Ep 239 Ruminations - Movement Culture and Organizing with Alexandria Shaner

Her past sessions and indeed all 238 prior episodes of which I believe very few are time bound are available by an archive at znetworkorg slash revolutionz-2 or at patreonorg slash revolutionz . So , alexandria , the pitch aside , welcome again , and have you got something you'd like to kick off with , or would you like me to propose a topic to pursue ?

It was a list of eight observations all related , and we could add many more if we wanted to , and it went like this One the lawyer hopes you get into trouble . Two , the doctor hopes you get sick . Three , the police hope you become a criminal . Four , the landlord hopes you don't build a house . The dentist hopes that your teeth decay .

The mechanic hopes that your car breaks down . The coffin maker wants you dead . Only a thief wishes you prosperity and life . So what's your reaction to that ?

know that's the point of this list is to confront like hey , isn't this messed up ? So if it has some truth in it and if we don't like it , then we should maybe start by asking why is this the case To me ? It really makes me think of what is the conversation around human nature versus systemic conditions and why this is the reality we find ourselves in .

Even the thief has an incentive that you got a lot of good stuff to rip off . So it's basically a case four , which I don't think is the case . I mean , I don't think it's true . It's a case four . We are what are . We are just what our environment imposes on us .

And that's not quite true , because in any of these cases there are there are counter examples of people who have been the incentives to be a schmuck , but who are well-meaning and caring .

But I also think that another economist perhaps might say , yeah , well , this is because that's human nature and all capitalism does is try and organize it , and this is the .

You know , maybe the satina scenario like this is the best possible way to organize our base human nature , which is why I thought to , maybe my reaction was that a step back , that I can imagine different people having your reaction as well as the other kind of opposite reaction that I just outlined .

Of course , I agree , I agree more with yours and I , yeah , I just think it's this interesting question of you know it's , it's not 100% one or the other . I think that a lot of , a lot of this reality , yes , is a result of systemic conditions , but that the exception can prove the rule , that actually it's not .

It's not just the conditions , because people do act differently . Even though we have incentives to act terribly , a lot of people choose to do their best to act in a better way or resist , and then the opposite . You know you have , of course you can have devious individuals or , you know , antisocial behavior , even when there's incentives for the other way .

So that's that's kind of how I see it . There's , there's like a political and economic lens that you mentioned .

There's even this nature versus nurture , which these days is kind of , I think , that the more cutting-edge science is now looking at it as nature via nurture , like epigenetics , where we're actually , you know , we , we have agency over our nature that can be heavily , heavily implicated by the conditions that we're living in .

And then there's even , you know , I'm thinking kind of like a David Graber's work in Dawn of Everything or even debt in some , you know younger YouTube content creators that are putting out a lot of material on the anthropology of humanity over time in different ways that we've organized ourselves in different human behaviors . That that elevates .

So perhaps I'm going in way too deep , but this little list just speaks to me of all all of these things and that , you know , there a lot of this is just a function of how our society is organized rather than of any kind of inherent base human nature .

But I do think that that it doesn't mean that everything can just be put on the system that we have no agency it's . It's a bit of both .

Right , even language faculty , all these various things are human nature and you can't do without them . They're there every time . And on the other hand , you have to make a serious effort to produce all the antisocial stuff . And the example of my grandmother's nice is enough to combat the idea that being nasty is human nature .

If being nasty was human nature , then in the societies we live in , in which all the incentives are to be nasty and all the historical backdrop is to be nasty , there would be no non-nastiness .

I used to make this argument all the time back when I was in college , at MIT , because in those days the reflexive response to the left on a campus was well , it's human nature , you're fighting an uphill battle , it's waste of time , war is human nature , greed is human nature , etc . Etc . And I used to make this kind of argument all the time .

If it was human nature , it would be everywhere , because the incentives are all to do it and the human situation is to do it . Therefore , it would be everywhere . Therefore , it's not human nature .

On the other hand , I used to have a hard time admitting that human nature was consistent with the existence of evil , you know of antisociality and greed and all the rest of it . Yet that's obviously true . Also , hannibal Lecter exists . Therefore , human nature can allow for a Hannibal Lecter .

Hannibal Lecter audience is this movie character who's the epitome of evil .

they act . You can do that , you can , you know , dig into , like the biological and you know genetic and you know behavioral sciences . You can look at various political systems that have been tried .

I mean , I think that , yeah , this , for anyone who wants to take this at all seriously and even starts to look at it through any one of these angles , you'll find what you're saying is yeah , of course there's a wide breadth of what is human nature and we have the potential to act in lots of different ways , but it is absolutely not true that the way that

patriarchy and capitalism and whatever else incentivizes us to act is therefore the way we act in some kind of natural , predetermined , unavoidable way .

You know , through my work on at znetworkorg recently , I've had to force myself to become much more active in various online communities of communication , like using Discord servers or being a little bit more active on social media , and it's funny through that I'm going on a little tangent here , so stick with me .

I'll bring us back Go ahead Through that type of , you know , communication and organizing , like in the online world , which is , for me at least , not where I've historically spent my time . I have been exposed to and finally understand meme culture . You know , memes like little , kind of normally simple graphics .

