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Anthony & Yo's-<br>
<br>
Anthony's statement, taken on its own and not associated with
specific personal arguements, is one of the most well-reasoned
statements against authoritarianism I've run across in a long time.
<br>
<br>
All the more so because it challenges the "soft" or "social"
authoritarianism, the dynamics that aren't mediated by law or overt
force, but are usually mediated by custom and tradition. "Children
should be seen and not heard," and "People should respond to
feedback only by silently assenting," are the same types of
dynamics, and to my mind each ultimately translates to "Because I
say so" and thence to "Because I can," the latter implying, "Because
I can impose my will upon yours (or at least attempt to do so)."<br>
<br>
There's a lot of anarchist politics going around in SR, but
anarchist ideology is meaningless unless lived in accord with the
anarchist spirit of anti-authoritarianism. That entails the
attitude of "no-harm," where one not only doesn't seek to dominate,
but where one doesn't even live in a world defined by by attack and
defense, competition and domination, etc. <br>
<br>
Much of the activity in the mainstream political and economic world,
and the culture at-large, is based on competition for power. Our
culture is thoroughly saturated with competition to the point where
it has become pathological: almost but not quite to the point where
Thanksgiving dinners would be "competitive events," where Grandma
corners the market in turkey, Grandpa corners the market in
stuffing, the kids fight over market share of condiments, and then
everyone negotiates for their dinner (hopefully before it all gets
cold and goes stale).<br>
<br>
One of the most radical acts of all is to build a new culture, and
at its root that's a culture of voluntary cooperation, informed
consent, and good will. Part of this entails catching &
critiquing the unintended instances where each of us occasionally
says or does something that's embedded in the control-matrix of the
culture we're trying to replace. Another part entails cutting
people some slack from time to time, and assuming they aren't out to
do harm. Anti-authoritarianism begins at home. <br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
======<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 13-05-05-Sun 2:10 PM, Anthony Di
Franco wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAOJkv1rRK+oRDxqPBWFxqF=YsVPOWautJ6+vViM7gQ2W-NxT=w@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">Rachel, I've had a bit more time to
reflect on what you wrote, and while I don't have anything to
add about the immediate question beyond what I said yesterday,
I'd like to talk about some of the broader context you brought
up in your reply and the more general issues involved.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">The first thing is that I am primarily
viewing what we are trying to do as having a discussion, so it
seems to me that when there are misunderstandings that is
exactly when we should be having more discussion to clarify
what we are trying to say and find out effective ways to say
it, not less. Meanwhile, you are using the terms of some sort
of power struggle where I am being attacked and defending
myself and allegiances are forming and shifting around the
patterns of conflict. I do not see a power struggle but rather
a community trying to communicate and communication depends on
shared understanding among senders and recipients of symbols
and how to use them to convey meaning. Where this is not
immediately clear, clarifying it explicitly seems the most
direct way to move towards better mutual understanding. I hope
this can be reconciled with your own views and I welcome
further discussion on this.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">Within the attacking and defending point
of view, I am also uncomfortable with some things. To speak of
attacking and defending and also then to say that the subject
of the attack should *stop defending* reminds me too much of
the revolting cries of "stop resisting" from police - I could
certainly never meditate on such an ugly phrase and I find the
suggestion grotesque. It's something I've heard while
authoritarian thugs victimize people who are not resisting but
only perhaps trying to maintain their safety and dignity under
an uninvited attack, perhaps not even that, and one way the
phrase is used is as a disingenuous way of framing the
situation so that later, biased interpretations of what
happened will have something to latch onto. I am glad we have
much less at stake in our interactions here than in those
situations but I still really don't like to see us
internalizing that logic in how we handle communications in
our group.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">There is another aspect of this I am
uncomfortable with, which is the idea that people should
respond to feedback only by silently assenting. This reminds
me too much of other situations where people, sometimes
myself, were supposed to be seen and not heard, and it
deprives people of agency over and responsibility for what
they do by expecting them to let others determine their
behavior unilaterally. I am happy to take feedback and,
generally, I hope you can trust people to act on feedback
appropriately rather than trying to short-circuit their
agency. The more informative feedback is, then, the better,
and it should contain information people can use themselves to
evaluate what they are doing the way others do so they can
figure out how to accommodate everyone's needs. When feedback
consist simply of naked statements it is too much like
trolling in the small or gaslighting in the large, and
especially then, amounts to an insidious way to deprive people
of agency by conditioning them to fear unpredictable pain when
they exercise agency, and has a chilling effect. In general,
the idea that certain people are less able than others to
handle the responsibilities of being human, and so they should
have their behaviors dictated to them unilaterally by others,
is a key to justifying many regimes of oppression, especially
modern ones, and because of that I am very uncomfortable when
I see any example of that logic being internalized in our
group dynamics.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">I don't know what passed between you and
Eddan involving trump cards but if the card game analogy
really is apt then it may be a sign of trivializing the
question of safe space by saying that certain people's
concerns trump other people's concerns, based not on the
concerns themselves, but only on who is raising the concerns.
