Know that you scare them

Insisting on being human through the apocalypse

Dear friend,

If I’m honest, most of the time lately I find myself in prolonged periods of stunned silence, only to be jolted back into the reality of what surrounds us: dark woods, ever-multiplying levels of hell. But I have to believe that there is a guide to see us through. (Yes, I am referencing The Divine Comedy).

Here is what I know for sure: I will not do their work for them. I will not be dragged into despair. I will take my breaks, I will make plans that see me into the future, I will find delight in the things I love, I will continue to exist, I will speak.

The best thing you can do for these ghouls is become so overwhelmed and terrified that you detach. They’re counting on us fading into our screens, barely going outside and barely talking to one another, unable to engage in the political and social realm because it’s all too much.

And it is all too much. By design.

We have been primed for this. Our ability to pay attention, to think deeply, to analyze complex issues and know how to respond to them has been eroded over decades of careful engineering. We have been fed passive, brain-rotting content for so long and in so many ways that now it’s not uncommon for people to become offended by the concept of intellectualism. We are, finally, the pliant and disengaged populace who are watching in helpless horror while an internet troll with too much money and a ketamine problem has effectively taken control of one of the most powerful nations in the world. And we are being told that we don’t know what to do. The problem is too great, their control too powerful, their influence too far-reaching. The opposition does not exist. The worst people control our communications platforms. There is nothing you can do, so just focus on your own life, keep your own street clean.

This is what they’re counting on. This is the point of hundreds of executive orders being issued in a matter of two weeks. We are supposed to believe that all is lost.

So, what to do instead of despair? Pick something and concentrate on it. I don’t mean that you stop paying attention to the destruction of our government, the health, education and human services departments and agencies that are being gutted because the re-animated corpse and the south African vampire have decided that there’s too much diversity and inclusion. As exhausting as it is, we do have to keep telling our elected representatives that we elected them to do a job.

But in my own life, in my day-to-day, I have found it a lot easier to get through the nights now that I know my financial efforts will concentrate on the two issues I believe to be most pressing: the safety of immigrants and trans people. So I have set up sustaining donations to Trans Lifeline and to Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Last year I began volunteering once a month with Sound Generations, which partners with Meals on Wheels to deliver food for people, usually seniors, who are house-bound. A few times a year, I take on a project with Catch a Fire, which is an organization that connects people with certain skills and nonprofits that need someone with those skills. It’s remote, and it’s project-based.

Believe it or not, I’m not sharing these details because I want to highlight what an altruistic, truly angelic and completely perfect human I am. Shocking though it may be. I’m just trying to be transparent about the lanes I have chosen to occupy, and maybe give you some ideas about where to start, if you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed. And to implore you: if you can only do one thing, please let it be in support of trans people in this country. It is truly an emergency.

We are in a dark wood. But there is still light inside us. We will get through this only with each other, always reaching out for a hand. Sometimes to lead, sometimes to follow.

—-

Some recent books:

My Obsession Continues - I read The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains a few weeks ago and right now I’m in the middle of The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. You can just imagine how insufferable I have been to my friends and family who have now spent almost three years listening to me drone on and on about the topic of our ability to focus and think deeply. A couple of years ago I read Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again and it completely changed my life. So much so that for several months I made it my entire personality. It gave me tangible strategies for healing my brain and put me back on track with the kind of thinker and reader I used to be before my attention and focus was eroded. And, since that book made me realize that what was happening to my mind wasn’t natural and that I could combat it, I’ve become something of an evangelist on this topic. All of which is to say: please read one or all of these books if you can.

A Little Fun – Miranda July’s It Chooses You is a funny, insightful, coffee-date-with-a-friend of a book that got me through some heavy days this week.

And, finally, a question: if I were to start an informal book club, hosted primarily on Discord would you like to join? It would prioritize books by non-white, queer and women authors. If you’d be interested, please reply to this email (not a comment) and give me an email address where I can send the invitation to the server. I want to emphasize that this would be an informal book club, which to me means that once a month we choose a book and we read it together. I’ll set up a meeting but only those who want to meet will join. There will be a chat channel in the Discord for chatting with each other while reading. And that’s it.

Alright, I think that’s enough of me talking for now.

Take care, take care of your neighbors, and thank you for being here.

Lidiya