiences serving homeless patrons in [our] County.
The highlight of the event was Leah Wankum’s arranging for Barb McEver to make an appearance during the middle of the day. Barb is the founder and director of Project 1020, [our] County’s only homeless shelter—who would normally have been asleep at that time since Project 1020 operates from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. during cold weather months. Leah and Barb had a dialogue about the history of the shelter, its growth, and the ongoing local need for further growth. [Degolar] followed to talk about how [his library building] is the daytime home for many of the Project 1020 clients, about the training that [our] building staff have had to become better able to serve homeless patrons, about our own relationship with Barb, and about some of our experiences with homeless patrons. Then, Leah and Barb brought in five current Project 1020 clients to give a panel presentation to the students. They took turns responding to questions like, “Do people treat you differently when they find out you are homeless?” and “What do you need to be able to move on from this phase of your life?”The students started the day thinking of homelessness as a research topic; they ended the day thinking of the homeless as people with names, faces, and stories.The homeless patrons ended the day feeling more seen, heard, and understood, like they had been given a forum in a world that largely wants them out of sight and out of mind.Library staff built new bonds with local media, and APS was impressed with our space and hosting and wants to plan more with us as soon as able.It was a powerful exercise in building a more connected community for everyone involved.---*See, for instance: Administrative Regulations Manual Policy 10-20-10, Library Bill of Rights: “5. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background or views.”Also: Administrative Regulations Manual Policy 20-15-10, Access Policy Statement: “No Discrimination . . . Libraries and library staff are responsible for providing equal access to library materials and services for all library users.”
It only just went live so I haven't yet had a chance to receive feedback from colleagues, but when I submitted it for publication my manager replied: "This is a fantastic article that highlights what I believe is the ultimate superpower of libraries: bringing people together who might otherwise never find themselves sharing a space." That makes me feel I succeeded at least a little.
To move on to more national-level current events, this is an important story to tell in response to the current administration's work to scrub any mention of so-called "DEI" from government sources.
Very few are telling the story that the motive behind the effort is fear.
When it comes down to it, Donald Trump has just one move.Fear."It's the emotion at the heart of Trump and the GOP," Dr. George Lakoff has explained. "Fear of immigrants. Fear of people of color. Fear of equality for women and LGBT people. Fear of religions other than Christianity. Fear of non-existent conspiracies. Fear of the media. Fear of social progress." . . ."Brain imaging studies have even shown that the fear center of the brain, the amygdala, is actually larger in conservatives than in liberals," wrote John Bargh, a professor of social psychology at Yale University and a hero of Dr. Lakoff. "And many other laboratory studies have found that when adult liberals experienced physical threat, their political and social attitudes became more conservative (temporarily, of course)."Fear makes people more conservative . . .His fear mongering, the media's compulsive need to share it, and even the urge to reshare the horrible things he says to stoke our amygdalas thinking we're turning people off to Trump are actually creating conservatives. . . .By recognizing fear as the tool being used against us, we can deliberately activate its antidote. . . ."They were asked to close their eyes and richly imagine being visited by a genie who granted them a superpower. For half of our participants, this superpower was to be able to fly, under one's own power. For the other half, it was to be completely physically safe, invulnerable to any harm."If they had just imagined being able to fly, their responses to the social attitude survey showed the usual clear difference between Republicans and Democrats — the former endorsed more conservative positions on social issues and were also more resistant to social change in general."But if they had instead just imagined being completely physically safe, the Republicans became significantly more liberal — their positions on social attitudes were much more like the Democratic respondents. And on the issue of social change in general, the Republicans' attitudes were now indistinguishable from the Democrats. Imagining being completely safe from physical harm had done what no experiment had done before — it had turned conservatives into liberals."Science demonstrates that feeling safe makes people more tolerant, progressive, and liberal. . . .We have to fight fear itself – and we do this by creating safety together. . . .The power and safety in numbers . . .Political scientist Erica Chenoweth studied over 300 uprisings across history and found something remarkable: When just 3.5% of the population actively joins a movement, her research showed, change often becomes inevitable.That's the good news. The bad news is that we're nowhere near that number in America yet. . . .So here's the empowering truth: We get to save America. We have the power. We have the strength. We have the numbers.Trump has never had the majority of this country behind him. He has no genuine overwhelming support for his ideas because all his backing comes from fear, not inspiration or agreement. Americans overwhelmingly reject what he and Musk are doing to our government.We know a mass movement can and will save this country. The only question is when. The answer seems clear. We will begin to win when Americans feel safe enough to reject Trump's only move.Together, we create that safety.
Together, we can tell a different story.
Here's a helpful perspective for overcoming fear.