Both are important. I have heard some justifications for
'trumping' as I understand it that remind me of the debate
around the Oscar Grant case. There, defenders of Mehserle's
conduct claimed that police should be the judges of what
legitimate police use of force is because they have special
training and experience that give them a uniquely relevant
perspective on what violence is justified and what demands of
compliance they can legitimately make of people. Another
justification I heard was that police are especially
vulnerable due to the danger inherent in their duties and so
things should be biased heavily towards a presumption of
legitimacy when they use violence or demand compliance. To me
both these justifications seem problematic because they create
a class that can coerce others without accountability and can
unilaterally force standards of conduct on others. I am happy
that there is much less at stake among us here than there is
in cases of police brutality or Oscar Grant's case, and that
there is no comparison other than this logic being used. But
the logic that certain people's perspectives are uniquely
relevant, or that their vulnerability gives them license to
force things upon others unilaterally, is still a logic I
don't think we should internalize among ourselves, because it
produces unaccountable authoritarianism that can be exploited
for unintended ends, and does not help with the ostensibly
intended ones anyway. It results in us 'policing' ourselves in
a way much too much like the way the cities are policed to the
detriment of many people and of values we share.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">Finally, you mentioned the evening at
Marina's apartment and I want to clarify my experience of what
happened there. My 'aha' moment didn't have anything to do
with the point you were trying to make - I can't even remember
exactly what that point was, because it is so strongly
overshadowed by my memory of how you treated me. You called me
out for something that had passed between you and me in the
middle of a social gathering among a mix of friends and
strangers, none of whom were involved, which immediately put
me in a very uncomfortable situation. Then, you dismissed my
attempts to defer speaking to a more appropriate setting, and
to open up a dialog with you where I shared my perspective.
The only way out you gave me was to assent without comment to
you. My 'aha' moment was when I realized that things between
us had degenerated to that point; it was when I realized I was
mistaken in trying to have a discussion because we were
interacting like two territorial animals, or like a police
interrogator and a suspect, and you were simply demanding a
display of submission or contrition from me before you would
let me slink off. While it felt degrading, I took the way out
you offered to spare myself and the others in the room the
experience of things continuing. I take the risk of sharing
this openly with you now because I think we know each other
much better than we did then and we would never again end up
interacting like potentially hostile strangers passing in the
night, or worse. I think we can and should and have been doing
better, and overall it's best not to let a mistaken assumption
about what I was thinking and how I felt influence an
important discussion about how we treat one another in our
community.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">I, like you, hope you can appreciate that
I am taking the time to write this admittedly long-winded
reply, not to suck the air out of the room, whatever that
means, but to contribute to a discussion that moves us towards
a better shared understanding of how to respect our shared
values and towards more appreciation of one another's
perspectives.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'arial
narrow',sans-serif">Anthony</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 10:14 AM, rachel
lyra hospodar <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:rachelyra@gmail.com" target="_blank">rachelyra@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<p>I am really sad about this whole thread.</p>
<p>Anthony, I think I know you well enough to say that your
intent here was not to be offensive, but unfortunately...
