28:00

Have their moment, have their time. Exactly, exactly.

28:02

And it's trying to hold on to stuff

28:04

and not let it die that

28:07

actually puts us in precarious positions,

28:09

even for our species. This is

28:12

actually one of our biggest issues right now, is we're

28:14

so scared of death. Yeah. So

28:16

we think about how do we make people live

28:18

forever, and how do we look young forever and

28:20

do all this stuff instead of being like, oh,

28:22

no, how do I get good at dying? You

28:25

know, how to get to where I'll be at

28:27

peace when my time comes, because there's other generations

28:29

that need to survive off of the resources of

28:31

this place. You

28:33

know, it's in the design. I

29:00

guess something that's so on

29:02

my mind also as I read you, because, you know,

29:05

I think my kind of focus is, or

29:07

my lens on things is the

29:09

human condition, right? Yes. with

29:12

the human condition, and that also is very

29:14

much part of your world.

29:17

And I feel like there's a lot

29:19

of wisdom about the human condition, and

29:21

also really that you have to be wise about it in

29:24

order to work with it and help it

29:27

evolve generatively. You know, so

29:29

just drawing on what you were just saying, I

29:33

mean, emergence is change, right? Some place you said

29:36

emergence is our inheritance as a part of the

29:38

universe. It is how we change. And

29:42

emergence doesn't wait for us to be

29:44

ready for change, and we're really in

29:46

an accelerated moment of that right now.

29:49

But as you know, change

29:52

is really hard for human beings, right?

29:54

It's hard for us at a creaturely

29:56

level, and also we

29:58

all individually... Perhaps

38:00

it felt a little more true in

38:02

a more homogeneous society. Yeah,

38:04

and I also think it's like, again,

38:07

in the imagination, if you

38:09

are someone who would benefit from that

38:11

power system, right, then it

38:13

really behooves you to imagine the world as

38:15

that way. Yeah, that works. You know? Yeah.

38:19

It's like I'm just, you know, I, from a very young

38:21

age was like, but I'm just as smart as these white

38:23

men in my classes. And

38:26

yet the same opportunities are not available to me.

38:28

Can someone help me understand that? I

38:30

need a logic because it's not adding up. And

38:33

there is no logic. And there's no logic to

38:35

it, right? And often when there's no logic, then

38:37

that's when you know you're in someone's dream. You

38:42

know, I was looking up because I

38:44

also mistrusted my own, I

38:46

still mistrust my ability to define

38:48

fractals. There's this mathematician, great mathematician,

38:51

Mandelbrot, asked to define fractals, said,

38:55

beautiful, damn hard,

38:57

increasingly useful. Yes.

39:01

I love that. Yeah.

39:04

I feel like it, you know, there's so many things

39:06

like this, I will say, when I wrote

39:08

the book, I think in one of the footnotes, I was

39:10

like, if you're a scientist, you know,

39:14

just trying to help us make more sense. It

39:16

got me a little slack. Yeah. Or basically I

39:18

was just like, you know, because especially in the

39:20

sci-fi world, the science world, there's

39:22

already this battle over like, is that real

39:25

science fiction or fake science fiction? Like,

39:27

does it have enough hard science in it to count

39:29

as a story, right? And it's like, okay, if you

39:31

want to spend your life arguing about that, cool. But

39:34

for me, I was like, the point for

39:36

me is not to argue about the science

39:38

because science is actually still unfolding all the

39:40

time and we're, it's

39:42

a question-based methodology. So I want to be

39:45

asking questions. So I'm a scientist, so

39:47

what, you know, deal with it, right? But

39:50

then there's also like, don't come to just argue

39:52

the point, right? I feel like

39:54

our whole society right now spends so much time just

39:57

arguing for the sake of arguing. And I'm like, we

39:59

actually need solutions. So if fractals

40:01

is the wrong word, teach me a better one. But

40:03

what I want to talk about is this, right? You

40:05

know, I talk a lot about alpha versus more

40:09

collaborative creatures. Right. And,

40:11

you know, I can tell when I'm with the

40:13

devil's advocate folks, you know, they're like, well, what

40:16

about, you know, lions just eat everyone. Should we

40:18

learn that from nature? And I'm like, no, nature

40:20

does everything. Nature does everything.

40:22

There's not, it's actually the beauty

40:24

of releasing the right wrong paradigm. That's

40:27

not how nature is even operating. Like, is it wrong

40:29

to eat this deer? You know, it's

40:32

beyond that. It's like if nature

40:35

can show us everything, then we're the ones

40:37

who have agency. And

40:39

if the goal for our species is

40:41

not to cause harm to each other,

40:43

we could do that. There's

40:46

models from nature. And if the goal is to

40:48

make enough out of the

40:50

resources we have, there's incredible

40:52

models of creatures who are doing

40:54

that all the time every day and in very difficult

40:56

circumstances. If the goal

40:58

is to love each other, right, like Thich

41:01

Nhat Hanh said, such that we all feel

41:03

free, you know, that that's possible. Well, we

41:05

can see in nature who's

41:08

up to that. Right. We

41:10

can learn a lot from the bonobo monkeys, you know, and

41:12

so on and so forth. So it's really, you

41:14

know, asking people to be more intentional with, like,

41:17

we were given some things about the world from people who

41:19

knew less than we do now. So

41:22

what do we want to hold on to and what do we want to evolve?

