How Many *s Do You Have To Give?

If my capacity to care was like light waves right now, it would not be a laser beam, utterly focussed on one goal. It would not be a spotlight, panning across the salient and important issues of life. It would be like a morose rainbow, refracted across a spectrum of crippling angst about the Climate Crisis, fear for our survival as individuals and as a collective, face-palming about the stupidity of the world’s superpowers, on top of the normal worries and cares of life - will people like my posts? I’m going to be late! Am I actually good at my job, or are they just saying that, and what even is the meaning of life? 

It is in this vast spectrum of dissipated cares and scattered sorrows that we find ourselves depleted, unable to plan for the future, or imagine much past a month from now. I am aware that Beirut has just imploded, and that the US is on the brink of collapse, that there is a refugee crisis from Syria to Venezuela to Sudan. As much as I might want to help, I cannot help others until I help myself. Our uncertainty about our future here rings like a siren in my ears, much like the literal siren that has been going outside our building for the ENTIRE.WEEKEND.SO.FAR, and its shrill unrelenting whining drowns out thoughts or cares for anything else. 

I feel utterly disempowered by the bigness of the world’s problems, and my comparative smallness. 

For me, the knee-jerk response to that is sinking into a slough of ambivalence, a dearth of caring.

How many times a day right now are you catching yourself saying ‘I simply don’t care’? 

I don’t care about the homeless people that my heart used to bleed for. I don’t care about the politicking of politics, I just want functional leaders that can competently do the job. I don’t care about a virus ruining the world, I just want to live my life. I don’t care about where I’ll be in 10 years or 10 months, I’m looking at 10 days and thinking ‘How do I cope with another lockdown?’

Sound familiar? 

There must be a way to build the capacity to care. It’s a tall ask at such a time, but I have to believe that we can overcome our current circumstances.

 

How can we flex our muscle of intention, should we so choose? 

How else can we describe intention? Give a damn. Give a fuck. Give a care. Give a hoot. Give a toss. Give a shit. Give a rat's ass. Whatever it is - you are giving something. By the very vernacular that we use to describe it, it is not a passive act; it requires something from you. I think that might get to the heart of why it is so very difficult to do.  

 

For those who are disinclined towards certain language, I will use a * in place of whatever noun it is that you choose to describe what you are giving. 

I woke up at 6am this morning, a Saturday morning, and since then I’ve argued with my father about the reliability of various sources in regard to find out information about COVID-19, I’ve read through an article about systemic racism in the US - twice, because it had lots of statistical analysis and big words and hurt my brain, and I’ve listen to this drivel of a podcast about ‘Rapid onset gender dysphoria’ and how it’s ‘stealing’ a whole generation of American girls. 

It’s 11am on what was supposed to be a lazy Saturday and I have used up all my limited *s that I had to give today, and none of them were on anything to do with me. 

I do not have COVID, I don’t believe there’s a government conspiracy to try and inject you with something when/if they find a vaccine for it. I am not a US citizen, nor a BIPOC, nor any flavour of LGBTQI+, nor a teen, nor a parent, and frankly none of these remotely personally affect me. 

I’m all for caring about other people’s causes, and each of those need allies and advocates, and for people to understand. But at what cost?

5 hours of substantial research and what have I to show for it, other than now wondering how many teens in the US are *really* transgender, and who is profiting from them being so? 

Is this the very best use of my time? My intention? My *s? Is this the very best use of me?

Have any of my opinions changed? Uh, perhaps I’m slightly more open to the possibility of there being a cure for COVID through a drug cocktail concocted by a New Jersey doctor with some dubious clinical techniques, and maybe slightly less open than I was to the possibility that the fleeting notion of a teen wanting to change gender should be unequivocally given the green light without letting them know the fullness of that decision.

The mental gymnastics required to try and navigate our current world and be politically correct is just exhausting. No wonder people stop trying. 

I did not set points of intention for today, except for doing some yoga to help my sore neck and finish reading the 17 page academic study so I can have an informed conversation and not sound like a luddite when next I see a particular friend, (and also to ‘win’ an ongoing argument with a Facebook friend from high school. No one ever really wins in online debates though, right?) 

