Interesting video by Jessie Gender on the "redemption" of Syril Karn in Andor. It prompted some thinky thoughts I'd rather put here than throw at YouTube. (Andor S2 spoilers)



I agree with Jessie's contention that white men are often treated with kid gloves when it comes to creating space for them to see the error of their ways, while marginalized people's lives are dismissed and errors castigated. Jessie cites the difference in fan discourse between sorrow that Syril died without a chance at redemption and near silence that Cinta (a queer woman of color) got summarily killed off. I'd add that this is partly because Syril is a better written character—but, then, white men have long been better written characters. That is evidence of her point.

But I'm frustrated by recent fandom's/leftwing YouTube's discourse on "redemption." I love a good redemption story; it's my favorite kind, but I think we need to dig deeper into the concept because, too often, it gets used without being explored.

"Redemption" is (at least primarily) a Christian concept. Traditionally, it refers to being saved from damnation, and this entails is a mix of personal responsibility and external acceptance. It requires personal responsibility in the form of actions like repentance of sins, penance, baptism, truly reformed behavior, etc. It requires external acceptance because ultimately it's God's to accept or withhold, and in many versions of Christianity, it cannot fully be attained without God's grace, that is, without that mystical quality of salvation that one cannot earn but is given.

When we use in secular discussions, as of characters like Syril Karn or DS9's Garak, or real people (Jessie mentions JK Rowling), we often end up with formulations like video commenter elanthys makes: "But not everyone deserves redemption, and not everyone who does gets it...." What does this actually mean? "Deserves" according to whom? "Gets" from whom? In the theological context, the answer is God. God can grant grace to someone who doesn't "deserve" it. (In traditional Calvinism, no one deserves it.) All redeemed people ultimately "get" it from God.

So who grants redemption in secular society? I think, by default, it usually translates to "us," the people having the conversation, the good people, the good leftists, the anti-fascists, etc. "We" judge that some do not deserve redemption. "We," sometimes in error, withhold it from those who may. What does it mean to be redeemed? In Christianity, it means heading to heaven. In the secular context, it means being socially forgiven, I guess? No longer cancelled, etc.? Slate wiped clean?

I do not trust myself to determine who metaphysically "deserves" anything. There are people I have not forgiven, but that says more about me than them. I do believe in accountability, which is, in essence, what Jessie is calling for. Accountability is a comparatively easy concept, if hard to achieve. If you've done harm, own it and take proportionally appropriate steps to repair it or—if it can't be repaired—do other, ideally related work to bring more good into the world.

Syril is never accountable for his actions. If he hadn't died and was to have a "redemption" arc, I think he would have had to spend the rest of his life trying to repair the damage or, more accurately, change the system so similar damage does not continue. But did he "deserve redemption"? I don't like the God-like insight that question presupposes.

Personally, I'm a Buddhist, and I prefer a Buddhist framework: that we are all on the path to awakening. We're just in different places, going at different rates, and taking different "side trails" to get there. The question of what we "deserve" is fairly meaningless. We are where we are; we carry the karma that we carry and work through it as best we can. And we can, to an extent, recognize that in each other and help each other through it.

Reposting my newsletter from ownhands

Election Reflections Like everyone on the left, I'm scared for our future. I'm also hopeful. In the face of the fear and polarization, there's an undercurrent of mutual care I don't remember seeing in 2016 or 2020. There's a sense that the left needs to do some soul searching. In this moment, I personally think our most important task is listening. Our most important stance is compassion, remembering the humanity of each person.

Book Launch for Being Cut Sunday, January 26, at 11:30 a.m. Kairos-Milwaukie United Church of Christ 4790 SE Logus Road, Milwaukie OR 97222. Join me January 26 for a brief reading from Being Cut: A Rumination on Relationship Cutoff and open discussion of why cutoff happens, how cutoff feels, and how we can to heal from it or limit its harm. (No pressure to attend the church service before the event.) I didn't write this book with this election in mind, but I think the book may be timely. At its most basic, it's about listening and connection, things we need now more than ever.

