Understanding human cognitive bias, and the psychophysical mechanisms that compartmentalize our experience so that we can navigate in a world of endless variation, let us recognize that the rainbow is not actually made up of discrete bands of color – that is an illusion created by our senses.
As comforting as it may be to align ourselves with one band of color in the rainbow, let us also be able to abandon ourselves to the imperceptible spaces between the bands, as disorienting and vulnerable as that may feel.
We truly are one, and truly need one another to understand the whole.
That sounds very Berkeley. I own it.
If we let go of the idea that we are responsible for knowing everything about the world, and accept that we are actually co-responsible, how much more important is every relationship? How much more care do we take in articulating our perspective? How much more deeply do we listen, and in listening, build connections to parts of the world that we are incapable of hearing, but for our connection with others?
Neurodiversity, like gender diversity, sexual orientation diversity, racial diversity, is just language to describe the vast territory of human variation. Where once our language was simple, our categories few, and our understanding limited, we now are able to talk about our unique being in the world with recognition, empathy, and nuanced respect.
At one time we only had names for the large and small lights in the sky: Sun, moon, stars. Then we began to see patterns, and so the Constellations formed. The deeper we look, the more we learn about the nature and vastness of existence itself. And suddenly, we can print volumes and fill institutions with the great variety of language that we have to describe what was always there.
We have only relatively recently had the tools to be able to look into the nuances of human diversity beyond the realm of human cognitive bias. What we might think of as new has always been part of the human experience in a way that we may not have developed language for–or that the biases of powerful societies have erased as they absorb and subsume older ones, whose languages are often more nuanced.
The next time someone tells you that the neurological orientation we call ADHD is caused by video games, or that vaccines cause autism, or that sexual orientation can be prayed away, or that being trans is a lifestyle choice, or that it’s a sin to marry outside of one’s race, ask them if they believe in a world beyond the constellations.
Ask them if they believe the moon landing was faked. Ask them if they believe the moon is made of cheese, or that the Earth is flat and the sun is extinguished in the ocean every night. Because what they are really saying is that they are clinging to a world of simple categories that they can understand. Pity them, but please, do not fail to educate them.
Remind them that we are more alike than different, even as we are infinitely individually unique. Remind them that we all have hordes of tiny insects living around the base of our eyelashes, and that there are bacteria living in our intestines that are waiting only for us to perish so they can make our nutrients available to the grass.
Remind them that neurodiversity, gender diversity, sexual orientation diversity, racial diversity, are not any more threatening to them than those organisms that inhabit their bodies, that on the contrary, they actually affirm the community of beings that each one is, including them. Remind them that we, as a species, are successful because of our diversity, rather than in spite of it. Remind them that inclusion includes them, too, as they cling to their paper glider as it hurtles through the vastness of space.
If one recognizes the Palestinian people as equally human to oneself, one will experience no moral dilemma as one simultaneously condemns their slaughter, starvation, and displacement; and desires that Hamas-held hostages be released.
On the other hand, if one finds oneself making statements which include clauses such as “sad, but,” or “you’re ignoring the hostages” or “you hate [the state or people starting with ‘I’ or the people starting with ‘J’] when someone condemns the genocide, one is experiencing the belief that human beings exist on a spectrum, and that certain tribal/political/ethnic/religious groups of people are more human, more deserving of respect and dignity, than others.
This has been covered before. “Black Lives Matter” does not need to be qualified with “All Lives Matter.” “Stop the genocide” does not need to be qualified with “bring home the hostages.” In demanding so, one’s bias is revealed.
If one is not hearing “bring home the hostages,” then one has tuned out the roar of US dollars and weapons flooding the region, which are louder and more powerful than all of the voices calling for an end to the genocide.
Woody Guthrie was a DJ. He used the power of the social media of his time to spread the message of anti-fascism and pro-democracy. Pete Seeger had a television show. He used the power of social media to highlight outspoken advocates for social justice in song. Nina Simone used her platform to expose the abuses of power and hypocrisy in our society and our government. Paul Robeson traveled the world and spoke out at his concerts, championing anti-fascist causes in the US and abroad. Teresa Teng encoded revolutionary messages into her pop songs. Victor Jara lost his life for using his artistry to inspire people to defend democracy and resist authoritarianism.
All of these people were blacklisted, repressed, investigated, and trivialized by the systems of power they spoke and sang against. And many regular people went along with the program, belittling them as corny, or fringe, or eccentric, or out of touch with reality. Many people who look back on these figures as heroes might have ignored or laughed at them in their heyday.
Sometimes revolution is ignored in its time, only to be looked back upon with wistful reverence.
To heck with that.
Anyone who is called to inspire their people to coordinated action for the common good knows that the work is not sexy, and will not result in accolades or personal gain. Often, it seems like the people who are most responsible for igniting our spark are the least willing to engage in our efforts. Nevertheless, our passion and our recognition of the moment compels us to continue to reach out, connect, educate, and build alliances through whatever networks we have available to us. It’s a face-to-face, word-of-mouth, phone-call-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of thing.
This is a post that I sent to my ukulele students.
Many people consider taking a music class at some point in their lives. Studying an instrument or using your voice in new ways can be a little bit challenging, and I think people think about doing these activities when things are peaceful, and they are feeling expansive, like they have some “wiggle room” in their schedule. That makes sense.
That being said, my own music practice has grown out of my tendency to focus on music at times in my life that were difficult. For me, playing music and singing is a powerful emotional regulation tool–when life is feeling chaotic or overwhelming, musical activity helps me focus on parts of myself that I can control and nurture.
