#72 Emergent instead of urgent
Plus: an obscenity of links.
Hello fellow person. This is newsletter full of links, with a few thoughts up front about the video I posted last week. It’s long, there’s lots in here to look at, there’s a ton of resources.
Regarding the video (“I’ve been lost for years. The election ended that”), thank you to so many of you for watching it and engaging and for letting me know how you’re doing. I will respond to all your comments, it takes longer these days. [If you didn’t get a chance to look at the conversation, I found it very helpful to read the multitude of different experiences everyone is having.]
One big thing that came up for me in reading your comments, which has also been coming up in the general course of my life with my clients, friends, loved ones, acquaintances, is how urgent all of it feels—how much it feels like we must act now, or read and know and make sense of everything now, or community now, or live like we should have been living all along now, or wake up now, or whatever. I know too many people that feel like they are doing something wrong because they are pausing; thinking; resting; mourning; reeling; grounding; numbing; escaping; rebounding; tending to their immediate needs or those around them; living; surviving; reacting; responding).
“There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.” - adrienne maree brown
As I mentioned in that video, the election activated me. I have a sense of clarity and certainty I haven’t had for years, and that activation happened the morning after the election, in what feels like an observable moment; it’s remained steadfast for weeks. The clarity and motivation is palpable and real, and also relieving because I wondered for so long whether I’d ever feel these things again—I hadn’t for years. I want to be here, I want to be alive at this time, I feel ready for whatever this is and for whatever is about to come.
What’s even more suprising is that since positing that video, I’ve moved into a kind of optimism and gratitude, and awe even. Something similar to what a few others have said (like
this morning, or on Sunday). For me, it feels very similar to early 2013, when I first stopped drinking and felt like I’d just escaped a near death experience. Last Friday I started playing the same playlist I played in 2013 when I stopped drinking. I started singing again. I have a kind of Morning Energy I forgot was possible. There’s joy in my heart. Which is like, what?As I also mentioned in the video and throughout this newsletter for years, I shut down four or five or maybe even six years ago. I’ve spent the last half falling further and further apart and not really coming back together in a form I recognize; I’ve been in grief, in bed, in pain and in hiding. I think there’s a readiness and a joy in me now because for in me because for so long there were these other very undesirable things in me, and because—and this part is seriously important—I didn’t try and change those undesirable things. I went full fucking Guest House. I entertained the crowd of sorrows. I knit them sweaters.
What I mean to say is I think I am feeling okay in the face of all this because I allowed myself to not be okay for such a long time, despite how urgent it always felt to be some place else. And what I mean to say is that whatever it is you are feeling, especially if it feels like the wrong thing, or even a total waste, is that perhaps it’s absolutely correct.
We get to slow this part down. We get to allow it to unfurl. We get to be where we are. We get to move through this in a way that feels necessary to us and nurturing to us. And only do we get to but we have to. We can’t get from there to there—what we do now, how we are now, is what and how we are seeding for the future.
“Only nations capable of the true art of grief, grieving their mistakes and the deeply felt losses they have endured or have caused to happen, can say that they are not pools of emotional stagnation dressed up in the spoils of ungrieved wars disguised as good business, heaping their unwept tears upon the poor and struggling as the currency of poverty.” - Martín Prechtel
To the ongoing deep, slow, intentional work.
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33+ Things Right Now
These are links I’ve been collecting for a few weeks and haven’t sent, and because I want to share all of what I found valuable (esp. post-election analysis) I’ve sub-divided this edition into NOT ELECTION and ELECTION so you can give your brain and soul and heart a break if you need it.
14 THINGS THAT ARE NOT ABOUT THE ELECTION
📚 The book that’s healing me this week is Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown—I’ve had it for five or six years—since it first came out—and while I’ve tried multiple times to start it I never got past page ten. I opened it a few days ago and absolutely inhaled it, highlighted it to death. I’m working on a booklist newsletter for these times—coming next week (please add what’s saving you right now to the comments).
The best thing I’ve read in a long time is this essay by Dr.
Price on burnout: “You Might Not Recover from Burnout. Ever.” Reading it brought so much clarity to me about what I’ve been going through and experiencing these past four years. I think “burnout” is a term that can get thrown around so loosely these days (because we’re in peak burnout) and applied to such a spectrum of symptoms and conditions that we treat it like having a common cold—something you suffer and then return to your previous baseline functioning—when for a lot of us, and by us I mean at least me, it’s disabling for the long term, and perhaps will always be. I’m doing some deep dives on ADHD/autism, addiction, and burnout, and I’d love to hear your comments, questions if you have them, or your resources.Pluto left Capricorn and entered Aquarius, and while I know this may actually discredit me entirely with at least one of you, as someone with Capricorn everywhere in her chart including her sun, rising, mercury and mars, I can confirm the vibes have shifted, and it’s good.