Own Hands Story Search Update

Jessie Gender has posted a video on Biden's response to the assassination attempt. I find it moving and, honestly, somewhat disturbing. I could have commented on it on YouTube, but I found I didn't want to. I even considered just messaging her personally but decided she has enough on her plate. So I'm just going to give my thoughts here.



I really appreciate her willingness to share the sincere hurt and vulnerability she shows here. She's completely right about the hypocrisy, and at the same time, I personally thought Biden’s condemnation of the assassination attempt was appropriate.

Here’s my reasoning: our goal, I think, is to see less violence. If Biden had not condemned the assassination attempt, millions would have read that as endorsing more violence. That would stoke backlash. It would not make trans people safer; it would make them less safe. I think the problem is not what Biden said condemning the assassination; it’s all the things he (and the establishment overall) don’t say/do.

Biden’s statement was clinging to old norms, i.e. “We don’t shoot our political opponents in the US.” That’s not enough, but I would rather live in a country that has that norm than one that doesn’t.

I am curious, though, what Jessie would have advised Biden to say instead.

This quirky-fun-disturbing music video commenting on our polycrisis is by the band, Zimbru. One of the members is the brother of a classmate in my Degrowth Master's. Creative video!

In my researches for my book on relationship cutoff, I came across two interesting and uplifting articles today:

Jaron Lanier suggests that social media be reformed by orienting it around small groups. Yes, please! Let's at least try it!

Greater Good has a great article on what peaceful, non-violent people and societies have in common.

(What has this to do with cutoff, you ask? I'm in the book's later sections on a larger culture of disconnectedness and how to address it.)

It amazes me how relieved I feel after Biden's inauguration.

The past four years I have devoted so much work to dissociating my own sense of wellness from the craziness going on in my country's national politics. In fact, I think this has been one piece of the larger work of dissociating my wellness from external signals in general. It's part of the work I've had to perform in managing the trauma of being cut-off without any resolution to the cut-off, to feel decent in myself despite the external signals that I'm horrible, unforgiveable.

Don't seek external validation, my therapist said several months ago.

And I thought I had gotten fairly good at it. Yes, Trump got to me. Yes, I was afraid. But I wasn't in terror or daily distress. I was as prepared as I could be for the chips to fall: for the country to fall into civil war, etc.

And so it amazes me how relieved I feel, how suddenly and profoundly it shifts all my feelings about my world just to see a president do normal president things: fill cabinet positions, rejoin the Paris Accord, have a competent press secretary, communicate with the press. Just to see politicians do normal, decent politician things, like Pence showing up at Biden's inauguration and getting his little trumpety fanfare like everybody else, because there is such a thing as decorum.

Yes, what people do around us does matter. Leadership matters. Our treatment of each other matters. Having an even somewhat working social contract matters. For all my psychological attempts to learn self-sufficiency, I am still deeply enmeshed in social need. So are most of us. That's human.

Today, I feel astoundingly relieved, probably more than any day of my life.

Disclaimer: This is a personal reflection, not a prescription for what anyone else should do.

So there's a certain social media storm about certain author's views and to what extent they warrant boycotting or completely "giving up" her works. (I'm not going to spell out the specifics out of regard for the effort to not increase her platform—but you know who I mean.) For the record, I am not in this fandom. For me, giving up her works is like someone who once smelled weed giving up pot [Edit: And that semi-pun was unintended]. But the general discussion of ethical responsibilities has been fraught for me.

I totally get the boycotting idea. I get the value of showing protest by not financially supporting her and not engaging with her works in a way that would increase/maintain her huge platform while she is actively using that platform in a way that hurts others. I do not get the rather common response that someone is going to "give up" her works, i.e. never read them again (even if already owned), never enjoy them, never talk about them with friends, or perhaps even think about them fondly without guilt. I hear comments like, "They're tainted" and "A group of people is more important than a franchise" as if an imaginative world that has been foundational to many people's lives since childhood is just a "product," like a washing machine, and not a piece of their minds. It's fine for people to feel this way; it's just very alien to how my mind works. ( Spoilers for The Mists of Avalon and its author's horribleness )

The newsletter is here.

