Introducing: From the Roots
Self-rule requires a "self." To know what to do, we must first know who we are.
I do not know how to fix things.
This humble, obvious statement is actually quite a revolutionary admission for me, and it’s a long time coming.
There are many roots of our national and global crises. I have deeply studied multiple facets of our current landscape, from US and developmental politics to global energy, the war in Ukraine, the history of China and Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and even Bitcoin and the history of money; I have “superficially” studied many more. I have also (and not unrelatedly) studied myself.
Over the years, I’ve worked to develop a coherent worldview through which to understand and address our current crises. My earnest hope has been that, with enough brow-furrowing, research, and soul-searching, a framework for healing our splintered, struggling society might emerge.
I remain as convinced as ever that we are living through a transition between “the way it has been” and “the way it may yet be,” even as I mourn our collective inability to stem the tide of unfathomable suffering that seems to define this historical moment.
But I’ve also realized something: much of my work in the world — as positive as I believe it’s been — has, in an incredibly subtle way, been rooted in fear. “If I don’t do it, then who will?” was the unacknowledged and ego-inflated subtext of my pursuits, and I often harbored secret resentments and jealousies of those whose choices pointed to a much less alarmed, less burdened orientation regarding the state of things.
When I think of that jealousy, the image that comes to mind is of a particularly stately home in Topsfield, Massachusetts. It was an extremely hot day in the summer of 2018, and I was — as I did every day — pounding the pavement and knocking doors for my state rep campaign. A young-ish mother answered the door of this particular home, and I saw clear through the sunny house to her sprawling backyard, where a lively pool party was underway; children’s squeals echoed through the house and across the green-lawned cul-de-sac. I had barely been home in months and was sweaty, starving, and sunburned, but this mother seemed as carefree as I had been at my own sixth-grade pool party. I gave my schpiel, we chatted amiably, and I went on my way; she had no inkling of the sadness and self-pity I felt throughout our conversation and long afterward, guiltily imagining my own family spending day after day without me and projecting all of that angst upon this unsuspecting woman and her backyard full of lounge chairs.
Which was the “real me”? The sweaty woman in sensible door-knocking shoes, trying desperately to make things right in her own corner of the world? Or the jealous and judgmental one burning with indignation over this woman’s seemingly superhuman ability — with her pool and her well-watered grass — to simply live her life while the world burned, free from an all-consuming obsession with the fracturing of society and derailment of humankind?
Intellectually, I knew that my little narrative probably bore no resemblance to reality. For all I knew, the woman was enjoying a much-needed day off from a career as a pediatric oncologist. Emotionally, however, it didn’t really matter: the perceived injustice elicited overwhelming feelings of self-righteousness and moral superiority.
Again, this is all very subtle, and I’m shining a brutal light on myself to raise the point: society is an expression of who we are. We must reckon with the sense of disconnection and dislocation that is often the unacknowledged engine of even our noblest pursuits, much less the choices we make in presenting a confident and successful version of ourselves to the world. If we do not, we will remain vulnerable to people and forces who seek to exploit our weaknesses for the sake of control.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, I’ve come to believe that love and control are mutually exclusive.
Someone who knows the inner workings of the self and is thus able to love — like, say, the Dalai Lama — does not feel morally superior. They do not have a savior complex, a desire for control masquerading as heroism. In stark contrast to the legions slinging empty-calorie opinions like fast food burgers, they start with an open mind and open heart. To do so is not meek; it is fierce and full of conviction and sometimes dangerous, and requires a much deeper wellspring of strength than the ugly, frothing type of othering ablaze across the country and throughout the world.
When we start from there and really listen, we quickly realize that there are no easy answers. I am grateful for those who are working on behalf of the worldview I generally share, but I also find that I am increasingly unable to paint what I feel on a sign and march around with it.
I’m glad for the chance to put down that certainty and put away my poster board, at least for a while, to do the work of preserving and building on what is still right in our country.
