 Religions of the world share many commonalities, but one stands stark amongst the others to me: the belief in eternity, especially the gift of eternal life after (usually) suffering in the human flesh. Without a doubt, world religions got something right, especially Buddhism, when they claim that all life is suffering. At least, in some regards this is mostly true, though of course, some of us suffer more than others. Eternity, though, nonetheless, is potent idea that permeates the world today, just as it has throughout time; today it is an especially formidable political and personal force, one that is shaping our world in many of the same ways as nostalgia. Often, it even pairs itself with nostalgia. In my early years of growing up, my family didn’t have much to say about religion, and I was often somewhat shameful of our apparent “un-religiousness” of sorts. That is, until my mom became a born again Christian around my fifth grade year. Perhaps it was after seeing the deaths of my best friend’s brother and grandma only days apart, or it is possible that her friends had a much greater influence on her. Either way, she clearly yearned for something deeper in life and found that in religion. Much to my chagrin, she drug both my brother and me along, in addition to attempting, and ultimately failing, at coaxing my dad. The first year or so were quite fine, and I really might have even had a small bit of interest in religion, though not nearly as evangelically as the other members. This factor only grew worse and more complicated, ultimately becoming the crux of disappointment in my mom and I’s relationship, which took some years apart to mend. Overall, though, it not only turned me off to organized religion, it jaded me for viewing Christianity positively, even to this day. What it did for my mom, though, was interesting, and I could see its personal effect not only in those members in our congregation but in others around my area as well, though many of them were practicing Catholics and so had a different way of going about the specifics. Regardless, though, the evangelical zeal present in school, public, and other spaces was present. Anyone who was not Christian was looked down upon, usually quietly, though occasionally vocally. This peer pressure rubbed me the wrong way more than once and essentially forced my free thinking brain out of the religious conversation for a number of years while I read and discovered other ideas of the world, from animism to Buddhism to ultimately atheism. A recurring theme present in the lives of the most religious people I have interacted with, though, is the unshakeable belief in the afterlife, an eternity, one resplendent, vivid, and beyond glorious. Filled with jewels, mansions, and worldly desires in an otherworldly place, the eternity sought by my fellow townsfolk seemed one of bliss, peace, and harmonious community, reuniting with lost loved ones and indulging in the greatness of life. For them, I was happy, but in the years since, I have also noticed a slightly different viewpoint of this ideological worldview, particularly regarding work, regarding empathy, and involving advocating for oneself. Regarding the political and personal implications of eternity as a social force, I am much less interested in changing people’s minds than in understanding them, especially in pointing out those parts of their behaviour or ideology that prove the most problematic. Within eternity as an ideological force, I find a couple. First, when eternity numbs people, it is potent--and dangerous. What I mean by numbing is what happens often back home and it involves people accepting their fate and succumbing to the obedient authority of eternity, as if it were a monarch. To clarify further, sometimes folks put aside their suffering, placing it deep inside, and avoid any interaction with difficult feelings, challenging conversations, or downright abuse, and the particular people I am talking about do this under the cover of eternal grace. They internalize negativity and brush it off with the belief that, well, at least some day they will no longer suffer. While this can be a tremendous tool to use on occasion, especially if we are facing abnormally difficult challenges--the death of a loved one, a lost job--it proves to be much less effective for the here and now, and even the long term, than one would believe. In my small community where I grew up, this phenomenon is rampant. So rampant, in fact, that it permeates society, so deeply that no matter where you turn you can find it, like a viscous residue. I saw it in both the young and old, in both men and women though in different ways. Often it took the form of asceticism, though it was far less noble than most people wanted to admit, especially because most hated every second of it. However, low self-esteem and lack of self-advocacy only made it worse. Perhaps this trio creates and positive feedback loop. Also, it is possible that such actions, in a society that values obedience, loyalty, and honor higher than most other attributes, are portrayed as the highest regard, even though it is proven that, after a certain point, they are ultimately counterproductive. Secondly, when this ideology permeates the culture of an area, it has obvious political implications. One among many is apathy, which creates a culture of hostility toward those in