2021 best-of: highlights of my learning journey
2021 best-of: highlights of my learning journey
Centered accountability, interdependence, and the power of curation
This is my last post of the year: my 4th annual “best-of” list, where I take on the Sisyphean task of trying to capture an entire year’s learning in one newsletter post. I love this time of year, the “wintering” process of reflection, introspection, and preparing for the year ahead… but giving space to the process of unwinding before recommitting. Integration before intention… that latter will come in the new year.
As always, this is material I engaged with this year, not necessarily material published this year. Without further ado:
Key themes and learnings
Boundaries and “centered accountability”: this theme showed up in virtually every newsletter post this year… obviously remains on my mind :-) I haven’t yet written in this space about the concept of “centered accountability,” but it’s the thing I’ve been circling around all year and finally found a name for thanks to Staci Haines and the Strozzi Institute: the balance between holding on and letting go. What is mine to do, and what is not. How to maintain my boundaries… and stay in loving relationship. In 2022 I want to continue to deepen my practice of centered accountability.
Practicing interdependence—the gift economy: another major theme that I spent the year orbiting around and tried to tie together in this post, inviting you (newsletter readers) to become subscribers and step into intentional practice with money and interdependence. In 2022 I want to continue to deepen my practice of interdependence, and the gift economy.
Belonging to land—the need for roots: this theme also appeared in a number of posts, and continues to be a major area of inquiry for me. Bruno Latour’s work (below) offers a powerful way to ground some of the insights emerging from Kimmerer and Albrecht (also below). I’m not yet sure what intention I want to form here, only that it seems essential: to find some way to build community connected to land.
The vital necessity of vision: Donella Meadows’ essay below is the anchor point for my exploration of the importance of vision, but it’s closely connected to the theme of radical imagination that I find myself consistently returning to in this newsletter. We HAVE to dream, because it is our longings that inform our actions (this post on Medium describes my aspirations for Building Belonging as a “future dojo”). As I explored in this post from February: we haven’t yet figured out the right role for visionary leadership in our movements.
The power of curation: This last point is essentially the raison d’etre for this entire newsletter: an effort to separate signal from noise, to focus relentlessly on those people and ideas that are already moving us toward the world we long for. I love the slogan for the Laura Flanders Show “Where the people who say it can't be done take a back seat to the people who are doing it.” I spent an entire post looking for the right word to describe the role of humans in the world, and I think this is it: we are curators, from the Latin curare meaning “to take care of.” The first and fundamental act of curation (as we now understand it, in the context of a museum exhibition): choosing what belongs together, to lead the participant on a transformative journey. Getting the right inputs makes all the difference: what are those core design principles that can lead to the emergence we desire?
Best of the Best (if you only choose one…)
Book: Myles Horton & Paulo Freire — We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change (Temple University Press: 1990).
I generally defer to articles/podcasts instead of books, as a reluctant nod to time constraints of a full-time job and two young children. But in addition to the 40+ youth books I read aloud to one of my aforementioned children :-), I did manage a few books this year, including the fabulous Broken Earth trilogy from N.K. Jemisin and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s masterful Braiding Sweetgrass. But this book, a compilation of a series of conversations between two lions of the fields of social justice and democratic education, is just a rare gift. I loved it. A taste:
“Real liberation is achieved through popular participation. Participation in turn is realized through an educational practice that itself is both liberatory and participatory, that simultaneously creates a new society and involves the people themselves in the creation of their own knowledge.”
Article: Miki Kashtan — The Impossible Will Take a Little While – Experiments in Gift Economy, Part 1 (Self-published: 2016)
Of the 1,000+ articles I read this year, it’s extremely difficult to choose just one. So I want to highlight one that managed to weave together a number of themes from the year, from one of the very few writers on my “read everything they write” list.
I love Miki’s writing: astonishingly self-revealing, insightful, provocative… truly unique. This essay is not from this year, but played a key role in connecting a number of threads that I continue to explore. It’s an article that is so layered and uncovers so much that it’s impossible to take it all in with one read: to take this seriously is nothing short of utterly transformative.
