What does privacy feel like?

Sometime in my childhood there was a news cycle that centred around the growing ubiquity of “security cameras,” suggesting that some large percentage of public spaces (at least in Britain) was already being filmed. Areas that you might not imagine having 24-hour monitoring, like street corners and parks, were now possible to watch all the time.

But even if cameras were starting to be everywhere, we had an idea that an actual human had to be paying attention, hence the movie trope of the distracted, sleeping, or absent security guard and the meta-camera view of a bank of monitors with our characters unseen except through our own omniscient perspective.

We could assume that our homes or other places we “owned” were not under continual monitoring, unless we were doing things of interest and/or threat to a nation-state. We could say things to other people that no one else would hear and that would live on only as part of human memory, subject to our subjectivity and sense of salience.

Those were the days.

The end of privacy

How far away are we now from near-total surveillance?

Recently, in a meeting I regularly attend on Zoom, one specifically oriented around the sharing of quite vulnerable and personal information, the software began to show a warning as we entered the room.

AI will be listening and summarizing this meeting, it said.

There was no “I don’t consent” option.

Zoom has various reasons to let us know we’re being monitored, but in more and more cases, we may not even know that our locations, likeness, words, or voices are being captured. And what’s more, we’re largely agreeing to this capture without awareness.

Death by a thousand paper cuts

Many things have led to this moment, in which we are experiencing the last days of an expectation of what we called privacy.

Our monitored-ness follows Moore’s or other power laws that predict ancillary outcomes of cheaper processors and storage. Digital video has made incredible strides from the early days of tape-based camrecorders. Quality cameras are tiny and cheap and nearly everyone is carrying at least one audio-visual device around constantly. We have room for massive amounts of data to flow through servers. AI can now process language and visual information to an extent that while it may still be cost-challenging to save every bit of video, we don’t need humans to watch it all to determine its importance or relevance.

And the emergence of click-wrapped licences has accustomed everyone to the idea that they have no recourse but to agree to whatever data usage a company puts forth, if they want access to the benefits or even to the other people who have already struck such bargains. What’s more, we seem to have little sense, so long as the effects of our surveillance are not authorities acting against us, of what it means to lose what we knew as privacy.

Subjects and Rulers

In The Dawn of Everything, authors David Graeber and David Wengrow posit the idea that control of knowledge is one of the three elementary principles of domination.

Historically, surveillance was defined primarily in terms of the state, who had the means and motivation to enforce control of knowledge with one of the other key principles of domination: violence. We had spies and police, and then eventually, as property rights of individuals other than rulers began to be backed with state violence and technology became more accessible, private detectives and personal surveillance emerged and eventually became small industries. But now, we’re mostly being watched by for-profit companies.

When I started down the rabbit hole of “the implications of AI” thirteen years ago, even ideas about human-destroying agentic AI such as “Roko’s basilisk” were thought of by some (notably Eliezer Yudkowsky) as dangerous, akin to releasing blueprints for nuclear weapons.

But most people didn’t think there was much to worry about. Technology was still a domain mostly thought of as benign. iPhones were brand new. Even the idea that AI might be trained in such a way as to maximize its outcomes at human expense, as in the ‘paper clip factory‘ metaphor, seemed far-fetched to most.

For me, the idea of the technology being able to become conscious or even agentic was less compelling than the way people who DID think about this outcome were thinking about it at the time. This was my first foray into the Silicon Valley underground, and what I observed was that many people within the subculture were thinking about everything as machines, while simultaneously longing for more human, embodied, emotional connections.

What I didn’t see then was the cascading motivations that would make AI’s surveillance inevitable and not exactly state-based (though the state still acts as an enforcer). It didn’t occur to me that most people would willingly trade in their freedom for access to entertainment. I didn’t see how compelling the forces behind corporate capitalism were becoming.

Voluntary bondage

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.” —Marshall McLuhan

Though the “Internet of Things” seemed to be hype when it got lots of press in the 90s, we didn’t need to adopt smart appliances to begin shadow surveillance in our private spaces- we invited it in so we could shop more easily.

The current crop of AI tools centre mainly around figuring out how to sell more things, how to optimize selling, how to invent new things to sell. If we made it illegal to profit from AI trained on public data (as opposed to trying to put the genie back in the bottle), we’d surely see less unconsidered damage in the future.

It occurs to me that our only real form of resistance is not buying or selling things. And that form of resistance may actually be harder than smuggling refugees or purloining state secrets.

Each new technological breakthrough recreates the myth of social mobility- ‘anyone,’ it’s said, can become a wealthy person by using these new tools. Meanwhile, actual wealth is becoming more and more concentrated, and most people making their living using the tools of the digital age (versus creating them) are scraping by.

The upcoming innovations in surveillance involve not only being able to record and analyse everything from a human-capable observational standpoint. They will include ways of seeing that go beyond our natural capabilities, using biometrics like body heat or heartbeats, facial gestures, and network patterns. We will have satellites and drones, we will have wearables, we will have unavoidable scans and movement tracking.

Follow the money

As someone involved in the world of internet Trust & Safety, I’m aware that there’s a kind of premise of harm prevention or rule-enforcement that is involved in the collection of vast amounts of information, just as there has concurrently been a groundswell of behaviour that requires redress.

To me, it seems strange to simply accept all surveillance as fine as long as you’re ‘not doing anything wrong;’ but this is a vestige of the idea that being monitored only serves as a way to enforce the laws of the state. What’s happening now is that we are being tracked as a means of selling us things, or as a means of arbitration of our wages.

None of these thoughts or ideas are particularly innovative, nor do thoughts like these have any protection against a future of total tracking. We could have some boundaries, perhaps, but I don’t feel optimistic about them in any short term timeframe.

Instead, I am drawn towards embodied experience of untracked being, while it is still possible. We may be living in the last times where we can know what it feels like to be with other people and not be mediated or observed by technology, to not be on record in any way. We can notice our choice and where we are not offered a choice.

We can feel the grief of this passing.

Money for nothing

I haven’t ever really gotten into video games post-Atari, but I used to joke that eBay was my favourite video game. There’s something game-like about searching through its huge market for treasures, finding things that seem like good deals, and adding those things to my Watchlist. Then eBay gamifies it even more, sending notifications to say, ‘oh, you’re running out of time,’ and I quickly decide whether or not the item is really what I want (usually not). It’s pretty fun.

But sometimes I’ll be in a certain mood, or have a story that I ‘need’ something more urgently, or the deal just seems so compelling from a ‘level of discount’ perspective and I go and snipe the auction, only to realize once the item arrives that it was not actually necessary at all. Like when I bought a dress shirt (designer! only $20!), thinking, I’d really like to wear more dress shirts and blazers, only to come back into reality and realise that I live in Portland and mostly only am seen by people other than my family on dog walks or Zoom calls, neither of which necessitate the wearing of items that require professional dry cleaning, ironing, or for that matter, even frequent washing.