power, not to mention a complete lack of knowledge regarding issues. In addition to apathy, long-term planning is often cast aside for more short-term solutions or at least solutions that don’t necessarily address the entire issue, such as a band-aid type of solution. Generally these are related to the lack of ability to see beyond the single human-life timescale that we erect. Unfortunately, for ecology and politics in the 21st century, we desperately need longer timescale praxis. Third, while I do find a belief in a higher power and with that eternity, I am more skeptical regarding putting certain ideas, goals, or values aside for use in some eternal land instead of using them in the world we are given together as well. I don’t feel as though it always has to be viewed as an either/or, especially in the case of Christianity when interpretation is constantly shifting. This is true especially for valuing self-advocacy, empathy, and work. For example, instead of viewing the dreadful long hours of work as something one must suffer through and that that is acceptable because some day there will be eternal rest, we could instead advocate for healthier work environments, shorter work days, and more reasonable pay for our work so that we can also enjoy the life we are given on earth, even if we expect something better later. In my simplistic view it is moreso the culture that an excessive belief in eternity creates--especially a culture that puts off anything positive of the now for a small hope for the later--rather than the belief itself. Either way, thinking about a belief in eternity as a social and political force is something that is misjudged in the current political atmosphere.
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 Note to reader: This is a long, rambling post from a previous NaNoWriMo attempt. I split it into two parts for clarity sake. For the past three years, I have been challenging myself with reading goals. It sounds kind of silly admitting it aloud because I have always been an avid learner, though more of a reluctant reader, at least when it comes to dedicating myself to an entire book. In this way, the challenge has forced me to slow down, to absorb information more intentionally and to think more critically about ideas that I encounter, in addition to a pursuit of following through, of finishing a project once started. Recently in this journey, I have been reading Strangers in Their Own Land, a fantastic book that attempts to climb what the author eloquently calls the “empathy wall” between her liberal enclave in Berkley, California and that of the center of the Tea Party: Louisiana. As an avid reader of social class and a member of the working class myself, I put off reading this book for at least two years, as I was extremely skeptical of the basic premise. Working class people in flyover country did not need some liberal professor coming in to “enlighten” them or “save” them, I thought. Certainly, I have discovered that my assumptions of the book were quite wrong. Though I will elaborate on the book in another post (or two, or five….), there are many themes present in it that I have thought about obsessively since way before indulging in this particular book. What I truly enjoy about this book is that is succinctly captures many of the thoughts that I have been stewing over for at least three years. Two of those thoughts form an interrelated theme, one that I have only recently begun cracking open, though only to discover more layers below. - Nostalgia is a word with myriad meanings, but they all focus on the concept of an idealized past, one that is longed for in a loving way, full of memories of a greater-than-now time, innocent and often full of wonder, or at least love and warmth. The study of nostalgia as a political force has gained a little ground in recent years as sociologists, historians, political scientists, and even psychologists discover its power for influencing the world. Growing up in the Heartland in the midst of conservative politics, I can clearly attest to the power of nostalgia as an immense political force, and it is something that Hochshild hints at in her book, but it is something I feel deserves even more attention, as it forms not only a foundational piece of the current administration, but is in itself a pillar of an entire generation, if not ideological worldview. And it is one that spans the entire political spectrum, too. Our current president has used nostalgia as the premier message for his campaign, with a promise to make American great again, as if there were a glory day to which we must return. Much in the same way that I have read about and discussed in the past few years regarding the idea of a pristine nature, we can clearly see that this idea doesn’t really quite exist, at least not in the way many supporters think it does. However, within it are truths that are important to acknowledge because not only do they help us understand this longing, but they are also powerful tools for moving forward in our society. For me personally, the chief problem with nostalgia as such a critical junction in one’s ideology is its ephemerality. The truest constant of the universe is change. Research shows that liberals and conservatives incorporate different values of change into their own moral roots, and though this is not the entire moral story, it