By some mystical technical glitch I thought this post went out last Friday, but it didn’t for some reason. Here is the adrienne maree brown / DARPA post from last week whose link would not work. Apologies to those who tried to get there from here and couldn’t do it. Thank you for telling me about it.
Last Saturday I sat for hours at a restaurant table and watched one of my precious granddaughters dance at her wedding. It was such bliss that I can still snatch warm feelings from the memory even after yesterday.
What happened yesterday was one of those podcasts. Here it is. I suggest that it’s better to know these things than to live in ignorance, so I’m including the link for all of our edification, but don’t force yourself to listen to it.
World Affairs — Annie Jacobsen: Inside DARPA: The Pentagon’s Brain
Because at the same time we have a world to rebuild. So we need to find ways to look at evil geniuses creating power for themselves and then turn back to our real work undeterred.
What I turned to is this interview from my ol’ favorite Yes! Magazine. Zenobia Jeffries, the editor, is interviewing adrienne marie brown about the immense healing our nation and our culture need to engage in to move into this big transition we look for. Brown has such a clear vision for racial healing, and has been working and writing long enough to have some pragmatic ideas about how to move forward on that.
Unfortunately, I can’t get the link to the article to work, but I hope you can read it by going to https://www.yesmagazine.org/ and search for “adrienne maree brown Closing the Loop”. Sorry it’s complicated but I don’t know how to make the link work. The advantage will be that you’ll be forced to notice an amazing array of interesting articles you might miss otherwise.
Closing The Loop: On Harm and Accountability
It’s unsettling, but I like the part where Brown uses the midwife metaphor. The midwife watches a woman struggling to give birth. A moment comes when the woman says “I don’t want to do this anymore! This is impossible! I’m outta here!” But there’s no “outta here” at that point. There’s no choice but to keep breathing and pushing. Doesn’t that feel like where we are? And the new world isn’t birthed yet, so it’s likely to keep getting more painful for awhile. Dang.
But those things that are impossible find a way to become possible.
Like I’ve said many times, racism is the bedrock of capitalism and climate change, and all the oppressions we’re struggling with. Sexism and other oppressions are biggies too, but it’s exciting to see that the momentum for change is zeroed on race, and to overcome any of the great oppressions reduces oppression for all of us.
Oppressions are what DARPA founds its “brilliant” strategies on. It always has. Remember in “The New Jim Crow” where it tells the story of the Supreme Court admitting that it could not allow racism to be stricken from the legal system because it would destroy the system? It’s an old and evil thing, and built into our institutions, and must be changed if democracy, planet Earth, and we the people are going to survive through to the other side of these looming catastrophes beyond covid.
The deep harms that have driven all of us into the present moment come out of some ancient wounds that our ancestors had no way to express. I think of that when I’m curious about the old family stories that we never told in my family. Why were they so quiet about our histories?
But now is such a new time that the deep unsettlement of untold stories needs to be some part of our new institutions. The kind of institutions that can be used to build the world where we’re all in this together, instead of hurting each other.
Brown has some powerful things to say about harm, race and healing.
“… not just what harm did I cause in this moment, or who called me in at this moment, but historically, what wave am I a part of changing? “
Or this clear distinction that lots of White people struggle with:
“There’s a real difference between niceness and kindness. That niceness is that desire to please and be polite and to accommodate even the harmful things. And then kindness is like that deeper, like I’m connected to the Earth, and from the Earth I can be compassionate to you. And I really love that … don’t be polite in the face of oppression. … There will always be room if you want to move towards the future, but I’m never going to be nice about them pulling me back into the past. No thank you.”
She’s talking about race oppression, but every harm people suffer responds like this. We’re all connected to the Earth, and from the Earth we can draw strength and compassion for ourselves and one another at this horrendously confusing time. She (the Earth) is there for us no matter how this struggle plays out, win, lose or draw.
I feel like there’s a deep well of hope in that thought. One that I believe the DARPA geniuses will never have access to. They’re so intent on becoming masters of the universe, they’ll never see the power of the Earth supporting we the people. Which means we need to put down roots that strengthen that bond even more.