But eBay is not the only vector of my aspirational shopping. I fantasized for a while about a reMarkable tablet before buying the second generation when it came out, only to have it end up in a drawer. I own socks that are still attached to their little plastic sock hanger.

There are many things I honestly thought I needed (NEEDED!) that barely saw use once they arrived at my doorstep.

And another interesting thing about me, I guess, is that in fact if I buy something that I like a little less, something less special, like items from Portland’s infamous Goodwill bins, I will often use them much more than the great deals on fancy things I’ve found elsewhere, because I don’t want to ‘use up’ the nice things. I have a gallery of ‘nice things’ and an actual experience of items that are good enough.

I have a general policy about buying most things used, or sometimes new from individuals who never used the items, as a way of living without directly encouraging sweatshops and the overproduction of discretionary items (food is an exception, and let’s face it, I still use Amazon to buy some things). But this policy doesn’t really protect me from my own games, the idea that some additional item will enhance my life in some way, that there are rational reasons for purchasing something that fundamentally implies that right now things really aren’t good enough.

I don’t think I am alone here.

We are producing so many things, so much of which is bound for landfills, so much of which comes with this idea that material goods can ease our discomfort, so much of which we really just don’t need.

I notice that there’s a sense of security I am seeking with this kind of behaviour, being able to have new versions of things that are still functional, having clothing options, keeping backup supplies of things we ‘might need’, or buying groceries that are good deals but don’t get used before the best-by dates (accelerated by my proclivity to shop at Grocery Outlet, or grossout as it is known in my household).

Then there are these moments where Marie Kondo shows up and is like “what if you only keep things that spark joy?” And then we purge all the extra stuff, leaving so much room for additional things to refill our home, because homes in North America are really built for stuff more than for people.

Enough already

Let’s start thinking about what is enough. Let’s start thinking about what it means to have everything we need.

To do this, we can consider some basic questions:

  • What matters?
  • What would the world be like if everyone had what we think is enough for ourselves?
  • What is sustainable?
  • What if there’s no security? What if no money or possessions can protect us?

Everywhere around us, we are being sold the idea of needing more. We need new clothes, appliances, cars, phones, things long before our old ones wear out. If we have abundance, we can satisfy our whims to travel or to eat out at restaurants or just buy things because shopping is pleasurable. We can have treatments to make us more beautiful.

So often I hear the idea that spending money on yourself equates to caring for yourself, that when things are challenging, just ‘do something nice for yourself,’ suggesting you can buy your own self love.

Scarcity isn’t a mindset

It’s no fun to live in a state where basic needs can’t be met because of our lack of resources. I’ve been in a situation where I ran out of money. I depended on public assistance to eat, and even couldn’t get to work or interviews for work without scrounging for change for the transit fare. This experience was transformational because it happened at a time when I had been beginning to invest in practices of self-growth and collective practice. I experienced the fear of what would happen as I ran out of money and the awe at realizing I was OK because other people cared about me and were willing to help me get through a rough time.

Without community support, the panic response and elevated stress of survival mode lead to degraded decision-making and mental and emotional exhaustion. Children living in this situation have lifelong effects. 10-15% of people worldwide and in the US live in this state.

People live with the effects of our overconsumption globally: pollution, war, climate-related famine, and other kinds of stress-inducing situations to contend with, much of which is made invisible to affluent people whose neighbourhoods are situated away from landfills, Superfund sites, and areas of direct conflict. In my own neighbourhood, for example, there are nearby encampments that are regularly cleared out, making it seem as though public spaces are “really” owned by only people who also can purchase land around them.

Let’s stop celebrating the idea of abundance.

Having everything we need feels different than abundance. Abundance can be infinite. Access to more wealth and privilege expands one’s idea of what abundance might be. Having what we need is more definable, collective, and possible.

This is not a communist polemic. I don’t think everyone has to have the same things. I am skeptical of the blunt ideas of equality or fairness, which tend to disregard the beauty of difference. I don’t think we can have a world where everyone has what they need through a state-enforced program.

As a reflective practice, though, I think it’s very helpful to feel into what enough looks like. To start to notice when wanting more is more an addiction than an genuine longing or need.

How I spend my time and money have consequences. Most purchasable items involve some level of complicity in systems of extraction and dominance. I can’t extricate myself from this but I can participate less and operate with more awareness.

When I buy something new, I wonder, what am I actually trying to obtain with this purchase? Am I imagining I will be more attractive, have more peace of mind, more fun, more sense of being accepted? This applies to the little purchases as well as the big ones. What’s more, a lot of my purchases are just things I need because I bought some other thing I need, when the need itself was always an illusion.

But what about them?

There are always people with more wealth and more conspicuous consumption around to use as a fake barometer of our own behaviour.

It’s not useful to police or to call out people who are, by virtue of factors including luck and effort, able to own property or properties, to accumulate wealth, to travel as tourists, to buy expensive items, to eat at restaurants that charge hundreds of dollars per meal, or take advantage of other kinds of ‘luxuries.’

And, it’s fair to say that most luxuries come at a cost to others. It’s fair to say that most means of acquiring wealth come with some exploitation of others. It’s fair to say that Western people’s ideas of enough or abundance are pretty weird, and that we’re often imagining something for ourselves that would be inconceivable to a large percentage of the world, if we hadn’t invented social media and streaming media to let everyone know about the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

How can we open a discussion about what enough looks like, that doesn’t lead to pointing fingers, resentments, or ignoring blind spots or areas of conflict?

What can I do to be honest with myself about the ways my earning and spending money impact others?

Money doesn’t care about us

Money is a stand-in for many relationships in our culture. We measure love in the cost of gifts (two months salary, for example). We pay people to do care work, such as child care, elder care, and health care. We hire and fire caregivers, making care something we think is a result of spending rather than relationship. Les and less do we invest in reciprocal caring.

We feel isolated though we have more people around us than ever in human history. We have to pay others to listen to us, to take care of our kids, to make us food. And when we pay people to do things that are associated with care, we necessarily make care transactional, we don’t feel like we have to care in return. Think of the day care centres who tried charging extra to mitigate the tendency of parents arriving late, making staff work longer than they were meant to, only to find that it made the problem worse. “I’m paying for this service so now I deserve to get what I paid for,” completely divorcing themselves from the human consequences.

My sense of why many paid forms of community are strange is something like, ‘you can’t pay someone to be your friend,’ but even that truism is being tested now, whether by paying actual people to perform friendship, or with new forms of technology or drugs that are supposed to replace the need for actual humans to care for us.

