TWENTY-TWENTY was The Great Sobering Up.
Just as the skies cleared because of the sudden decrease in car and airplane traffic, so too did our awareness of the social contracts we are operating under. It’s not that these contracts were broken. It’s that, for a moment, we were able to see them as they truly are. We no longer saw them as we idealized and fantasized them to be.
The lynching of George Floyd (may his soul rest in power) was a catalyst for social change unlike any other because of how undistracted many of us were. Those of us who had the power and resources to hide from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) were situated outside the grinding wheel of industry at that time. We weren’t spending 2-4 hours commuting to and from work. There were no weekends spent mindlessly consuming at restaurants and stores. We could stare directly, without looking away, at the images of a racist murder executed by a representative of the state. We could see it for exactly what it was.
What lies could we tell ourselves about the reality of our social contracts when the fragility of human survival was laid bare by the existential threat of a pandemic?
Undoubtedly, we arrived at an unprecedented nearly global emotional consensus then: SARS-CoV-2 was worthy of our fear and respect. That consensus changed how we moved and used our resources. We bore witness to the fact that change in the best interest of people can be immediate. Aid can be dispensed in the moment of distress. We can change everything suddenly and all at once.
Don’t let them make you forget.
Remember back in 2020 you felt fear and that fear was honored. Remember those moments when you were not safe, and they protected you. Remember when you were hungry, and they fed you. Remember when you were housing insecure, and they secured your housing. You needed medical care, so they provided it for you. You needed money, so they gave it to you.
Don’t let them make you forget.
Remember when you watched another Black man be murdered by police in plain sight or everyone to see? Remember when your neighbors flooded the streets with you to demand change? Remember when we felt all those feelings together, that rage and righteous indignation?
Don’t let them make you forget.
Human nature is to belong, not to dominate
We are much like herd animals who follow each other off the cliff as we march forward, or into the den of danger as we fight for our lives. A sense other than sight and reasoning other than what is informed by our material conditions is often what drives our behavior as humans. The underlying motivation for almost all human behavior is belonging because belonging equals survival in the safety of the group.
Belonging and the desire for it is expressed by mimicking the behavior of those we are in proximity to, in conscious and unconscious ways. It’s how we efficiently form judgements about who and what is safe and who and what is dangerous. Ultimately, sameness is safety and difference is dangerous, even when sameness manifests like buffalo following each other off the cliff to their death during a buffalo jump. Even hen sameness is being in denial about real threats to our safety.
To instigate change it takes a force, or threat, bigger than the intractable conflicts over power and resources we find ourselves mired in. SARS-CoV-2 was that irresistible force of change at the start. While we’ve positioned ourselves and our cultural norms as immovable objects, we can only hold off the forces of change for so long. Many of us have become the standard bearers for change, leading the charge by refusing to forget while we are all subject to weaponized disability and death by eugenics.
The enforcement of normalcy and sameness through top down, lateral, and intra-communal policing is meant to protect the group from disruptive forces that threaten our stability from the inside. That same policing makes us struggle to adapt to the unrelenting forces of change that come from the outside. The enforcement of sameness is not the problem. The problem is with the emotional consensus that is being enforced. What is the real threat and how do we rally ourselves and our resources to confront it?
We’ve done it before.
Don’t let them make you forget.
Revolution Begins in the Body
Revolution is the act of imposing your internal distress on the environment so that it has a vested interest in your peace. Revolution is sharing the weight and burden of discomfort with others rather than swallowing it down until it forms a cancerous tumor of shame and alienation in your gut.
When did you lose your capacity to cry for help to a lie that says you can take care of yourself by yourself? When did you lose your humanity to self-disregard, an adaptation to your caregivers’ and society’s disregard of you? When did you lose your longing for comfort to a neglect that has normalized suffering you don’t deserve? When did you become so afraid of feeling?
Your feelings are the instrument of change you can wield with power and force. You’ve done it before.
Revolution begins in the body.
Freedom begins in the imagination.
Liberation is what happens when we revolt and imagine together.
DON’T LET THEM MAKE YOU FORGET.
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