with no power

[metaphortunate]

I was talking to rosefox the other day about the futility and counterproductiveness of staying informed about everything horrible that happens in the world everywhere, that has nothing to do with me. Remember the wise words of Uncle Ben, guys.With great power comes great responsibility. The converse is also true. With almost no power comes almost no responsibility.

And let me give you a little depressive realism here. You know about depressive realism, right, depression has a fun little party trick where mostly it lies and lies to you about yourself and everything and how you are a loser and everything is awful but in one respect it tells the truth? There's evidence that depressives tend to more accurately estimate their level of control over external events that they have no control over? Y'all, go ahead and accurately estimate that "ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country." I mean, you know it, I know it. rosefox was saying the other day that they've been futilely protesting US involvement in the Middle East for 24 years. It is wasted time. I don't go to marches anymore. Right here, right now, they have no effect. I marched on Washington for abortion rights, I marched in my city against war in the Middle East, I wasted my time. With power comes responsibility. What that means to me is that I have to learn where I do have power and where I don't. And I need to focus my actions on where I have power.

Like for example, "staying informed" is an amorphous concept that sounds righteous and important but, really, being informed changes nothing unless I do something with the information. There's stuff I'm never going to do anything about, because I can't. I have no power over a kid being bullied by her school system over on the east coast somewhere, to take one example of something I was exhorted to care about by Tumblr this week. Look, I am sorry about that kid, but it would be creepy and wrong if a random person on the other coast had the power to significantly change her schooling experience based on information off of Tumblr, and in fact it is not the case. I have no power there. So it's not my responsibility. It's not important for me to be informed of that. On the other hand, it is important for me to inform myself of the way the police work in my country and in my city to the point that I finally, finally, really internalize that I should never call the cops again unless I am prepared for someone to die. And not necessarily someone in the situation that I wanna call the cops about. Maybe some random dude five miles away who fits a ~profile~. And I am so embarrassed that this took me so long to realize. And I am scared because the next time I hear slight thuds and a crying woman begging her boyfriend to stop hitting her, underneath my window, I can't call the cops. What am I going to do? I'm going to have to go down there and talk to them myself, and I don't want to, and probably that's what I always should have done, and I don't want to. And the next time I see thick black smoke coming from a van parked under an underpass downtown at 1 A.M., I'm not fucking going into that situation myself - so what am I going to do? Will someone die if I call the cops, or if I don't? This sucks, but it is about my actions, so it is my responsibility.

And of course this also sucks because it is limited to my individual power, to my individual actions. So neoliberal, right? I want to believe that people would be stronger if we acted collectively but maybe Ferguson is putting the lie to that. See this post: "if they can lie to us to our face and us KNOW the truth, what power do we have , then?"

Well…not a lot. And - didn't we know this already? Why didn't we know this? This isn't new, right, the people in power lying to the people without, and us know they're lying, and they know we know they're lying, and they don't have to give a shit, isn't new? I've been reading The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, about the AIDS crisis and its aftermath, and that's just the 1980s. Not even that long ago, don't we remember how the government let a gay generation die before Ronald Reagan would say the word "AIDS", let alone put some damn money into the problem? Schulman writes that ACT UP forced the government to finally take AIDS seriously as a public health menace, but….how? I know a little bit about ACT UP and its actions, but…. how do these demonstrations force people with power to do things differently? Do they? I've been reading about this, I've been listening to Revolutions - which is a great podcast by the way - I've been trying to learn how, fundamentally, people convince other people to do things. How people get other people to stop doing one thing and do something different. I swear this is a huge flaw in my education, this is a place where we have been let down. I should know this and I don't and I don't even know how to find out.

Comments

[ambyr]

As far as ACT UP goes, I thought How to Survive a Plague had some interesting thoughts on the group's peculiar success. As far as the larger question goes, I have no answers.

[metaphortunate]

Thank you, I will put it on the list!

[loligo]

I'm guessing you've already seen INCITE!'s resources about community accountability and alternatives to the criminal justice system, but if not, here they are.