Delusional currency

We see money as a sign of our worth. And we see other people’s worth in terms of money. But we’re fond of stories that upend this paradigm. “Greed is good,” goes the Gordon Gekko memetic mantra, but in the end of Wall Street, Gekko has fallen. We are in this weird shame cycle of wanting money, power, recognition while recognising we’d be much happier investing in our communities, relationships, health, and skill-development.

In one study, when participants watched a video of a child talking a test, those who were told the child comes from a wealthy family rated the child as smarter, more capable, and the test more challenging than when the same video is shown to people who’ve been told the child comes from a low-income family. We truly believe people with money are better, despite the widespread evidence that wealth and power often lead to less empathy and more bias and irrational thinking.

When the conversation about what it might look like to live without the aim of making a lot of money, many people I’ve talked to seem to regard the whole idea as fanciful and misguided. Some are dismissive entirely, some retort with some version of the ‘do good to do well’ concept of finding ways to be “good” and still make a lot of money. It’s not money itself that is the problem, of course, but every argument in favour of wealth accumulation I’ve heard involves bypass and contortion. Yes, it may be that my accumulation comes at others’ expense, but I’ll do good things with the money, or I will be able to stop doing terrible things and commit my time to collective good once I have enough money for my own security, or I don’t want to live with scarcity mindset.

Real scarcity mindset is a belief that money can offer meaning, acceptance, or security. We are most likely to live longer, have good health, and feel our life has meaning when we’re integrated in contexts of interdependence and care, where we feel loved and where we’re not vastly unequal in resources to those around us. When we think of money in terms of a practice of cooperation and collaboration, where we create value with other people, and can then pass along resources to those creating value for us, where we by and large know the people we’re creating value with and for as well as those who are creating value for us, we can understand money as simply a metaphor for our connection.

It’s the system, baby

It’s interesting that so many of the destructive materialisms we’re engaged with are subsidized by taxes and seen as beneficial to ‘our economy’.

Our current economic strategies rely on people buying stuff (or traveling, or eating junk, or pursuing wealth accumulation or whatever) in lieu of being satisfied, and anti-social patterns work in service of those strategies.

It’s economically advantageous, at least for corporations, to have people living apart from one another and needing to buy individual versions of everything, to pay for care, to be fined into prison. In theory, we’d have governments (meaning, a group that we’ve selected to ensure our collective wellbeing) looking to more of a holistic measure of economic benefit. This would involve holding corporations accountable for the economic costs growth strategies involve, such as environmental damage, heath care costs, even things like crime (though punishment is simply another corporate-benefit industry without accountability). We’ve stopped regarding government in this light especially in the US (or, for example, in more universally accepted as despotic regimes).

I have to suspect that people who have learned how to live with fewer financial resources and more community will be in a better position as things collapse, whether due to war, climate, or other scarcity-inducing situations. Whether that will be ‘enough’ is hard to say, but there’s no downside I can think of to learning to share resources, support each another, and recognise how deeply satisfied I can be with all my needs being met.

Sweet Social Media

Should we try to make it keto or just have an apple?

Whether ‘social media is bad for you’ has these annoying debates. Social media has benefits! But there’s no doubt that there are psychological effects from forms of communication that are equivalent to advertising, in which consuming content necessitates others to be served a lot of actual advertising for things they don’t need, which themselves are served by fostering insecurity and internal lack, not to mention tribalism and division. And that there have been real harms as a result of social media, including genocide.

Unsavory similarities

What if we think of social media like refined sugar? It’s fantastically tasty, but has no nutritional value. Its negative effects go beyond individual health.

Production of sugar comes from a powerful (and subsidised) industry with roots in slavery. It is ubiquitous and seems impossible to avoid in modern life. Our collective palate-shifting towards it has caused all kinds of downstream effects on our health and ability to moderate our behaviour (so much so that we now have pharmaceuticals to address our inability to naturally self-moderate).

Sounds similar to many criticisms of social media. The idea that we should try to hang on to the “good parts” of social media does seem akin to the proliferation of ‘keto snacks,’ highly processed items that are low in ‘net sugar.’ (TBH some of those snacks are pretty delicious! but probably not great for us).

There’s always an interesting tension between ‘we’re living with human systems that are leading to our ultimate demise‘ and ‘we have to live in these systems and anyway there are rewards in this system I don’t want to live without.‘ Part of the practice, in my mind, is holding both feelings while getting curious about how either are true.

I am fairly certain that my absolute happiness would not be reduced by the non-existence of social media, even though it has its rewards and pleasures. I was alive, even if I was only a child, when we weren’t all connected and ‘sharing’, and people were pretty OK.

Don’t look back

I am not advocating ‘going back in time;’ instead, I am asking ‘how can technology support first principles?’ What might ‘unprocessed’ look like in our digital interactions?

If everyone was on Mastodon or some other still-social-media platform that was not ad-driven, would all the problems dissolve? Is it possible to have a way to share thoughts and information and promote your group or art or thinking in a network that isn’t gross?

There’s a distinction between “within my network and x degrees of separation” to “public,” and perhaps there’s some ways of imagining ourselves being less prone to performance and self-censorship if we have an idea of who we’re talking to. Models of highly cross-pollinated small groups could serve us to share more thoughtfully than trying to get attention from ‘everyone in the world.’ Decentralization could make this possible but more needs to be done to set limits, to normalise boundaries.

The negative effects of social media come not just from bad actors and harassment, not just from being exposed to advertising and algorithms, not even just from participation in a system that mirrors corporate oppression in general. Investment of time and emotional bandwidth into superficial forms of connection, being constantly evaluated, and seeking attention take us out of our own freedom and sense of belonging.

But what about nihilism?!

Is there any real argument for not eating a sugar-filled diet if you are like “well, we’re all going to die eventually?” My experience suggests that as I divest from more of the systems like corporate work, social media, faith in institutions, I not only feel better but I start seeing the possibility of supporting human patterns of connection and belonging with technology, rather than trying to create a successful startup that exploits human behaviour to gain power and influence.

My experience with the path towards internal freedom is that I find more compassion for my behaviour but far fewer reasons/ less need to choose comfort and convenience over what seems to be right for me. But it’s a curious question of whether you act your way into right thinking or if you heal enough to not need the crutch?