certainly has a measurable impact. If it did not, there would be little resonance for our current president’s message. However, despite its powerful pull and drive, we need to also acknowledge the ecological and scientific fact of the universe in which we live: change is a constant. We can either embrace it, or resist it to little avail. Besides, upon closer inspection, the idealized past that we long for probably never really quite existed as we thought it did. However, there may be aspects of it that did, which is why we study history. Union membership, for example, is one aspect of someone’s social class and upbringing that could influence their childhood idea of work and life that has simply withered itself away, for many reasons. However, if we look at what those numbers of union workers achieved, we might reconsider some of our current strategies within our movements. Too many liberals and other progressives, though, focus on fighting the aspects of nostalgia that are obviously detrimental: the longing for a “whiter” world, the “return” of women to their “place,” and the diminishing of rights of many minorities, especially including LGBT folks. These are certainly real issues, and they must be taken extremely seriously, especially within the current administration. Though while we simultaneously fight to uphold these newly won rights, we should also ask the harder question: why is nostalgia such a powerful personal and political force? - Of all the morals, values, and ideologies shaping politics today, nostalgia plays not only a silent role, but a powerful one. It’s place within politics is relatively unexamined, at least when considering the reasons why it is such a powerful force, rather than just simply how. But a cogent analysis requires a little of both. There are innumerable impacts of nostalgia on personal and political discourse, and here I will discuss a few that I have seen most resonantly in my experience and research. Changing demographics has not only been an underlying force within politics in many obvious ways--increasing ethnic diversity, raising tension amongst social groups, and newer types of immigrants arriving to the country--but it has always changed the world in another, often less obvious way: regarding age. Baby boomers will soon be replaced as the dominant group, and with them, the dominant ideology of the current world. Without a doubt, this large demographic shift has shaped politics in modes both seen and unpredictable. I believe nostalgia is one of those shifts in the cosmos. When examined on a personal level, age begets nostalgia, at least longing of a certain type. It is common when people reach certain ages to reflect upon their lives, reaching for the importance of their hard work, their community, their familial connections, and the general time that they have left. Upon reflection, one easily slips into nostalgia, in the form of hyperbolic stories or a longing for something no longer present, whether a fit mind and body or a loved one long since passed. As the largest generation in American history reaches this point in their lives, then, it is not pushing the envelope too far to claim that nostalgia would play a critical role in their everyday lives and that this may or may not bleed into their political worlds. If we stop to consider the immense changes even in the last two decades in the lives of many boomers and older generations, we can simply gawk at how radical the world has become interconnected, faster, and more globalized in the matter of just one person’s 12 years of schooling. These changes have wrought other shifts in society as well, many of which are positive. However, many of these very changes also create an immovable shift as they collide headlong with the ideologies present in many previous generations. Some of these are moldable, others are not. While the baby boomer generation will slowly leave us, their resistance to change may shift, but it is also likely that their longing for a past will also increase. In this way, and in others, we must ask ourselves what aspects of the past are best to remember. Surely any of us would love for any other person to want to remember life well, but the definition of a life lived well may differ between folks. Within this difference, though, we find the more complex and nuanced factors influenced by the force of nostalgia in both personal and professional life. Some of the shifts toward nostalgia are certainly guided by principles that many would renounce. In the US for example, there exists a small minority who long for some of these aspects of society, whether they be a return to a time when women and blacks and LGBT folks were reserved as second class citizens or at least to a time when those issues weren’t discussed in the ways they currently are being debated. At its deepest root, some of these folks may have genuine concerns, though I personally believe they are misguided in their solutions and overall conclusions. However, within some of these more radical viewpoints exist parcels of other, more common, beliefs. One such belief relies upon the idea of tradition. As society increasingly becomes secular, scientific, and technologically based on a globalized system, traditions of all sorts are diminished, as new ones are consistently developed and refined. When one is in shock of these new changes--especially