As JFK put it in his inaugural address, just before his most famous line:
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
We have been living through a period of extreme noise, distortion, and destruction. It’s easy to fall into despair when confronting the Gordian knot of existential issues “out there,” but I am convinced that those forces have made their way into a vacuum within us that was opened and exploited when we were most unsuspecting. Edward Bernays, the “father of public relations,” put it plainly:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.
I will no longer relinquish our collective future to those who profit from the gaps between us and our real, authentic selves. I will train my ear to listen for the truth even in my own cluttered mind while searching for storehouses of wisdom outside of it.
If I could project into the future and describe the landscape I envision, I think it would look something like biodiversity, like allowing life, color, texture, and culture to come through again after we’ve spent a generation pinning butterflies to the corkboard. I think we’ve learned, by now, that there is no quick fix to our problems; there is, however, real evolution if we want it. I think it will involve bearing witness to a lot of pain without being swallowed by rage, dwelling too long, or looking away in denial. It will involve resisting the instinct to react to and share headlines, and instead watching out for persistent old, unexamined habits and listening with an open heart to people of good will grapple with the lived experience of complexity.
I am committing myself to a seven-year horizon within which to completely transform my relationship with myself, the world, and the reality we create together. Our problems are interrelated; they start in a fractured and co-opted human mind, and are propagated through other, also-fractured minds.
Although current conditions certainly give us radically new variables to contend with, the human story has been pretty consistent.
I am therefore turning, with awe and humility, to the great works and those who grappled with humanity’s biggest questions long before I awakened to the situation. I’ve decided to start, somewhat arbitrarily (but not really; more like instinctively) with Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots. As the Times Literary Supplement put it, the book wrestles with the question,
“What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their full vitality?”
I can’t imagine a better articulation of the moment at hand.
Part 1 of Roots is concerned with “The Needs of the Soul”; it is broken down into chapters on order, liberty, obedience, responsibility, equality, hierarchism, honour, punishment, freedom of opinion, security, risk, private property, collective property, and truth.
Part 2 explores “uprootedness” in towns, the countryside, and nationhood.
Part 3 discusses “the growing of roots.”
My intention is to read and write about each chapter this book not from an academic or intellectual perspective — surely that’s been done as well as or better than I ever could — but to seriously interrogate my own instincts and assumptions and widen the lens on how we engage with such topics. I think we take a lot of this stuff for granted; we think we know what we think, until we really sit down and explore ourselves, our beliefs and ideas.
When I was in third grade, a boy in my class showed me his response to a journal prompt. I can still remember his third-grade handwriting, the careful attention paid to working within the wide, light-blue guidelines on the page. His words are burned into my memory: “Dear Mrs. Craig,” it read. “I hate myself. I hate the world. I hate Allison Protas.”
This was one of the most twinkly-eyed kids I’ve ever met. He very much did not hate himself, or the world, or me. In fact, he loved me; many years later, he confessed as much. I have a feeling that he also loved himself and the world. He just didn’t know how to express any of that, so he inverted the message and wrote it in a way that would ensure zero vulnerability and maximum reaction from the grown-ups.
I think a lot of people are like that kid, hiding a poignant sense of love and fear behind strident and self-righteous armor.
I have to come clean: I love the world. I love people. I actually also love myself, at least most of the time. I know none of this is cool to say; it’s dorky and kind of embarrassing, but it’s true.
Part of our plight comes, I strongly suspect, from the fact that all of the “fixing” and “saving” and “fighting” give us a sense control that feels better than the alternative. What that “alternative” looks like is different for everyone; many people, upon answering the door, have shared concerns that made perfect sense to me even as I disagreed entirely with their proposed solutions.
As a parent, it’s usually obvious — if I stop to inquire — when I’m coming from a place of love and when I come from a place of white-knuckled control. They very much respond accordingly.
“The world” — however we personally hold that enormous concept in our minds and hearts — is no different. I’m so glad I now recognize that I don’t know how to fix things. What could be less conducive to feeling at home in society and recovering full vitality than fear and control?
