13 Sep 2020
Lately I’ve been thinking about making some kind of “Emotional Intelligence Toolkit for Activists”. This toolkit would include tips on
- self-knowledge, including knowing one’s own limitations
- dealing with a complex and overwhelming world
- sustainable ways to maintain hope
While, on one hand, I see an urgent need for something like that in activist circles, in the other hand, I see value in such a toolkit for everybody.
But today’s reflection is more on the last point, aka sustainable ways to maintain hope. In fact, what I’m going to present might seems for some a very twisted way to do so, but I still think it’s worth exploring this idea.
So I have read the text Beginning with the End by Roy Scranton and what is stated in this essay is that “[t]he world has already ended, over and over, for countless peoples and epochs”, in an attempt to re-frame what we consider “the world”. The other focus point of Scranton is that the only certainty about the future is its uncertainty.
He starts by acknowledging how uncertainty can be troubling for the human psyche, by talking about we collectively need meaning.
“Nature” has no inherent meaning, yet paradoxically “nature” made
humans conscious, social animals who find such groundlessness
infuriating, nearly incomprehensible, and all but impossible to live
with in a day-to-day way, since our daily activities, our sense of
being in the world, and our sense of the world itself are motivated
and made meaningful not merely by unconscious reaction and instinct,
but by individually imagined and collectively produced symbolic
structures, which is to say beliefs and stories […]
But he doesn’t leave the reader on such a disappointing note. With a zen approach in mind he suggests that “[t]here is another way” :
Accepting unknowing. Embracing the void. Recognizing the limits of
human knowledge. Relinquishing our consoling fictions about the
future. Acknowledging the transience of the present and seeing in the
death of what is the birth of what will become. It may be
true, as Kermode argues, that we cannot exist without imposing some
order on the chaos of experience, yet this insight makes possible the
realization that the relationship between order and chaos, form and
emptiness, meaning and void, is not dichotomous, but dialectical, as
articulated in the Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness; emptiness is
form.”
He introduces the concept of an “apophatic futurism”, following the spirit of the satori of Buddists and the “radical hope” of philosopher Jonathan Lear.
Apophatic futurism recognizes that we cannot know how climate change
and ecological catastrophe are going to transform our world, how human
civilization will change in response, how human beings will adapt to
the new world of the Anthropocene, or who we will become in the
future—yet it also remains committed to some future human existence,
no matter what form that existence takes, no matter who that human is. Perhaps the least consoling form of consolation, this via
negativa might also be the one most responsible to reality and the
idea of collective human endeavor. Insofar as apophatic futurism
insists on the impossibility of saying what the future holds, it is a
kind of nihilism, a total negation, a learning to die, a great “No.”
It accepts the end of the world as given. Yet insofar as apophatic
futurism rejects all the spurious fictions of apocalypse which clamor
to claim our faith, the utopian and the dystopian, the heavenly and
the hellish, it remains committed to the possibility of a new world
yet to be born.
I very like how he phrases it. I think it’s an interesting way to see it in the specific time we are in. Like, objectively, the impact of climate changes are getting more real everyday. Subjectively, we feel like it’s “more here than ever” because it’s happening in the USA right now (I’m thinking namely of the California fires) and the USA has more media coverage than the rest of the world.
I myself refrained from going to protest lately and became very less politically active on social medias because of anxiety. No matter how rational I’m trying to be, I’m getting stressed out. And I’m a very optimist person to begin with. Nonetheless, I try to remain aware of my feelings. I’m trying to see what’s beneath this anxiety and a lot of it is grief.
I once read an article I cannot find anymore which said something like this : the fight for social change is one where generations learn to lose over and over again, but every time stand up and “lose in a more effective way”. But in those days, I feel like no matter how much battles we lose and how many battles there is left, there is no way we can balance the score and win the war. But I don’t want to give up.
So I have this “funny story” I’m telling myself now, which goes in the vibe of what Scranton is saying himself, but it sounds very less intelligent on my end. Personally, I’m picturing myself an extraterrestrial civilization. I imagine them discovering the Earth in a distant future. We have “failed”, so maybe there is no human survivor (but there is probably still life on Earth, but it doesn’t really matter). If they decide to study our long gone civilization (I’m quite convinced some marks of our presence will remain in some way), I want them to discover that we try our hardest until the very end to fight against the barbarians capitalist, that until the very end we were making the best we could on this little time allowed on Earth.
Feel free to steal that little story. Otherwise, to study zen might be a good spiritual alternative to remain sane. And more seriously, the subject deserve much more thorough analysis and I shall come back to it.
In the meantime, let’s hold space for our collective grief.
