I appreciate your writing, Caitlin, and this article is powerful. At the same time, I would interrogate this line:
"We could crush them like an insect the moment we decided to."
First of all: who is we, and who is them? Be specific. If you are going to set up an us vs. them narrative, we need to know who to crush.
My contention would be that statements like these only fuel the machine because they further separation. They set up an enemy class that, once crushed, humanity is then free from. This is a false salvation and history has born this out time and time again.
As you've written before, we need people to expand their consciousness. Part of that expansion comes from letting in an unconditional love that embraces all, even our shadows and enemies. If we are to band together to confront the powers that be (a worthy goal), we must keep the focus on crushing systems, not people. We must hold out the possibility for forgiveness and transformation for the managers of that system, to see them clearly as also being in the thrall of inhuman patterns and structures. It's the only way we'll succeed.
I would distinguish between confrontation (necessary to stop ongoing harm and domination) and crushing. The latter is inherently violent, the former not necessarily so.
Also, it is not necessarily the case that systems are set up and run by people, at least not depending on how you understand "people." Is an ant colony set up and run by individual ants? Or it an emergent process resulting from a complex, dynamic system in interaction with it's environment?
I believe there is something more-than-human at work in the nature and structure of our dominant systems. By that I don't mean aliens or demons, I mean a form of intelligence and agency that exists in the system itself, an emergent property not reducible to individual actors.
In my model of reality, recognition of this allows us to see what our enemy truly is rather than falling for mirages and camouflages. This enables our actions of resistance and confrontation to still affect other people, because as you say people are components of the system, but we without losing sight that the true rulers are systems, not people.
Losing sight of this makes us vulnerable to a new arrangement, a remix of a system built on separation with different people at the helm.
I appreciate your writing, Caitlin, and this article is powerful. At the same time, I would interrogate this line:
"We could crush them like an insect the moment we decided to."
First of all: who is we, and who is them? Be specific. If you are going to set up an us vs. them narrative, we need to know who to crush.
My contention would be that statements like these only fuel the machine because they further separation. They set up an enemy class that, once crushed, humanity is then free from. This is a false salvation and history has born this out time and time again.
As you've written before, we need people to expand their consciousness. Part of that expansion comes from letting in an unconditional love that embraces all, even our shadows and enemies. If we are to band together to confront the powers that be (a worthy goal), we must keep the focus on crushing systems, not people. We must hold out the possibility for forgiveness and transformation for the managers of that system, to see them clearly as also being in the thrall of inhuman patterns and structures. It's the only way we'll succeed.
The systems are set up and run by people. How do you crush one without confronting people behind them?
As to the language Caitlin uses - I find it mostly a rhetorical device. No practical application is possible there.
I would distinguish between confrontation (necessary to stop ongoing harm and domination) and crushing. The latter is inherently violent, the former not necessarily so.
Also, it is not necessarily the case that systems are set up and run by people, at least not depending on how you understand "people." Is an ant colony set up and run by individual ants? Or it an emergent process resulting from a complex, dynamic system in interaction with it's environment?
I believe there is something more-than-human at work in the nature and structure of our dominant systems. By that I don't mean aliens or demons, I mean a form of intelligence and agency that exists in the system itself, an emergent property not reducible to individual actors.
In my model of reality, recognition of this allows us to see what our enemy truly is rather than falling for mirages and camouflages. This enables our actions of resistance and confrontation to still affect other people, because as you say people are components of the system, but we without losing sight that the true rulers are systems, not people.
Losing sight of this makes us vulnerable to a new arrangement, a remix of a system built on separation with different people at the helm.