Dear Allison,
Thank you for writing this. So much to unpack here…..I will attempt to simplify and reframe some of what I think is at issue for a lot of left-leaning activists. I hope you don’t mind my unsolicited thoughts about what you wrote.
First of all, welcome to what I like to call the “Sensible Center”. This is where the power is held in a democratic republic. When we come back to the basics of our democracy, we’ll find that we can still make progress - even if it’’s baby steps - one after the other. There is no magic wand to make change happen immediately. That is because democracy is not a rapidly paced institution. We have rules, regulations, and processes and procedures.The reason for that is that it takes time to initiate these steps that give us transparency from which we have accountability (sound familiar? that’s because it was my tagline when I ran all 3 times for office).
I think a great many left and right leaning activists have become more radical and militant than in the recent past. It does not help our democracy to slice and dice the demographics of the electorate. We are literally all in this together, and if groups, sects, tribes, cults, cliques, etc., begin to pull away from the rest of us in the mainstream, we really are in trouble. I see radicals from the left cutting away their natural allies because they feel these allies are not radical enough. Therefore, the “allies" are the enemy. Has this happened to you yet? It has happened to many good people I know - including me!
When I ran for office, I always ran as someone who would serve EVERYONE regardless of where they were on the political spectrum. I was deliberate because we are all on Team Hamilton …..not Team Red or Team Blue. I have been there and done that, so I won’t be running again, but I will be watching, writing letters to editors, and to the elected officials who need to hear from pro-democratic voters.
The tension is always going to be there; it’s a feature of democracy. The tenuous ballet between the 2 parties is how we find that common ground to reach compromise for the benefit of the people. The tension between factions is how we keep our democratic republic healthy….baby-steps instead of “my way or the highway”. There are ways to make progress, we just have to be creative, not strident…..it’s all about coming together in the center- away from the obnoxious and dangerous fringes of the left and the right.
I also believe that people don’t understand how our various governments work: local, state, and federal. They don’t think our governments work because they have no foundation of knowledge of civics. Teaching civics K-12 would go a long way toward educating people about their own power, responsibilities, and obligations as citizens and voters. This might be where we see progress and a possible solution to the schism wracking this country. Maybe this is where we can begin to agree: civic responsibilities and knowing how governments work.
I also think there is too much unbridled emotion and not enough serious, critical thought….I heard one left wing activist in Hamilton encourage lawlessness during a human rights forum I participated in. She said to the audience that they must ignore the law, ignore the courts, ignore the the judges, and just go with your raw emotions. She said to let your raw emotions steer your actions because that is all you need. She actually said to the audience, “Don’t think about anything except the goal”. I found that shocking: don't think.
Wanting to control others, and what they think, and what they say, is a form of authoritarianism and is also a form of narcissism. I just cannot picture you as one who needs to control others. I love the idea of freedom of thought and diversity of ideas. Not everyone is going to agree with us, but there is nothing good that comes from wanting to control others.
Finally, don’t focus on how to controll others; instead, focus on practicing democracy, and insisting on transparency, and don’t be afraid to hold those in power accountable. These are all things you can control.
Hope you are safe, happy, and healthy!
XOX
Darcy
Allison,
Ah yes, I remember that evening in Ipswich when you kicked off your campaign. In fact, I'm in the photo. You were impressive, articulate, driven by a sense of desire to do good things. Our district was poorer for your loss to (R)Brad Hill.
I share your feelings about our current conditions. Our fragile democracy is under fire and tensions are high and unrestrained in Washington. Many problems need to be addressed and progress seems to be at a stand still. It's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to withdraw. It's not easy to press on in your belief that you can be a force for change.
I too have transitioned from banners and demonstrations, the young energetic folks can handle this better than I. Getting the non voters, the unregistered voters, the folks who feel left out of the process into the voting booths is my main activity now.
Stay involved Allison.
Will Holton