when they challenge the very foundations of one’s identity or morality--it is easy to side into a nostalgic state of mind, sometimes for good reason. It is important to note, though, that this slide away from tradition can affect both sides of politics, or at least issues that are associated with both sides. For example, while science undermines Judeo-Christian religion, technologies that exploit indigenous land breakdown tribal networks and governments. Though seen as divergent on the political spectrum, these issues are actually intimately tied and both sides participate in a form of nostalgia to lift these issues up, whether that be through a return to “traditional” Christian “family” values or the empowering of indigenous people to take back their homelands. In this way, nostalgia is practiced across the political divide. Butting heads with tradition isn’t something that humans haven’t overcome in the past, as the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution clearly point out. However, the complete overhaul of traditional systems across the board is certainly something coming from nearly every academic field, from Quantum Theory to Philosophy to Ecology. Similar to Newton’s second law, it may not be too farfetched to consider an equal and opposite reaction from those still clinging to tradition in the face of a massive wave of global integration. In fact, many World Systems Theorists posit many events of the last half century in this regard, from terrorism against US and Western “values” to ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia and Burma. As new ideologies replace tradition there may be increased violence, hatred, and bigotry. Avoiding these will require compromise and empathy from all sides, I think. Similarly, the left and the right use this nostalgia to refer to similar time periods, though often for very different reasons. For example, one idea of many libertarians is a return to simpler times, a time when people worked with their hands and could do many of the jobs needed in everyday life. This idea of simpler times can be seen across the spectrum but is especially prevalent in rural society that is increasingly becoming poorer, left out of the conversation, and is traditionally Christian and conservative. A very similar issue can be seen advocated on the left, though: the return to a pristine nature. Within the environmental movement, a return to the Pleistocene world of bountiful beauty and wildness is implicit and explicit within the discourse of the movement, though, once again, it spans the political spectrum. Both of these concepts are clearly half-truths: true in certain regards but not in their entirety. There is another important point often acknowledged that both of these examples point directly toward: an idealized past. Many commentators contend that a certain past existed, and it is our duty to return to that past, especially because our current state has us “drifting away.” Historians are always quick to point out, however, that often our ideas of the past are often overzealous and unrealistic in their simplicity, even naive. However, even with this in mind, we must consider that not only do these logical details matter little, as nostalgia is a feeling and not necessarily a logical thought, it is also true that some aspects of the past not only were positive but may, indeed, be worth longing for, as they have slipped away from our societal grasp and other, less pleasant phenomena, have filled the void. To begin, we can examine union membership. In the post-war period of US history, union membership soared and with it, a standard of living that become not only the basis for the mythical American Dream but also some sense of upward mobility and stability. Along with union membership, policies across the board favored the worker, but not necessarily at the expense of the owner. However, they did force corporations and bosses to become incredibly thoughtful about the ways they did business. This form of quasi-Keynesian economics succeeded for nearly 30 years before coming to a halt during the oil embargo crisis in the mid and late 1970s. During this time period, a new consensus emerged and union membership declined. Simultaneously following a half decade of membership collapse, business regulations also crumbled after the very successful early 1970s. Along with this, corporate taxes declined, automation increased, and offshoring thrived. The time of globalization emerged, to the detriment of many blue collar, unionized manufacturing and other jobs, which forced the entire economy to change, despite few supports from above. In this way, union membership declined throughout the years and with it, many of its benefits, including negotiating higher wages, worker benefits, and a general kinship amongst workers. As one can see, this positive benefit of looking nostalgically at the world could be to our benefit, and it is certainly something important to note. Along with union membership, upward mobility has seen a recent decline in the US, along with a lack of belief in the myth of the promised American Dream. It is easy to turn toward nostalgia when the past certainly looked and actually existed, at least in certain ways, in a way that was more stable, with careers that helped someone get by. Beyond just economic reasons, though, other factors are influencing an increased turn toward nostalgia, too. Some of these are cultural, such as beliefs in a time of more freedom, less PC conflict, or just simply a return to innocence and childhood, the golden years. With these in mind, it is important to realize that there are innumerable reasons why nostalgia influences politics and the personal today. In the end, it is critical to accept that while some aspects of nostalgia may be rooted in false notions, they are always in a sense “true” insofar as they evoke true, valid emotions, even when those emotions may be based on a false belief, or at best a half-correct belief, what I will call a half-truth or a double-truth. Despite this, understanding nostalgia as a political entity begins with thinking the why, not just the how.  