Cultural addictions

Our collective decisions about what to do about addictive things is curiously inconsistent. Some people become alcoholics and there’s no evidence that alcohol has health benefits, but we’ve collectively decided to allow adults to make their own choices about how to use it. Some people become nicotine addicts and cigarettes are still widely available, though there’s awareness of some of the malfeasance of the companies who profit from selling tobacco products. Some people become heroin addicts and we’ve collectively decided to criminalize that behaviour or at least criminalize possession of heroin. Some people become prescription opioid abusers and we have decided to hold corporations somewhat accountable and also continue to permit doctors to prescribe opioids. Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out that when there’s a lot of money being made, less profitable alternatives will often be suppressed or vilified, even if they are actually more salubrious.

To take an opposing position, indulgence is fun. And social media is fun. It entertains us, it gets us excited, it is silly and sexy and delightful. We can be creative and be rewarded and recognised. We can find people who we vibe with and share aspects of ourselves that might be unappreciated or censured in our local community. We can learn and discover things and perspectives we wouldn’t have encountered offline.

Everything in moderation no pun indended

There are no absolutes. I still love to eat a brownie, have a drink, and watch YouTube videos. But I don’t feel happier if I have two brownies or three drinks or spend too long looking at content. It’s only because I generally eat healthy that I notice the ugh feeling of going off the rails. It’s because I have so many other, meaningful things I care about that I’m satiated by a limited amount of entertainment. I don’t long for more stuff. But we’re living in a time where limits are not the norm, and consumption is king.

When people bring up “making the internet weird and fun again,” I am reminded that the online world can feel like a portal, a place of mystery, surprise, and new connections. Part of this to me feels like it’s not compatible with social media, which is designed to be a firehose, an endless amount of stuff, not a place to have an experience, to feel something and feel a reciprocal sense of knowing.

Socially mindful

How can we have social media that is intentional? How can we create an environment that still allows us to perform, to show off our creativity, but to slow it down to an embodied, breathing, collaborative experience?

Could we have the delight and fun of social media without the approval-seeking and ranking algorithms? Let’s start with the ‘feed.’ What does feed-free social media look like? Even in the so-called ‘cozy web,’ popular community platforms have feed metaphors, though they may not be updating at a social media clip.

Could we live without likes and views? Could we have social media that didn’t reinforce unnatural standards of physical appearance or encourage polarizing viewpoints? Could we have social media that didn’t replace actual feelings of interdependence, collective good, and mattering?

I’m excited to live in a world where we’re not going for “not as bad as…” and living into new ways of being and thinking that rest on the fundamental idea of our collective freedom, our collective responsibility for the space and for our individual experience, and it strikes me that centralized social media simply is anathema to that vision.

Yes, we need breaks from all the seriousness, we need to have fun, we need to laugh and play- but I am not convinced social media is a prerequisite for these activities. If anything, it seems much harder to really feel joy when we’re glued to screens, when there’s always another thing queued up to entertain us or to be processed, especially when a huge number of those things are selling us something. This is how it seems to me, but I love to discover the ways I am making assumptions, and I want to understand how you think we can align social media with a world that supports us as humans, isn’t extractive, and doesn’t rely on violence and dominance to function.

Is it OK to feel OK?

There are catastrophic things happening in the world around us. In many ways, it feels like humanity on the whole lives on borrowed time. Floods, earthquakes, and other weather disasters, wars, famine, addiction, houselessness, structural racism and oppression, and even genocides. Most of these involve at least some level of human culpability. As a human, I am involved in all of these things.

At the same time, I am sitting in a warm bed in a comfortable home in a pretty neighbourhood, with working electricity and high-speed internet. I have been able to eat healthy food without fear of running out, am covered by health insurance, and can use a library system with endless books to read and access to more films and television than I’ll ever watch. I am surrounded by love, family, and two extremely wonderful pets. I participate in a number of groups and have a deep sense of meaning and purpose. My practices include meditation, journaling, walking, and reading, which bring me joy and satisfaction. I feel a daily sense of gratitude.

In Al-anon, which has been an important part of my recovery from the effects of trauma, there’s a saying, “we can be happy whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.” In other words, our inner and felt sense of wellbeing isn’t dependent on other people changing. There’s something about acceptance that is critical for my own sense of OK-ness.

But, as I said earlier, the problems of other people and other beings are not just other people’s problems. So should I feel OK?

From the perspective of what I’ll use the word ‘consumerism’ to describe, no. I don’t use social media much anymore and in part, it’s because there’s a constant state of overstimulation and fear there, on every topic from war and climate chaos to politics, to stuff you need to be OK. Not being OK on some basic level is an unsurprising message in a place designed for advertising.

From that perspective, my OK-ness is freedom, it is choosing how I am and how to respond. It’s recognising there is not an immediate crisis that I need to attend to in my personal life.

And yet, this line of thinking can lead me astray, and definitely becomes its own consumerist seduction. The ‘wellness industry’ is massive, it’s all about feeling good, feeling good about yourself, feeling calm, feeling detached, having abundance, manifesting what you want, going to retreats and getting bodywork and never having anxiety.

What’s going on around us should make me anxious, and does. I don’t want to feel better simply because I have the option to live with my needs met. It’s not true that there is any actual security, if that’s defined as ‘protection from harm’ or any kind of predictability. When I see myself accurately I am interdependent with other people, and other beings.

There are not refuges untouched by the crises around us. I feel waves of grief, seeing images of people hurting and killing each other, of elephants being rounded up and massacred, of fires displacing people from their homes, of animals being abused for the food supply, of forests clear-cut and the mantle of the earth stripped for resources.

Real freedom isn’t being OK, in other words, it’s the capacity to feel, and to sit with the paradox that feelings include fear and grief as well as joy and love and wonder. Real freedom, perhaps, is OK-enough to look for what is within one’s capacity to address a crisis, and to be willing to do things that have a real impact- moving to a smaller place, contributing time and resources to community and collective efforts, letting go of the need to win or have everything I want. It’s discovering the ways I participate in dominance and extraction and avoiding denial or justifications. It’s the willingness to stay in the discomfort of awareness, not to feel like I’ve done my part by recycling or posting articles somewhere. It’s by committing to love and being with the trouble.

We are prone to find solutions and yet our solution-oriented thinking comes along with an inability to know everything and predict the outcomes of our actions. It comes with our modern aversion to taking responsibility- and leads to pretty terrible ‘solutions’ that benefit a few at the expense of most, or give us a false sense that we can keep on with short-term pleasure-seeking or reward-oriented behaviour. It leads to very selective evidence inputs, or the pretense of holism when we’re simply unable to be holistic while we’re in solutions-thinking, which doesn’t even include parts of our own brain and wisdom systems.

I can be with the trouble, I can notice the cracks, and there are no answers. I can slow down and be with other beings, I can witness and feel the shudders of death and destruction around us. I can love all the beings regardless of their actions or inactions. This will have an impact and it won’t solve anything. I am in wonder, I am OK, and it hurts sometimes.