Because I had little in the way of agenda for today, my day was easy to hijack by other people’s cares, agendas and intentions. 

The old truism of teachers everywhere rings through my mind as I review my day so far: 

Those who fail to plan

Plan to fail.

Perhaps failure is a bit of a harsh assessment of my day so far. Learning surely is never a failure. However, sacrificing my agenda, my wants and my desires for others’ causes ad infinitum is certainly not being true to myself. 

Should I give a * about rainbow rights, about structural racism, and about whether or not there’s a cure for a disease? Yes. Ostensibly these are things that do need to be cared about, they do need to be researched, funded and discussed. 

But is this the very best use of the limited *s I have to give today? 

I’m not convinced. 

When we spend all our available *s on other people’s causes - however noble - there are very few left for ourselves. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just a thing. 

When thinking about how scarce *s are, I marvel/despair at people who can wantonly give them to things like obsessively hand wringing over sport, arranging cushions, dog grooming, reading gossip magazines, or even fighting with people on the internet to try and prove a point, when one knows it will only lead to bad blood and people doubling down. (Yes, I get frustrated with myself…) 

I think that excessive cleaning is a waste of time and *s. That counting calories is a waste of time and *s. Shopping for shit you don’t need is a waste of money, time and *s. 

I expend more *s than I would like to mention on analysing how many *s other people waste. Obviously not a great use of my *s.

There is an austerity of *s, generally. People have a very finite amount of *s to give and everyone, from every platform is screaming and clamouring to get hold of some of your *s.

There are so very many issues in the world at large, that I would rather spend my very limited amount of *s on such things are solving global poverty, working towards a circular economy, and saving the environment for future generations.

But right now, I don’t feel like I have spare *s for these big picture things. My *s are wasted on minutia such as ‘Do I have a mask with me today?’, ‘Did I remember hand sanitizer?’, ‘Can you catch Covid-19 through particles landing in your eyes?’, ‘Is it safe to take the kids to x place right now?’. I detest this perceived waste of *s, but also in order to not get sick and eventually have the luxury of caring about big picture things again, one needs to care about petty minutia right now. 

So many of our *s are stolen from us during inane daily activities. I must expend fucks on things like checking whether the rubbish is empty, if my pits are shaved, if there’s still toilet paper in the house, how much money is in the account attached to the card I currently am carrying with me, what is my employer REALLY thinking of me at this time, did I remember to water the plants? Is there enough food in the house for dinner tonight or do I need to attempt to reserve enough *s to go out of my way to procure more food on the way home? Do I even need to eat tonight?

Our *s are stolen by that advertisement on the bus, the *s we spend on road rage from the wankers who hold us up in our commute, the slowness and tedium of the work day, and the *s we must give about the perceptions of colleagues, employers and customers.

Not to mention the *s that all consuming dread takes hold when one strays into thinking about things like what happens when we die? Why am I really here? What does my life actually mean? Do I, in fact, actually matter, or am I just a meat popsicle with complicated feelings?

When you look at all the various phenomena that the human mind has to try and juggle in a day in order to stay alive today, and to try and make tomorrow an even more enjoyable day, then it really is amazing we get anything much accomplished. 

In the same way we budget our money, I think there must be a way we can budget our *s so that we save them for the things that we deem the most important, and not have them sucked into the vacuum of useless crap along the way. 

I would like to offer 5 key suggestions for giving a * when it is really really hard to care.

Limit what you say yes to

 

There are myriad things demanding our time, *s, and attention. You can’t care about everything all at once forever. Find points of intention, and focus on those for now. Choose carefully what you will say yes to. Write them down. Set time aside to give a * about these things. Find friends who also give a * about it. Perhaps, join a group or a club.

Knowing what you stand for limits what you will fall for. Knowing what you’re about means other people’s agendas can’t railroad yours.