On a random Thursday (or maybe it was a Tuesday) in my 11th grade American Literature class, the teacher invited a speaker to join us for the day. As he entered the classroom, I could see a glistening shaved head and he wore a brown robe. Throughout our units of literature, we interspersed a variety of perspectives in the humanities, from philosophy to world religions. Today’s class focused on the latter. Earlier in the semester, our teacher had brought a much younger man studying to be a Rabbi to speak about Judaism. Today’s speaker was a Buddhist Monk. I had never met a Buddhist (nor had I previously knowingly met a Jewish Person either), and I was fascinated by the religion. It felt, in our tiny, secluded, sterilized community, like a brief journey to another place. In class, the monk directed each of us in a short meditation exercise. As the awkward 16 year old that I was, I can’t recall particularly engaging well or witnessing anything profound. But the simple exposure to the new idea was enough for me, and I found it fascinating, even if my colleagues all believed it to be weird. Though I would not engage in such a practice for over a decade, the tiny seedling planted in my brain grew into a mighty oak. Not only did I late take up the practice, but I based my life around the curiosity of learning about new places and new people. Other events that year also fed into the transformation, as have events since, but when I took up meditation practice this fall, I had a found, nostalgic remembrance of that class. Diligently searching for a teacher job, this summer became more stressful than I originally intended. Whenever my search turned unfruitful after some time, I knew I would need some personal changes in my life to motivate myself. The first was rejoining a climbing gym nearby, which was much-needed motivation and practice. The second was a search for a new practice, one part religion, one part meditation. Living in Seattle, numerous places exist that offer meditation. Likewise, numerous temples, monasteries, and abbeys also exist in large quantities, from all creeds and religions. Because of this, options were nearly overwhelming. Early in the search, though, I stumbled upon a monastery closer to my house, the Buddha Jewel Monastery. Hesitant at first, I missed the deadline for signing up. Luckily, though, I emailed the crew after the first week and joined soon after in the third week. The class ends tomorrow, and it has been quite the journey. Buddha Jewel Monastery has a unique setup. It’s housed in a former church that consists of a large meditation hall, a small entry area, and numerous small and medium-sized classrooms, in addition to a large dining hall in the basement. The building is recognizable from the nearby vicinity by its large stained-glass triangular outside, which sparkles in the morning and illuminates the nearby street at night. While in the high ceiling of the meditation hall near sunset, one can see tremendous glistening orbs dancing along the wall. The setting for the meditation is tremendous. Helping students establish the skills, meditation practice at Buddha Jewel is intentionally designed with three levels, and I am currently finishing level one. Within level one, students are guided through most steps of the practice, from each routine into the next. Routines and rituals are practiced daily and carried out with great intention. This is perhaps the most unexpected introduction part of me, as I was not expecting it. However, I have grown to enjoy many of them, sometimes chanting sutras in my brain on the way to school or bowing before a nonexistent Buddha statue before practicing some meditation on my own. As a person who normally thrives without rituals, it has been tremendous to finally incorporate some aspects of rituals that I somewhat enjoy in my life. I used to do this with sports often, and it has been an aspect missing from my life in the last decade. Growing up in a Christian household, I could never have imagined my mother allowing me to practice Buddhism instead of Christianity on a Sunday morning. Because of this, my announcing of joining the class took her partly by surprise, though she is much more open-minded than she once was. In fact, she has been quite open to the basic idea, though she is still a devout Christian, and I am sure longs for my soul to be saved by Christ. With this in mind, it has been interesting learning a new practice and almost wanting to “become” a Buddhist after having been raised in a truly conservative area where nearly everyone was devoted Catholics. The religion never really stuck