Creating the Conditions

“Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other ‘undesirable’ side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.”

― Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Systems are complex and interwoven. When we imagine or feel into a different world, it’s clear that mitigating symptoms won’t change the system. When we treat the symptoms, we are often perpetuating the problem itself or enabling the root cause to continue.

In many ways, critiques and analysis are part of the system of dominance and so reinforce it, even as we might think we’re making a difference. Instead of just engaging in a practice of evaluating and identifying symptoms, we can focus on creating the conditions for change. When we start with our own conditions, we can see they are a fractal of world change, change that is emergent and more complicated than we can plan for. As long as we feel compelled to hold onto the stories in ourselves that fuel dominance, our prescriptions for others will come from a warped and reinforcing-systems perspective.

It is far more difficult to do the work of rooting around in ourselves and changing our own behaviour than it is to analyze what is wrong with a system or to make recommendations for what everyone should be doing. The latter approach lets us eat popcorn and feel smart whereas the former means contending with the ways we are out of right relation with ourselves and others while also resisting the dominance trap of self-judgement.

In my own inquiry, some of the conditions that I can foster are: being in practice and returning, living as body and attending to body needs, noticing the things that hook me, being willing to listen, curiosity, wonder, love as an action, action as emergence, and radical compassion.

Creating the conditions involves two aspects. We do the work of letting go of the stories, identities, and behaviours of dominance. The other side of this practice is fully generative, living in the real possibilities of the present, not the future. What does now have to offer us?

We have been taught that to make change we need a plan, a strategy. As humans, our imagination is a gift, that we can create things in our minds and then figure out the steps to accomplish such a thing. And to be sure, there is complexity in thinking about the tradeoffs between beautiful and staggering achievements and the dominance and manipulation required to enact them. Cathedrals and pyramids are wonderous, and are also enshrined power structures. The concept of ‘modernity’ seems to me to be a world in which nearly everything around us depends on some measure of exploitation, of others and of resources, and also of invisible interdependence, relying on the work of thousands of other people without any sense of appreciation for each of their contribution to our wellbeing.

We can make change with a strategy but it is the kind of change subject to co-opting by the system because inevitably goal-setting is a reinforcement of the system itself. Instead, if we put the focus on ourself and the reality of the present, we see that much of what we call ‘reality’ when we are in the more typical state of past and future focus is actually just a story, a narrative, an often collective hallucination.

As I say these things, I am reminded that just by speaking these things I am perpetuating a lie, and thus, though my intention is to articulate something I believe to be true about how change is possible, I simply perpetuate the falsehood that anything is knowable.

Even the practice of creating conditions is that it disintegrates when it is called truth. Any truth that is, only is and can’t be named and explained. It falls apart under the weight of whatever might be called ‘good and bad’ or ‘correct and incorrect.’ Evaluation on a linear spectrum is meaningless when it’s put into a multiversal container of what is.

My experience of this involves the unsettling and exciting sense that there’s an unknowableness, something my body has evolved to feel as supernatural or divine. I am in a near constant state of questioning, and when I go to a place of ‘I know something’ there are interesting effects. I feel the initial rush that comes from being in analysis, synthesis, seeing something to be definable, I have the pleasure of arrogance, like ‘look at what I discovered!’ especially when I see that it seems to resonate for others, but soon enough I get another feeling, an uncomfortable body-sense like a residue of a chemical, the aches that arise from unnatural contortions, strain from trying to lift a boulder.

At the same time, trying on these various knowings and wearing them as costumes is fun. Unknowable as source means that all things are true equally as nothing is true, or at least definitive. But there is a body truth that can be felt, something I can trust until I start to narrate, as in meditation where the mind will be like “oh, I think I have gotten somewhere with this meditation!”

The results of the right conditions, I think, are quanta-like in this way. They involve a deep sense of peace that evolves from our removing urgency, they involve an anxious hypersensitivity when we let go of the defense structures of of blame and judgement. The conditions involve both the freedom of knowing I am not all-important or able to predict anything on any scale beyond the immediate, as well as the responsibility of seeing that I am fully the agent of my own experience, that I am in choice.

Weeding a community

Definition: For the purposes of this conversation I define ‘community’ (with the understanding that this definition leaves out much if not most of what the term ‘community’ is used to describe now) as:

A number of people interconnected in various ways, who feel a sense of identity with the collective as well as a sense of being known and cared about by the others who consider themselves part-of, and who are interdependent with at least some of the others.

A community is an emergent phenomena. You can’t build a community. You can’t manage a community. Instead, if you are interested in community, you can create the conditions for emergence, including structures that reduce the opportunities for malignance.

What to weed out

Some things that will likely lead to toxicity or a failure to cohere:

1. Over-leadered spaces: a community thrives on egalitarian structures. Leaders emerge rather than appoint themselves. Expertise can be offered but not imposed.

3. Too much enclosure: No community can survive when there’s not progress, which requires new people. Lives change, people leave. Newcomers offer the opportunity to see one’s own evolution through others at different stages, and a sense of ownership that comes from welcoming.

4. Too much openness: There needs to be a threshold, a sense that there is connection, purpose and shared identity. There needs to be a sense of consistency with the people you’re with.

5. Dominance: If one individual has power over others, there are limitations on being, and this has cascading effects for the whole community

6. Unstructured interaction: We come into every space with the shapings of our lived experience, our inherited trauma, and many blind spots. When there’s not enough structure, people can miscommunicate, make assumptions, or play power games like ‘helping’ in ways that feel imposed onto others.

7. Too much identity: belonging is both an action and an experience. We choose to include ourselves, and part of growth is rooting out where we might be excluding parts of who we are. Communities can easily develop anti-patterns in which membership depends on suppression or hiding of parts of who we are. Fitting in the opposite of belonging.

8. Rules or weak norms: again, as an emergence, a community shifts and changes. Strong (articulated) norms allow people to be at different stages of development and to feel into how things work. Rules lead to policing and power games. Weak norms lead to confusion and disintegration.

9. Action before trust: trust takes time and is torpedoed by many things, often interaction that doesn’t accommodate full agency or freedom to be.

10. Not enough deep interaction: an essential part of community and belonging is being seen and known. Parasocial dynamics need to be coupled with actual social connection, but also should be voluntary and fairly unstructured. These are the ‘spaces between’ in community.

11. Under-leadered spaces: communities need structures that keep things happening. Much of this can be ‘automated’ in a way with regular meeting times, a standard format, and fallback options. But communities develop leaders naturally and offer ways for ‘leaders’ to be in service or stewardship without authority. Under-distribution of work leads to burnout.

12. Not enough togetherness: frequent, positive interaction with the same people is the basis for emergence. There may not be such a thing as ‘too frequent’ except insofar as it tends to build trust that is more difficult for newcomers to penetrate.

