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cruciferous
cruciferous
06 July 2007 @ 03:33 pm
we are all hypocrites  
i've been really enjoying these conversations about redistribution, and having really good discussions with people via email as well. everyone is being so brave! i just want to acknowledge how anxious i feel every time i get an email saying there is a new comment and i know i have to read it. i mean, i'm excited to read it, but also i have an enormous amount of anxiety about being misunderstood, discovered in all kinds of way, etc. this is just really tricky stuff and i'm impressed with all of us for talking to each other about it.
my sister and i had an interesting and difficult conversation the other day because she told me she is considering getting a cell phone and we talked about how i still feel like it is important to me to resist that particular version of consumption and she talked about how there are so many things we each do that contribute to environmental destruction, economic injustice, and capital accumulation that it seems problematic to her to single out this particular item/purchase. she mentioned things like having cars, having laptop computers, buying clothes that were probably made in sweatshops, etc. i had to agree with her, and this reminded me of other conversations i've had with people about hypocrisy, one of which i'll also describe here.
after my last post, i had a conversation with a friend who said that he would never give to a non-profit because he knows all these rich, elite-educated people who work at non-profits who are hypocrites and he doesn't want to give them money.
i think in both these conversations, we're dealing with the fact that there is no right way to be in this economy, especially for people with as much privilege as many of us living in the US and being housed and having educations have. the question of hypocrisy often comes up as a way to discount certain critiques. what i wonder is if there is a way for us to recognize that none of us will ever have perfect analysis or practice on this stuff, none of us has the right answers, and to still be able to nondefensively hear each other's ideas and attempts. my critique of cell phones is strongly felt, but it is not designed to make other people feel bad, its is focused on helping us remember things that are easily forgotten about this relatively new "necessity." i don't share this critique based on an idea that i am perfect and my choices have no negative impacts and i am the master non-consumer. i have a car right now. i have a laptop computer. i, like everyone trying to do this work, could be accused of hypocrisy, but i'm not sure it is a useful approach. i think that people will make different choices about their priorities and needs in figuring out redistribution. people with dependents might decide that life insurance or a retirement account are essentials for them in the current economy. people with mobility issues or living in certain places may find a motor vehicle to be essential. people who perform emergency services for a family or a hospital or a community of some kind may find that cell phones are essential to them. i just wonder if we can make a space to have the conversation that acknowledges that it is okay to have a strong view critiquing certain widespread consumer practices or norms and still not judging individuals. it reminds me, again, of conversations about polyamory, monogamy, and marriage where i always feel we need to work to open space for critique of big coercive systems and at the same time avoid judging anyone's personal navigation of their practices. it just doesn't get us anywhere, and fear of being judged keeps us from participating in conversations that we might find useful or liberatory. i think this is why i keep going to the green living/environmentalist/local foods discussion model. when people give each other tips on how to use less energy or how to make their own veggiediesel or how to change gift-giving practices in their family to reduce plastics or how to replace foods from afar with local foods in their diets or whatever i feel like those suggestions are taken as points of departure and inquiry and maybe not as huge bases for judgment (although probably some people do judge and feel judged). i want to imagine us exchanging ideas in that way, like nepon's comment about how they tried to sell a house in an ethical way. what an interesting project that people could try or adapt if it makes sense for them! what other things like that exist? what things are people living without consuming that i'm consuming thoughtlessly? what cool ways are people giving away resources that i haven't thought of? that kind of exchange really excites me, and doesn't require us to believe that anyone is entirely consistent in their political practice, because that is not really possible in this world yet. i hear people speaking a lot to the issue of fear, and i want us to get to the bottom of how judgment works and how we can create space for real analysis and specificity in a context committed to non-judgment so people can work on being willing to hear past fear.
 
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locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 7th, 2007 12:05 am (UTC)
Dean, yes. There isn't any purity, everybody's a hypocrite, and we all disappoint each other sometimes. I got a cell phone after years of agreeing with your analysis and resisting this new necessary thing. And I know that has to be at some level disappointing to you, to lose a comrade, so to speak. (Not that I think you're at home pining away for me to make choices that match yours, but in that small way that we are disappointed when people we love don't act in ways that we might, that are essential to us.) And yes, it's like polyamory conversations, and I think at base we need to respect each other and respect each others choices, even if we don't agree with them, and trust that people we know to be thoughtful are making thoughtful choices. I'm thinking about vegans I know/have known, the political vegetarian I just spent a year being before modifying my practices, practices that I'll surely modify again. And again and again. And how challenging food politics can really be, especially when some people are doing some hard thing that is also fundamentally correct. Getting into a war about how I have an iPod but you have a car and who's the bigger villain now just plays into the individualist basis of capitalism that kate and tyronius (I think?) discuss on an earlier comment of yours and keeps us from creatively and collectively resisting the harshness of this place.

