Today's Tough Times Tuesday is another rough one.
I'd understand if folks really don't want to revisit the last nine months, and what they've brought out in us: the gamification of atrocity, the weaponization of data, the blatant schisms between local reports and how stories of Israel-Gaza manifested in Western discourse.
But I needed to grieve our indifference to truth and humanity in the throes of wartime missions, so I hope this serves anyone else in a similar mood.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/nine-months-at-war-with-our-own-worst
@MLClark "By and large, we humans are small-c conservative. Fill us with fear, make the world confusing and violent, and we will always cleave to whoever promises us the simplest moral claim."
That really struck me.
It's a hard, ugly facet of human nature, but also one that makes it easier to forgive my fellow human being for leaping to rigid and extremist thinking.
So much of who we are is shaped by fear, trauma, and a powerful desire never to be helpless again in the face of violence and confusion.
No monsters, only men - living as best we can with the fragility of our lives.
Thank you for sitting with me in the grief. 🕊️
That also caught my attention. So true.
Something that stuck out for me was the mention of Western notions of people who don't really count... We've seen that otherization over and over again, haven't we?
We have indeed. Othering, but also domineering within our own groups, so that people who share our identities aren't allowed to have their own opinions. Some folks will always try to say there's only one way to be X, while everything else makes you a traitor to your blood/community.
You can't say we aren't a creative people, eh? Just look at all the different ways in which we reduce our fellow human beings to mere objects in service to our own sense of what matters most.
Yes, absolutely that too. I wish our creativity could be directed toward lifting humanity rather than trampling all over it.
@LiseL @MLClark I have been seeing it for a very long time. But it is not always an overwhelming norm.
I've also lived in many cosmopolitan societies where difference was accepted and even enjoyed.
Humans have instincts to come together, and instincts to make them fear the other. It's which are fed and humored that make the difference in a society.
Otherization causes humanity to fight humanity.
@MLClark You needn't apologize. This is a shared grief.