EDIT 06/10/2020 : I’ve just read the speech of Russell Means, member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, from July 1980 and this passage offers a future worth meditating about.
American Indians have been trying to explain this to Europeans for centuries. But, as I said earlier, Europeans have proven themselves unable to hear. The natural order will win out, and the offenders will die out, the way deer die when they offend the harmony by over-populating a given region. It’s only a matter of time until what Europeans call “a major catastrophe of global proportions” will occur. It is the role of American Indian peoples, the role of all natural beings, to survive. A part of our survival is to resist. We resist not to overthrow a government or to take political power, but because it is natural to resist extermination, to survive. We don’t want power over white institutions; we want white institutions to disappear. That’s revolution.
08 Sep 2020
Just a little list of anime and movies which marked me with their political insights and messages of hope.
-
Belladona of Sadness (1973), a Japanese movie inspired by the French novel La Sorcière by Jules Michelet (1892)
This movie illustrates well a fight that is way too often invisible, this fight being the one against patriarchy.
-
Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997), a yuri anime and movie
Makes me contemplate the idea that there might be an equivalent of capitalist realism but for patriarchy, since the main female characters are (in some way) trying to escape the patriarchal system, and this translates in a quest to reach the End of The World. Also, this anime is a great piece about gender stereotypes and the importance of remaining loyal to our dreams and the ones we love. I enjoyed this analysis of the work of Revolutionary Girl Utena’s director, Kunihiko Ikuhara.
-
Shinsekai Yori (2012-2013), science-fiction anime
This anime’s main subject, in my opinion, is dehumanization and it is brilliantly approached. It also covers colonization, bureaucracy, and the impact of a society ruled by fear. A very smart critique of human history, and one that let us leave with hopes.
-
Rio 2096 (2013), a science-fiction Brazilian movie
On the cyclical aspect of fighting against oppression (as in, it is a fight that always change but never ends). Also, it serves as a good reminder for activists. Despite the impression that “humanity is actually slacking” in its pursuit of social changes (and so, in such a critical time), it is important to remind ourselves that, at all time in history, there were groups fighting against the oppressive forces (never did humanity just complied as a whole to them), and the fact that humanity now “looks like it is slacking” is not a defeat of morality but the fruit of this game where the oppressors had all the time in the world to think about how to weaken the oppressed and create the conditions for this weakening state to remain constant.
-
Hayako Miyazaki’s work in general
There is this nice marxist analysis of Miyazaki’s work to which I would like to come back to.
-
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020), fantasy/sci-fi cartoon
I could go on and on about why I think this cartoon is amazing. But, in short, following queer princesses with magical abilities uniting to defeat a common evil is wonderful. Kids (and adults) need that kind of show in their life to be able to imagine our very own uprising.
06 Sep 2020
Monogamy is a performance, even though it’s often believed to be the very definition of love.
Monogamous relationships fit the ideal of predictability that keeps capitalist industry afloat.
For this reason, being single is not a status but an art. It’s all about the ability to react to things that life involves by its very nature: chaos, setbacks and growth. Life is risky. And as a small, single unit you are constantly aware of the burden of risk.
The antifragile person is a ‘rational flâneur’, who breaks with ‘the illusion that you know exactly where you are going, and that you knew exactly where you were going in the past, and that others have succeeded in the past by knowing where they were going. The rational flâneur is someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision at every step to revise his schedule, so he can imbibe things based on new information.’
If you are with someone and there is a shared awareness that something might get in the way, you’ll seize the moment with all your strength. Being together is subject to pressure, so the relationship has a special intensity. Each of the lovers is present as an act of will; there are always external circumstances, hassles, or other people.
Seeking safety through comparison and categorization is a colonial approach, whether in the past or now.
Intimacy is the feeling that you’re not being evaluated.
I wanted to show that a rejection of the ideal of monogamy is in fact a call for more romance, not less.
Romance is a game, the rules of which need to remain unclear.
Romantic gestures provide new layers of meaning.
In any case, a new form should not feel too practical or natural. Living things need dissatisfaction as a nutrient.
It’s not the technology that’s driving us crazy but the continual sense that it’s not real life, that it’s all about something else entirely, that the iPad helps us to control all kinds of peripheral aspects of life, that before real life can begin we have to make things less hectic. But what if it’s real life that’s hectic? What if we think we get up in the morning because there are certainties (the children need help getting dressed), whereas we really get up because there are uncertainties (are the children still in their beds?)?
The defiance of chaos, rather than the taming of it, is the art of living that love needs.
Eros and love are like faith and religion: there is the human predisposition, and then there is the formalized structure.