So in your spirit: Thanks to these conversations, I realized that I've been blocking out requests for money on the trains and participating in perpetuating the social death of poor people. Lots of reasons for that, but none of them good. So I spent some serious time this week acknowledging those requests and the people who made them with money but also with my self--thanks everybody here for helping me remember that I can't pretend away the surplus bodies that make my life possible.
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 7th, 2007 12:18 am (UTC)
emily,
thanks for that. i do have to acknowledge that i have a hard time knowing what to do with my feelings about the set of people who were part of resisting cell phones with me getting cell phones. it was hardest with craig, who i realize i over-identify with because we've been such close collaborators at so many points and he has been such a key influence in my political growth. we share a lot of things, and when he recently made the choice to get a cell phone, i felt totally betrayed and heartbroken for a whole day even though i knew that i didn't want to judge him or make him feel bad in any way. i just felt sad, and i felt the ways that it makes it harder for people resisting something when each time someone else stops resisting. increasingly, people i know don't have landlines so when i travel for speaking or projects and stay at people's houses, there is no phone and i can't be reached or reach anyone. at times this has been a real problem when there are no payphones nearby or once when i was too sick to go outside and find a payphone. i feel hesitant to mention these issues because so many people tell me i am ridiculous for not having a cell phone and i am causing these inconveniences for myself. i feel okay about being inconvenienced for something that is politically important to me and trivial to others, but i can't help but notice that every time someone else gets a cell phone and gets rid of their landline it becomes harder for me to have access to phones. this individualization of telecommunications, and especially its impact on poor people because to have a cell phone you need to have some kind of credit or capital (not just 2 quarters), is part of why i don't want to have a cell phone, and i plan to hold out, but i will acknowledge that i feel really sad when people who had been resisting stop, and it does change my quality of life when i visit friends who used to have landlines and now don't. i haven't figured out how to talk about these feelings with people without it turning into a really defensive interaction, so i am mostly avoiding it, because i don't want my friends to feel judged by me. i feel like this is what all these conversations are about--so much fear and judgment surrounds these decisions that conversations, even among intimately connected and politically co-committed people, become silenced.
[info]tyronius on July 7th, 2007 12:33 am (UTC)
I think a *lot* about how to have community engagement about this stuff in a way that doesn't fall into the trap of blaming each other and letting our guilt and issues get in the way of really building healthy alternatives to fucked up systems. Here are a few thoughts that immediately came to mind while I was reading what you wrote:
1. The balance between: a) being nurturing and supportive of each other's processes and acknowledging that dealing with this stuff takes time and everyone has their own path to approaching it; and b) being real, when being real is kind of harsh. For example, there's this question that gets talked about a lot in the organizing I do with resource generation about how "radical" a face to present to the folks we're organizing. Like, we don't want to turn RG into a radical rich kids club where folks who don't have a specific political analysis are scared away or feel unwelcome. But at the same time, what does it mean to get rich people together in spaces that are often fairly (if not totally) exclusive, if we aren't talking frankly about how we directly benefit from oppressive systems? That reality is really really hard to deal with, but it's also real. I think that because the truth about class and oppression is so hard to hear, we sometimes default to vague language about "aligning our resources and our values" and "leveraging privilege" - which are good concepts but not super useful without a broader analysis. I tend to want to say things that come across as really harsh in certain circumstances (being rich is wrong, philanthropy is a racist tool of capitalism, etc.), but it's not because I'm trying to be mean or blame individual people, but just because I want to start from an analysis that calls out the systems of oppression that we all are affected by in multiple ways, and go from there. I actually think there's so much room for support and trust and respect within that, because we all struggle with this stuff in various ways, and its complicated, and its not about criticizing individual people but about systems. In spaces where we're trying to deal with and challenge class privilege, let's just be *real* about what we're working with: that within this system, folks with wealth have it at the expense of folks who are forced to remain poor; that capitalism is part of racism and imperialism and these are all systems that harm and kill people; that privileged people are bound to reproduce oppression because we're part of these systems, etc. - but that we didn't *choose* it and it's not our fault (but it is our responsibility to deal with). So let's be real about that stuff and then figure out how to deal with it.
[info]tyronius on July 7th, 2007 12:35 am (UTC)
2. I appreciate your point about how there is no right way to be in this economy - I think it's a futile trap to get caught up in thinking about perfection all the time, because there's no way to escape capitalism, we're in it (although there's also no limit to how much we can talk about this stuff and challenge each other and build new things that are healthy and sustainable). So, I work in an organic juice bar and I recently started doing this thing where I make organic vegan raw chocolates and sell them there. I started getting paid way more because people were buying so much chocolate, and right away I was like "yay! this means I can work less and have more time for my other projects. Awesome." And it is awesome, but since I think so much about class and wealth and giving away my money and security vs. hoarding and what is right and 'just' for me to have as an individual, I then thought "wait a second, why do I get paid more then everyone else just because I'm doing this special project..." and then I was like "oh yeah! there *is* no justice in capitalism!" It might sound obvious, but that's just a simple way of thinking about how so many different things in our lives affect the way we function in the world - white privilege, education, luck, various forms of access, etc. - and there's no way of really making things "fair" exactly because the whole system isn't fair. So we just do the best we can. And try to build new systems! Does that make sense?
3) One last thing about guilt: I notice when I talk to other class-privileged people about giving away my unearned wealth, they're usually like: yeah, but you have to keep some of it to support yourself/have a cushion/save for the future/etc. And I do think it's important that we all "take care of ourselves," although there's a lot of ways of doing that. But I notice that there's this way that (mostly privileged) people react when I talk about the idea of just giving away my entire trust fund (when I legally get access to it, which is soon), where they're like: you must just be coming from a place of guilt, because there's no possible other reason to do that. And I do think it's important not to work from guilt, because guilt keeps us stagnated and immobilized and makes us make bad decisions. But I also think that guilt sometimes gets used in this way that prevents certain conversations from happening: like, "you must just be a guilty rich person, and if you weren't so guilty you would realize that you need that money for (insert whatever presumed necessity)." I'm not about telling people what to do with money or making up new things that we "should" do if we're doing the right thing, but I do think it's really valid for folks to practice complete divestiture of unearned wealth and to model that (and other personal models of big-time wealth redistribution), and the ways that we do or don't make those decisions are really affected by class conditioning and capitalist messaging.
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 7th, 2007 12:54 am (UTC)
what you just said about people telling you not to give away your whole trust fund because you should save some of it for security brings me to a big question i have: do i deserve security that other people don't have? so, when i think about retirement funds i think about this for myself. not only is the security of saving money fleeting since that can still go away and also because i'm praying for a revolution that redistributes everything in everyone's accounts, but also, why should i be more protected from relying on the state or whatever is there when i get old than other people? if other people are suffering from old age poverty now, maybe i should give them money instead of saving it somewhere to prevent my old age poverty? i think, especially, about all the things my mom didn't have and all the people who still live the way i lived growing up. and it gets confusing, because my mom didn't have any teeth, and it was so important for her that i went to the dentist, and every time i go to the dentist i feel like i'm being her caring for me and it feels really important, but i've had to spend about $3000 in cash for dental work not covered by insurance in the last three years (mostly because my teeth are so messed up from growing up poor without adequate dental care), and then i wonder if having teeth that meet a certain standard is a luxury. in an email you wrote to me about this question being "how much is enough?" and connected to that question is the stuff around feelings of entitlement that people with class privilege may have (entitlement to security or to a cushion or something) and feelings of disentitlement that people who were raised poor might have (am i entitled to have teeth that are healthy according to current dental standards when most people don't?). of course, i also have tons of areas where i need to work on feeling too entitled, because i grew up poor but i'm not poor now and i'm highly educated and white, so its multi-layered, of course. but overally, this question of "how much is enough" is what makes these moments so troubling. its hard to separate various kinds of self-hatred or harshness out too. like i would don't feel judgmental of other people having retirement accounts but i feel really judgmental about the idea of me having one, like i would be a huge class traitor. but at the same time, its gross when people pathologize a desire to redistribute or a critical approach to money as just guilt or just self-hatred and disentitlement. sorting through these different threads to find a compassionate, self-loving, world-loving, generous, not fearful place from which to assess economic practice is hard.
(Anonymous) on July 10th, 2007 06:20 pm (UTC)
saving
I feel you when it comes to talking to class privilege folks about saving money for security. And I think, for me, what is missing in those conversations is analysis of what security looks like monetarily. I think this is when things get vague and the action of giving is thwarted.