41:27

Thank you. This

41:57

is Christa Tippett, comes from the Fetzer Institute. supports

42:00

a movement of organizations that are

42:02

applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest

42:04

problems. Learn more at fetsa.org.

42:22

The language of transformative

42:24

justice and resilience. Talk

42:28

to me about putting

42:30

the word transformative there. Transformative

42:35

justice, transformative resilience. For

42:38

me, when I add the word

42:41

transformative to anything, what I mean

42:43

is let's get

42:46

to the root of the problem. I

42:48

think Angela Davis said this is how she talks

42:50

about radical. Let's go all

42:52

the way to the root. Yeah, and that's the meaning of

42:54

the word radical, right? Exactly. It's not

42:56

something on the edges. It's not the edges, right?

42:58

It's like, what's at the core, the root, the

43:00

essence of it? For me,

43:03

when I speak about transformative, it's like I

43:06

don't want to dance around on the surface

43:08

rearranging deck chairs. I

43:11

want to get down into the root system and

43:13

really understand what's happening and what it would

43:16

take to create a change if a change

43:18

is needed. For

43:21

example, we have a crisis

43:24

of sexual assault, a crisis of

43:26

sexual harm. I don't

43:28

want to be in a situation where we punish

43:30

one person at a time, which

43:33

doesn't seem to have worked at all in

43:35

terms of eliminating the problem. And

43:38

yet we continue doing it and building bigger and bigger

43:40

prison systems and jails and other stuff, but it's not

43:42

stopping the problem, right? So transformative

43:44

justice says, actually,

43:47

that's not working. Why

43:49

don't we get to the root system? What's

43:52

causing people to enact sexual

43:54

harm against each other? And

43:57

can we turn and look at that without

43:59

holding on? anything back? Can we really get

44:02

honest with ourselves and look at it? Because

44:04

we all have some experience of someone

44:07

crossing those boundaries. And we're talking about

44:09

the level. How badly did

44:11

they cross them rather than did

44:13

it happen or not? That's wild.

44:17

So for me, I'm like, how do we get

44:19

transformative about it? How do we go to the

44:21

root system? And I learned this, there's a group

44:23

called Generation 5, who was

44:25

really starting to have this conversation of like,

44:28

what would it look like over five generations

44:30

to end child sexual abuse? And

44:33

it's like, oh, that's a radical

44:35

vision. The other aspect of

44:37

transformative is it often doesn't rely

44:39

on the existing structures

44:41

or mechanisms. So in

44:44

organizer speak, we might say the state,

44:46

right? Like it doesn't rely on what

44:49

we already think of as the solution, because we

44:51

know that that's already not working. And

44:54

actually, we want to

44:56

never try to solve a problem

44:59

with something that we know will cause more harm if

45:02

we can avoid it, right? So in

45:05

a lot of our communities, say

45:07

that a domestic violence incident is happening, we

45:10

don't want to solve that by calling the

45:12

police because the police

45:15

in our communities tend to escalate the harm

45:18

rather than deescalate the harm. Not

45:21

only do we have this domestic violence situation happening,

45:23

but now we have someone

45:25

being possibly removed from their community, removed from

45:27

their home. We have

45:29

kids possibly being removed from their parents and other things

45:31

that are actually not necessary,

45:34

nor are they helpful to solving the

45:36

problem. So let's not add to the

45:38

problem. Let's figure out how

45:40

we can resolve it within our communities through mediation,

45:43

through setting clear boundaries,

45:46

through healing circles. Is

45:50

there therapy needed? Let's

45:52

get as creative as

45:54

we can about what needs to actually

45:57

happen to stop the harm cycle. And,

46:01

you know, this is emergent,

46:03

right? This whole way

46:06

of seeing, this whole way of

46:08

imagining is emergent in our world

46:10

right now. And there's

46:13

struggle around it. There are different ways

46:16

of seeing, but I think perhaps

46:18

more definingly the conditions

46:20

aren't all there, right? That's right. You

46:23

know, one of the things that you

46:25

also talk about is how there

46:28

is going to be important conflict

46:31

and contradiction that

46:34

is part of the process of ending

46:36

cycles of harm. And

46:39

so one of the things we also have to be

46:41

working on, and it's back to our human condition, I

46:44

mean, here's some ways you've talked about it. How

46:46

do we fight fair? How do we struggle in

46:48

principled ways? How do

46:50

we practice accountability beyond

46:52

punishment with each other? Because the

46:55

structures are not there right now

46:57

in most of our communities to

47:00

just move to what you just described. And that's

47:02

where a lot of, and there's all kinds, there

47:04

are all kinds of friction points, right? But

47:07

that's one of them. That's right. Well, and, you know,

47:09

one of my teachers around this is a writer

47:12

and a thinker named Miriam Kaba. And

47:15

she's an exquisite human being,

47:17

exquisite thinker. I want everyone to learn from

47:20

her. How do you spell the last name?

47:23

Kaba, K-A-B-A. She put out a book

47:25

last year, We Do This Till We

47:27

Free Us. And

47:29

one of the things that she often

47:31

reminds me of, because like, I think

47:33

what would be so comforting to us

47:36

is if we could be like, we're

47:38

going to end the prison system and

47:40

automatically move to a very well organized,

47:42

centralized system where like, instead

47:44

of everyone going to prison, like you just go

47:46

straight to a mediator and it's all handled, right?