A platform from which to leap

At the beginning of 2023, I decided to write every day, and to put whatever came of it onto a blog that I would not promote in any way. This arrangement seemed to me to meet some kind of integrity with the idea that I was indeed ‘shipping’ as the startup lingo has it, without participating in a collective performance that would only get in the way of being open with my (probably half-formed and unpolished) words. This plan was effective in its way. I wrote a number of things that were exploratory, though also strange in their lack of recipient- perhaps language can be useful just for one’s own understanding, but only an understanding that escapes the body.

Over time, I started to drift, and post less frequently. The unfinishedness seemed odd or even risky to publish, with the trope of the internet’s indiscriminate memory in mind. And also, I feel myself, when writing to noone, becoming more likely to express myself in the form of college essay or with a touch of what you might call “archness.” I’m more interested in a constant breaking apart or disintegration that sometimes a post can’t contain.

Then I decided, for no good reason that I can think of, to begin putting the posts on Substack. It has been an experiment that brings in a kind of cognitive dissonance- can I continue writing in an undefended way when I am also presumably sending the words, or giving a VC-driven company the task of sending my words, to other people? And is it then my job to manage the ways that such a platform would like me to work for them, showing me analytics and sending me various prompts to continue my investment in their ecosystem (one that I then, for consistency’s sake, invested in to the tune of a one-year’s subscription in another newsletter (consistency’s sake being my least favourite cause in general))?

Well, I don’t know. I certainly felt uncomfortable sending out these little posts, which I’m sure a coach would cite as a growth edge of some kind- bumping into my pattern of feeling like a burden if I am not feeling unimportant. But am I really attached to those kinds of narratives anymore? They seem like this weird way of conditioning myself to be productive in service of something invisible but smelly, to think “of course, if I were seen / had a platform / gained legitimacy” then I would be more likely to get what I want or avoid harsh judgement. While that’s obviously the opposite of true, maybe I could think, “‘my authentic self’ can emerge when I don’t censor myself.” There is a stage that I am meant to be on, and that stage’s performance somehow proves my realness, or at least, my worth and power.

There are so many layers here, because even in that inquiry there are judgements that I think limit my understanding. What could it be like to write or not write, to post or not post, with both the intent to connect and communicate (why else make things public or even epistolary?) and the indifference to being read or understood? Is this even logical in the first place? Part of what is so odd about the social media metaphor is simply that there are few historical examples of social contexts that combine communication and attention-seeking with such intensity and ubiquity, along with trying to negotiate the general lack of communication or attention most of the attention-seeking efforts inspire. In a way, posts on social media are advertisements of our loneliness. What makes an unread newsletter any different?

I have a kind of guilty nostalgia for the semi-private experience of LiveJournal, back before we understood the implications of putting one’s most embarrassing experiences on a platform soon to be purchased by unknown Russians. While I have generally begun to have less interest in text-based media as mediators of communication, LiveJournal was a place for the kind of reflection that journaling offers, while being also hilarious and at least for me, an impetus to take my own problems way less seriously, because it was more entertaining to note my own stupidity. There’s probably some layers of avoidance baked in to that as well- more of a spiritual bypass than an actual loving of my own feckless humanity, but these things are not binary.

I come back to a kind of presence and present when I remember that a sense of purpose has been revealed to me, that I don’t really matter so much– or rather, that the construction of me doesn’t matter, though I matter fully and equally to any other thing, being, or human.

Does writing support this purpose? I think so. Does a newsletter support the purpose? I really don’t know. My sense is that I’m much better at asking good questions than having answers. If going down inquiry road with me leads other people to connect more with the underlying idea that freedom, responsibility, and belonging are the same thing, maybe? I’m unsure that reaching this conclusion can come from anything other than practice. But perhaps for some reason there’s value in sharing my practice with you (because there must be a you, as the tree falling would agree). There’s no more that that, is there? Just the intention of love that can somehow be alchemically infused into the electrons moving and also not moving, the virtual that is also what is.

HOPE – How Our Practice Evolves In Us

Last night I spent some time talking to my step-kid, who is a teenager, about the future. He was wondering if there’s any point to doing things that support the health of the planet because it might already be too late. Looking around at the American kids his age, for every kid who seems interested in justice, climate, or any other kind of activism, there seem to be 10 more who are coveting Jordans, eating hamburgers, and spending hours a day on social media. What does this portend for the future? It’s a self-reinforcing paradox that is not confined to teenagers.

There are radical changes needed to shift things and even the people I am around who are doing deep thinking about these things often manifest what seem like irreconcilable dissonances between their behaviour and thought. We, either as humans or specifically as people who live in this dominance-driven culture, seem to regard self-honesty and taking the actions within our power as impositions, as “what someone else thinks we should do.” For Americans (and Canadians), if ‘doing the right thing’ might involve any level of ‘not doing what I want right now,’ then it becomes a weird political thing, or a way we shame one another.

There’s frequently a big gap between behaviour and viewpoint. Someone says they are very concerned about climate collapse, who even work on green initiatives, but still eats beef or takes frequent flights. There are many folks in my world of ‘healthier tech’ who are posting and scrolling for hours a day. I have found myself among them. I know the challenge in choosing something different, something that may risk me being left out or feeling invisible. (Or not getting my package in two days for free).

This is the state of affairs when we’ve abdicated our freedom- we think that our individual actions “don’t matter” and that it’s all about what politicians or billionaires decide to do.

My experience is that it’s quite the opposite. When I am coming into a situation and feeling into my own complicity, I recognise my agency and can work towards solutions in an embodied way, in a way where I am not living in pure denial and cognitive dissonance. The process of divesting doesn’t happen all at once and I expect to be doing things that are out of alignment for all of this lifetime, but I’m closer to freedom when I see my behaviour and seek to be in more right relation to the earth and to other people. I’m more alive when I am not policing other people or waiting for someone to decide my fate while I consume and pleasure-seek.

This is why communities of practice are essential. Doing this work alone is nearly impossible. A community of practice helps me to feel like I am not alone in holding myself to account, and it also allows me to see into my blind spots, to recognise areas for growth that I was unaware of. In a community of practice, I encounter people who seem stone-cold real with themselves and people who are currently going through inquiries or challenges that I wrestled with in the past and have now worked through. I can see my growth and my opportunity to grow. I am able to feel the love in the practice, to feel the deep and unconditional regard I have for myself and other people as we do our best.