Because certainly there is security in the privileges people have based on their class upbringing, skin color, able-bodiness, etc. And those aren't privileges that can be given away, so surely if all the money is gone certain privileges are still there.

On that note, I just had a conversation with someone who had given a ton of money away and was excited to take a break from giving now that they had less money (this was interesting for me, because what they were left with was precisely the same amount that I am struggling to figure out what to do with).

Everyone has a different idea of what security looks like. And I think this is where some collective thinking comes in for me. I would like to envision a new sense of security outside my family model of saving money. I could have tons of money and still feel insecure (which is common i think) or I can figure out a way to align my politics and my bank account in ways that make me feel secure.

emmett
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 11th, 2007 04:17 am (UTC)
Re: saving
emmett, thanks for joining the conversation! so glad to have you here.
its so true what you say about how everyone has a different idea about security. i think that is a key point, how its hard for us to tell how much is enough because our expectations are related to these different ideas, so to one person, having an extra month's rent is a huge big deal that would make them feel really set and would be hard or unlikely to have, and for others hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars or owning a home or something are key for feeling even a bit secure. i think these expectations aren't entirely based on class upbringing--my brother and i have very different ideas about how much is enough. he has responded to the poverty we grew up in by focusing his whole life getting money and he feels such a deep insecurity that i don't think any amount really comforts him, whereas i felt really rich pretty much as soon as i got out of our worst circumstances. nonetheless, though, i think that our class backgrounds can have something to do with our capacities to estimate what resources we have. i think it is easy to misunderstand or discount the safety net that exists for people with class privilege, so that even if they give away all their personal wealth, they have an enormous cushion waiting to catch them if they ever become ill, or have kids, or often even just if they want to buy real estate parents will chip in with capital to have or "borrow." i feel like people with family wealth, or even just not-poor parents, often miss how much actual income they get from their families in the form of holiday presents or hand-me-down kitchen items or plane tickets home to visit family. if you buy all your own socks and undwear and batteriess and plates and plane tickets and sheets from a young age, you realize what a huge resource that stuff is, and how much it costs. maybe one of the worksheets that we could develop would be one focused on helping people feel more secure by helping them realize how much of a safety net they have and how much help they already get that is actually a significant form of wealth or income.
i also wanted to throw in something katrina mentioned to me. she talked about tithing, about approaching giving as a percentage of income and time. it made me think about how i just went to england and in england people don't file tax returns. so their taxes get taken out of their income and they never see them again. i feel like its an interesting thing that here in the US we all see exactly what was taken out and lots of people struggle to get it back, and i think that makes people more resentful of taxation, more like its 'their money' that was stolen by the government. people don't think of taxes as necessary for having basic social goods, but rather look at what was taken from them and think of whatever they most disagree with the government for doing and are mad at that. and then rich people can avoid a lot of taxation and set up private foundations and trusts that benefit conservative causes. i feel like this conversation in general makes me want to learn more about tax and how it works in places with less conservative governments or how it has worked at other times, and to think about what i want my politics to be regarding government taxation, which is perhaps the most tool of wealth redistribution. remember in his first term when bush sent people checks--sending their taxes back to them supposedly, like a bribe? that still blows my mind. anyway, i'm on a tangent, but this is all coming to mind in this conversation.
(Anonymous) on July 12th, 2007 01:44 am (UTC)
Re: saving
I think the worksheet idea around security, safety net and family/friend benifits beyond cash is a great idea. Also it could have parts beyond the tangible items (sox, plane tickets) about ways friends, lovers, ourselves, strangers give a sense of security by their very presence. I think I will make a list of my own safety net and maybe that will give me more questions/ ideas about a potential worksheet.
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 12th, 2007 02:00 am (UTC)
Re: saving
I also think that's a great idea. A lot of safety for me is about having people I trust around me/feeling able to trust myself. I think money-as-safety often ramps up in importance when I feel alone or lack other tangible forms of safety like friendship.
sable_twilight[info]sable_twilight on July 7th, 2007 12:40 am (UTC)
off toptic
i'm glad to see you're posting again. thank you. you always give me concepts to think about.
(no subject) - [info] on July 7th, 2007 01:33 am (UTC)
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 7th, 2007 01:47 am (UTC)
thank you so much for this generous offer! tyrone and i plan to speak next week and talk about potential ways to create a space on the internet for this dialogue, and we will put that on our list of resources that could be used. thanks so so much!! i'll get back to you about it.
(Anonymous) on July 7th, 2007 02:32 am (UTC)
detail about family
hey there dean,

so i realized i want to get a bit specific, and to do that safely i feel like i need to post anonymously. kinda fucked up, but i want to get these thoughts out however i can at the moment. i'm having anxiety about somehow my family reading this.

i have a schitzophrenic sister. right now my mom supports her. she's 33. she's never supported herself; first my folks supported her, then my dad died and she lived off the inheritence she got from him for awhile, using it to support a cult/ friends who were abusing her, and since then my mom has supported her. anyhow i have a lot of complicated anger towards her going off her meds. and recently i was thinking that through, and i realized that i am deeply invested in her choices because i believe if my mom died tomorrow, my sister would either be homeless or i would need to let her live with me. this is really scary. especially because when she chooses not to be on meds she is mean to me.

once i looked at this fear and anger, i realized that i wanted to talk to my mother about trying to set up some sort of trust for my sister where she wouldn't have access to all the money to give it to another cult/ boyfriend who beats her up. this is problematic and scary in a whole bunch of ways. but i believe that any money she inherited, she would run through in a few years and i don't want to stand between her and homelessness.

anyhow. i've been having really scary conversations with my mom, gently urging her towards moving through procrastination on this-- of course it's horrible stuff that she doesn't want to deal with, i don't want to deal with it either! but when my mom dies, i really want the money to go to be a resource to my sister for years, not get spent immediately on an abuser.

i just read the old piece you wrote about in make about harm reduction, and i realize this really conflicts with a harm reduction model. god, i wish i believed that giving my sister a lump sum of money would help her long-term. i just don't. and i'm so, so scared of needing to support her after my mom and the money are both gone.

anyway. thanks for this space.

brother
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 7th, 2007 06:17 pm (UTC)
Re: detail about family
thank you so much for sharing this. this is such a difficult situation, with absolutely no right or easy answer. as long as we live in a country that totally fails to provide meaningful support for people with psychiatric disabilities (or poor people, or old people, or homeless people, or people with any disabilities, or children, or parents, etc) these questions come up that involve complicated economies of care and coersion. you are really brave to share this and i am hopeful that other people struggling with these questions in their own families might share their experiences and strategies here. we really need ways to think through how to care for each other and recognize people's differing capacities to survive in this hostile economy and the complexities of interdependency.
esquire[info]esquire on July 7th, 2007 02:56 am (UTC)
Wow... this is an amazing conversation. One of the things I love about you, Dean, is your patient way of talking and teaching in ways that don't make me feel judged, but that make me feel exhilarated about new possibilities and ways of being in the world, possibilities that I hadn't even thought of before but that feel viscerally right.