[metaphortunate]

I had seen it, and then I lost the tab and couldn't remember enough to google it properly! Thank you very much!

[jae]

Great post. I've been thinking about this stuff lately, too.

-J

[resolute]

I've been reading books about cold reading and criminal profiling in order to try to figure out how people get other people to do things.

Because, YES, I am enthralled with Revolutions Podcast, too, and it seems that ...

...

...

... it seems that the vast majority of vital world-shattering decisions are made on the grounds of interpersonal relationships.

I thought this through all of the Wiscon Harassment stuff, too. People made calls based on ... how they FELT about stuff. I'm not talking the Wiscon Concom or the harrassment board, I'm talking you and me and everyone making judgments on the internet. We all have feels and they are interpersonal feels and WE MAKE IMPORTANT DECISIONS BASED ON THOSE FEELS.

So I am teaching myself to manipulate people. On purpose. With all the goodwill and good intention in the world.

[metaphortunate]

Good luck, but whoo, as a solution that does NOT scale. :/

[norah]

I don't disagree, I just...I dunno. I have to believe in the power of all acts of resistance, large and small, because I need that belief to function. So I can't or don't think about this much.

[metaphortunate]

That sounds like it's getting into religion, which I'm not gonna mess with. But I don't think it has to be all or nothing - I think it's possible to value acts of resistance and still think about which ones are more effective, perhaps.

[hradzka]

Sounds like you want to read Alinsky and Gene Sharp? Maybe some Robert Moses to go with it?

[metaphortunate]

I probably do! *adds to list*

[hradzka]

Whoops, meant Robert Caro, was thinking about his books on Robert Moses and LBJ (which are the opposite of what you want, but they're about how power works on the inside rather than being shaped from outside).

[metaphortunate]

Well, that's important too, though.

[rosefox]

I've been trying to learn how, fundamentally, people convince other people to do things. How people get other people to stop doing one thing and do something different.

1) Person B says, "Hey, person A, here are some good reasons for you to stop doing something and start doing something else."
2) If A's trust and respect for B is stronger than A's commitment to doing things the way they've been doing them, A will change.

This is the reasoning behind "Think globally, act locally". Collective action is most powerful when it takes place within a community. To use an example that I'm intimately familiar with, at first a number of people involved with Readercon dismissed vschanoes's petition as "internet rabble-rousing", but when past GOHs and longtime attendees started signing it, the grumblers had to pay attention. The united voices of 400,000 strangers are far less motivating than the united voices of 400 friends and colleagues. And once Readercon changed, the trust and respect that Readercon had earned from other convention organizers helped to push ripples of change outward through the con-running community. Individuals with big platforms helped to amplify it and encourage more collective action among interested parties--Scalzi's pledge is really another sort of petition. And just last week, a major convention's conchair said to me in tones of pure bemusement, "I don't understand how anyone could put on a convention without anti-harassment policies in place."

So yeah, I'm skipping the big marches, but I haven't given up on collective action. I just try to remember to stay focused and target my activism toward people who have reason to listen to me personally. My name on a MoveOn or Avaaz petition means basically nothing. My name on an email to a friend or colleague means a lot more. And if I can't reverse climate change or bring about peace in the Middle East, I can at least help steer those friends and colleagues in the direction of building kinder, safer, happier communities.

[metaphortunate]

This is a very, very, very good point!

[laurashapiro]

I struggle with this a lot too, but I believe more strongly in the power of collective action than I used to, because I've seen examples of it through my work. We get stories every day about how a women's organization in Liberia or India or Croatia made a difference through collective action, in concert with other forms of advocacy and education. They're changing laws and cultural norms. It's happening. Slowly, and locally, but happening.

And I think, too, about Occupy Wall Street. They didn't bring down the rich, they didn't destroy capitalism, but they sure as hell changed the conversation. I think it was the OWS protests, and the resulting awareness of and discussion around income inequality, that made Mitt Romney's 47% remarks lose him the election.

[metaphortunate]

This is really good to hear!