In a community of practice, we can begin to experience what the future might look like when we become forced to recognise out interdependence. Our survival depends on our ability to cooperate and collaborate when we don’t have predetermined hierarchies or state-enforced power. In disasters, people often come together for a time to help, to work toward common goals, to surpass their own idea of what they are capable of. I’ve found something quite similar when people come together to do their own work and to begin to develop relationships that reflect a sense of total inclusion, where we are fully welcome, there by choice, willing to contribute.

The structure of communities of successful communities of practice allows us to experience collective purpose, strong norming, reflection, being witnessed, and witnessing others. It makes everyone a welcomer, even when they are practicing for the first time. Strong structures allow for every person to be there by choice, for there to be no individual who matters more than others, to function even when someone with a role or responsibility isn’t able to participate or doesn’t show up. They function as a reflection of the complete dignity and autonomy of each member while simultaneously creating a container of total belonging and connection.

There are many things we might do to contribute to a future that, as Buckminster Fuller put it, works for ‘100% of humanity.” It’s a collective hallucination to believe some people are more entitled to anything than others, that any of us are not completely responsible for our own roles in creating the future, or that we are required to participate in systems of dominance and extraction. That doesn’t mean it’s as simple as saying ‘no’– but if we’re thinking along these lines, we can start to innovate in powerful ways. The most important thing I have to contribute is my own self-ownership, my own freedom, and a recognition that my honesty, openness, and willingness to practice emerge in collective.

Our Work and Our Worth

“Money is like water. It can be a conduit for commitment, a currency of love. Money moving in the direction of our highest commitments nourishes our world and ourselves. What you appreciate appreciates. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands. Collaboration creates prosperity. True abundance flows from enough; never from more. Money carries our intention. If we use it with integrity, then it carries integrity forward. Know the flow—take responsibility for the way your money moves in the world. Let your soul inform your money and your money express your soul. Access your assets—not only money but also your own character and capabilities, your relationships and other nonmoney resources.”

― Lynne Twist

“We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement.”

― David Graeber

It’s hard to reason about money when it has a kind of theological position in our culture. My old stories about money fall into a few categories. Maybe you have entertained some of these ideas yourself.

Being liked or accepted

  • If I seem to have money, I will be subtly ostracized or mistrusted by others
  • If I appear to have a low income (or even an ‘average’ income) I will not seem credible as a consultant/job candidate/human
  • If I speak of struggling with money, people may believe (or find out) shameful things about me, like I am dealing with emotional struggles or I was fired from a job
  • If I charge for my time at a rate that reflects my worth, I will be rejected or seen as greedy

Fairness

  • If I receive less money than other people with similar levels of education/experience/power/hierarchical role, it’s not fair
  • If I speak about struggling with money, I am being insensitive to people with more systemic disadvantages than mine
  • I have had many advantages so I should make a lot of money
  • I have had many challenges so I’ve been kept from making money
  • Fair pay is the same thing as getting what other people get for the work
  • Non-male founders get ridiculously little investment

Worth

  • If I receive more money than other people with similar levels of education/experience/power/hierarchical role, it’s a sign of my worth or negotiating prowess
  • My personal work is not valuable enough, not good enough
  • How much money I can raise is a reflection of the potential of my startup’s success

Safety

  • I should always be in an upward earning trajectory
  • If I don’t make enough money, my life will fall apart
  • You need at least a million dollars to be able to retire
  • Having a job, a house, a retirement account makes you safe
  • I can’t afford to take time off
  • I can’t have a vacation if I’m not working

Identity

  • I should be doing things for money that reflect ‘who I am.’
  • What’s holding me back from doing what I love is that it’s not a good way to make money
  • Finding a way to make money and do what I love is difficult or impossible
  • If people see all my sides then I will be too something to be hired
  • The person who I’m in relationship with should make enough money
  • Good people don’t care about money
  • Good people don’t neglect their responsibilities by being financially unstable
  • If I were a ‘real’ founder I would be making a product that investors were lining up to fund
  • I can’t do creative work without having enough money to take the time to do it full-time

Competence

  • If I worked harder I would make more money
  • If I made more money, my life would be better
  • I need to find a benefactor
  • I don’t have the credentials to make money
  • All I need to do is get over my fear of being visible and I will make money
  • I can’t find a job even when I lower my standards
  • I shouldn’t pay someone to do something for me if I could do it myself
  • It’s naive to think you could make money without sacrificing your principles
  • Great founders fundraise and bring in large capital investments as a result of their storytelling skills and clear business acumen

It took many years to wrangle with all of these stories and to realize I was operating with faulty priors in the first place.

When it comes to money, there are many ways to get out of right relation with myself and with others. As with any wisdom I have discovered, there are lots of ways to refute what might feel true to me, lots of ways to prove that the wisdom is wrong because there are people for whom the wisdom doesn’t apply.

Wisdom that speaks to me continues speaking, often in layers, often with my own objections layered on.

Wisdom related to money tends to activate me and other people and leads to many objections. Money often proxies for value among us, even in situations that such a metaphor doesn’t hold up well.

In conversation with Peter Limberg from the Stoa / Less Foolish we’ve explored the idea of Alivelihood, framed as “How to make money while doing what makes you come alive?“

Right now I believe that at some point a choice is required to commit to aliveness. For me, any kind of strategising doesn’t support this, it only gets in the way. In other words, aliveness as I experience it starts in the body, in the choice to listen to what is there for me in the interplay of breath, blood, being. The truth rests and abides. It doesn’t need to lead to making money. It does need the conditions to be able to be nourished, literally and spiritually. At times I hear people say having this nourishment is a privilege or a right. To me, it is a choice.

There are a lot of ways this can feel unskillful to express. Do I think it’s easy for people who are financially struggling to make this choice? No. But it’s also, at least from what I’ve observed, quite hard, at least as hard, for people who do have resources.

Making this choice doesn’t mean, “now I am alive all the time in everything I do.” Very few people I have met get to even 50% aliveness without making many choices, without being constantly in the practice of choice, without bumping up against all the deadening we are culturally conditioned to.

What I’m experiencing is that being alive, listening to the body, being willing to be slow leads to more discernment about opportunities. There are certainly people who have found material success by grinding and hustling, and sometimes it feels very alive for me to work hard, to work a lot, to press up against exhaustion. But it does not feel alive to be in fear about the repercussions of not making enough money. It seems more like a situation where, when I keep returning, keep doing the things that feel like they have a positive impact on the world, ways of supporting that show up.

In the conversation with Peter, I came up with a list of heuristics or ways of approaching money that emerged from a time when I went through the (unintentional) experience of having no money, no housing, and no income. I had an amazing transformation when I saw that I remained loved and cared for and that my main job was surrender.