Last week I told my therapist about this story which I first got from
, about a robot that freed a bunch of other robots from captivity, and when she asked me what it meant to me I started crying when I got to the part where the little robot invited an unhoused robot home with it, which kind of gives you a clue to what’s happening over here.My friend Eliza who also has a prepper heart and probably many Life Straws sends me stuff like this all the time and this one is actually not a bad suggestion:
This “de-shouldifier” (How ‘Should’ Makes Us Stupid — And How to Get Smart Again) that took fifteen minutes to read and implement and then thoroughly changed my life. Seriously, if there are things you want to start doing that you think you should do that you are habitually not doing, try this thing.
This website that lets you watch TV like it was in the 80s, 90s. I got this from Ann Friedman Weekly and it definitely made my life better for about ten minutes! You can actually watch entire shows and commercial breaks as it was when TV was TV, and nostalgia is such a good drug.
Binging English Teacher on Hulu
Tara Brach podcasts and meditations, especially this episode and this one on cultivating a courageous heart
AI can now create a replica of your personality. (Yes, really.)
This article (“The Rise of the Crisis Influencer”) is a thoughtful piece that attempts to answer the question of the roles we play in crisis, and provides a thoughtful framework to think through how we might show up right now. (This social change map she linked to was helpful, and a more robust version by Slow Factory here (“Callings & Roles for Collective Liberation”.)
Positivity is not the opposite of negativity This Liz Gilbert dispatch on positivity, which is a thing I’ve been really trying for
Eliza Dushku transitions to becoming a psychedelic coach, which feels like a bellwether
ELECTION
Here’s a shit ton of things I’ve read or listened to or engaged with since November 5th (some before). I’ve noticed that I’m drawn to articles and think pieces and analyses by those who want to build something better; by those who are coming vulnerable with their solutions, not just complaints or blames or moralizing, even though you’ll find plenty of that in the below links and probably (unintentionally) in some of my own language. As I said last week, I am not interested in participating in creating further divides. Being mad at each other is a luxury none of us has any longer. It doesn’t work; it’s what got us here; it will keep us here and eventually destroy us (though, I am also remembering Sean Corne’s “you can’t skip the fuck you”—repression doesn’t work either so let’s be mad too!)
That said, I’m also listening where it hurts to listen; from people I don’t agree with; from people I think have some of it wrong. I’m trying to listen like I don’t already know, which is so hard for me to do.
A trigger warning—there are dark topics below and too many terrible things to warn you about.
Will we start killing addicts? A thing I’ve been thinking about for a little while is how Trump will affect not just drug policy (like cannabis rescheduling, or legalization of certain substances) but also how people who are addicted will be treated, and whether he’ll follow in the footsteps of countries like the Philippines and leaders like Duterte, who use state-sanctioned violence to murder both suppliers/dealers and users/consumers. (Trump once said to Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.” Duterte had already murdered thousands of people using vigilantes.) Involuntary addiction treatment is already on the rise, and it’s not at all that unlikely to believe that we’ll move toward an even more punitive and potentially less humane approach which feels like such a wild thing to say because we are already incarcerating a quarter of the world’s prisoners here in America, and that’s largely tied to the War on Drugs. It’s nothing I have deep thoughts on yet, I’ve just been collecting articles. “States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dealers don’t have a drug problem”; “Trump wants to expand federal death penalty”; “I’m I’m terrified I’ll be executed’: Trump win could bring spree of death row killings.”
The problem of everything being a crisis. We tire very quickly of being told that everything is on fire. “…the effects of crisis-mongering on the collective psyche…may dull our sense of what’s possible…it also primes the populace with anxiety, and a perpetually anxious society is a vulnerable one.”
A dive into bro-media culture. Rebecca Jennings on the Gen Z bro media diet: “They vote for a man who has done everything you’re not supposed to do — steal, lie, rape, idolize Hitler — because his election fulfills their fantasy that men really can get away with whatever they want. For now, it seems they’re right.”
Related: A viral video of an influencer coming out as pro-trump—and then also throwing in that she “hates fat people”—was the most shocking thing I’ve seen in the past few weeks and the one thing that fucked me up the most. It was so lowest common denominator and truly shocking, and it’s like, okay we’re in the part where men are saying “Your body, my choice” and thin people are just going to start relieving themselves of their already not-at-all-secret secret fatphobia? There’s something so unnerving about the entire part where we’re leaning into and claiming our worst tendencies and beliefs and casting off what vestiges of decency, of privacy, of [insert a thousand words that sound puritanical] remain—like we just don’t fucking care anymore—and what that leaves us with as a culture. What happens when literally nothing is out of bounds, and nothing remains sacred?