Plan ahead

 

It requires less cognitive effort to enact a plan that is already made, than it does to try and make it up on the spot. Sit down the night before and write your ‘musts’ and ‘mights’ on two separate lists. If you get to the mights tomorrow, bravo, go you.  

Set reminders on your phone, or plaster your walls with post -it notes if that’s more your jam.

When you plan how to spend your *s, you are more likely to spend them where you want to spend them, rather than simply wherever the day takes you. In my mind, not planning for the day is like the difference between trying to canoe down a river with or without a paddle. It might be a wild ride without, and it might work out - but it is good luck rather than good management. Steer your day, as you would paddling a canoe down a river. Going with the flow might very well lead you over a waterfall or down some dicey rapids.

Yoga classes start and end with the idea of ‘set an intention’ for this practice or for this day. To whatever degree you are comfortable with, set an intention for a day. I have learned that I am unlikely to get done more than a post-it note’s worth of things in a day. If it can’t fit on one post it note, it’s too big for today. 

Spend some of your *s on something bigger than yourself

 

Obviously looking after yourself is important, and you need to spend a fair amount of your *s on yourself, but balance that with bigger picture *s as well. I try to work on a strategy of ruthless self care: looking after myself so that I can look after others. 

Spending all of your *s on yourself, your vanity, your wants, your desires, your interests is a surefire way to end up with a really insular, small life. 

People function best when they have a crusade, a cause to fight for, a purpose so much bigger than them. What’s yours? This world is far from perfect. Pick a thing and get passionate.

Give yourself permission to run out of *s for certain things

 

Not giving a * about some things leaves you more *s for other things that you value. Just because someone you care about wants you to give a *, doesn’t mean it is a good use of your *s. 

If you are empathetic and prone to giving a * about ALL.THE.THINGS, there will still be a Give a * hierarchy in your head. Have a think about the most important things, and maybe make a list of 3-5 things that are super important to you at the moment. 

It is only Facebook that gives you infinite ‘care’ capacity. Spend your cares wisely. 

 

Spend some *s on growing your *s budget over time

 

Think of it like a muscle. The more *s you put into building your capacity for *s, the more capacity you will have to build your capacity of *s. When you create the habit of caring, setting an intention, giving a *, then it becomes second nature. 

If you default to ‘I just don’t care’, and that is the language you use around exercise, diet, sleep, job options, where you holiday, where you spend your money, then it is very easy to just not really give a * about anything much. Try spending just a few *s on each of those things, and you’ll find it easier and easier to continue to level up. 

Ideally, giving a * will become part of your new normal, and no longer a conscious, effortful task.

(This might be lies, I’m still at the I just don’t care phase about quite a few of those.)

The More *s You Give, The Better You’ll Get at Giving a *

When we give *s in order to grow our capacity to care, our capacity to give a *, then we can afford to be more particular in the future with our *s. 

I love the adage ‘think global, act local’. We are all interconnected, and each of our decisions to use plastic, or to drive a car, or have a child, or go on holiday, or wear a mask does impact on others to some degree. 

Something I really admire about my friends, particularly my North American friends, is their capacity for caring about what I would consider minutia. They’ve looked at all the restaurants, and know which ones they want to go to. They have a handle on which bars are the best in town. They know exactly where they want to go on holiday. There is so much research, planning and intention that goes into their daily lives, it astonishes me. 

I used to think that ‘The devil is in the detail’ meant that you should stay as far away as possible from caring about details as you can. I consider myself a bigger picture thinker, but much like a tapestry, the bigger picture is created from thousands of individual stitches, so too are the tapestries of our lives woven from individuals decisions, and whether or not we choose to give a * about a particular thing.

What patterns are you weaving in the tapestry of your life? Where are you spending your *s?

Keep flexing that muscle of intention, that muscle of giving a *, and watch it grow.

 

You are Culture

       

In 2007, I took a course that was about the Anthropology of Resistance and Power. My lecturer, the laudable Diane O'Rourke, covered a multitude of incidents where people had risen up and overthrown the presiding hegemony, or power structure. Over the course of a few short months, my understanding of my own agency was irrevocably changed.