for me, and I feel no less happy for abandoning it in my twenties. Although I have been enjoying it tremendously, I would almost not even consider the Buddhism that I practice to truly be a religion in the sense that it does not guarantee me enlightenment, heaven, or some other goal. Though despite that, I also take the practice seriously. When being compared to Christianity, though, I have discovered profound differences. Some of these explain everything from my personal distaste of Christian doctrine to my uncovering of a closeted Buddha mindset. For example, many of the principles within the practices of Buddhism are not only scientifically sound but fit closely within ontologies in which I study and believe, as well as ideologies. Ecological ideas are closely related to Buddhism, for example, and many are more closely related to that religion that, say, Christianity. Stewardship of the Earth is about as close as many Christians get. Unfortunately because of dogma, many of the conservative Christians in the US barely even get that far. Its as though politics blinds the true lense of religion. But I suppose a religion that only preaches obedience might do that to someone who already has a hard time changing anything--especially beliefs. Numerous other facets of Buddhism are not only inspiring and enlightening (pun intended) but also fascinating. One such example is Zen practice. The branch of Buddhism that I have been practicing is related to Chan Buddhism, known as Zen Buddhism in the US. though the world Zen has been appropriated to have various meanings, the particular mode of Zen Buddhism that I practice features simplicity and mindfulness at the center. Within the practice of meditation, I have discovered, mindfulness in Zen practice is vastly different from my original ideas about it. To begin with, the goal of mindfulness in Zen practice is quite different from my original conception. Without many contexts, one may often get confused about the difference between mindfulness and mind-fullness. Though often confused, these two ideas are not necessarily related or similar. Mindfulness, I have discovered, is the intentional practice of using one’s own mind to tactfully identify thoughts, letting them rise and then fall, while simultaneously allowing yourself to drift back to a stage without thoughts or distractions. The theory goes that if you can accomplish this task enough times and with enough awareness, you can become enlightened. In this way, mindfulness is like awareness; it is extremely difficult, requires tremendous effort on behalf of the practitioner, and can even be frustrating. The more I have practiced in the Zen way, though, the better I have gotten at it, at least when I am meditating. Whenever I started some meditation practices years ago during Silent Meeting at Farm & Wilderness camps, I had a certain idea of what a particular goal of meditation could be. There I would meditate using a particular story in my mind: the water cycle. Imagining my thoughts as a droplet of water, I would visualize a place that I knew well--in this case the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont--and I would imagine a single drop of water falling from the sky, rolling into a river, then traversing the rapids, stirring into Lake Champlain, and then eventually finding its way to the ocean. Once at the ocean, I would imagine it evaporating, condensing, and then finding its way back. This meditation practice was extremely relaxing and fulfilling, and it was useful practice for the amount of time we spent at silent meeting. Sadly, it never became a full-time practice. When I started meditating again this year, I quickly found myself drifting from this practice, and I have not used it at all in the past 5 or 6 weeks. Though it is an extremely relaxing practice, I have found focusing on thoughts coming and going to be a better practice, attempting to focus as closely as possible on the Buddha Mind, the state without thoughts. Though I fail often, I can generally succeed for at least a few minutes at a time. In our practice, we meditate for about 35-40 minutes, followed by a walking meditation that takes about 10 minutes. This format is ritualistic but helpful. Overall, my journey with Buddhism is only just beginning. I am hoping to take the Level 2 class next semester. There is much to look forward to in the practice, and I know that if I can keep with the momentum that I will discover even more next semester.  Yesterday in class, I experienced a hilarious incident that also had profound meaning. I had set up a small group discussion activity with mixed groups in the classroom. I teach in a diverse and urban high school in Seattle with many students of color in the classroom alongside their white peers. It is also a college prep school, with the expectation that all students will attend college after enrollment. Because of this, it offers an interesting mix of students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as ethnicities and races. During our small group activity, which was highly structured, students were given the opportunity to “discuss” a particular element of which they had prepared. Mostly they were asked to answer objective questions, however, this time they were discussing an opinion based question. They were asked to collaborate as a group, either choosing to pick the best