I may have spent the whole day at work having to bite my tongue or not express my difficult feelings about my working atmosphere, but then I can come home and channel all of those feelings into a musical activity that helps to lower my heart rate, regulate my breathing, and stimulate my creative mind. I can learn to play a song that I then share with my friends or family, which creates a sense of shared experience, which also helps to relieve my stress and help me feel connected to my community.
So, even though taking on the challenge of learning an instrument might seem like an extra thing to have to manage in a busy schedule, that time that we spend making music can provide a welcome balance to our regular working life.
So far so good. After 2 weeks on meds and a consultation with the pharmacist, I doubled the original dose, and i don’t see increasing any more going forward. My sleep patterns have stabilized and I am actually sleeping more and deeper. This is probably in part due to the fact that I am no longer napping in the afternoon, so at night I am actually tired and fall right asleep.
My step count is on point, and for the last week I have averaged 5 miles a day. I am down 15 pounds from my January weight. I do sometimes forget to eat, but I’m not actually skipping meals, and I have less of a tendency to just clean my plate on principle.
This is all great, but what about my attention? This is a little more difficult to wrap up succinctly. I have continued to experience a decrease in “background noise” that would pull me away from a task. I have also noticed a subtle but unambiguous change in my connection with my current instrument, the ukulele. I have always had a difficult time internalizing and retaining patterns–I have to practice a lot to memorize and integrate new material, and even then it doesn’t always “stick.” It seems lately that the circuits seem to be firing a bit more smoothly. Not a dramatic change by any means, but noticeable and welcome.
What medication hasn’t helped with is the sense of panic and dread I feel from situational sources: caring for and managing the affairs of a loved one with dementia; a marked downward trend in enrollment in music classes, my source of income; parenting a neurodivergent teen who, like me, learns everything the hard way and navigates a world that wasn’t necessarily designed for him; and watching the failure of our justice system and legislature to stop the dismantling of our hard-won civil liberties, environmental protections, and social safety net. All I can do is focus on the task at hand and avoid ruminating, and with that I feel more vulnerable and see fewer options each day. My instinct for self-preservation has seemedly not increased with my ability to focus.
My mind’s tendency toward world-building seems to continue unchecked as well–there is an unrelenting “impossible dream” that a big part of my consciousness is trying to realize, which saps a great deal of the energy which I feel should go into organizing my activities into a sustainable livelihood. Well, that’s that. To be continued …
The mindset of the people dismantling our social and environmental protections is the mindset of people who go into National Parks and push over rock formations that took millions of years to form. It is a mindset that is incapable of awe, empathy, self-reflection, or vulnerability; that can only feel something when exercising power or control. There’s no point in asking why or trying to make sense of their actions–they will say one thing one day and the opposite the next. The only answer is a mindset of greed, hatred, and ignorance.
We can overcome this mindset in ourselves, through practices that promote awe, empathy, self-reflection, and vulnerability, and so spread these qualities through our interactions.
One of the things that makes the current crisis so difficult is that this particular class of disruptors as a rule do not mix with people who cultivate awe, empathy, self-reflection, and vulnerability. They would feel quite uncomfortable to find themselves among such people. Once this corrupted mindset takes hold in a government or society, it really takes sustained effort, a grand gesture, to overcome it. What will this grand gesture look like? Will we recognize the moment for action when it arises? Are we capable of such a grand gesture?
No one should be confused about what is happening in our government. It is cultural revolution, on the scale of the program implemented by Mao in China in the 1960s and 70s. It is an attempt to create a complete break with institutional memory so as to assert greater control over the mechanism of government.
Institutional memory exists in the connections between people, and it is fragile. It’s not something that can be preserved in digital storage or even the printed page. It is even hard to articulate: it really takes place in the invisible spaces between people, and individuals may not even know that they are participating in it.
Case in point: I lead family music classes for parents and young children. A staple movement activity is the train, where one person follows the person in front of them, and we move together in a sinuous line, connected by invisible bonds held together by our individual attention and our collective intention. If you think about this, you may be able to remember doing such an activity in school or Sunday school, or at camp. It’s an activity that most people have engaged in. Instructions for such an activity could be written down, but it needs to be experienced to truly understand the subtle workings of the train.
I had been teaching and leading trains in my classes for about 20 years when Covid shut down in-person musical gatherings for a couple of years. I had 20 years of lesson plans all ready to go when things opened up again. On one level, it was easy for me to pick up right where I left off, but it wasn’t that simple. One of the first things I noticed is that people were no longer able to make a train without a great deal of description and demonstration. The first few classes I tried to just lead the train, expecting that folks would intuitively know to jump on board. Instead, people’s attention would wander, and once folks got disconnected from the train, they wouldn’t know how to get back on, resulting in a chaotic mass of divided attention. Over the course of several weeks, I was able to cultivate a community that was able to focus and have a satisfying train experience. To do this took attention, focus, patience, and trust.
So many of the structures that we rely on to get our needs met are just like this train. Understanding is passed on through overlapping groups of skilled people, whether it’s knowing how to sort the mail, understanding the needs of people who receive aid, having the wisdom to know just where to push to get an environmental protection through to legislation, or knowing first hand how a diplomat from another country will respond to certain types of language. To think that government agencies will just recover and learn how to function as the individuals change all at once is wrong–and it’s not even the point of such a cultural revolution as is happening. The current individuals in power want the institutions to cease to exist, rather than re-organize. They want to interrupt the institutional memory of how to make the train, and then to erase the cultural space that made that type of cooperation possible.
It is imperative, if we value democracy and the myriad agreements and cultural memory that makes it possible, that we stop this interruption. We must continue to nurture and cultivate the spaces where complex institutional memory can build on itself. We must focus, intend, trust, and practice patience, before the memory of how things work is lost to neglect. The time to focus is now.