What is agency, I hear you ask? It is taking control of the parts of your life that you can control, or influencing the parts of your life that you do have influence over. It is the belief that your actions matter, and that they have a bearing on how your life plays out.

People's beliefs in self-efficacy, or personal agency "determine whether people think pessimistically or optimistically, and in self-enhancing or self-debilitating ways. 

Efficacy beliefs play a central role in the self-regulation of motivation through goal challenges and outcome-expectations. Whether people act on the outcomes they expect prospective performances to produce depends on their beliefs about whether or not they can produce those performances." [ref]

Basically, if you believe you will make a difference to your own circumstances, you are more likely to make a difference to your own circumstances.

History is replete with these examples.

We learned from James C. Scott about how Malay farmers gave spoiled, rotten or malformed crops as zakat to tax collectors, when authorities cracked down and demanded a double tithe, the farmers came up with even more dastardly evasive strategies, such as misreporting their yields, or planting in 'gardens' instead of fields. 

French peasant farmers struggled for four centuries with 10% of their taxable grain being taken by the tax-exempt nobility and the clergy, and resorted to strategies from mixing taxable crops with non-taxable crops in the same field to flat out refusing to pay and threatening to throw the collector into the river.

Their rebellion was not quite the same as the tax-evading giants we have issues with now - these farmers were trying to avoid having to choose between starving and paying tithe. There was an excellent term for this: 'rituals of rebellion' by Max Gluckman, and this is one example of many where people covertly rebelled against oppressive powers.

As the weeks in my course went by, we were presented stories of lynchings in the United States' South, and I was affronted by someone so articulately saying 'Someone's worth is not determined by the colour of their skin.'  It's so obvious when you say it aloud in one sentence like that. It was not a thought that had overtly occurred to me prior to that. My question then became 'How could anyone ever believe that someone's worth would be based on the colour of their skin?'

We studied the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and the long slow struggle towards human rights, voting rights, and equality. Martin Luther King's words from Washington rang out across the ages, and across our lecture hall:

"I have a dream that my four little children I will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character"

I had not heard any of his speeches before. All of a sudden I understood why he was such a big deal. 

We read of the horrors of the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, and how prisoners smeared bodily fluids on the walls instead of leaving their cells and being beaten by British prison guards on their way to empty their chamberpots. These prisoners believed in their cause so much, they were willing to starve to death before giving in. They were fighting for the right to vote, as it was denied to Catholics, and other basic human rights such as equitable access to social housing, employment, the right to vote, the right to not be harassed or killed by paramilitary forces while going about their everyday lives.

One aspect that I have grown to admire about the Irish struggle is how they reframed the narrative around the events. The British portrayed the Irish as terrorists and criminals, and therefore the answer to the Irish problem was harsher policing, and criminal justice.

The Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland, with the help of international media, reframed events like Bloody Sunday in 1972 as a peaceful protest against an oppressive government, demanding the right to vote, and the response to it a massacre of unarmed citizens. The British described them a rebellious insurgents stirring for a fight, and the attack provoked. 

Irish who were imprisoned from that time on told their story as prisoners of war. As prisoners of war, they had rights such as not having to wear prison clothes, to be treated humanely, to contact family about being imprisoned. They fought for those rights, and eventually triumphed in getting them fulfilled. A hollow victory in a lot of ways - acknowledgement of prisoner of war status rather than being common criminals is hardly what most would perceive as victory.

So much of oppression is the story the oppressors tell to justify it. The Irish did a really compelling job of changing the narrative.

We learned of Gandhi and his peaceful protests in India, catalysing the overthrow of British rule in the colony.

We studied the overthrow of communism and restoration of democracy in the Czech Republic, initiated by playwright Vaclav Havel, the Magic Lantern theatre company, in the Theatre Without a Balustrade. The influence of the arts in resistance and power struggles cannot be overstated.

Tutorials were spent debating the works of Gramsci, who wrote about Cultural Hegemony, while he was imprisoned in fascist Italy. Cultural hegemony is the narrative that those in power create to justify their actions and maintain the status quo. (Obviously, we have to spend x on military but couldn’t possibly afford y for medical provisions... sound familiar?)