Here we are. I am responding to the specific message below
because it is the one that made me want to unsubscribe
from this mailing list and unassociate myself from this
group. Everything that came after, gah.</p>
<p>Anti-oppression for the priveleged class, ie not being an
unintentional giant jerkface: if someone points out that
you are offending or harming them, they are not seeking an
explanation, but a change in behavior. Perhaps an apology
or acknowledgement, even a query. If someone says 'i think
your POV is fucked up and harmful' please do not go on to
elaborate on your POV to them. Even if you think they
don't get your amazing nuances. Your amazing nuances are
not always important, and part of 'oppression' is that
some peoples' nuances are always shoved in other people's
faces. Sometimes being a friend means keeping your opinion
to your damn self.</p>
<p>This relates to something that eddan has on occasion
termed 'the trump card'. We are all individuals, and as
such we ultimately need to keep our own house in order.
The trump card concept relates to safe spaces - as safe as
eddan might feel in a space, I'm not going to average it
together with my safety levels to achieve some sort of
average safety rating. My safety reading of a space will
always, for me, trump eddan's, and while I am happy if he
feels safe it doesn't really matter to my safety level.</p>
<p>The interesting thing about telling most people they are
making you feel unsafe, or that they are offending you, is
that for some reason their response is almost never 'gosh,
whoops!'. It's more usually like what happened here - a
bunch of longwinded explanation that completely misses the
point, and then a perceived ally of the offender jumping
in, also talking a lot, and sucking all the air out of the
room. People always have reasoning for why they did what
they did. Requiring offended folks to read about your
reasoning for why you said what you said misses the point,
and to me makes this conversation read like you don't care
if you were offensive.</p>
<p>It's deja vu to me that you are giving all this
definition and explanation around the terms you used. It
seems identical to our debate around the use of
'constable' and it is sad to me to see you take refuge in
the same pattern of defense. It doesn't matter about the
etymological history of a phrase. It doesn't. As fun as
you may find it to think about, the way things are
*heard*, by others, NOW, is a trump card for many. </p>
<p>Anthony, I hope you can understand that I have taken the
time out of my life to write this message in the hopes of
helping you to modulate your behavior to be less
offensive. I am sure you remember the first time I engaged
with you on this topic, at Marina's house. Perhaps you'll
remember the aha moment when you *stopped defending* and
simply accepted the input, thanking me. Perhaps you'll
find in that a sort of meditative place of return.</p>
<p>Good luck to you all. I enjoy many things about sudo
community and am sure I will stay connected in many ways.</p>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<p>R.<br>
</p>
</font></span>
<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5">
<div class="gmail_quote">On May 3, 2013 3:05 PM,
"Anthony Di Franco" <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:di.franco@gmail.com" target="_blank">di.franco@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial narrow,sans-serif">Doesn't
the civilized psyche secretly crave the things
it sets itself apart from and gives up and
projects on its image of the noble savage
though?<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial narrow,sans-serif">Your
description seems more like meditatively flowing
through it.<br>
</div>
<div style="text-decoration:none">
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, May 3, 2013 at
2:58 PM, netdiva <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:netdiva@sonic.net"
target="_blank">netdiva@sonic.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0
0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc
solid;padding-left:1ex">Here I was thinking
"killing it" was just another example of
appropriation of african american vernacular
by the mainstream.
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/3/2013 2:46 PM, Leonid Kozhukh wrote:<br>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px
#ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>
"killing it" is a recently popular term
to denote excellence and immense
progress. it has a violent, forceful
connotation.<br>
<br>
friends in the circus community -
through empirical evidence - have
established a belief that operating at
the highest levels of talent requires
mindfulness, awareness, and calm. thus,
a better term, which they have started
to playfully use, is "cuddling it."<br>
<br>
thought sudoers would appreciate this.<br>
<br>
cuddling it,<br>
<br>
--<br>
len<br>
<br>
founder, ligertail<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://ligertail.com"
target="_blank">http://ligertail.com</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
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