“When I envision a full, global, functioning gift economy, I see an enormous and endless flow of generosity in which resources continually move, always forward, always from where they exist to where they are needed.”
Podcast episode: Quanita Roberson — The Inner Work of Facilitation (Workshops Work: 2021)
I first encountered Quanita this year, thanks to an Art of Hosting call she co-hosted with Tennyson Wolf back in May. I found myself taking frantic notes throughout, wondering: how have I not found this person before now?
This episode is a tour-de-force; incredible depth, nuance, complexity, tenderness, and wisdom packed into 58 minutes. Thanks to Sara Huang for the share! (I also recommend this one, if you want more Quanita). I could listen to her all day. A taste:
“We mistake shame, blame, and guilt as emotions. But they are not. They are where we go to hide from emotions... We think we are taking responsibility when we sit with the shame and guilt, but actually we are dodging responsibility for what lies beneath... Which is usually deep grief.”
Video/Multimedia: ALOK Menon — The Urgent Need for Compassion (Man Enough Podcast: 2021)
I initially listened to this as a podcast, but ALOK has such an incredibly embodied presence and plays with gender so invitingly in their sartorial choices that I think it’s worth the watch. The dynamic between the hosts is also fascinating; they clearly haven’t encountered (even in a show about masculinity) anything quite like the wisdom ALOK is dropping, and they’re shook. I’ve queued the video below to start at 35:17 minutes: the 3.5 minutes of wisdom ALOK shares here is just breathtaking (to 38:45); I’ve found myself returning to it again and again and keep finding new insights. A taste:
“We keep on mistaking the prison as another home… What we don’t recognize is that true freedom is going to be uncomfortable… the only gender rule is that there are no rules. Man and woman only mean what you need them to mean for you. People hear that [vision] as a threat and not an invitation because of trauma, because they're afraid of possibility. Because they have been taught that the only way that they can get love and receive love and be is by being someone else's fantasy of who they should be.”
Best Articles
Each of these touched on one or more of the themes that helped define 2021 for me. The top 10, in no particular order.
Rebecca Solnit — Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope (The Guardian: 2021)
Another on my read-everything-she-writes list, Rebecca has a rare gift for eloquence and compassion paired with a deep commitment to action. This is a great post-COP26 reflection on what this moment demands.
“As citizens of the Earth, we have a responsibility to participate. As citizens massed together, we have the power to affect change, and it is only on that scale that enough change can happen.”
Bruno Latour — For a terrestrial politics: An interview with Bruno Latour (Eurozine: 2018)
I first came across Bruno’s work a couple years ago when john powell recommended it. This year I finally dove in. His prose is dense, but this interview is a great introduction to his ideas; his concept of “territorial politics” for me is the single best conceptual framework I’ve found for linking our climate justice movements to a coherent theory of political action that’s adequate to the moment.
“As long as people fail to take account of the terrestrial question, they will be caught between two alternative strategies: flight towards the hypermodern future and withdrawal into the sense of national belonging.”
Achille Mbembe — Thoughts on the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe (New Frame: 2019)
I first came across Achille this year, and was immediately impressed by the breadth and depth of his work. I love perspectives on race and decolonization from outside the U.S.; it’s always so refreshing.
“The expansion of colonialism had to do with the broader question, Who is it that the Earth belongs to?… decolonisation is by definition a planetary enterprise, a radical openness of and to the world.”
Melissa Febos — I Spent My Life Consenting to Touch I Didn’t Want (New York Times Magazine: 2021)
Oof. Just a powerful gut-punch of a read, a visceral telling of patriarchy-in-action in the post-MeToo world that I found really resonant.
“Every sexual encounter, there has always been an element of ambivalence… What models had I ever encountered for real, enthusiastic consent?… There were few people who seemed capable of the deep attention required to actually know what they wanted, especially when faced with the wants of someone else.”