You know when you wake up in the morning and watch the light filtered through your closed eyelids, and then you open your eyes and the sun coming through the window is so bright that it almost hurts to look at all at once, until your eyes adjust? You make me feel like that.

I have been thinking a lot about money and debt issues for a while now, as someone with almost a hundred grand in debt, almost all of which is school loans and health care loans. I have been paying attention to the ad copy on credit card solicitations, which invariably says something like You deserve this freedom! or Make your dream come true! I've been thinking about who is most harmed by debt, and the ethics and consequences of repaying it, or not repaying it, and the complicated feelings people have about declaring bankruptcy or defaulting on loans. I've also been observing that I sometimes feel angry towards people who don't have debt, and I've been sitting with that feeling and trying to learn from it. So I would like to bring those beginning thoughts and questions to this conversation. I've been learning so much from these posts and comments.

Cole
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 7th, 2007 06:21 pm (UTC)
cole,
you are so sweet!
i want to read the literature on the history of credit and debt. from what i hear, things are really different now than ever with the amount of debt young people have, changes in rules to favor creditors, etc. i want to think about how this is all playing out and what resistance would look like. it feels impossible for me to imagine a resistance strategy to my debt, but i'm sure that isn't true, right? but its so gross to send money to the worst people in the world every month. makes me feel terrible. when i did legal services for people with psychiatric disabilities, some of my clients needed bankruptcy assistance, and it was so terrible to watch the shame they had to endure, and also how little bankruptcy actually helped them clear their debt. it was heartbreaking. i feel like i need to learn more so that i can actually have opinions about the gross conservative law changes about credit and bankruptcy that go on without me even noticing....
xo dean
powered by nightshades[info]srl on July 7th, 2007 12:23 pm (UTC)
... a big question i have: do i deserve security that other people don't have?

This is something I've been thinking about in a specifically queer way, along several different lines:

  • some people in my communities have less access to family resources than they would if they were straight
  • others have more, because being queer and/or educated means they've avoided some common economic traps (early parenthood is the big one)
  • queerness can be a motivator for people to "get out" of bad situations if they've got even the beginnings of enough resources--- how many people have you seen who sublimate their sexual energy into 60+ hour weeks? (or maybe that's just white guys.)
  • on the third hand, because our relationships sometimes get less respect, or because we're reluctant to be out about the complexities of our emotional/affectional lives, sometimes queers end up taking care of our parents and other relations---- the assumption being that we're not married and don't have kids, so we have more time than married relatives with kids. When is selfishness a virtue?


I'm from a working/lower-middle class background, but I was fortunate enough to get scholarships to fancy private schools, to be in graduate school now, and to have hope of a better financial future. But yeah, it's hard to figure out what to do about my female relatives who are only barely making it--- how and whether it's right for me to be paid to go to grad school (!) when they have to stand on aching feet for every penny they take home.

On the other hand, I'm in a school system which assumes that we can take out loans or live with unsustainably low incomes for several years to finish our dissertations; what might be "hoarding" in someone else's book is, for me, saving so that I'll be able to complete a major life goal. I have faith that completing my Ph.D. will be more important in the long run than giving my family cash today, but I'm not sure I'm right.

I thought a lot about this too around medical transition stuff, which I was able to access through the privileges of a good education (and job)--- how could it be ethical for me to spend money on top surgery, knowing that other people can't afford it? In the end, I listened to friends who said, "look, you can't change the world if you're gibbering in a corner with angst," and bit the bullet. I still sometimes wonder if I was right, but overall I'm happier. It doesn't mean I have a "right" to be happy, but I'm a lot more effective as an activist than I would have been. But maybe that's just me justifying my own privileges? I don't know.

What happens, too, when we try to give away money out of our politics, and end up falling on hard times ourselves? Without a solid sense of fiscal community--- "I'll do this now, and someone else will do it for me later," that people are committed to and actually follow through on--- it seems like to me some of these ideas could be unintentionally self-destructive in the long run.

I think that talking about housing would be good, too. I live in a place where the housing stock is ridiculously expensive, to rent or to buy--- but I also think about being old and not being able to afford rent. It might be nice to own something, but our current financial system doesn't make that easy for individuals unless you want (and are able) to carry a mortgage by yourself. All the housing co-ops here run on a no-equity model, and banks are notoriously weird about giving micro-mortgages to, say, 5 individuals so they can buy a house together.

