Importance of Peer (Friend) Groups in Resisting Social Conditioning: Throughout this section of the book each author touches on the theme of resisting social conditioning and dominant narratives about race, gender, and class. Rev Angel writes in two separate chapters:
"It's an important entryway into the potential for healing when we start to recognize we are all participating unless we're interrupting. The momentum of the dysfunction of how privilege operates in this society is such that if we're not interrupting, we're actually participating in it."
"But when you drop out of the system and you are not productive, it will have consequences. But those consequences are part of the imagination of this system that says that we have to be producing and we have to be making something happen in order for us to have value, in order to effectively know who we are...what's really overwhelming is the day-to-day aggression (from the system) that's not confronted right there on the spot." Holla Jenny Odell!!!
Recently, I've been thinking about how my relationship with my type type click clackity computer job, my identity as a white male, and my assumptions about money and class where handed to me by educational institutions, family, and social structures that embody pretty limited assumptions about what I will do with my future, what my friends should look like, and how I ought to relate to people. I'd like to chart a different course with the remaining years (hopefully decades!!!) of my life, but I'm realizing evermore that I need examples of people dropping out and living lives fiercely committed to justice and love. On my own, and with my conditioning, it's hard to have the courage or vision to resist the harmful patterns I was raised to align with.
So my question for the group is what friends or peer groups have shown you a way of resisting dominant, harmful patterns in society and how can we model that for one another in this community?
Asking for Care From Others, and Society: A female speaker in the chapter "Love" made a statement that struck a chord for me: "It's a radical act to take care of each other, and it's a revolutionary act to ask others to take care of us." This may be (certainly is) a personal issue, but I've acutely struggled in my life with asking directly for help or care. I'm often afraid of being a burden, or that if someone feels like I'm asking for too much emotional energy they'll just drop me as a friend. I'm sure these patterns are rooted in some self-esteem issues and I've been working on trusting people and asking for care.
From the group I am curious how and when you ask for help from people you care about when you're in pain. Also, how can we learn from these individual requests for care or safety to inform demands for society to care for people experiencing suffering. Can we imbue political demands with the intimacy of asking for care from a close friend, human to human? Is that something we even want to do, or should politics be less personal?
How to Use Dharma for Social Analysis: The authors emphasize that the dharma is an effective but often underutilized tool for understanding the root ills of our society--racism, misogyny, environmental degradation, and class warfare among them. In previous meetings of this group we've highlighted this point, but also emphasized that if we focus too exclusively on the dharma our understanding may remain incomplete. My question for the group is how do you think dharma can coexist with more "secular" forms of understanding and analyzing social or policy issues. In your own lives, how do you integrate information from your personal experience, science journals or magazines, the news, first-hand storytelling, and the dharma to understand problems and identify right actions? What is the dharma's role in this process?
Hi all,For the next installment of our reading group focused on Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, by Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah, we'll be meeting this Saturday, December 19th at 5:00. The Zoom link is here:It is my task to write up a few discussion questions before the meeting. I promise to do this by tomorrow but wanted to get the reminder out now :)Please feel very invited to join even if you haven't read the book. It's just idea talk and loosely related to the actual text. You are more than qualified!!With love,--Luke Horvathhe/him/his
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