Scott Remer — A Radical Cure: Hannah Arendt & Simone Weil on the Need for Roots (Philosophy Now: 2018)
Simone Weil is one of my favorite philosophers; indeed, we gave our second daughter “Simone” as a middle name in homage. Arendt is another of my favorites; her work on totalitarianism in particular has provided a constant referent point for my thinking (both played an important role in my undergraduate thesis). Scott does a great job weaving their prescience into this current moment. If this line isn’t a searing indictment of life in 2021 I don’t know what is:
“One measure of a society’s sickness is the level of dissonance that an individual confronts in trying to fulfill all her moral duties.”
Donella Meadows — Envisioning a Sustainable World (Self-published: 1994)
I’ve long been a fan of Donella’s work: this essay is a profound and inspiring call for setting and cultivating bold visions.
“Vision is the most vital step in the policy process. If we don’t know where we want to go, it makes little difference that we make great progress… we can hardly achieve a desirable, sustainable world, if we can’t even picture what it will be like.”
Glenn Albrecht — Exiting the Anthropocene and entering the Symbiocene (Minding Nature: 2016)
A beautiful piece of writing in the tradition of eco-philosophers like Joanna Macy: a compelling vision for the mindset shift we need to make to navigate the transition to right relationship with each other and the planet.
“We must rapidly exit the Anthropocene with its non-sustainability, its perverse resilience, its authoritarianism, and its “corrumpalism.” The new foundation, built around a new meme, will need to be an act of positive creation.”
Andrea Smith* — The Problem with Privilege (Self-published: 2014)
(This section updated Dec 16, 2021): When I initially read and recommended this piece, I didn’t know anything about the author. I think it’s an outstanding analysis and key contribution to our fraught discourse around privilege; one of these days I’ll share my complete thoughts on the subject (in dialogue with Quanita above, bell hooks— rest in power—last year’s favorite by Olufemi Taiwo, and others). And on those grounds I think it’s worth a close read.
But I’ve since learned that she has been perpetrating “ethnic identity fraud”; passing as Native although she is not. While the initial mistake may have been honest, she has refused calls for accountability. Re-reading the essay with that knowledge does make it land differently. So I want to still share the essay because I think it’s a valuable contribution to our collective grappling with a topic of huge importance for our movements for liberation. And: I want to invite us also to hold the tension of how our identities influence our perspectives, and how we think about positionality (and relational accountability!) in our work.
“Liberation would require different selves that understand themselves in radical relationality with all other peoples and things… These projects of decolonization… challenge capital and state power by actually creating the world we want to live in now. These groups develop alternative governance systems based on principles of horizontality, mutuality, and interrelatedness rather than hierarchy, domination, and control.”
Nicolas Guilhot — Bad Information (Boston Review: 2021)
The single best essay I’ve read on understanding the root causes behind conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine or vaccine-hesitant sentiment.
“Never before has our existence as individuals and as a species felt so precarious. Never has our world seem so fragile. Our capacity to project ourselves in the future has shrunk dramatically… One looks in vain for the cultural and political resources that would help us see through the apocalyptic haze the possibility of a new beginning, and a better one.”
Erica Sherover-Marcuse — Towards a Perspective on Eliminating Racism: 12 Working Assumptions (Self-published: 1988)
I encountered this article via another of Miki’s essays. It’s my first encounter with Erica’s work (who went by Ricky)… RIP. A lot of nuance and brilliance here… the link above is to a compilation of her work including her premises on “liberation theory” which I also find very compelling. I’m including this essay here primarily as an excuse to share this quote, which feels so on point (particularly in the context of the Guilhot essay above):
“People will change their minds and let go of ingrained attitudes under the following conditions: 1) the new position is presented in a way that makes sense to them; 2) they trust the person who is presenting the new position; 3) they are not blamed for having had misinformation.”