answer from everyone’s to support the group or to guide the group in synthesizing the overall ideas into one. While most groups chose the first option, a few attempted the latter. The volume level in the class grew accordingly, which was fine because students were mostly on task. Then it happened. In a moment of exhilaration, a student, a white boy from an upper-middle-class family who feels as though he is “woker” than thou, blurts out, “Did you even learn about slavery?” Mind you half the students in class turn and look at the palest student in the room. Another student, another white boy nonetheless, but one who has no filter responds, “Boy, shut up! You were a damn slave owner,” to which the class erupts in laughter. A similar phenomenon abounds in public school classrooms. Despite how hilarious this statement was and how unshaken (but maybe a tiny bit embarrassed) the well-meaning student was about his comment, it struck a chord. This chord rings well to the tune of online culture, as well as harmonizes with movements at the forefront of social justice, and it brings up an important point. While the student clearly had the best intentions (and I do not discourage him from speaking up in general), something about a white upper-middle-class student, who has probably never experienced racial oppression, teaching other students--many of whom are from lower-income families--about a reality of racism in the form of slavery, feels disjointed, off-kilter, at least in the way it came across. However, it brings up the critical difference between two important words that are shaping our world and discourse in the 21st century: knowledge and experience. Trained in experiential education, I often dream about the connections between experience and knowledge and how they reinforce each other in a positive sense. While they are often connected, it is imperative to understand them distinctly, too, especially regarding social experience. In the prior scenario, the student clearly had knowledge about the subject of slavery. He clearly pointed out the atrocities and, attempting to use the knowledge for praxis, he was speaking truth to power. However, to a group of students whose lived experience has probably more closely aligned with those oppressed folks, there is a bit of hilarity in the gesture due to the reality of having a relatable lived experience. Though this does get to the heart of some of the fights currently within social movements, I do not mean to claim that white people can never talk about racism or that men should never speak about sexism. Indeed, they should probably never claim to be experts, at least in terms of the experiences of those things. However, if we moved beyond lived experience into the realm of more objective forms of knowledge, men and white folks can be just as well versed as anyone else to relay information. For example, a white professor at a community college teaching slavery in West African history who has a Ph.D. and studied abroad and wrote books about Ghana is going to have much more content knowledge and an understanding of the lives of slaves than just your average black person. However, that same professor, being upper-middle-class mostly likely, would not necessarily have similar experiences to people of color in the US that may feel connected to Ghana through their African heritage with that country if their ancestors were brought here as slaves. The latter statement is one that gets incredibly lost in discussions of privilege, oppression, and social justice, I think. And, as of now, the world is worse off for it. In no way am I advocating that white folks or men are the experts at having a lived experience of sexism. Though if we were to really delve into the details, there can be some objections clarified in ways that the current movement also does not like. But those are comments for another time. For my purpose right now, I just want to clarify the differences between the two because they are impactful when understood discretely. When a person claims to hold the knowledge that only another group has, this is clearly a missed spot, something they should not claim to have, even if their ego inspires it. On the other hand, when folks have a certain expertise in relevant areas, they should feel empowered to use that, especially when around other people of a similar background. For example, as a white educator, not only do I feel it is my duty to teach slavery and oppression, but I think it is almost even more important for some white students to hear it. This is not because they benefit from it more, but rather because they learn just as much as well as more about the experience of those different from them. In the end, we should be careful to criticize, open to discussion, and promote as much dialogue as possible, in the true Freirean sense. To do this, though, we need to clearly define our terms, which means staking the differences between a lived experience of oppression and the knowledge of an oppression. The same is true for numerous other topics. |
About the AuthorEthan C Smith is an educator, adventurer, and thinker who is passionate about education, ecology, and social class. He happens to also spend a great deal of time reading and thinking about history, literature, philosophy, music, the future, and coffee. Archives
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