47:48

And one of the things she points out is

47:50

like, we would have the foundation for that. We

47:52

just move from one place to the other. We

47:54

just move from one straight to the other, right?

47:56

And she's like, it won't be like a huge,

47:58

overarching, centralized system. like transformative justice

48:01

will be a lot of us learning

48:04

the skills to hold

48:06

conflict within our communities, within

48:08

our families, within

48:10

our schools and institutions. We're

48:12

learning ourselves to hold it in different ways.

48:15

So she has another book

48:18

out called Fumbling Towards Repair with my friend

48:20

Shira Hassan, which

48:22

I love because it's a workbook that's like, okay, how

48:24

do, if I wanted to do, you know, a

48:27

process like this and like not have to

48:30

call in punitive devices, you know, what would

48:33

that look like? And it's

48:35

like, yeah, we have to actually learn

48:38

how to do something that feels new.

48:41

But also I always love to point out that this

48:44

is some of the most ancient technology also.

48:47

If we listen to indigenous communities

48:49

around ways that they have resolved

48:51

conflict over, you know, thousands

48:53

and thousands and thousands of years, a

48:55

lot of it is these same practices

48:57

and they're still practicing them, right? So

49:00

it's being in a circle,

49:02

it's listening, it's being able to let one

49:04

person speak at a time, it's

49:06

identifying what are the consequences, right?

49:09

Not the punishments, but what are

49:11

the reasonable consequences, the boundaries, you

49:13

know, how do we make this

49:16

right? What does that actually look like? And

49:19

relinquishing the idea that, you know, we'll

49:21

all end up as best friends at the end or whatever, right?

49:23

The kind of fairy tale

49:25

Disney version of conflict mediation. Instead,

49:28

being with what is the human condition, it

49:30

says, it might be hard. You

49:32

might never get back to that, but you can get

49:34

to a just place. You

49:37

can get to a just place, you can get to a

49:39

place where you're not walking around carrying the anger of knowing

49:41

that person, that that's not

49:43

the primary experience you're having. You

49:46

know, it's like I was hurt and now I've been able to move forward and

49:51

here's what moving forward looks like and I was able

49:53

to define some of that for myself. You

49:57

know, there was a, I

49:59

just want to read a book. beautiful, some

50:02

beautiful sentences you wrote, so, so

50:04

powerful. And I'm, and I think

50:06

this is in, we

50:09

will not cancel us. Okay. We

50:12

are brilliant at survival, but brutal

50:14

at it. We tend to

50:17

slip out of togetherness the way we

50:19

slip out of the womb, bloody and

50:21

messy and surprised to be alone, and

50:24

clever, able to learn with our

50:26

whole bodies the way of this

50:28

world. And the

50:30

context of that was talking

50:32

about how your default position is

50:35

wonder. And you have

50:38

to carry around a lot of

50:41

disappointment and frustration and critique with

50:43

humanity. And, and that you also,

50:45

that that is especially true when

50:48

you look at social justice

50:50

movements, where you expect so much, right,

50:52

and desire so much.

50:54

And you're being honest, and

50:57

you're actually saying that from a place of

50:59

love, right? And, and

51:02

of high, brilliant

51:04

expectations and, and

51:07

so countercultural in

51:10

this context, in

51:12

which to call

51:14

for accountability, to express

51:17

honest critique, even to

51:19

kind of acknowledge imperfection

51:23

is leapt on as

51:25

failure. Yeah. So

51:27

you really walked into a

51:30

brave and hazardous space.

51:34

That's right, Krista.

51:38

Yeah. Yeah. You

51:40

know, I, I

51:42

always think about how that, that book came

51:44

out, I had been away on sabbatical and

51:47

the pandemic was unfolding and I

51:49

returned from sabbatical and there was

51:51

like, everyone was canceling each other

51:53

is what it felt like. I

51:55

had been away from social media for not even that

51:58

long. And so I know this was

52:00

happening. before I stepped away, but

52:02

I was normalized to it because I was

52:04

in it every day. And then when I

52:06

stepped away and came back, I was like,

52:08

Oh my goodness. Like this is all we're

52:10

doing on the internet now. Um,

52:12

you know, it just felt like, it just felt

52:14

like so intense and it didn't

52:16

feel, it didn't feel like

52:18

what we're supposed to be up to. You know,

52:20

like I felt like sometimes when I sitting

52:24

around, I feel like I can feel, I'm

52:26

not sure if it's ancestors or future spirit

52:28

or whatever it is, but I just feel

52:30

this, this beyond energy,

52:33

sit with me like that's not the way, that's

52:36

not the way. And sometimes

52:38

there's a like, try this or take

52:41

a look over here, you know, look

52:43

up, you know, look at

52:45

these starlings and just see if they

52:48

offer you something, you know, and it

52:51

felt like that. I was looking

52:53

at this cancellation wave and

52:56

then I was feeling for mushrooms,

53:00

you know, and feeling for like,

53:02

who does know how to process

53:04

toxic energy? Who does

53:06

know how to process toxic happenings?

53:08

You know, can we do

53:11

it a different way? Can we do it with love? And

53:15

can we be honest, at least honest that there's

53:17

not love in the way we're doing it now?

53:19

Because I think that was also what was hurting my heart

53:21

was people being like, yeah, we just have to

53:23

love each other. And then we're doing

53:26

the most awful, awful

53:28

dismissals and disposals of each other.