Best Podcast Episodes
Sarah Jaffe — The Case Against Loving Your Job (Ezra Klein Show: 2021)
This episode really resonated; a lot to unpack here in a future post. I agree with the “bullshit jobs” aspect of her argument, and the growing recognition that the capitalist system of labor (and its neoliberal incarnation in particular) is fundamentally extractive and coercive. I disagree that we should stop looking to “work” as a source of purpose: rather, I think we should recognize that the need for significance and contribution is universal, and structure our society to offer people an opportunity to meet those needs in service of something other than enriching the owner class.
“We don’t have that sort of broad based social understanding of solidarity… What [the Great Resignation] suggests is even the jobs that are supposed to be good jobs, even the jobs that we’re supposed to love are also draining and exhausting, and take a lot of our emotional energy to perform, and actually, that maybe we’re sick of those jobs, too.”
Rev. angel Kyodo williams — The Core of Belonging (Insights at the Edge: 2021)
Rev. angel is one of my favorite practitioners of belonging; she has such a beautifully embodied presence I could listen to her all day. I love how she always connects inner and outer change, and how committed she is to everyone’s dignity, centering those most marginalized by dominant culture
“As you become more aligned with yourself, it no longer becomes tolerable for you to leave parts of yourself behind. And as a result of that, you will generate relationships and you’ll seek out and you will find relationships with people that will be comfortable with allowing you to be who you are… We all find our ways to those kinds of communities, but first we have to have the commitment and impulse to go and search for it and that commitment comes because we’re committed to ourselves. We’re committed to becoming whole, we’re committed to the healing of those parts of us that have been left behind.”
Jess Hill — Why do they do it? (The Trap: 2021)
Oof. Probably the single best hour I’ve encountered unpacking patriarchy, asking: why do men abuse their (female) partners? Content warning: there are a few minutes of a recorded domestic violence incident that are tough to listen to (you can skip it, and they offer a warning before that section). But I love the sincerity and intentionality with which Jess treats the question: I’ve long believed there is no path to ending patriarchy that doesn’t take seriously the root causes driving men’s violence.
“You do feel ashamed and you do you feel guilty and you feel really shitty, because obviously, I never wanted to be that person. I didn’t see myself as that person. I thought that was, there was triggers for my partner that made me become that person. But it wasn’t. It’s not. And we’ve all got a choice.” -A perpetrator, reckoning aloud with his harmful behavior
Ashley Robertson — Kids, Consent, and Sex Education (Multiamory: 2021)
In response to my post on sex and belonging, a reader (thanks Ana Maria!) reminded me to look at The Ethical Slut, and in general the nonmonogamous community as a domain of deeply intentional practice around questions of consent, boundaries, pleasure, and desire. As a consequence I added a few new podcasts to my feed, and have really enjoyed this one exploring all manner of nontraditional relationships.
This episode in particular was so refreshing; I felt such a deep longing and even grief at how mistreated we all are by a dominant culture that not only denies us healthy education on these topics but actively mis-educates us in such deeply harmful ways. A taste:
“Our goal is always to share with kids an answer to their question, but not overshare… I think one of the most important things as a parent is to always address feelings first as opposed to content first…The first thing you have to deal with is your own feelings and emotions. If you feel elevated, and if you feel distraught, and if you feel freaked out, that has to be addressed. It has to be named… Making sure your kid feels safe and secure and a place to speak freely is your primary responsibility.”
Arielle Schwartz — Trauma Recovery and Post-Traumatic Growth (Insights at the Edge: 2021)
I loved this episode: connected a lot of themes I’ve been exploring around trauma, embodiment, healing, relationships, interdependence, and belonging. It is deep. I love the emerging literature/data around this, confirming what indigenous traditions have long known: a whole-bodied in-community approach is the only way to heal from complex trauma. I love her focus on naming sources of resilience: we are more than our trauma.
“One of the layers to it that I hear is what we can think of as… the secondary gain of staying attached to the victim story… So that there is this way in which it becomes this vicious cycle of I’m enlisting someone into a certain codependence with my wound, and as a result I actually don’t have to change my self-identity. So, the third stage of healing is really about letting go and a deep transformation. It’s a grief process and that grief might even be the identity that is hooked in to the trauma story.”