We dabbled on the fringes of the French Revolution, and with each new topic and each passing week, a common theme was emerging:

People shape history,

Small insignificant people can do mighty things,

What you do IS culture.

Culture is fluid.

Your actions create it.

We spoke a lot about the idea of agency; acting as though you have the power to influence your situation.

The idea of culture as an impermeable membrane, static, historic, bigger than them and impervious to influence was challenged, and replaced with 'culture is symbiotic'.

Culture is a collection of shared beliefs and practices. But much like how the surface of the skin might look smooth and silky, and yet is an ever-changing canvas of shedding skin cells, a home to a host of microbes, the idea that culture is still and static is simply false.

See, the thing is you are part of culture. And you are not still, static or sedentary. So why would culture be?

One of the other women in my class was a pakeha woman living with her Maori partner in Wainuiomata, a less-than-desirable part of Lower Hutt. She was relating an interaction with her partner about how he was struggling with having to move back to a place where he grew up, because that was the only place that they could afford to live. He'd worked so hard to fight off the stereotype of Maori as poor, unemployed, unqualified, government bludgers who never do anything useful with their lives. He was qualified, successful in business and yet still living in Wainuiomata. She simply said to him: 'You challenge the stereotype by simply being who you are, by living here and having a job, by living here and being qualified, by living here and being successful. That's how you change the stereotype. The stereotype changes as you change.'

Culture changes as you change.

Cultures exist because people make a choice to continue to do life in those ways. Each story that is told, each conversation that is had, each article that is written either conforms to culture, or transforms culture. 

If beliefs are passed down from generation to generation, it is because the next generation has accepted – consciously or not - that those beliefs and practises are valid and still serve the community.

Much like Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction - the economy being in a constant state of flux, with businesses constantly birthing and bankrupting – so it is with culture. It is the debates, the subjugation, the arrests, the discourse, laws, beliefs, the conversations, the memes, who gets air time and who doesn’t, every decision made of how to frame and share media stories or not, who gets a particular position, who gets a bank loan. Everything. Everything in the public domain. Which information is privileged and which is kept hidden or ignored. Who is privileged, who is hidden or ignored. These are all the ingredients that comprise culture.

With each successive generation, you get to help choose: will you continue as your forebears have, and accept the status quo, or will you pause, analyse, investigate, experiment, and change.

Learn. Think. Grow.

Do better.

This is how we evolve as a society. Some might even argue, this is how we evolve as a species.

Throwing up your hands and simply saying 'Oh it is bigger than me, [this thing] I'm complaining about, it will never change' doesn’t help anyone. Sure, ambivalence and defeatism is the easy way out, but that definitely doesn’t change anything. 

Also – look at the rate of change in even the last 100 years. Nothing is socially constant!

History gives us jarring examples of what used to be OK, but now isn’t.

There was a time when it was OK to beat your wife - but only if you had a stick as wide as your thumb. Now people are punished for domestic violence.

There was a time when it was OK to wear a fox skin draped around your neck. No longer. Even faux fur is questionable.

There was a time when it was OK to hunt whales. This didn’t disappear by accident – it was through activism.

There was a time when it was OK to arrest people for being homosexual. This was overcome with protests, and slowly incrementally telling stories that showed people the human cost of those policies.

There was a time when it was OK to have slaves - but this was overcome. Not with peaceful protest mind you, but with bloody civil warfare.

There was a time when a woman in the workplace was scandalous, particularly if she wanted to do ‘men’s’ work.

There was a time when it was OK to conflate economic superiority with cultural superiority, and participate in White-is-right type rhetoric, because everyone else was.

The British Empire is gone, but its legacy still remains - one of economic rifts, inequality and perceived cultural superiority. It is now our choice to continue on with the situation we find ourselves in, or to create a new narrative.

Obviously, huge wide-reaching systemic changes are needed, but before we get there, there needs to be a hundred thousand smaller changes.