53:31

And because of my facilitation background, I

53:34

was also catching some of those disposals,

53:36

like people would show up and

53:38

just be like, hey, you probably saw

53:40

this, but I just got canceled. And

53:42

almost always, I was like, I didn't even see it. Like I

53:44

can't even keep up with all of it. So

53:47

I was like, I had no idea,

53:49

but this person was devastated and sometimes

53:51

suicidal, like it was having an impact.

53:53

And I want us to at least

53:55

not pretend like it's not having an

53:57

impact, at least that, you know. Let's

54:01

take responsibility. And then the

54:04

other pattern I noticed was often

54:06

it was people who were fairly young in

54:08

movement themselves or fairly young inside of whatever

54:11

their political analysis was. I'm like, I

54:13

can kind of remember before

54:15

you thought that. I can remember when

54:18

you might have made the same mistake. And

54:22

my heart just was like, do y'all

54:24

remember that everyone was

54:26

transphobic last week? All

54:30

of y'all were saying this horrific stuff

54:32

and like, we need to unlearn this.

54:34

Like together we need to unlearn it. And

54:36

I think it felt like people

54:38

were starting to skip the step

54:40

of actually decolonizing and unlearning these

54:43

oppressive systems and just being like,

54:46

I'll just punish anyone who missed steps

54:49

and that'll be how I do my action.

54:51

And it's almost like that's people's activism now.

54:54

And I'm like, so now we're in a

54:56

true bind because punishment doesn't work. It's

55:00

like we're aligning ourselves with the state and

55:03

we're depressed. We're losing leaders left and right

55:05

because people are making mistakes and now there's

55:07

no room for making mistakes. So it just

55:09

felt like a total crisis to

55:11

me that needed a different kind of attention. And

55:13

because I'd been away on sabbatical, I think I

55:15

was brave enough to do it in

55:18

that moment. Yeah. What

55:20

is it? You mentioned Tick Nodhan

55:22

talking about being free. He says, fresh, solid

55:25

and free. You came back from sabbatical. Okay.

55:29

We will not cancel this. Do you have the little book by you? I

55:31

do. I do. So

55:33

on page 58, what you've

55:35

been talking about on the previous page is kind

55:37

of the harm that is created.

55:41

But what I really think you get at

55:44

here is again, we

55:46

started with the cake, right? The layer cake.

55:48

And the election isn't going to change very

55:50

much if it's just the icing.

55:53

And so you're looking at the layers of this and

55:56

I feel like this page is

55:58

such an acute analysis. of

56:00

what cancel culture, and I

56:02

mean all around, right, across

56:04

the spectrum, what it says about

56:07

our culture, which is

56:10

kind of the opposite of, I

56:12

mean, honoring emergence,

56:14

right? So

56:16

would you just read that, you know, but one

56:18

layer under that, what I hear is. We

56:22

cannot change. We do

56:25

not believe we can create compelling

56:27

pathways from being harm doers to

56:29

being healed and to growing. We

56:32

do not believe we can hold

56:34

the complexity of a gray situation.

56:37

We do not believe in our own

56:39

complexity. We do not believe

56:41

we can navigate conflict and struggle in principled

56:43

ways. We can only

56:45

handle binary thinking, good, bad, innocent,

56:48

guilty, angel, abuser, black,

56:51

white, et cetera, et cetera.

56:55

Cancer attacks one part of the body at a time. I've seen it. Oh,

56:58

it's in the throat. Now it's in the lungs. Now

57:00

it's in the bones. When

57:03

we engage in knee-jerk call-outs as a conflict resolution

57:05

device, or

57:08

issue instant consequences with no process,

57:10

we become a cancer unto ourselves,

57:13

unto movements and communities. We become

57:15

the toxicity we long to heal.

57:19

We become a tool of harm when we were

57:21

trying to be, and I think meant to be,

57:23

a balm. Oh,

57:28

unthinkable thoughts. Now that I have thought

57:30

you, it becomes clear to me that all of you are rooted in

57:32

a singular longing. I want us to

57:34

live. I

57:37

want us to want to live in this world,

57:39

in this time, together. What's

57:44

it like to read that back to yourself? You

57:48

know, I mean, I

57:51

deeply believe it. Yeah. Like,

57:53

I really want us to live. And I also,

57:56

I feel less lonely now. When

58:01

I was writing this, I felt very alone.

58:03

You know, like I was just like, I'm

58:05

scared for us and for

58:08

movement spaces. Like I want us to

58:10

hold each other as so precious. And

58:13

when I was writing it, that was in me,

58:15

thrumming through me, you know, such a loud longing.

58:19

But I feel so much less alone now than I

58:21

did when this came out. Because

58:24

it came out and I've had so many people like, oh,

58:28

yeah, you know, just like, yes,

58:31

now I see what you mean. A

58:34

lot of people have been called out in

58:37

the time since this book came out, who've reached out to me

58:39

and been like, I didn't know. It

58:42

happened to me. So

58:45

yeah, that's the main thing that strikes me now

58:47

is I feel like a lot more people are

58:49

like, oh, it's part

58:51

of the political toxicity of

58:53

the moment that we've been

58:55

all tricked into participating

58:57

in. You

59:25

know, one thing I don't want

59:27

to end without getting to is

59:33

pleasure activism. I

59:36

think it's been so fascinating. It's

59:38

been fascinating for me because I have this

59:40

kind of cumulative conversation, right? And

59:42

at some point in the last couple of years,

59:45

over and over and over again, people kept

59:48

making this very clear,

59:50

very insistent connection between justice

59:52

and joy. Yes.