I think intimacy is an ephemeral experience of sharing that occurs in various forms only when you stop trying to get a grip on it. As soon as you attempt to turn it into a constant state, you betray the capricious, multifarious and momentary character of intimacy.
The belief that a good sexual and intimate life is created by setting boundaries, by remaining true to yourself, arises from a discourse of criminalization. How would it be if we were to formulate our desires from the point of view of consent rather than boundaries? If we fantasize from the starting point of consent, we make speculative space for being together where the wish, the feeling of possibility, is central, rather than the lines we draw. As long as we continue to start out by thinking of boundaries, we formulate sex and intimacy in response to repression, or the fear of it.
Many people think that love is simple and it’s finding the right person that’s hard. The object of our love is regarded as the most important thing. If it doesn’t work out with one person, we project all our hopes onto another. The person we once loved has merely turned out to not be right for us. Or we blame ourselves: I’m just not likeable and attractive enough. The main question for most people is therefore: How can I get love? Fromm argues that we have a collective obsession with love but that love is not really present anywhere. Love is not about finding the right match. Love is an activity. Love does not serve a goal to be reached or a profit to be gained; it is the exercise of love that matters. Love is an exercise in giving.
In our quest for closeness, love is created. Love is therefore not something that suddenly hits like a bolt of lightning. It’s all about movement.
Love is the faith that something is worthy of attention, but love also arises when we pay attention to something.
The polyamorist learns to feel safe in a variety of interactions. The security of love is not simply seen as something the other person can offer you. Rather, it is defined as something you must find for yourself.
To play a role is not to renounce your identity, it’s an exploration of possibilities and as such it’s important less because it brings enjoyment and pleasure than because it abolishes assumptions and extends empathy.
The real world is made up of playing fields. The belief that there is one true life and one true self removes the serious possibilities from all play.
I’m sometimes told that seeking alternative forms (in relationships and love, for instance) is experienced as ‘making difficulties’. I don’t see what else life is other than making difficulties and I prefer to do so explicitly.
01 Sep 2020
I know, in life, you don’t have to justify yourself to others. But I have this habit of writing blog posts to justify what I decide to study.
I did it on September 23th of 2018. I was back then waiting to start my Technique intensive en informatique at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, from which I graduated last June. I explained in my old blog post why I was starting this program for 4 reasons :
- Because my natural strengths were the one needed to succeed in computer science, namely my logical mind and my creativity. I also hoped that my communication skills would help me stand out from the crowd. I would say that my assumptions were right.
- Because I wanted to be useful. In 2018, I had no practical skills whatsoever (living the intellectual and artistic life more than anything), and I had just given up on my illusion that to study in International relations would allow me to change the world. I’m about to start an internship in a nonprofit organization and I hope it will help me feel useful like I wanted to be.
- Because it looks like a key-element to “the nomadic lifestyle”. I was a vanlifer in 2018, but I have sold my van in 2019. I guess it could have been true, but right now I am more interested in settling down so, meh.
- Because computer science can only get more and more important in the future. I still believe this to be true, and I am happy to now be able to understand more easily (and critically) the technological stakes of tomorrow.
Looking back, I am very grateful to have started and completed this program. In the end, I’ve learned much more than what I expected from this year and a half at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal. Because I got involved in the student life, I learned that I had some great leadership ability and that I really wanted my career to be cause-oriented, or in other words, that I hadn’t really given up on the idea of wanting to change the world through my work.
What wasn’t written in the post, but that I used to tell myself and my friends often, is that I was studying in computer science to get a “well-paid job” in order to afterward be able to study in whatever field I want for fun without getting in debts. And that was a core motivator. But I almost fail in my own trap.
Even though “I am good at computer science” and that the field is actually challenging in some really interesting ways, this is not my calling. But I almost changed my plans to try to train to become an engineer (probably out of some ego aspirations). Like I was technically a student of the bachelor degree in Software engeneering of l’École des technologies supérieures this fall, but I cancelled my classes last minute.
And so here I am writing this text about my new academic intentions. Yesterday, I paid the administration fees of my dear Université du Québec à Montréal (that I honestly missed despite my harsh critics of my experience there), hoping to start a new certificate this winter.
Like mentioned in my exploration of critical pedagogy, I want to do a Baccalauréat en éducation par cumul de certificats at l’UQAM. But like, now, it’s official. I shall start with the Certificat pour formateurs en milieu de travail, then hopefully do the Certificat en intervention éducative en milieu familial et communautaire and maybe conclude with the one in Animation culturelle.
And now let me justify myself, for posterity.
