Ideas
- What is this work saying?
- How do I now feel?
- What will stick with me?
- What am I moved to do?
Really enjoyed this episode of The Long Now with Eric Ries, dealing with long-term thinking re: markets. (Note: this is from February and I don’t know the current state of LTSE) 🎙
They Elflord and the Mayfly from Existential Comics
This distinction is very helpful for thinking clearly on these issues. Censorship, Social Sanctions, and Access to Audiences
I still have a ways to go, but did some good work on my Resilient booklist this morning.
Another great one from James Clear
“The biggest generator of long term results is learning to do things when you don’t feel like doing them.” - Shane Parrish
Angela Davis vs. The Liberal Reformers from Existential Comics
Here’s a great podcast intro to Restorative Justice, includes shoutouts to Howard Zehr and Mennonites, which is, unsurprisingly, how I got introduced to the concept in a more concrete way.
Questions to ask after finishing media:
“The motivation to work toward mitigating disaster is minimal for those with the most power to do so.”
This is clever Climate Strike License
“a software license that developers can use to prohibit the use of their code by applications or companies that threaten to accelerate climate change through fossil fuel extraction.”
$97 million endowment. Management won’t pay for health insurance and is leaning on musicians for rights to their work. Despicable. Perhaps Indianapolis needs a new orchestra that’s run as a co-op Press Statement: 6/22/20 – Musicians of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
Another entry in “What if we wrote about the USA the way we write about other countries.” Unrest continues for a seventh day in former British colony
Sunday Quote
A Former Prosecutor’s Case for Prison Abolition. This is great intro to the topic of prison abolition, but also to Restorative Justice, a concept I hope everyone will learn about. If you aren’t familiar with Restorative Justice, I recommend starting here: Changing Lenses
I continue to compare the recent protests, because I think they are incredibly informative about what our systems prioritize (stocks over lives), and what people fear (unarmed people of color more than armed white people).
Ta-Nehisi Coates was on my favorite podcast 🎙 and it was great. Have a listen
✝️🕊🏴🌹, in that order
Let me share some of my labels, or identities. Let me share some of my beliefs.
You’ll note that I say “in that order”. That is because these have a priority ranking, since each flows from, and is beholden to, the above. Our means ultimately determine our ends.
✝️
I’m a Christian, specifically, an Anabaptist Christian.
I believe that Jesus is the clearest revelation of the nature of God, and that the actions and sayings of Jesus in the synoptic gospels, as well as the testimony of the early church in Acts & Epistles, are relevant to us today. I believe that they help reveal God’s love for humanity and the rest of creation.
I believe in creating hope, overcoming fear, and experiencing joy. I believe in looking for the image of God in everybody. I believe in second chances, healing, and liberation.
I believe that faith is not just a personal matter, but something to be wrestled with in a loving and supportive community. I believe group discernment, mutual aid, spiritual formation, grace, and consensus-based decision making are parts of a healthy faith community.
I understand that we don’t know it all. I believe we should watch & listen for God anyway, and be graceful to others along the way.
🕊
I believe in pursuing peace. I believe in pursuing reconciliation, restoration, and redemption. I believe in caring for our communities, our watersheds, and the earth.
I believe Jesus was serious about loving our neighbors, laying down our weapons, and not returning evil for evil. I believe in Jesus’s call to use subversive tactics to upend violent power without becoming like those we are opposing. I believe Jesus’s calls to creative nonviolence are relevant to all who follow the Way.
I understand that peace does not always seem practical. I believe we should pursue it anyway, while also strategically working on the upstream problems that make peace seem impossible: economic & racial injustice, environmental exploitation, miseducation, fearmongering & scapegoating, criminalization, and war.
🏴
I believe in decentralizing and democratizing power. I believe in respecting negative liberties.
I believe in undoing the still-echoing harms of chattel slavery and abolishing forms of modern day slavery. I believe in dismantling kyriarchy. I believe in dismantling empire, colonization, occupation, borders, and racism. I believe in abolishing the school-to-prison pipeline, the prison-industrial complex, and in changing justice systems to focus on restoration rather than revenge. I believe in abolishing intellectual “property”, planned obsolescence, and restrictions on innovation, alteration, maintenance, and repair. I believe in dismantling CAFO farming, the “nutritional industrial complex”, food subsidies, and monocultures.
I understand that these goals are not accomplished overnight or maybe even in my lifetime. I believe we should pursue them anyway, building fair and just alternatives along the way.
🌹
I believe in equity and fairness. I believe in listening to and amplifying the voices of the oppressed and marginalized.
I believe you can tell a lot about a person based on whether they defend the powerful or the powerless. I believe in sharing, cooperatives, mutual aid societies, unions, partnerships, and common purses. I believe in resisting advertising, addiction, and the attention economy. I believe in supporting underdogs and resisting monopolies. I believe that those who extract from people and the earth should pay their share of costs (e.g. for protection, legal, and infrastructure), and not be subsidized by the ones they are extracting from. I believe that abandoned properties may justly be reclaimed and restored by those willing to care for them. I believe in helping our neighbors. I believe in sharing over hoarding. I believe in working together.
I understand that equity is difficult when injustices still exist. I believe people with privilege should share that privilege, anyway, working towards a better future for all.
This is really good:
How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country