59:57

And you, and you talk about... pleasure

1:00:00

activism. And so, yeah,

1:00:02

so describe that. Yeah,

1:00:05

I mean, I want to make justice

1:00:07

and liberation the most pleasurable

1:00:10

experiences that we can have as

1:00:12

a species. I want

1:00:14

to make it feel like, when

1:00:17

I make the best choice, it feels good

1:00:19

and I know it from my bones up

1:00:22

and out. And I

1:00:25

know that that means a

1:00:27

deep reclamation, especially for those of us

1:00:30

who have experienced depression or trauma, that

1:00:33

what gets taken from us often

1:00:36

is the sense that we deserve pleasure, that

1:00:38

we know how to feel it, that we're

1:00:40

allowed to feel it. So

1:00:43

one of the things I say is

1:00:45

pleasure is not a frivolous thing. Actually,

1:00:47

it's a measure of freedom, that

1:00:50

when you are free, one

1:00:52

of the ways you know that is that you

1:00:54

can feel pleasure, you can feel the present moment.

1:00:56

For most people, it's really just being

1:00:59

able to feel the erotic aliveness of

1:01:01

a moment and the erotic

1:01:03

like, yes, I am alive, I'm here

1:01:05

right now and this is how

1:01:07

I want this moment to go, this is good. And

1:01:10

I have to shout out the Queen

1:01:12

Mother of our lineage.

1:01:15

Her pleasure activism is Audre Lorde.

1:01:17

She wrote an essay in 1978

1:01:20

called The Uses of the Erotic as Power. And

1:01:22

I highly recommend listening to

1:01:25

it. You can actually listen to her read it. I

1:01:28

did not know that. Yes, there's a video

1:01:30

clip on YouTube of her reading it. And

1:01:32

I'm like, it's always good

1:01:34

medicine, it'll always get you right back in

1:01:37

your alignment. Yeah. And

1:01:40

you point out when you write

1:01:42

about pleasure activism that so much

1:01:45

of how we try to

1:01:47

organize and mobilize and even

1:01:50

inspire, orient and yes,

1:01:52

in social justice

1:01:54

work, but in journalism as well

1:01:56

is about planting facts and guilt

1:01:59

and shame, even though, I mean,

1:02:01

if we go back to that

1:02:04

list of, you know,

1:02:06

if we go back to Octavia Butler and

1:02:08

the way you've talked about what is successful

1:02:10

life, right? It's that, that does not create

1:02:12

change. But you're talking

1:02:14

about how do we create practices

1:02:17

and communities that everybody see, that

1:02:19

are magnetic, that you want to

1:02:21

run towards. Yeah. And Tony Cape

1:02:23

and Barra said we have to

1:02:26

make the revolution irresistible. Yeah. Right?

1:02:29

And I think about that, she's quoted, and

1:02:31

there's a whole essay from Alexis Pauline Gumbs

1:02:33

in the book about her

1:02:35

work. But I think about that, you

1:02:38

know, because I'm like, we need, and

1:02:41

it's all connected, you know, to me, is

1:02:43

the radical imagination work, the emergent strategy work,

1:02:45

the pleasure activism work. It all

1:02:47

connects because it's like we are trying to create

1:02:51

a future in which we can actually survive

1:02:53

and we want to make it feel good,

1:02:55

smell good, taste good. We

1:02:58

want to make sure that everyone feels like they could

1:03:00

belong in it. Yeah. We want to

1:03:02

make sure that everyone feels like their needs could be met in there. And

1:03:05

we know that we can't get there through punishment,

1:03:07

right? And there's

1:03:09

a pleasure, and I

1:03:12

promise it, I always love to promise it

1:03:14

to people because I'm just like, I know

1:03:16

that this, everyone can experience this. There's

1:03:19

a pleasure from being present, truly

1:03:22

present, where

1:03:24

you're like, I'm with the people I want to be with.

1:03:27

I'm doing what I want to do. It

1:03:29

only comes from being really present. And

1:03:32

capitalism has us socialized to think we

1:03:34

constantly have to be looking elsewhere for

1:03:36

it. So we're running around,

1:03:40

not satisfied, not satisfiable, no sense

1:03:43

of what that would be like. And

1:03:46

in our justice movements, that's not a good look, right?

1:03:48

Because if we have no idea what it feels like

1:03:50

to be satisfied, we won't know when we win. So

1:03:54

I'm always like, we need to be

1:03:56

satisfiable. We need

1:03:58

to know what that feels like. And one

1:04:00

of the fastest ways to know what that feels like is

1:04:02

to be satisfied in the body. Yeah. Right?

1:04:05

Like, you know what an orgasm feels like? Most

1:04:08

of us do. And even if we can't

1:04:10

feel an orgasm, we can feel pleasure.

1:04:13

We can feel the beauty. Ease, right?

