5 things on my mind

teachings from kindred spirits

1. Human beings are precious, not disposable.

adrienne maree brown: “Humans have made of ourselves a hierarchy of value in which some people are disposable—can fail at being human, can be killed as a punishment, can be collateral damage. Can be wasted. Or tortured. Or locked in a small box for their whole lives, given no hope of transformation, or a future in society.

And even those of us who critique these punitive methods, who are committed to justice, practice our own versions of prisons, blacklists, takedowns, and public executions. When we don’t agree with each other, we destroy each other. When we feel competitive with each other, we splinter and destroy the other.

We say we don’t care, and then invest time and energy into cultivating conflict with each other. When we feel scared, we destroy each other instead of working to get to the root of our fear.

How do we shift into a culture in which conflict and difference is generative?”

— adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy (pp 131- 132).

“Nothing in nature is disposable. Part of the resilience of nature is that nothing is wasted. The earth swallows it all through mouths or soil or water. This is such a simple beautiful truth. Nothing is disposable. Everything is food, fuel, compost, a home for some other creature”

- adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy, p 131.

adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through her multi-genre writing, her music and her podcasts. Informed by 25 years of movement facilitation, somatics, Octavia E Butler scholarship and her work as a doula, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas and practices for transformation.

She is the author/editor of seven published texts and the founder of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, where she is now the writer-in-residence.

2. Ubuntu: A Southern African philosophy of humanity

Jacob Mugumbate and Andrew Nyanguru: “Ubuntu is a Southern African philosophy that places emphasis on ‘being human through other people’. It has been succinctly reflected in the phrase I am because of who we all are. It is a social and humanistic ethic. Ubuntu relates to bonding with others. This is in line with what the word expresses in most African languages: being self because of others. This is also in line with the popular Zulu saying: ubuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. Such sayings as “I am because we are” and “I am human because I belong”, express this tenet”

“This means that in African philosophy, an individual is human if they say I participate, therefore I am. Whereas in Western aphorism, the individual is expected to say I think, therefore I am.” -Source: Exploring African philosophy: The value of ubuntu in social work

Mungi Ngomane: “Ubuntu is a concept that, in my community, is one of the most fundamental aspects of living lives of courage, compassion and connection. It is one that I cannot remember not knowing about.

“I understood from early on in my life that being known as a person with ubuntu was one of the highest accolades one could ever receive.

“The fundamental meaning of the proverb is that everything we learn and experience in the world is through our relationships with other people. We are therefore called to examine our actions and thoughts, not just for what they will achieve for us, but for how they impact others with whom we are in contact.

“At its most simple, the teaching of this proverb and of ubuntu is similar to the Golden Rule found in most faith teachings: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!” But one who has ubuntu goes a step beyond that. It is not only our actions we are called to keep track of, but our very being in the world. How we live, talk and walk in the world is as much a statement of our character as our actions.

“One with ubuntu is careful to walk in the world as one who recognizes the infinite worth of everyone with whom they come into contact. So it is not simply a way of behaving, it is indeed a way of being!”

- Mungi Ngomane. Everyday Ubuntu (pp. 7-8).

Mungi Ngomane is a South African author, public speaker and human rights activist. Her work has centred on Middle East peace and conflict resolution, the advancement of the rights of women and girls, and the philosophy of ‘Ubuntu’ in partnership with a range of international organizations and initiatives.

3. World-building is a dual process of deconstruction and construction

“Dreaming is a luxury. Many people have spent their lives being forced to live inside other people’s dreams. And we must come to terms with the fact that the nightmares that people endure represent the underside of elite fantasies about efficiency, profit, and social control. For those who want to construct a different social reality, one grounded in justice and joy, we can’t only critique the world as it is. We have to build the world as it should be to make justice irresistible.” - Ruha Benjamin. Viral Justice (p. 11)

Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab and author of three books, Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019).

4. Imagine society were a lake…

Ruha Benjamin: “In describing how we can grow the world we want, late sociologist Erik Olin Wright likens society to the ecosystem of a lake, in which we find an intricate web of many kinds of life-forms: bacteria, aquatic plants and algae, and fish, among other vertebrates.

“Despite this heterogeneity, a dominant species of capitalism (and I would add racism, ableism, sexism, and imperialism) reigns in this ecosystem. He suggests that transforming our current system will require a gradual process of introducing “alien species” that can survive the environment—nurturing their niches, protecting their habitats until, eventually, they spill into the mainstream and displace the dominant species.

“Viral justice” as an approach to social change seeks to nurture alienated species—all the forms of life and living that are routinely cast out and rendered worthless in our current system. These are the species of behavior that embody interdependence and, in the old ecosystem, would be judged as weak: non-carceral responses to harm, non-capitalist approaches to healthcare, and mutual aid of all kinds.

“Look closely, and you’ll find these alienated life-forms already taking root under the atomized and stratified habitats that have been slowly killing us. The pandemic has allowed these life-forms to grow beyond their niches, and with more of us fostering them, they could eventually transform our entire ecosystem.” - Ruha Benjamin. Viral Justice (pp. 12-13)

5. A lesson from Siamese Crocodiles

“The Siamese crocodiles share one stomach, yet they fight over food.”

Ruha Benjamin: “In the words of James Baldwin, “We are living in a world in which everybody and everything is interdependent.” It is not something we must strive to be. We are.

“This is what disability justice organizers have been trying to tell us, and what Indigenous peoples have long asserted—that whether we want to accept it or not, we are connected, not just to other living things but to those yet born.

“Interdependence is not only part of a sacred philosophy but also a guiding ethos for refashioning social and political structures.” - Ruha Benjamin. Viral Justice (p. 9)

In summary, nothing in nature is disposable (#1) and disposability is a logic of white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, ablism, and carcerality. And yet even those of us who oppose each of these things have adopted a disposable approach to dealing with harm in ourselves and in our intimate relationships. How can we move away from disposability? What do you want to move towards? We have to ask ourselves this because we have to not only deconstruct harmful systems like the aforementioned but also construct healing modes of relating to the self, each other, and the earth (#3). When we move through and with Ubuntu as a guiding principle for interdependent humanity (#2), we can sprout pro-social, ways of relating to ourselves and others that are rooted in care and action: I can’t just say I care for you, I must enact care in my deeds and in my being. This honors the notion that we share one stomach (#5), like the Siamese Crocodiles. You are my other me. I am your other you. This can be our greatest strength (e.g., mutual aid, care-taking, teaching, healing, helping, loving, social justice movements) or our greatest downfall: one deeply painful example is how the global south pays for the west’s climate violence.

Thank you for reading sunshine! You are precious. Sending you love and joy.