I kind of always said that I wanted to be a cegep or university teacher, because I like to teach but I’m not especially fond of children. I have been doing some tutoring in French and literature since 2016 and I enjoyed every minute of it. As a student, I also always was the one helping my comrades who had trouble understanding what was seen in class. When I quit university in 2018, my first reflex was to create a website called Apprendre comme du monde because I couldn’t bear the idea of stopping to learn and wanted to investigate how to “fix the learning process” since I realized that, in some way, we weren’t really learning at university.
So that last paragraph is there to prove to myself that I am genuinely interested in education. Because the running gag around my person is that I’m always “changing career path”. Even if, deep down, I know there is nothing wrong with that in the first place, I still feel the need to explain that I am not studying around “by pure confusion about what I want to do in life” even if it might look like this. So what about this new path I’m taking?
My mom sometimes seems desperate at the idea that my studies do not lead to a clear title (“programmer”, “lawyer”, “doctor”), and this new path is just like that. I won’t become a teacher just because I’m studying education, and I’m fine with it. The people I know who studies or have studied to become teacher in elementary or high school usually complained about their programs, and with my unfamiliarity with youngsters, I wasn’t interested a minute by that. Me studying in education is part of a greater investigation of mine.
If nothing changes, in the next three years, I will look at pedagogy and education in the workplace, in the family, and in the community. Exact, everywhere but in school. I feel like I’ve got a good idea of what it looks in school, having been a student for so long.
So this peculiar situation will hopefully help me do three things :
- It will help me compare methods used in those different environments, and hopefully there will be some interesting ones that could serve as model for a new way to do “institutional education”.
- It will help me understand education outside of school, as simple as that. In my opinion, it is fundamental for my investigation because I think every member of society should be a life-long learner, and that learning should take place in every sphere of life. It is also fundamental, because I don’t think we will be able to reform the education system in a timely fashion that will truly allow to prepare the next generations to a world of climate change and where everything is to be rethink and rebuild. Therefore, we should probably invest efforts in opportunities to teach outside the borders of schools.
- It will help me have some hands-on experience of those learning contexts since the certificates I am planning to do usually have internships, and I think that without them, I would have struggled to get out of my comfort zone (because I am an intellectual book nerd). Nonetheless, praxis is key and theory without praxis is pointless.
Therefore, I am very excited to start my new academic life. I am happy if someone reads that and feel inspired by my unconventional approach. But, in the end, I wrote this little piece to be able to come back to it, to help me remain grounded in moments of doubts. I don’t know if my mom will see the point of all of this, but I’m sure that Paolo Freire would be proud of me.
EDIT 18/12/2020: Well, of course I have changed my plan already. Currently enroled in the Certificat en animation culturelle and not planning to do the the two others. I took one class from the Certificat pour formateurs en milieu de travail this semester as an independant student and I didn’t enjoy it much so I thought it’d be better to reconsiderate.
24 Aug 2020
You can find in my favorite books Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, but I have only recently discovered his work. Nonetheless, I have been interested in education for a while now (I used to talk about it on Appprendre comme du monde), and this book sparked my interest again, and it did so toward a more specific field : critical pedagogy.
So here is just a little post to save some resources about it, authors and questions I would like to explore.
- I have only listened to Paolo Freire’s book, I also looked at this very well done synthesis, but I would like buy a copy of it to be able to re-read and annotate thoroughly.
- I want to borrow an introductory book on the subject of critical pedagogy to have a wider perspective on the subject and makes sure I don’t forget any important theory/consideration.
- I shall continue reading Tomorrow’s Childen : A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century by Riane Eisler and stay alert to find new scholars with similar ideas than hers.
- I would also like to investigate a “Pedagogy of Healing”, in a sense of how to teach in a way that heals, but also how to teach healing. My personal healing process has been shaped mostly by books, and the ideas I’ve found in them. I namely wonder how it would have been if I wasn’t a book nerd in the first place.
- I am now somewhat planning to start a Baccalauréat en éducation par cumul de certificats at l’UQAM next year, for which I would possibly do the Certificat en intervention éducative en milieu familial et communautaire, so I would also like to read about pedagogy/learning/teaching outside the school environment.
- I also want to leave here a nice text from Ouvrage, «La reproduction ne sera pas télédiffusée», which summarizes critically how the COVID-19 crisis was handled in Quebec. I think it puts brilliantly how the education is perceived by the Quebec’s governement, and highlights well the challenges we’ll have to face. I like how the author discussed the tension about technology within the education system.
As I am writing this, we are entering in Virgo season, which is also back to school season. I am looking forward all the headlines about everything going wrong in the reopening of schools among a pandemic.
EDIT 18/12/2020 : I think it’s worth adding another text to this list, also from Ouvrage, which is «Contre la romance de l’éducation». I thought it was mind blowing and I want to go back to it another day.