Until my friends started getting into relationships, hitting their late 20s and early 30s, and starting to buy property because of their double incomes, I didn't really see how class worked over the long term. Since family money started to show up for my friends' down payments and I realized it wouldn't be the same for me, I've been thinking a lot more about what economic privilege looks like. I think that secure property ownership is one of the seductive things about same-sex marriage for a lot of middle-class people, and I haven't seen many people talk critically about how we work with this as a movement.
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 7th, 2007 01:09 pm (UTC)
I mean, I think the answer is clearly no: You don't deserve some special security just for being you in a world where noone is secure. But how does my elective insecurity help anything? (This is a real question.) I'm also remembering here Kate's helpful observation in an earlier thread that capitalism simply won't allow a feeling of economic security--it wouldn't work if we didn't all believe, and believe sincerely in our bellies the way i do and always have, that we need more amid plenty. And while I wouldn't argue for just blindly wandering through the world rapaciously gobbling everything we want, I do think a certain appreciation for the smallness of ourselves and the (relative to the maw of the system) insignificance of a lot of our economic choices frees us up from that trap of "Is it okay for me to want/have this iPod" and allows us instead to start to act and make critical choices. Once I'm freed up from the necessity to be right every time I can stand more critically outside the desire that led me to buy my cell phone and think next time about whether I want it again. Does that make sense? It isn't fair that I get to enjoy challenging work that fulfills me about half the time and affords me the luxury of this conversation while other people work three jobs at a time and still can't make it. That's not fair, but I don't think that's my personal, individual fault. And now I feel a little less freaked and a little more able to make choices about how I act from this position I occupy and can't actually escape without the invention of a hocus-pocus machine or through serious social change that i have to believe is coming through the hard work of a lot of us.
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 7th, 2007 01:23 pm (UTC)
I don't mean to say that the question of "Is it okay for me to want/have this iPod" isn't an important one. It does seem, after indulgent reflection on my previous comment, the only kind of question that can lead us to make different choices about how we utilize resources in a really concrete way. ("I do not want this iPod, and will turn now and give the $200 I was ready to spend on my iPod directly to a local group making political change I believe in"--that would be the concrete form these resource-sharing discussions would take, right?) I guess I mean that asking it while listening to an iPod we bought, or asking it while standing outside the apple store for days and days and days when we could just be buying the damn iPod if we really, really want it because sometimes everybody buys some frivolous thing, and then getting on with the rest of the work that we do. I just hate the thought of getting so mired in the micro-details of the rightness of our consumer choices that it becomes just another version of being 'all about shopping.' Like, I'm happy to explain my decision to get a cell phone to anybody who wants to hear it, and I'm willing to recognize and accept that it is participation in an individualizing, need-creating techno-capitalist moment that is really fucked up on a lot of levels. But I'd hate to spend *too* much time talking about my loneliness and my desire to 'be like everybody else' and my raw and base pleasure in having a new toy when there are other things to do or talk about. Or am I wrong here? Am I thinking about this the wrong way? (Again, a real question.)
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 7th, 2007 01:27 pm (UTC)
okay, last one, seriously, but I think the answer above should really be, "I *do* want this iPod, but after reflection on that desire, where it comes from, and what it means about the kind of world I want to live in, I will not buy this iPod and will turn now and give the $200 I was ready to spend on my iPod to a local group making political change I believe in." That's better. And I will now exit the conversation for a least a few minutes.
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 8th, 2007 11:50 pm (UTC)
i think one of the things i percieve you to be struggling with in this series of comments, which has come up a few times in this conversation, is whether or not our consumer choices are actually very significant, or whether they are details that we could become obsessed with unhealthfully. i think what made me start this conversation is that even though each choice seems small or insignificant, our aggregate choices as individuals and as groups of friends are really quite significant, and we move a lot of resources around and direct a lot of wealth. that is such a heavy responsibility, and i think a lot of capitalist brainwashing is focused on all of us not realizing how significant our resources are, not realizing our position in the economy, not realizing how extreme worldwide poverty is, how rich we are, how much damage we can do, and how much resistance we could engage in. i think our response to moments of seeing this responsibility is the guilt we all keep talking about. i want to get to a point where i am as intentional and fully present for my life as possible, including realizing the effects of my actions and my role in reproducing capitalism and poverty, without turning it into individualized self-punishing guilt that really undermines opportunities for resistance. this does mean being uncomfortable and unresolved in some ways, but i think there is a way to do that that isn't the same thing as torture--to have a lifelong mission of redistribution and realize its imperfect, and try to be principled in struggling with it, and not use it as a vehicle for self-hatred. i think it definitely requires support of others mutually engaged to do that. it reminds me a lot of the process of committing to anti-racism as a white person, knowing i'll never arrive at some finished place, that i'll always have more to learn and reflect on my behavior, but that my principles require that i consistently struggle with that. it's sort of a no excuses, no punishment approach. i feel like, as politicized queers, we're already engaged in a critical relationship to desire, examining how fatphobia, racism, transphobia, sexism, and other oppressive systems shape our desire, and believing that we can work on that in various ways. our ability to do so works best when we're creating shared analysis in various kinds of community spaces and rolemodelling new ways of being to each other. seems the same here. thanks for writing out this process...i can't wait to talk to you about it in person in 5 days!
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 9th, 2007 08:42 pm (UTC)
Here's my struggle. I know that i am among the 1 percent richest people in the world. I know that I could redirect that wealth and bring about significant social change, which is why I redirect some portion of my personal wealth. I know I could direct more of it. I make compromises, incomplete and provisional ones, every day in ways big and small. Right now, all i want to eat is a bagel in the morning. This turns out to be more resource intensive in terms of packaging and heat/light than the raw oatmeal I was eating all last year. What can I say. I also try to cut down on my personal consumption. I've got the reusable water bottle, I've switched to fluorescent lighting, I walk and take public transit, I don't run my air conditioner during the day, etc. I am, naturally, an active user of my library, so I buy less media. And yes, these conversations about how much we need/don't need are important, and it's important to think about how to ethically relate to our own abundance.

But I'm worried the conversation actually lets capital off the hook. Like, shouldn't the redistribution be happening at the level of surplus value, which I actually don't have access to? I make a whole lotta money you bet, but I'm still just a worker. I still just earn a wage. I can give away a big, bigger, biggest possible portion of that wage, but the surplus value of my labor still resides in the hands of capital. At the end of the day we're only talking about redistributing $45K with my attendent three percent raises over the next ten years while the surplus value of my labor increases and consolidates in hands that are utterly unconcerned with these conversations. What do we do about that?

And what do we do about the fact that everybody values things so differently? Why do we need to come up with a shared model of the 'correct' way to channel resources? I don't particularly need to visit home very often. I have my own complex parental relations that lead me to travel pretty rarely to my own homeland. But that personal understanding of family doesn't scale beyond my own value system, right? If you need to visit home, if that's a place where you need to channel your resources, I'm not sure what I would ever have to say about that. I totally trust you to understand best what you need. Or am I wrong? (I'm open to being called out and appreciate engagement, fyi. I'm cool being wrong here.)
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 9th, 2007 08:46 pm (UTC)
(I realize that i just typed 'surplus value of my labor' about ten zillion times in one sentence. Didn't mean to do that. I just learned what it was like yesterday, and am really feeling that that's the piece of pie where the struggle is already happening, and where perhaps we should be directly more of our fight.)
[info]rubychard on July 9th, 2007 02:44 pm (UTC)
heya,

this is an entirely other sort of comment, or request, i guess: i really want to read these long posts, but it's hard for me to physically do so because there are a lot of words without very many breaks or indents, in small text. if you leave some blank space there too (ie, between paragraphs), or do other formatting things to break the text up a little, it would make it much easier on my particular pair of eyes, and then i could read it and engage in these conversations.

thank you!
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 9th, 2007 08:43 pm (UTC)
How can I help with that? I'm not that big an lj user--is there some way to increase font size? Should I just try to use more paragraphs? I tried in my last comment, not sure how successful I was. Advice?
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 9th, 2007 08:44 pm (UTC)
(I mean, are my paragraphs still too long?)
(Anonymous) on July 9th, 2007 08:59 pm (UTC)
thought i'd jump on this, as a computer nerd.

there's a couple things you do for readability:

the simplest and most effective i think is to add paragraphs by hitting your enter key a couple times.