Most importantly: You need to change your attitude to one where you believe that you can change the world.

That starts with changing your world.

There needs to be openness to new ideas, to other perspectives, to other people’s lived realities. You need to be willing to call people on their privilege, and on their bullshit. We need as a society to learn how to have the difficult conversations about difficult topics without yelling or cutting people off. The calm, quiet ‘This is my story’ has a place in changing the world. Moreover, we need to identify and dispose of your own outdated outmoded beliefs and the bullshit we sometimes spin for ourselves. (Everyone has a little in there somewhere.)

This post was actually intended to be about creating a more environmentally friendly world after the Covid-19 pandemic, and that is 100% important. Voting with your wallets about which businesses should and shouldn’t succeed in the 21^st century is important, and we need to get into the habit of voting with our wallets and with our votes as much as possible. We are privileged to be in a democracy where we can speak out without fear of consequence, in fact, in hope of positive outcomes. When we speak up, it makes a difference, and adds to the growing call for change.

This is agency in action.

But this last week, the world has had something else to reflect on: the murder of George Floyd.

The George Floyd protests are a symptom of much greater problems: the ruling class has taken and taken, and ignored those at the bottom for too long. The lower echelons of society have been punished in every conceivable way in this pandemic – losing jobs, higher likelihood of dying from Covid-19, huge hospital bills for being hospitalised, soon more likely to be evicted, more likely to work in marginalised jobs that will be called back to unsafe working conditions. And now, more likely to be killed by those sworn to protect and serve. They are, understandably, on the brink of revolution. They have nothing left to lose.

  

And so they rise up. They use their agency. As they damn well should. 

Unfortunately, it seems that minority agency alone is not enough, and it is not until these ideas capture the popular imagination that they really take hold. Others have risen with them because it is evident when everyone unites the larger issues of justice and equality become the story, rather than simply race. The youth of the world has risen with them, with protests in nearly 100 countries internationally.

I hope that the world continues to take heed, and we can stay present in this moment long enough to do something useful, rather than just be ashamed. Already in the last 2 weeks alone, the protests have garnered such changes as Minneapolis defunding their police force, and looking into a community led policing model, much like New Jersey did in 2013, and the Governor of California looking to spend a lot more money on prevention than cure by way of investing in education and healthcare instead of policing. There's also a bunch of other stuff here.

A lot of people have condemned those who are rioting, but I think it is an expression of utter soul-destroying grief and frustration. As the saying goes - 'hurting people hurt people'. If you are in pain you're likely to lash out at other people or things to externalise that pain. This is so much more than a trite platitude though. We have witnessed attacks of physical injustice, which has megaphoned the conversation about systemic racism and ongoing institutionalised injustice through things like employers habits, justice systems, healthcare, economic factors, lack of access to housing and education, as well as police brutality. 

If our society is based on the dehumanisation, subjugation and economic enslavement of wage-servants, then the social contract is no longer bent out of shape, but broken. It is in the process of being torn up, and it needs to be re-written.

There’s two options, as I see it, from here. Rapid systematic change within the current systems, or revolution.

The culture within the US Police force in general is a culture of discrimination and racial profiling, of violence and excessive force. A culture of protecting some and punishing others. The ethos seems to be warrior and enforcer, rather than guardian and custodian of justice.

Social media has been a power force in taking the narrative out of the hands of mainstream media. Black Lives Matter has taken the internet by storm in the last 2 weeks, but there has been consistent evidence through film of the racial discrimination that faces POC, which if you're not a victim of it, is hard to believe that it still exists. 

So where to from here?

How do you come into this?

With each conversation, with each sharing of information on social media, with each book you read, each friend you make, organisation you donate to, protest you attend, with each neighbour you befriend, you are creating a culture within yourself, within your family, within your neighbourhood of either conceit or caring, community or continuation of the current.

You are the difference between us staying the same or changing.

Culture starts with which thoughts you allow inside your head. The conversations that you have with your family and friends. The communities that you are a part of, and the reading that you do, the TV shows you ingest and the movies you spend hours of your life watching. You conform to culture, or transform it.