The deepest lie we tell ourselves is that we should be afraid. . . .We live in perpetual fear despite being the safest people in history, by and large. This causes what I call the “anxiety spiral.” Due to the negativity bias, our attention preferentially goes to things that make us anxious. We pay more and more attention to things like the media or online algorithms. [These, in turn], feed back to us what gets the most attention, and it’s usually anxiety.You’ve got the brain doing it on one level, and you’ve got society doing it on a much bigger level. The result is the entire population spiraling into anxiety and not being able to get out. . . .We live in an increasingly unnatural world for our evolutionary being and our physiology. We’re robbed of the things that would calm us and hyper-exposed to things that we would never have heard about without telecommunications. . . .It’s one thing to feel an emotional impulse and say, “Oh, I had an irrational thought that the economy would collapse. I’ve got no proof of it, so I will put that away.” But we don’t tend to recognize irrational fears as irrational. We read them as the real environment: “In the room with me right now, there is a predator called ‘the economy will collapse.’”We are such brilliant verbal creatures who are highly sensitive to fear. We are storytellers. Anything that makes us afraid that does not come from an event in the room, but from a mental depiction of that thought, I would call anxiety. . . .The part of us that’s anxious is like a small, frightened animal. That kind, internal self-talk is something that you can force yourself to do, even if you don’t feel it. You can’t force yourself to feel calm or compassionate, but you can get yourself to do kind behaviors. . . .If you follow what calms your anxiety, you will go toward sensations like compassion and connection. At that point, you will find enormous joy in healing things that hurt and magnifying things that help. You will find joy in something that affects others positively. I’ve never worked with a client — and this is after thousands of clients — who found that their purpose in life did not help other people. That just seems to be built into our biology. . . .The fact is that we’re far more motivated by things like love, fascination, and delight than we are by fear.
Stories can make you afraid; stories can make you compassionate and connected. Pay attention to your stories.
A brief word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Well, not actually a brief word; one of the longer "concepts." The latter part of its essay.
The Bittersweet Awareness That All Things Must End. . . There’s a certain kinship there, shared by all things. The stars and the tombstones, the family dog and the honeybees. A comfort to think that we are all united in our impermanence. Because if even the mountains have lifetimes, and our own galaxy will one day be no more, then there’s no solid definition of what permanence even means. Eternity, infinity, forever: these are nonsense words, poetical abstractions, useful only to spice up mathematicians’ thought experiments. The finiteness of reality takes it out of the hands of the gods and gives us control. Without an objective yardstick to establish what eternity looks like, it’s up to us to define what timeframe we view as normal, and calibrate our own understanding of what fleeting and lasting really mean.You can take a summer afternoon playing yard games with your family and make it last for years. Spend an eternity sitting by the fire with your loved ones, or tell a bedtime story to your kids that they’ll remember for eons. Grow a garden, and revel in its sweetness for a little while, before it all withers away, buried in snow and ash. Drop by to visit with friends, chatting about nothing particularly important. Call your parents. Go out and look at the stars while they’re still visible. Doodle away in the margins, and make art for its own sake, even though you know it won’t last more than a few thousand years. You can sit in a chair listening to music, while music still exists; you can curl up and read a good book while the language is still alive, while the words still have meaning.The meaning of things isn’t an emergent property of how long they last. We are the ones who define them for ourselves, if only for our own satisfaction. It is an honor reserved for mortals; we just have to have the courage to do it. To decide for ourselves which fleeting, precious, interminable moments we’ll carry with us right to the end. Maybe to the mountains, they won’t amount to all that much. But to the honeybees, it’s more than enough.To the honeybees, summer never ends. They live for a few months at most, barely long enough to feel the seasons change. They have no need to remind each other to put themselves out there, gathering their rosebuds while they may. You can hear them buzzing deep in their hives, trading bits of sweetness they’ve gathered out in the world. How easily they pass the nectar back and forth between their bodies, freely mixing it all together as if none of it made a difference, knowing they’ll never live long enough to taste it all.And yet, their honey is the one thing that never expires, that never loses its sweetness. Maybe that buzzing sound is just another way of saying, We are here.
Find the kinship in impermanence and make its story your own.
At the risk of lawyers (as I said, I'm enthusiastically recommending The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives by David Mura to anyone I think will be interested), this post has an appendix.
Click for larger/zoomable versions of the images. It helpfully deconstructs a powerful story as effectively as anything I know.
The world is too vast
to fit into
just one mind
It needs millions of them
to consider itself
from every possible angle
The difficulty with minds
is that each perceives itself
as a separate thing
alone
And so the minds
spin stories
to bridge the gaps
between them
Like a spider's web
There are a million stories
and yet they are all one
posted by Degolar @ 7:08 PM
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