2 more involve using html tags when you post a comment. to do this, you need to put some letters in brackets. it's tricky to show you because if i do it, if i write the tag for bold, then you'll see my text in bold rather then seeing the tag. basically, a tag looks like this: < followed by the word followed by > the words you want to have special formatting < followed by / followed by the word followed by >

for bold, the tag is the letter "b" in brackets instead of quotes. so if you type < followed by the letter b followed by / followed by > followed by words you want in bold followed by < followed by / followed by > they'll show up bold.

the tag for bigger text is the word "big" in brackets instead of quotes. so if you type < followed by the word big followed by > followed by words you want to be big followed by < followed by /followed by big followed by > they should be bigger.

hope that helps!

[info]rubychard on July 9th, 2007 08:48 pm (UTC)
actually, i meant that comment to go to dean, about his long posts... but clearly i have problems with this myself, if the comment showed up as a response to you. oh well.

also, nice to bump into you (or pass by, anyway) at the farmer's market!
locallibrarian[info]locallibrarian on July 9th, 2007 08:53 pm (UTC)
Oh, you left the comment to dean, but I guess I just automatically thing everything is about me. The world? Totes revolving around me.

*points at self*

and yes! more bumping into each other at the farmers market!
treyf[info]treyf on July 9th, 2007 08:34 pm (UTC)
guilt
I have to say, I think it's pretty ironic that running down the side of these comments is an LJ ad asking us to participate in a survey on our buying habits - in exchange for which we can receive gift certificates!

The guilt issue is really interesting to me. I've often noticed in my own life the way guilt can take over my thinking about any number of issues in a way that seems to prevent me from really thinking about my choices. For example, my partner and I recently registered as domestic partners. She'll be on my health insurance next year, and it was required. But I'd be a liar if I said that's the only reason we did it. And sure, I thought about how profoundly I am against the state having anything at all to do with my sexual and/or "domestic" arrangements and how wrong I think ti is to allocate benefits according to them. And I would contribute money and time to going to bat for any cause that celebrated the removal of those distinctions outside of a spiritual or religious context. And then I thought about my partner's conservative, Irish Catholic family, her stepmother who cried when she told her we were planning to stay together permanently "because now A. will never have children and a family," and I thought of the ways in which this makes us intelligible to them, the psychic benefit of the stability they imply in these labels, how it makes my partner feel to know we've done it, how it makes me feel. And I made that choice. And then - WHOMP! - the guilt hit. And I had to stop thinking about it, push it away, divest, confess it guiltily in largely anonymous LJ postings...

This may seem off topic, but the same thing happens to me around money. If I have it and give it away, what does that mean? If I spend it on stuff, what does that mean? If I make the choice to hoard some of it "just in case" or because it's what my family tells me to do and I have difficulty withstanding their anger and disapproval, or because I know I want to have or adopt kids and diapers are expensive, or because it's either giving money to myself by buying an apartment or giving it to a corporate landlord - what does that mean about me?

I think the issue of entitlement and who feels entitled (and who doesn't) is also interesting. On a basic level, EVERYONE should have access to adequate dental care (whatever that means). Everyone should have food and shelter and care and medical attention when they need it. And so, denying oneself basic things like that because someone else doesn't have it makes less sense to me than foregoing the new iPhone and giving the bazillion dollars Apple shareholders will make off of it to provide anti-malarial drugs to half of Africa. So, the question becomes: what should we feel okay about giving to ourselves? When is it okay to have extra resources?

Anyway, Dean, I so admire the ways in which you live your politics. I think it's one of the things that makes you exceptional. And it feels like a really good model to emulate, in lots of ways. I know I'd like to find ways to make more choices everyday that align with my vision of how the world should be. So, thanks again.
frankendandy[info]frankendandy on July 11th, 2007 05:13 am (UTC)
Speaking euphemistically...
I read all of these posts and comments on Friday night, and have been thinking about them ever since. Dean, thanks for inciting the conversation—it’s huge.

I hardly know where to start. What I really love and what really terrifies me in this conversation is seeing all of the numbers. I grew up talking about money purely euphemistically. The book Classified talks about this a lot, how people who come from money selectively censor or build elaborate stories with pieces of the truth in them to hide their wealth and privilege. My family talked not about my Dad’s $100,000/year salary, but rather about comfort, safety, security, deserving, hard work and so on. We never talked numbers, because numbers would offer too much information. And a vulnerability, since numbers move toward quantification—and quantifying safety and security makes too concrete the notion that there could never be enough to guarantee these, and there would always be too much to justify the intention.

I was horrified with myself when I started realizing how much I’ve continued this practice of talking in euphemism and elaborate, censoring stories. In talking to fellow self-proclaimed anti-capitalists about recent indulgent purchases, I’ve launched into long, meandering explanations about 1) why it’s OK that I bought this thing, 2) why I kind of needed it, 3) how little money I spent on it compared to what it was actually supposed to cost, 4) how I picked the gadget produced by the least politically offensive and exploitative company, and 5) how I know it’s kind of wrong and I feel kind of bad. And 6) how really, truly, I’m not a capitalist or a consumerist. I promise.

One of the other things that Classified talks about, and that people have been talking about here is how much all of this hand-waving, guilt, and effort that go into hiding wealth or justifying consumerism end up wearing you out before you even get to the part of the EFFECT of this wealth and consumerism. I think the sad thing about this may be that guilt and self-shaming are somehow easier (and perhaps more familiar) to stomach than considering the creepy material effects of financial choices on other people's lives.

How do we find ways to carve out room for some inconsistency and disappointment (in ourselves and others) without resting on these to excuse things that don’t fit with our vision of the world? I mean, it's incredibly vital to make room for these things, so many movements and ideas become damaging and fundamentalist when there's not this room. But as someone who’s blown a lot of hot air when it comes to consumerism, AND as someone who's let guilt stand in for true caring and engagement, I’m interested in how we can combine patience, action, and change.

To this end, I love the concept of strategy/idea-sharing around ways we can find out about new practices. Some of the things I've been thinking about lately:
-I like the model of community fundraising for important events (travel, surgeries, projects)-- and I've also liked seeing things like bike messengers who pool resources to put in an emergency fund for uninsured injured messengers. I'd like to find out more about things like community banks where we could pool resources for longer-term needs, like health care or unanticipated illnesses, etc.
-A while ago, I saw the movie "Blue Vinyl." One of the things I liked a lot about it was that it interrupted the tendency of ignoring the origin and process behind a lot of scary materials (e.g. vinyl siding) and made a really clear map of where it comes from and what it does, as well as all of the havoc it wreaks along the way. I'd love to see more of these "where do these things come from and what do they do?" stories.
-I've only just started it, but there's a book called _Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping_ by Judith Levine. It's essentially about choosing not to buy any "excess" items for a year... but it also involves the interesting process of determining what she's going to consider "necessary" and why.