There is too much at stake for you to not have an opinion about this, to not have a voice.

Culture is changed by those who are willing to speak up, but also by those who are willing to act up.

The downtrodden and oppressed seldom manage to triumph over the ruling class without allies in the majority.

The ruling class when it tries to instil order is 'allowed' to use sanctioned violence for the sake of the greater good, to keep the peace, to be a strong enforcer of the rule of law.

When protesters and dissidents are trying to overcome ridiculous laws or standards, and they use similar levels of violence, they are accused of being terrorists or guerrilla groups. This is the language of cultural hegemony. The story the ruling class tells is one where anyone that questions the status quo is wrong. If this trend continues without change and progress, the ruling class will not be the ruling class for very long. 

The story of Irish independence is a brutal one, and involved a lot of violence, but also a lot of desperation. Michael Collins and his gang of IRA 'delinquents' assassinated a lot of informants so that the British didn't have information about what the IRA was planning next.

              Know what?

              I hate them.

              Not for their race or their brutality.

              I hate them for leaving us no way out.

              I hate whoever put a gun in Vinny's hand.

              I know it's me and I hate myself for it.

              I hate them for making hate necessary.

              I'll do what I have to do to end it.

Michael Collins movie, 1996

When you put that in the context of 700 years of brutal social, economic, religious, and often violent, oppression of the Irish though, it starts to make more sense. They had already tried for centuries various other versions of resistance throughout that time, and nothing had worked. Daniel O'Connell had advocated political protest, and non-violent protest for many many years, and had made some gains, to the point where England was talking about instating an Irish Parliament before World War 1. 

The war put a stop to that, and Irish independence hopes were dashed. Their patience spent, the IRA didn’t want to take that route, but they saw no other way to attain their freedom. The Easter Rising of 1916 was a watershed moment, built on by Michael Collins several years later, resulting in the Republic of Ireland that we have today. 

As Martin Luther King Jr articulated from Birmhingham jail:

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.""

So what about you?

You have enormous influence over your own life, but you also have influence in society. As a consumer, you get to choose which businesses you'd like to see flourish or perish in the next little while. As a voter, you get to choose which government you would like to have - or not have. As a community member, you choose whose voice you amplify and whose you ignore.

In every conversation you get to choose which ideas you bring to the fore, which ideas get air time, you get to choose which stories you will read about or listen to, whose story will you privilege?

We all have our soapbox, whether it be online platform, classroom, friend group, book club, church, or local business. We have a place where we can present ideas, and how we present them will start to shape other people's ideas.

Have a look at all that is going down, and tell me that you do not see a revolution coming. Any model that maintains human rights abuses in order to continue is not a model that can last forever.

In the same way that having no genders does not honour women's struggle
and saying everyone is asexual doesn't honour LGBTQI+ community's struggle

The time of being an unthinking consumer of culture is over: You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.

You may not be able to change the whole world, but you can change your world.

Choose carefully, mindfully, where you are spending your thoughts, your words, your time, and your money. They are your most precious tools for change.

Can never read this too often, amiriiight?

And so I sit here as a ‘white’ female, embroiled in privilege, not even knowing what to do with that identity. I’m only just beginning to grasp what that even means. I have not personally experienced racism as such, certainly not from the colour of my skin.

Cross-cultural living is always difficult, regardless of the context. I’ll never be part of the Irish inner circle. I think differently, I sound different, my values are different. Those differences can be maddening. 

This is nothing like the systemic racism that POC experience.

I spoke to a friend who is a POC over the weekend and her rage was evident, palpable, unsettling. Good. It should be. Rage is the start. It tells us the gap between where we are and where we should be. The next step is action.

What can I do to help?

She told me to read. Read? That seems so feeble. But read I shall. I shall school myself about what it is like to walk in shoes that are not mine.

‘It would be so easy for me just step back and not participate in this discussion at all’ I heard myself saying to her.

‘This is why it’s so hard to talk to white people about racism – they’ve never experienced it, so they think as long as they aren’t racist, it’s fine. But that’s not enough.’