1:04:15

Ease of being present. That is actually not so accessible

1:04:18

to so many of us, just that. You

1:04:21

know, yes, there's the, there's

1:04:25

capitalism that is constantly making us not

1:04:27

present. There's also a

1:04:31

world of fear, right? Totally. You

1:04:34

know, again, kind of circling back,

1:04:36

it is a time of unstoppable

1:04:38

change, and change is so unsettling,

1:04:40

and different kinds of people are

1:04:42

on the losing end of this

1:04:45

change, or fear that they are. And

1:04:48

fear has, right? Fear is also, fear is

1:04:51

the greatest example

1:04:53

of the power of imagination, because

1:04:55

even a perceived threat, right? Lambs

1:04:58

with the power of threat. Mostly

1:05:00

it's imagined. So I appreciate

1:05:04

a piece that you wrote, I

1:05:07

think this is on your blog, a word for white

1:05:09

people in two parts. And

1:05:11

you talked about, you know,

1:05:15

first of all, you speak as a mixed race black woman,

1:05:17

that you think about, you know,

1:05:20

you understand that you are connected to

1:05:22

lineages of harm, and as

1:05:25

you are harmed by these lineages

1:05:28

in your body. And you,

1:05:30

this, I appreciate this sentence so much,

1:05:32

which is just humanizing this. Supremacy

1:05:35

is our ongoing pandemic. It

1:05:38

partners with every other sickness

1:05:40

to tear us from life,

1:05:43

or from lives worth living. I

1:05:45

mean, to me, that kind of, you're

1:05:48

saying, let's move towards lives

1:05:50

worth living. Lives worth living. I really love

1:05:52

that. At the beginning of that blog post,

1:05:54

you put a word for white people in

1:05:56

two parts. Part one, what a time to

1:05:59

be alive. Which is true and which is

1:06:01

another way to frame it, right? And I

1:06:03

feel like we should almost put that sentence

1:06:05

at the beginning of so many of our

1:06:07

conversations, right? What a time to be alive

1:06:09

that we are in

1:06:11

this total paradigm shift, right?

1:06:14

And that we are tasked

1:06:16

with standing before these existential,

1:06:18

potentially transformative junctures

1:06:20

for our species. Exactly. I mean, this

1:06:22

is to me the most exciting thing

1:06:24

right now, right? It's

1:06:27

like, we are aware, if we wake up, we

1:06:30

are in a place where we can create so

1:06:32

much history and so much change. Everything

1:06:34

is falling apart, but also new things are

1:06:37

possible. And Octavia said that there's nothing new

1:06:39

under the sun, but there are new suns.

1:06:41

We're in a time of new suns. Right,

1:06:43

right. We're in a time of new suns.

1:06:46

Like we have no idea what we could

1:06:48

be, but everything that we have been

1:06:50

is falling apart. So

1:06:52

it's time to change. And we

1:06:54

can be mindful about that. That's exciting. Yeah.

1:06:59

It's buckle your seatbelt, exciting, right?

1:07:01

Yeah. It's like, this is

1:07:03

weird that action heroes, you know, I always say that

1:07:05

for organizers, but I'm like, really to be a human,

1:07:07

once you wake up and recognize like, oh, I can

1:07:09

shape everything. I don't have to

1:07:12

be a victim of someone else's vision for

1:07:14

my subjugation. I actually get to be a

1:07:16

powerhouse in the story of my own

1:07:18

life and my people's lives. Oh, that's

1:07:20

a different invitation. I'd much rather live in that

1:07:22

scenario. And so I do. And

1:07:26

you do it as part of an ecosystem, not

1:07:32

as a bold individual, right?

1:07:34

So that on the days that you can't carry

1:07:36

that, on the days that it's not hope that

1:07:38

you feel, but despair or exhaustion, you're

1:07:42

not standing there alone with those.

1:07:45

And I've been thinking about this a lot.

1:07:47

A friend of mine, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who I mentioned,

1:07:49

I think already, but she's such

1:07:51

an incredible poet, an incredible writer, but she

1:07:54

also has been teaching me a lot lately

1:07:56

about how just the idea of being an

1:07:58

individual, that. is a

1:08:00

ridiculous idea. Right? Yeah. Which

1:08:03

is like, that's a mythology. Like, we're not individuals. And,

1:08:05

you know, the more I think about the

1:08:07

ecosystems and emergent strategy and like what nature

1:08:10

is trying to teach us, the more I

1:08:12

hear like, we are one. And

1:08:15

when I think back to the first thing I felt

1:08:17

like I understood, it was that. It's

1:08:19

like, we are one. Whenever

1:08:22

I have a spiritual awakening, all

1:08:24

of it resonates with that same song. We

1:08:26

are one. We are one. We

1:08:29

are one. I think that's what we're supposed to be

1:08:31

figuring out is so then if we

1:08:33

are one, how do we do that? How

1:08:36

do we be one interconnected living

1:08:40

organism? How do we do that? And

1:08:42

I think that's our big human question for this time. And

1:08:45

I think it's a really good one to spend life on.

1:08:48

So if you look around, if

1:08:50

you think about this generative landscape,

1:08:53

this emergent world that you're part

1:08:55

of and that you are speaking

1:08:57

to and where there are conversations

1:08:59

happening that social media can't

1:09:01

imagine. I've

1:09:04

seen you talk about unthinkable thoughts

1:09:07

and favorite questions,

1:09:09

right? And I feel like

1:09:11

you are constantly, there's always fresh thought that's

1:09:13

emerging in you. But I also see that

1:09:15

it is, it's coming

1:09:18

out of presence, right? Not

1:09:20

just to what's going on inside your head, but to

1:09:22

what you see happening around you, what you're

1:09:24

part of and also always other teachers. I'm

1:09:27

curious, like, you know, sometimes I ask people at the

1:09:29

end of an interview about what is

1:09:32

making you despair and

1:09:35

what is giving you hope right now today.