How to be alive while making money

Taking action

  • Know my worth isn’t about money
  • Act from love, not fear
  • Know that I’m OK, loved, where I need to be
  • Believe that it’s possible to have what I need without having to be something that isn’t aligned
  • Welcome fear as an opportunity to see where faith is leaky
  • Ship things – get things out into the world not just in my head
  • Know that I am going to die no matter how much money I have
  • Welcome the possibilities in uncertainty
  • Be willing to live without convenience or comfort if doing so makes aliveness possible
  • Put connection first, be in right relation

Letting go

  • If opportunities to make money arise that align with my values, don’t turn them down
  • Don’t under-charge for my work or discount myself
  • Don’t prioritize free work over paid work
  • Put my full self into the paid work I do, even if it’s small or not ‘important’
  • Don’t let ego get in the way of being honest about my needs and my availability
  • Don’t spend my free time sucked into things that don’t create value for me, i.e. scrolling, shopping, or participating in social media except as very necessary (but still have fun and read and take in information that feels valuable or thought-provoking)
  • Notice when I want to blame, make excuses, or get into grievance
  • Address any dishonesty, mistakes, or dis-compassion
  • Amend situations where my actions impede others’ opportunities to live in their fullness

Any prescription that says, ‘this is how you make money’ feels like it takes me in a direction away from my source of aliveness.

Instead, the more I can feel into the interconnectedness of everything, the more it feels like my best bet is to be in trust, neither trying nor resisting earning money. There’s an underlying abundance that only gets distorted by trying to claim some of it as “mine.” As a tech person, I love the metaphor of open source, of cascading open-ness. The world is not headed in a direction that has any security other than what I can find in my own body and my connection to the world and the people with whom I’m in relationship.

Race & Space

When I enter a space I always notice the whiteness level in the room. This has been true for me ever since college, when I transferred from Columbia in NYC to the University of Victoria (in BC) and was like ‘what is it about this place that feels so weird? Oh, it’s ‘normal’ to be in a public space only populated by white people?’

I am often in ‘personal growth’-related or tech-related spaces with a lot of other white people, including a surprising number of spaces that are 90% or more white. I notice that, no matter how awesome the context is, and often there’s a lot of awesomeness, I feel a little less trusting of the space when it’s so predominantly white.

There’s so much complexity around this topic and even naming it seems to invite all kinds of unconscious reactions to show up.

I am a white-bodied person. When I enter in a space that is more mixed in race, I make it more white. I’ve seen several communities struggle when they began as more non-white and white people came in and began to, if not dominate directly, become the majority.

When I have entered into spaces where I’m the only white person, I have wondered whether I’m just killing the party. Whiteness in the form of me enters and provokes code switching, or just like ‘what is this person going to do?’

Many people I have spoken to who convene predominantly white spaces I’m in have expressed some dissatisfaction with the homogeneity. “How can we get more diversity?” or “we are open and welcoming if non-white people come here.”

But what makes actually ‘diverse’ spaces work? I’ve noticed a few patterns.

First, good collective spaces centre the margins (not just racial margins, but all people who deal with structural marginalisation). They don’t ‘include’ or ‘welcome’ so much as seek to be guided. This mindset can be quite challenging when we’ve been sold the idea that colour-blindness or other assimilation-oriented concepts are the key to getting along with different people. When a collective does the work of centring the margins, that means that everyone in the group looks for ways that all can strive and looks out for ways that default thinking can leave people out or behind. Awareness of inaccessibility, gendered language, or assumptions of common experience can all be gently and lovingly addressed. Governance can include practices of bringing in minority opinion and orient around consent instead of majority rule.

I’ve noticed that collectives with cohesion among many skin tones often have a culture of calling in without policing. Most of us as white people have huge blind spots when it comes to our own assumptions. Realistically, all humans have blind spots, but as a rule, status creates significantly larger zones of blindness, simply because people in lower status roles have to learn to negotiate with the behaviours status engenders. Everyone has their own intersections in terms of status, and each has different areas that become easy to overlook.

In spaces with a lot of white folks I’ve often heard a variation of, ‘how do we ‘fix’ this?” It’s probably worth questioning whether ‘fix’ is the right metaphor but putting that aside, my gut instinct tells me it’s not very easy. Most of them seem to want to change nothing except who is ‘invited.’

I suspect that when a group develops and grows with a supermajority of white people, it’s partly because no one even noticed, so familiar is such an experience for its members. It will be hard in this context to not assume, when people who look different join, that those people should attempt to fit in or conform to group norms, much as other white people have.

The first thing I would be inclined to try, if the community truly is committed to changing its dynamics, is for each member to participate in another community where they are in the racial minority. (Probably all different groups so it wasn’t just colonialization all over again).

Desire for change is also more believable if the community or group is willing to invest resources in facilitated conversations and honest self-assessment.

I feel the dissonance of overwhelming whiteness the most when I am in spaces that are ’embodied’ but never address the effects of racialization on embodiment. White people sometimes seem to have the idea that racialization only impacts embodiment for non-white people, but obviously, people in white bodies have also been racialized. This isn’t a political stance, it’s simply a basic conclusion one can feel immediately by considering our embodied experience as it relates to what we have been taught about race. Each person will have a different experience, but that experience has had effects on our physical health, our trauma response, and our access to different body modalities.

When I am in spaces that are white and unquestioned, my mere presence is not a disruption, but such conditions don’t facilitate easy belonging for anyone with an experience of marginalisation. I am more likely to keep parts of myself protected. I am a neurodivergent, queer, nonbinary person, and also an educated, skilled white professional. The latter identity is more likely to lead in white-dominated spaces.

There are definitely subtleties. What about spaces that are, for example, filled with neurodivergent, queer, nonbinary people and are also exceedingly white? Those are, often, spaces that do question whiteness, but sometimes also do a fair amount of general policing, which purports to be in service of safety but much like other kinds of policing, often just serves domination.

Race is a very toxic invention. There are so many many people who have explained this more effectively than I can, even on TikTok, and if you want to discuss, I will link lots of things at the end of this conversation to ground us.

In some ways, our current American context rests on the power dynamics that occur when stories, totally baseless in many cases, are treated as a kind of fact, or something that demands adherence and faith. Reality is more expansive, more individual, and doesn’t end with the hero’s return.

My purpose is to support communities of practice doing what is necessary to create conditions of belonging. For me, that means collectively asking hard questions, looking inward first to see how what bothers me about other people reflects something about myself, and believing it’s possible to be together. Perhaps this means third spaces, not my house or yours, but somewhere we can co-create and co-hold, starting from scratch, but knowing that those of us with white skin may also tend to design, manage, voluntell, or feel responsible in ways that only we can check.

Resources on the invention of race:

  • Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields, Barbara J. Fields
  • Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts
  • Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
  • The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
  • A guy on TikTok