Here's an excerpt:

Welcome to the coronavirus edition. I hope you are safe and well, and I’ll spare you the advice to wash to hands and socially distance because you’ve heard it. But with the hope of better societies at the back of my mind, I want to talk about the social fissures this pandemic exposes. It’s been great for our global emissions, but we will lose all those gains when industry starts up again. The fact that plunging the world into a catastrophic economic downturn is the best thing in living memory for our short-term emissions ought to be a wake-up call. Pitting our economic system against ecological reality is a lose-lose proposition, leading to mass extinction, starvation, disease, war, xenophobia, etc. Our current rupture in the capitalist economy is an ideal time to start planning for sustainable systems to replace it—not to replace all private enterprise, mind, but to replace a system that values only growth of capital at any cost. Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg offer some alternatives (summed up here in book review form), as does this article from Deutsche Welle. Let's move forward now to a more stable, livable future.

Also my spring term Writing to Sustain Hope class in Portland should go forward, but it might be postponed or moved online. More info. to come.

First day on strike for our faculty today. We picketed for about four hours before being released for lunch. (As a part-timer, I left for the day.) Many people honked in support, including several staff members. (I've heard staff were instructed to go to work or have their pay withheld.) It was about 37F (which is a few degrees above freezing for those who use C), consistently raining in that Pacific Northwest way that is not very cold but feels cold because you are soaked. I dressed in layers but was shivering uncontrollably by the end. The mood was good--big turnout, both full time and part time faculty, lots of snack food: almost all sugar and coffee. I am seriously amped!

I had more than one conversation debating what the administration hoped to gain by dragging this out. We faculty can't back down. We have too much at stake. Admin can't run the college without us to teach. With 10-week terms, every lost instructional day is hard to make up. We've now lost one with no word yet of any contract agreement. My best guess is they're hoping the weather will break us. The forecast keeps saying snow is coming, though it keeps not coming. In truth, snow and ice might keep me home because the hills I live on are treacherous, and I'm not prepared to die for a fair contract, but snow will not get us back to work.

It's hard not to check my email/course site and check in on my students, also weirdly freeing of my time (for now), but I'm holding the line for the greater good. We'll see how it goes...

Today my country is launching #ICERaids to detain undocumented people. At this shameful moment, I want to offer a perspective on immigration to the United States.

There are many reasons not to persecute (or prosecute) undocumented residents, refugees, and asylum seekers. A commonly cited and good reason: it is inhumane. Another: they enrich our society through their labor and their cultural presence. A third commonly cited reason is that the United States has always been a country of immigrants and we must remain true to this legacy.

I find this third reason problematic. It’s true the US was founded and populated by immigrants. It is also true that the first many waves of white immigrants—my ancestors—had zero right to be here. (Whether we have a right today is, I think, open to debate.) Our presence, then and now, is based on stealing or coercing land from indigenous peoples who did not—and, in many cases, still do not—want us here. I find it hard to celebrate immigration when its legacy is land theft, to say nothing of slavery, which brought millions of people into misery here against their will.

But by this same token—that our modern world is shaped by imperialism and colonization—I’ll offer another reason for welcoming immigrants today:

We owe them. The United States owes them. Most undocumented people willing to face danger and death to come to the US, or other developed nations, are coming because of Euro-American colonialism. They are coming because European-based powers devastated traditional models of living, destroyed working (if imperfect) cultures, wrecked land, stripped resources, enslaved people, enshrined racism, opened sweat shops, and demanded unfair trade deals to profit themselves. The US alone did not do all of this, but it has directly perpetrated or participated as a business and/or political partner in much of it.

And then there’s climate crisis. More and more refugees will be fleeing because their land can no longer support them due to climate change. And this is very concretely numerically hugely the fault of the United States. Trump’s antics aside, the US since 1850 has contributed about 27% of cumulative CO2 emissions, more than any other single nation. It is not unreasonable to argue that it should pay for about 27% of the damage, which could well include sheltering quite a large number of displaced people.

We broke it, we bought it: a basic principle of commerce. The US contributed to breaking the world. Justice and reason dictate we pay our share of the debt.