1:09:37

And I kind of feel like for you,

1:09:39

the question is, what is your unthinkable thought?

1:09:42

And what is your favorite generative

1:09:44

question today? Well,

1:09:50

my unthinkable thought lately has

1:09:52

been, will

1:09:55

I be okay if

1:09:58

humans don't continue? for

1:10:01

such a long time, I've been

1:10:03

really driven by the idea that we have

1:10:05

to continue. Like, we simply must. We're so

1:10:07

miraculous and incredible. But

1:10:11

lately, yeah, my unthinkable thought has been like, and,

1:10:13

you know, but we might not. So

1:10:16

far, we're not making the kind of decisions that

1:10:18

would lead to continuation. And

1:10:21

what does that mean? And how do

1:10:23

I still live a really meaningful life? And,

1:10:27

you know, fight till the end, because I do

1:10:29

feel like that, you know, I'm like,

1:10:31

it is miraculous enough that I want to give

1:10:33

it my whole life effort. But

1:10:36

also, can I also

1:10:38

be at peace with what is? Which

1:10:40

might be that we're not willing to

1:10:42

change. Yeah. So that's

1:10:45

the unthinkable thought. And it's unthinkable

1:10:48

because it's so, it

1:10:50

really brings up so much grief for me. You know,

1:10:52

like I really love life. And

1:10:57

then the question, which is actually

1:10:59

from one of my teachers, Grace

1:11:02

Lee Boggs, that she would

1:11:04

always ask when we showed up to

1:11:06

sit down and talk with her, is what

1:11:08

time is it on the clock of the world? And

1:11:11

I like this

1:11:13

question. It always makes me kind of

1:11:15

deconstruct time. When I, you

1:11:17

know, I'm like, oh, we're in

1:11:19

these like looping patterns actually. And

1:11:23

we're in a pattern that feels familiar in these

1:11:25

ways and new in these other ways. So

1:11:28

like we're in this interesting

1:11:30

moment in Black movement where

1:11:34

we came through this first massive

1:11:36

wave of Black Lives Matter and

1:11:39

lots of Black organizing happening. And there's

1:11:41

a moment right now that's really tense

1:11:43

and intense. And it

1:11:46

feels like, you know, a lot of internal

1:11:48

tension coming out into the light. But

1:11:50

for me, this is also a moment

1:11:53

of deep learning. And

1:11:55

what we've never had before are

1:11:57

the tools of communication and mediation.

1:12:00

And there's just so many people who

1:12:02

are calling each other and being like,

1:12:04

I don't wanna see us struggle

1:12:07

in this way. So the tension

1:12:09

feels like a time loop. The

1:12:11

tension feels super time loop. It's

1:12:14

super familiar every time any movement,

1:12:18

so it's like not just true for black movement, but like any

1:12:21

movement that starts to get national acclaim

1:12:23

and attention, there's going

1:12:25

to then be that backlash that happens

1:12:27

within of like, well, who are you

1:12:29

to? And

1:12:31

also the growing pains within the

1:12:33

human drama, right? The growing pains

1:12:35

of something that grows. So

1:12:38

that's the loop, right? But then

1:12:40

the different tools that we have

1:12:42

this time around, first of all,

1:12:45

is so many more people are paying

1:12:47

attention to black movement, period, right? And

1:12:50

I think the vast majority of them

1:12:52

are not getting caught up in that

1:12:55

sort of movement internal stuff. I think

1:12:57

the vast majority are just like, okay,

1:13:00

black lives matter. So

1:13:02

I need to orient around that. And I think

1:13:04

there's so much beautiful work coming

1:13:06

out of the movement for black lives and

1:13:10

Southerners on New Ground and the

1:13:12

Catalyst Project and Surge for white

1:13:14

folks and allies. And it's just

1:13:16

a different time of talking about

1:13:18

racial justice and thinking about racial

1:13:20

justice that is full of

1:13:22

complexity. There's so many people asking

1:13:25

the questions of what does blackness even

1:13:27

mean? Like, can we interrogate this in

1:13:29

a new way? And how do

1:13:31

we keep it intersectional? How do we bring in

1:13:34

all aspects of ourselves? So I'm

1:13:36

finding it a very exciting time, right?

1:13:39

But it's also a fraught time

1:13:41

and we're able to

1:13:43

look at it historically more. You

1:13:46

know, when I talked, I got to be in a

1:13:48

conversation with Angela Davis and she was like, yeah, like

1:13:50

we dealt with a

1:13:52

lot of the same stuff, right? But now y'all know

1:13:54

how to take care of each other and take care

1:13:57

of yourselves. And now,

1:14:00

there's therapy.

1:14:02

I have so many people who are like movement folks

1:14:04

so I'm like I don't know where you'd be if

1:14:06

you didn't have therapy but with therapy you could be

1:14:08

like oh I don't need to take all this personally.

1:14:10

So there's just more tools. Yeah

1:14:13

you mentioned Grace Lee Boggs and I'm so

1:14:16

glad that I sat with her in Detroit

1:14:19

in her last years and also just sat

1:14:21

with that community around her and

1:14:25

you quote her on this matter of

1:14:27

transformative justice and transformation right? What is

1:14:30

it that she says? We

1:14:32

must transform ourselves to transform the world.