Marshall Rosenberg — Experiencing Needs as Gifts (Nonviolent Communication: 2000)
This episode formed the backdrop for my last newsletter post, and profoundly influenced me. What he says sounds simultaneously so simple and intuitive… and so incredibly difficult and revolutionary. I find listening to Marshall talk deeply inspiring: he invites me to be better than I am, and holds out the idea that this better way of living is possible. It’s deeply attractive.
“Every time I hear a demand, that is because the person is too afraid to ask… A ‘no’ is just as big a gift as a yes. Every no is a ‘mitvah,’ an opportunity to hear and meet that person’s needs… with jackal ears [jackal is the NVC term for dominant culture ways of relating] we hear it as a rejection, or that our needs aren’t valued or are a burden.”
Chris Maxwell Rose & Charlotte Mia Rose — Sex & Power in Marriage (Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics: 2020)
I love this podcast, and this episode is a great example of what they do well: weaving fluently through layers of heart, body, and mind, the intricacies of power dynamics in intimate partnerships, and of course where it all becomes real: sex.
“With power comes responsibility; it can be a burden to have unwanted power… ‘Power with’ requires both people to have full access to ‘power to.’”
Nanjala Nyabola — Global Citizenship (How to Fix Democracy: 2021)
Nanjala is Kenyan, and speaks with such moral clarity on questions of migration, citizenship in the shadow of colonization, and belonging. Her discussion of the mobilizing force of ethnicity and ethno-nationalism in the context of a narrative of scarcity is one of the most cogent summaries I’ve encountered explaining the rise of authoritarianism and far-right nationalism.
“We are living in a time whereby inequality is so dramatically increased that people are really anxious; there [is a perception that there] isn’t enough stuff for everyone in the world to be okay. Ethnic identity is becoming a rallying point to justify not just exclusion but sharing whatever meager resources you can with a smaller group.”
Gopal Dayaneni — The Exploitation of Soil and Story (For the Wild Podcast: 2021)
Gopal was a founding member of Movement Generation, and is one of my favorites when it comes to deriving theory from practice in building movements for transformation. Incredibly wise, eloquent, and grounded. I found this episode really provocative: I found myself in heated agreement and disagreement at the same time, particularly around how he thinks and talks about scale. Highly recommend.
“The way to think about the climate crisis is through a spiral narrative of interdependence. The climate crisis is a message to us that our relationships are out of balance with each other, and the rest of the living world... Reimagining our relationship to each other through rethinking and redesigning the economy is the only strategic point of intervention if you want to navigate the climate crisis over the long haul.”
Ted Rau — Who decides who decides? (Brave New Work: 2021)
When I think about the highest-leverage intervention points for transformative social change at scale, I keep coming back to this: the practice of interdependence, of consent without coercion. This is the focus of Ted’s work at Sociocracy for All, and it’s so powerful. It’s one of my favorite questions in the world: how we can organize ourselves to do work without relying on coercion? If you can’t fire people (which under capitalism amounts to threatening their very livelihood and ability to survive)… how do we get things done? What does accountability look like? This episode is a great introduction to the realm of the possible.
“[Consent] changes everything… if we assume that everybody’s needs matter, that changes everything, because that’s not how people operate… So many of the ways we think about other people’s behavior are oppressive.”
Well, there you have it. I’d love to know what articles/episodes/videos transformed how you think about something, or that simply were a joy to read/listen — please comment below as you feel called.
Thanks to those of you have helped me practice the art of receiving by giving to support this newsletter, and to everyone who has read, commented, replied, shared, and engaged with me this year. I deeply appreciate being in shared inquiry with you, and look forward to continuing to practice in 2022. If you want to share this gift with others or deepen your relationship by upgrading your subscription, please do!
And finally, in case your reading/listening list isn’t already long enough :-) feel free to check out past years documenting my ongoing learning journey: 2018, 2019, 2020.
In community,
Brian