I'm really excited about this conversation & can't wait for more. It's so important as a conversation in and of itself, but I also feel like the way it's getting talked about here is really community-building and interesting. Thanks to everyone!
[info]chelate on July 11th, 2007 02:12 pm (UTC)
I was so overwhelmed and excited to find this thread -- I don't know where to start.

You wrote something about wanting people to be able to take risks, and this is definitely a risk for me. I joined livejournal so that I could be part of this conversation. I’ve avoided friendster, facebook, livejournal, etc for a long time, because I’ve been really shy, and have been hesitant to say anything in a public forum, although I’m trying to work on becoming less worried about being seen. And I don’t have the language yet for what I want to say to you, in this space, but I want to try anyway.

Part of the reason that I’m not sure what language to use is that I come to all of this, in a lot of ways, through Christianity. Even though I came to a lot of it first through the queer community, I tend to see a lot of these things – redistribution of wealth, trying to create a conversation that is nonjudgmental and also encourages people in their attempts to change the way they live, etc – through the lens of my faith. And I’m about to start seminary, and it just seems so important that I’ve found this forum right now, so that it can come with me into school.

I’m not sure I even know how to talk about these things anymore without talking about God, and I don’t know what that means for me, in this space. The last thing I want to do is make anyone feel like I’m trying to impose any kind of religion on them – I wasn’t raised Christian, and my own life has taught me incredibly clearly that different people have their own ways of connecting to God/Spirit (don’t know what language is most inclusive here), and that no one has the One Way. But the things in my life that have given me language to talk about money in ways that make sense to me, and to think about the questions like the ones you raise (how much is enough? and in the world I want to live in, could everyone have this thing I want/would it be sustainable? and what can we do to redistribute wealth?) have been through Christianity.

Like: it was in bible study that I finally admitted to myself that I felt called to get rid of my car, and that I could decide to do it or not do it – God wasn’t going to force me or anything – but that it was like I was being asked to do it, and I had to take that request seriously. And the car was basically something inherited (another part of this whole discussion you’ve been having – inheritance -- that’s so interesting and intense) from someone I loved so much, and it was hard to think of letting it go, even though the car itself was falling apart, even though I knew a car was not something I needed.

Like: I bought an ipod from the same store, on the same day, that I was buying clothes and supplies to donate (through a church drive) to a project that puts together backpacks of things for people who are homeless. And the ipod cost nearly as much as all the clothes and toothbrushes and soap, and I felt torn apart by it. I didn’t know what to do, because I wasn’t ready to not buy the ipod, but it felt so unfair. And I went home and sat on my bed, and prayed, and wrote things down, and at some point in that process I began to feel a lot of compassion – for myself and for other people struggling with all of this – and I remembered that God meets us where we are: whether it’s me, trying to figure out how to not hoard things or money and going out and buying an ipod, or someone with a mansion and millions of dollars trying to figure out how much *they* need, or anyone.

And the thing that has most recently reminded me how important all of this is to me has been writing prayers to use in leading worship at church.

So that is where I am. It definitely feels like what you said on one of these threads about learning to be anti-racist as a white person (I’m also white) and how there isn’t an endpoint or a place you get to where you’re done, and that’s definitely how I feel about all of this. And what you said in a few places about trying to work on not making this about shame, but talking about it through the fear.

Anyway, I know this is really long already. I just feel so grateful to have found this.
cruciferous[info]cruciferous on July 11th, 2007 04:14 pm (UTC)
faith
hi new friend,
i think this is a totally appropriate place to talk about faith and i really appreciate you bringing it up. just yesterday tyrone and i were talking on the phone and i was saying that these discussions bring up fundamentally spiritual questions about what we think the nature of people and the universe is. capitalism is based on or produces a notion that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and individual, that it isn't safe to share because you won't be taken care of, that private property is innate and natural. i believe that people are fundamentally connected, well-intentioned, generous and caring. i have no solid singular proof of this, its to general to prove, its a matter of faith. i also believe that capitalism is unsustainable and change will occur, and that change can be less violent and more beneficial if we do key work now to set up community resources, political education, to redistribute wealth and power in ways that allow for new political leadership, etc. i have to run, but i would be excited to have a longer conversation here about the ways that faith is an antidote to the insecurity and fear that we're all writing about here. it doesn't have to be religious faith, but i do think that even faith in 'the people' is a spiritual belief in the sense that it is an orientation to the world rather than a scientifically verifiable fact or something. not sure that makes sense, but i like where this is going. also, people give away money in churches and other religious institutions more than anywhere else and i think there is something interesting in that for us to think about in terms of models of redistribution.
(Anonymous) on July 12th, 2007 01:32 am (UTC)
Re: faith
I think faith, or positive outlook, is so important in giving. In having lots of conversations with family and friends about giving money I am seeing some interesting trends. Here are a couple examples:

1. My father warned me against giving to organizations because they may use the money for salaries or generally "misuse" the funds. This wasn't a critical analysis of Non Profits on his part, but rather a fear that giving money means people may not use it correctly- giving money is giving control of that money. (awesome) I think his response is not only symtomatic of greed, capitalism, etc, but also symptomatic of a lack of faith in people.
2. A friend who I was discussing setting up a 'loved ones emergency fund' thing with warned me that there may be feelings from people about the way the money is being used. I said that I thought that was great and that there is more conversation going on around money, class, community, etc. But I think her point was that she was worried about me setting it up at all- that i should save for a house and not give to friends because there could be a dynamic. I think having money or not having money already sets up a dynamic with friends and loved ones and I am excited to engage that. Again, I think this hesitence around giving money is in PART a worry about people not being good/wise/worthy.

So, I agree with you, that spirtual questions about the nature of people and the universe are deeply part of this conversation. And I think that bringing them up helps to dissapate the stressful and fearful aspects of giving. For I know that I get bogged down by the numbers I am crunching and the ways I am engaging myself around money and I know that coming back to having faith in humanity is fufilling.

emmett
timothy[info]heavyleg on July 13th, 2007 06:15 pm (UTC)
Re: faith
i also think that faith is such a huge part of these conversations.

the discussion here feels really crucial and exciting to me precisely because
it challenges me on a deeply spiritual level, forcing me to confront my cynicism and
pessimism, the ways capitalism (and white supremacy and U.S.-centricism) has been successful in worming its way into my heart and mind, producing this defensive insecurity, shame and avoidance, isolation & individualism that blocks the courage and compassion and vision and faith i want to be acting from. and doesn't ever actually make me (us) defended, protected, secure, but just produces a higher and higher level of anxiety and prerequisite.

yeah, faith and hope, vision and possibility. this conversation feels really spiritually grounding and rejuvenating to me. i'm having trouble articulating why exactly this is the case, but one example is dean's rhetorical question above do i deserve security that other people don't have?; asking myself questions like this and trying to align my emotions & practical choices with the answers is a crucial part of my spirituality. i think to me, spirituality is about believing in possibility, in change, about the courage and determination to act on faith no matter how crushing the odds seem. and knowing that acting together towards our visions of the world actually changes the odds, and when done right can really create possibility and energy.

i'm reminded of this quote, so i'm going to throw it out here - i came across it thanks to leah.

"Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope." - Cornell West.
[info]chelate on July 16th, 2007 04:49 am (UTC)
Re: faith
I have been thinking so much about this conversation over the past week. It feels like it's become almost a part of my body. Maybe because, like what you said, Timothy: it's been challenging me, on a spiritual level, to see the ways that Capitalism has burrowed in.

What you said, Dean, about how capitalism is based on/produces a notion that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and individual, that it isn't safe to share because we won't be taken care of, makes SO much sense. And I really appreciated what you said about your faith that people are fundamentally connected and generous. It's like that statement lifts up something in me. When I focus on that, it does help me let go of holding onto any part of capitalism as a form of protection from/against something. It also just feels so encouraging.

About a year ago, I read this one line in a Jim Wallis book (The Call To Conversion) that, for whatever reason, had a really big impact on me and the way I think about money. It's from a chapter called "The Vision." Wallis is talking about a moment when Jesus tells his disciples to love each other as he's loved them. Wallis writes: "Jesus tells us to love each other, not simply *because* he loves us, but also in the same way that he loves us. We are to extend to one another the very same love that God has extended to us...We are told to love as we have been loved, to forgive as we have been forgiven, to share as we have been shared with..."

That phrase, "share as we had been shared with" bowled me over. It turned everything upside down so that suddenly it was right-side up, in this way that made me feel dizzy and confused and also relieved -- because, like this conversation, it helped confirm and form the belief I had that hoarding money made no real sense. All of a sudden the idea that our money belonged to us at all made no real sense. I'm not sure quite how to explain why this line had this particular effect, and maybe it doesn't matter. It just suddenly seemed clear that my things -- my TV, my bed, my money, etc -- were not *mine* in a way that I had thought that they were, and that I was supposed to be sharing them in a way that I had not been doing. I realized for the first time that it was not my responsibility to accumulate money -- a responsibility I didn't even know I'd felt. That it was, in fact, my responsibility to share it as much as was humanly possible.

I have been thinking more and more this week about my retirement account. You (Dean) mentioned retirement accounts in one of your posts, and I've sort of been holding what you wrote in my mind. I grew up middle class (I don't have more precise language at this moment) with a single mom who always worried that she wouldn't/didn't have enough. Partly because I grew up always having (more than) enough, I never really worried about money. The job I'm about to leave, for grad school, was the first job I've ever had with a 4013b/K,etc. The company puts money in automatically, and then you can put in money on top of that, if you want. And I thought about how I would probably never have another job that included something like this, and I thought it was my responsibility to put money into it while I had the chance. It didn't occur to me, as much as I was focusing on the new idea that it was not my responsibility to hoard/accumulate money, that it was also not my responsibility to have a retirement account. I am not entirely sure how this got by me...

And now there is some money in it, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, and if I should take it out and give it to organizations I believe in that could use it now. I don't know if I feel ready to do that or not. Hoarding and saving and "enough" are so complicated.

Trust is such a hard thing to have, even in faith.

Nate
(fyi, I use female pronouns)
frankendandy[info]frankendandy on July 18th, 2007 03:42 am (UTC)
Re: faith
This conversation about faith feels really important to me.. It seems like talking about faith and spirituality in general can be difficult in the communities I run in because there's some assumption that spirituality=religion=christianity=the religious right. But what a sad thing, to lose this whole ability to talk about faith and spirit because some ridiculous hybrid of capitalism, conservativism, and misplaced moralism is passing itself off as a religion and monopolizing the concept of faith.

I feel like spirituality and faith, as it's being talked about here, is about exploring what links us to ourselves, to others, and to the world. I'm a hopeless self-help junkie, so I'm interested in the idea of connecting with one's "best self." I mean, it's a little reductive, but the idea is just what's getting talked about: fallibility, inconsistency, and perpetual learning, redirecting, and striving towards meeting whatever "integrity" you expect or want of yourself, in thought and in action. And trust, faith, and spirit provide the context for that, in whatever form/s they happen to take (religion, role models, community, love, support, whatever).

I just saw "Sicko." Michael Moore critiques aside, there's a moment that really struck me in it. This woman who lives in the U.S. (mild spoiler alert) is getting health care at a Cuban hospital. She and her husband have had to leave their jobs, sell their house, and declare bankruptcy because of health care costs. So this doctor is standing by her bed, and he tells her it's going to be OK. The look on her face is the most heartwrenching mixture of disbelief and sadness. It was just like... I don't know, this example of the very situation that keeps all of us scared and competitive and hoarding and selfish... and just receiving the news that there was any other possibility besides dispair was too much to digest. Though there's probably plenty more to say about this particular aspect of the film (probably specifically about the way it talks about Cuba), I felt like this was a really important moment... Even having trust and having faith in change (as I think you brought up about imagining an end to capitalism, Dean), is huge. Even just starting with the belief that maybe things might be able to be OK feels enormous.
(Anonymous) on July 31st, 2007 01:09 am (UTC)
I don't think anyone has an obligation to take care of anyone else. Not that people shouldn't care about each other and do what they can to help each other out, but they shouldn't be forced to. Besides, I don't want people to lose the incentive to work. I can't stand lazy people. You're hot, by the way.
(Anonymous) on October 9th, 2007 10:39 am (UTC)
response
hi, i just read with a sense of joy and release the revious posting. i wanted to acknowledge that i feel very much in a process and also that there is still quite a major gap between how i am lving and how i want to. as a relgious jew we need to live in a certain area that is expensive. we judt bought a cheaper house. i am going to accept some money as a gift to pay for mortgage which will free up some other unearned money to be able to give away. i want to invest it socially rsponsibly and then take my time to give it away and make a plan. i don't really have other savings so don't know what i should do about 2 kids educational future and all that. me and my partner work for an income. kids go to jewish schools which are very expensive too. we lik ehosting commmunity events at our place and also having guests a lot and may want to host international guests as well. i would love to live more communally and maybe one day can do that in a way that my partner would agree. i am not at ease with the fact that i am not doing it all perfectly now but at the same time i also want to not use feeling bad about myself to be th ereason why i jsut give away all my money without thinking properly about it. would love some feedback. last thing- i know that the most important thing is belonging to all people and i want as little as possible in the way of that goal.
with love and blessings