1:14:36

I feel like that is something

1:14:39

that this generation in time you

1:14:42

know and your generation and the ones coming

1:14:44

after of no

1:14:47

and that is new that is

1:14:49

a new thing to internalize. Maybe

1:14:51

that's kind of what Angela Davis was talking about to

1:14:53

you. Yeah like I feel like

1:14:56

there is this sense of it's

1:14:58

not either-or right? It's

1:15:00

just that you are a personal frontline.

1:15:06

What's happening in your life and

1:15:08

in the relationships you have with your family and

1:15:10

how you treat people when you're upset with

1:15:12

them. You know I always ask

1:15:15

people that when I when I talk about

1:15:17

transformative justice like are you punishing anyone right

1:15:19

now? And

1:15:22

could that punishment be shifted into a

1:15:24

boundary or a request? Is

1:15:27

there a courageous conversation that needs to be

1:15:29

had? How do

1:15:31

you personally begin to practice

1:15:33

whatever is in alignment with your

1:15:35

largest vision? Abolition

1:15:37

is something we practice every day in our lives

1:15:40

right? Liberation, emergent strategy all of these

1:15:42

are things to practice every day and

1:15:46

I guess maybe to bring it back to the first question

1:15:49

of spiritual practice right? To me that's

1:15:51

the ultimate spiritual practice as well. It's

1:15:54

not about the bombastic meditation retreat.

1:15:58

It's about can you... sit

1:16:00

every day. Can you

1:16:02

bring mindfulness into every

1:16:04

activity? Which

1:16:08

also brings us back to fractals. Yes.

1:16:13

Isn't it beautiful? Isn't

1:16:15

it absolutely beautiful? Yeah,

1:16:17

I mean, you're really, I

1:16:20

keep using this so much, how do we

1:16:22

really internalize in our bodies? That this is

1:16:24

what it's about, that what you do, what

1:16:26

you practice in your every day is

1:16:29

a pattern that is part of that larger pattern that

1:16:31

you want to see. That's right.

1:16:33

I mean, then there's so much awakening. I

1:16:36

always tell people that you're always practicing things. So

1:16:40

it's not like you go from not

1:16:42

practicing to practicing, but

1:16:44

it's, are you practicing things on purpose? Are

1:16:47

you practicing things you would wanna practice or are

1:16:49

you practicing what someone else has told you is

1:16:53

the right way to do stuff? And once you

1:16:55

start practicing on purpose, then you

1:16:57

can actually practice liberation and

1:16:59

justice and freedom. And then I think

1:17:02

you begin to have this contentment

1:17:04

that comes from practice. Like

1:17:08

I know that I won't see total liberation in

1:17:10

my lifetime, but I also

1:17:12

feel very satisfied with how I'm practicing

1:17:14

liberation every single day and in every

1:17:17

relationship. And

1:17:19

moving towards life. And

1:17:21

moving towards life, yeah. Life

1:17:25

moves towards life, that's the trick. And

1:17:31

the reason

1:17:34

I do

1:17:36

the put

1:17:38

time and emotion on your mind. And

1:17:41

that I'm a recognized that

1:17:43

all my work and

1:17:46

valueraff Fiennial

1:17:49

is a

1:17:57

go-in book that I learned and pleasure.

1:18:00

activism. More recently,

1:18:02

she's the author of Maroons, a

1:18:04

work of speculative fiction, and

1:18:06

she co-edited the anthology Octavia's

1:18:09

Brood, Science Fiction from Social

1:18:11

Justice Movements. She

1:18:13

co-hosts the podcast How to Survive the

1:18:15

End of the World. And

1:18:18

a special heads up. In

1:18:20

late summer 2024, she

1:18:23

is publishing a new book

1:18:25

that I am so excited

1:18:27

about. It's phenomenal, called Loving

1:18:29

Corrections. The

1:18:41

on-being project is Chris

1:18:43

Heigle, Laurenne Drummerhausen, Eddie

1:18:45

Gonzalez, Lucas Johnson, Zach

1:18:47

Rose, Julie Seipel, Padre

1:18:49

Gautuma, Gautam Srikishin, Cameron

1:18:51

Musar, Kayla Edwards, Tiffany

1:18:53

Champion, Andrea Pravo, and

1:18:56

Carla Zanoni. On-Being

1:18:58

is an independent, non-profit production

1:19:01

of the On-Being Project. We

1:19:03

are located on Dakota land. Our

1:19:06

lovely theme music is provided and composed

1:19:08

by Zoe Keating. Our closing

1:19:11

music was composed by Gautam Srikishin.

1:19:13

And the last voice you hear singing at the

1:19:16

end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn. Our

1:19:19

funding partners include the Harseland

1:19:21

Foundation, helping to build

1:19:23

a more just, equitable, and connected

1:19:25

America one creative act at

1:19:27

a time. The Fetzer

1:19:29

Institute, supporting a movement of

1:19:32

organizations applying spiritual solutions to

1:19:34

society's toughest problems. Find

1:19:37

them at fetzer.org. Caliopeia

1:19:40

Foundation, dedicated to

1:19:43

reconnecting ecology, culture, and

1:19:45

spirituality, supporting organizations and

1:19:47

initiatives that uphold a sacred

1:19:49

relationship with life on earth.

1:19:52

Learn more at caliopeia.org. And

1:19:55

the Osprey Foundation, a catalyst

1:19:57

for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled.

1:20:00

lives.