A wonderful long-read about a county in Pennsylvania that shifted to Trump. It’s remarkable to read, with quotes like “I’d gladly give up my abortion rights and my daughter’s for my son not to have to go to war. We’ll have peace with Trump.” Or this one by an undocumented immigrant: “I love Mr. Trump. Of course he could send me back at any moment, but if he did, I would still love him.”
This CNN graph that uses exit polls to show changes in the spread between who went Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 by demographic (gender, education, race/ethnicity). White women without college degrees didn’t budge across time—they held firm from 2016 to 2024 in going for Trump within the same range; white women with college degrees went for Harris more than Clinton (shifted left), and white men of both education classes moved left/dem (shifted left).
This is a great article on what happens when we listen and respond instead of demonizing: “It’s a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do.”
Hannah Arendt on the connection between loneliness and totalitarianism and also the Boggs center blog.
Moving to Canada? A cottage industry of expatriation consultants awaits to serve those of us who have the means to leave, which also happens to be those of us who have benefitted the most from this country. It’s such an American solution to decide to throw this used up shit away and just go to some other nice place (and suck that dry too), and it reminds me a lot of a quote about the American healthcare system by Jonathan Haidt: “As long as someone else is always paying for your choices, things will get worse.”1
This piece by
on the limits of man-hating: “A Feminist Utopia”: “Heteropessimists wish they were not attracted to men, but they're unwilling to strategize a politics that might change the situation responsible for these feelings.” I cannot love her work more than I do.Related: These pieces by Jia Tolentino (“How America Embraced Gender War”) and Xochitl Gonzalez (“What Can Women Do Now?”) were soothing because they did not call for the total destruction of men.
Related: The mounting, undeniable #MeToo backlash. I’ve also started listening to Susan Faludi’s Backlash, and I highly recommend it for the updated foreword alone.
On the narcissism it takes to think that “wokeness” is what decided the election, or that trans activism took things too far2 and was solely responsible for the dems loss: “Now some Democrats and their liberal supporters would rather help Trump divide the working class…When Maureen Dowd wrote that “woke is broke” in her post-election diatribe, she imagined a country that is nothing more than a mirror of herself.” There’s a quote from one of the characters in Elizabeth Strout’s work that says “You’re thinking like yourself again”. I think a lot of us are thinking like ourselves again.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk literally fighting over who likes Trump better. This is exactly like the shit I used to do to get my sister in trouble when I was fucking five.
It’s Not The Economy It’s Misogyny by
I think seeing things like this (slide 9) and this (slide 11) and this, makes it extremely hard to imagine a world that doesn’t so casually thoroughly hate women; I’m sitting with this; with my anger and my desire to just be so angry at men, and my exhaustion with the tactics I’ve taken and participated in.More post-election bits: 10 Ways To Be Prepared Now That Trump Has Won by Daniel Hunter; How To Survive the Apocalypse Again (“Hope is a discipline”); Ezra Klein’s post-mortem; Vox’s post-mortem; Democracy is Not Over; A Fresh Morning in a Broken World; Identity Politics Is Losing It’s Grip; That feeling you get knowing RFK is responsible for “women’s health”; Goodbye to Democracy? Not just yet.
Finally: I have read so opinion pieces that attempt to boil it all down to some single issue, or just hot-takes on social media that are so reductionist and myopic. I don’t personally believe any one thing, but so many, many different things, have arrived us here. It’s so seductive to try label and sort and come up with a definitive answer to how we got here so we can come up with one solution to how we get out, but I think this exact reductionism is what got us here. An alternate take from the book Queer Ecologies:
“Despite the scientific aim to make sense of the world, to categorize, to map, to find causal relations, many who write about sexual diversity in non-human animals are stuck with the sense that the remarkable variance regarding sex, gender, reproduction, and childrearing among animals defies our modes of categorization, even explodes our sense of being able to make sense of it all…queer animals elude perfect modes of capture.”
This is a queer time. We are queer animals. Our ability to make sense has been exploded. Perfect capture or enlightenment style thinking that tries to reduce it all to its parts will not work.
There are people who for their own safety have to leave (or should, if they have the resources)—there are so many people that are in immediate danger, and I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people like me who could actually leave the country if we wanted to, who are not in any kind of immediate danger the rest of the world isn’t also in. And I’m also hearing how much judgment I’ve got around this lol.
Really interesting to read this this am, too: “Transgender Activists Question the Movement’s Confrontational Approach” even though it’s an NYT piece : / .
Thank you for normalizing my pain. I can not mobilize yet. I am overwhelmed with this great fear, grief, and disbelief. I wonder if I am over reacting.. I wonder if I am suffering from a mental health crisis. I just know the pain is real.
Cap to Cap, I've been looking forward to the Pluto thing all year because I *needed it*