She then presented me with this quote from Martin Luther King Jr, written whilst in a Birmingham Jail cell:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Well, nobody wants to consciously be that kind of white moderate, right? So what else can help?

Listen. 

Stop pretending like it isn’t real.

Identify your privilege.

Be an ally for change.

We need white people advocating against racism. We need males advocating for women's right. We need managers and business owners advocating for better working conditions for minimum wage workers. We are stronger together. We need community, we need unions, we need strength in numbers.

In the context of racist injustice, reconciliation and healing is needed to really move forward. My homeland, NZ, has made some steps towards this end, but the systemic problems remain, and it will take a long time to make up for the mistakes of the past. 

Acknowledging that there was, and is, a problem acknowledging that wrong was done, making moves to increasing equality and creating space for conversations and opinions beyond the mainstream are a start. Monetary reparations are good. Cultural reforms are good. Acknowledging privilege and the limits of knowledge and understanding are good. Putting POC into positions of power is good. 

'Not my monkeys, not my circus' doesn't apply here. Accidental ignorance is one thing, but intentionally ignoring anything that might help you understand this power struggle is another thing entirely. This is the call to school yourself about this fight. It is once again a fight between the haves and the have-nots. This fight goes beyond creating poverty, social division, poor health or poor educational achievement; this one is costing lives. 

Who’s side will you be on?

This applies to racism definitely, but also to all the other isms - sexism, environmentalism, classism, etc etc

The loudest voices are the ones that write history. Who are you yelling with? Even just a whisper helps.

I know there's a lot of things to care about right now, and I know your Care Budget is at a low ebb, but keep exercising that muscle. You contribute to society by what you do and do not care about, by what you do and do not talk about. What are you contributing? Waistline worries and cat memes? Come on...

Most importantly of all, include kids in these conversations. The earlier that caring about these issues becomes normal for children, the more empathy, care, concern and intelligent dissent we will see in society, the better our society will be for it. Inform your children. They lack age and knowledge, not care or concern.

I always felt like I had very little influence over anything much as I grew up, until one lecturer started to tell me the stories of how even the lowest of the low had changed their lot by standing up to the power structures of their day and demanding better.

I'm not suggesting we break out the guillotine, but if the existing power structures fail to act, then action is the only option.

One thought. One conversation. One protest. One blog post. One dispelled myth. One book read. One understanding deepened. One friend made.

This is agency in action. This is how we rewrite history. One step at a time, transforming culture.

Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability, it comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. And so we must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.

Martin Luther King Jr 

Extras: ( Leave a comment below to add any other resources to this list)

Books:

White Fragility

Why I stopped talking to White people about race 

Headscarves and Hymens - really interesting book about how we need to help Muslim women overcome cultural oppression - their culture can be changed, just like ours, but they can't do it alone.

The Last Runaway - really beautiful story about a woman who helps slaves escape using the Underground Railroad

How to be an antiracist - Ibram X Kendi

So You Want To Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You - Jason Reynolds

To Kill A Mockingbird

TV/Movies:

13th (Netflix)

When They See Us  (Netflix)

I Am Not Your Negro

Teach Us All  (Netflix)

Crash
Django Unchained
Some Mother's Son
Bloody Sunday
Michael Collins

Articles:

Spinoff article - Analogy to understand how White Privilege works as a tailwind 

Super-touching things from the protests that haven't been shown in mainstream media

The difference between agency and agentic power

Super-quick overview of the French Revolution

The troubles of protesting during Covid-19

Gandhi's story

Ireland's history in brief

The Velvet Revolution in the Czech the Republic, and the theatre at the centre of it. Also this.

Interesting discussion from Warwick University about what is culture

Martin Luther King Jr Washington Speech transcript

Cultural Anthropology Basics - First/second year anth summarised in one post.

What if video of George Floyd hadn't been captured?

Scott, J. (1987). Resistance without Protest and without Organization: Peasant Opposition to the Islamic Zakat and the Christian Tithe. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29(3), 417-452. Retrieved June 2, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/179032