A lot of times they're even intentionally ugly or messy and they just make a point or a joke or an observation . So I've never really understood , like what is the deal with memes ? Why people get so excited about this ? I don't really get it . It's not even like beautiful from my perspective .

But now I'm starting to get where sometimes it's like really accessible , both accessible to make and accessible to understand , way of like getting a point across visually and it just hits home . So I saw this meme recently and I can't even believe these words are coming out of my mouth because , again , this realm is so new to me .

But I saw this meme recently that on Z's Discord server that said something like you know , I'm someone who's training to become a therapist and I think all of you are saying that you need therapy way too much , to be honest , and the activity that you're actually looking for is revolution .

So this guy who you know says he's studying to become a therapist is basically saying look , you know , therapy is obviously he takes it seriously is becoming a therapist .

He's not , you know , trying to put down people who want to seek some kind of therapy , and neither am I , but he's saying the activity you're looking for , for a lot of this stuff that you're prescribing therapy for , is revolution . And so , to your question , what's the same reasonable or constructive reaction ?

That's kind of where , where I go , where I'm at , and that I don't mean that to just to be flippant like , oh , you don't have problems and we don't , you know , we just need to change society . Okay , easier said than done . But I , I don't know .

I feel like a lot of times , the it's not your fault , it's the system can be viewed as a cop out , and I don't actually think it is .

If you take it a step further , because , okay , we can recognize a lot of these things , if you're the lawyer and this statement that you read before is saying you , you know , you're just there to hope people get arrested or hope people get sued .

Or if you're a doctor and you know you're living in a world where , okay , you kind of have to hope people get sick so you can get paid so you can live . That's probably not why you became a doctor , and so you probably don't like that very much .

So it might be nice , and I do think it's true that , actually , that that framing is not your fault , that is the system . But what is something that you have agency to do . Is the Okay , then what ? It is up to you to resist what you don't like and to imagine and practice something else in any way that you can .

So I guess that's like a very long story of what to me is the same reaction that the meme summed up a lot more concisely than me . But yeah , I think you got to . If you don't like the way the conditions are , you know , if you don't like the behaviors that it's forcing you to exhibit , then try and change it .

We constantly stop ourselves from feeling that because , after all , that would be psychotic or something . But it wouldn't be , it would be accurate . I can think of two examples .

Well , there's probably lots of them , but one is , without making it too long a story , there was a compendium of comments to gnome on his 70th birthday that I had arranged this thing , and the most moving one was from an anti-war guy .

His name's Fred Brantman and he took gnome on a little tour in Cambodia this is post-Paul Pot and he said he was very moved by gnome's response and what he told him and stuff . And then after that he said you know , only you and I , of all the people who I've taken on this tour , were weeping , and of course that's appropriate .

In fact it's probably inhuman not to weep at the fields of massacre , but others don't , because they have it under control . This is one side of the dimension . So Aaron Dottie Roy told me about how , in India , you have to steal yourself to the poverty that you see back then 40 years ago , driving down the street , because if you don't you'll go crazy .

And so that was her explanation of not having the correct response jamming the brake on the car , going out and doing something to help them , the people . Or you know , as you say , becoming political and becoming a revolutionary . But the flip side of it is .

In the 60s it was possible to come close to behaving in a natural , humane way , to feeling the emotions . You should feel fury at lots of things Because you could manifest it . And then at other times you can't manifest it without being an outcast . 69 , 70 , 71 , you could be furious at things you would see , and it was a natural , normal human reaction .

In 1990 , the same reaction was psychotic because everybody else was restraining themselves and you weren't restraining yourself .

You know , if you're , if you're out there raging against the whatever and nobody else , they might call you crazy , but there's , there's also , you know , each of us does have to do a balancing act , you know , for our own longevity and wellness , as humans who want to be in resistance for the long term .

I , a long time ago , when I was much younger , I was , I worked at an animal rescue organization and as a young person especially , I was , you know , the one like in the field , like there's , you know this starving dog chained up that somebody left somewhere , go get it . Or like there's the you know horrible things that you see .

And it was very much , I felt , a constant process of reacting to emergencies . And yes , there there is that kind of like . I guess satisfaction you get from engaging with your natural reactions at something very close at hand and saying like , look , I don't accept this , this is horrible and wrong and I'm going to do something about it .

So , in a way , that's good . Too much can also leave lead to burnout , but over the long run it will lead to burnout of the entire movement of , say , animal rights and animal welfare in this case , because if you're just constantly chasing the suffering and putting out fires you're never going to get ahead of the problem .

You know it's symptoms versus causes , but then again I think you know it's a balancing act , because if you're only focused very coldly on you know , your advocacy and your like upstream , and you lose that connection with on the ground , then it can start to feel like cold , you can get disconnected , you might even lose your motivation .

You know getting bogged down and frustrated . You'll either lose your motivation to continue or lose your , your realness , your radicalness and your connection to what's actually happening , to those you're trying to help .

It's I'm not saying this as a preacher , telling everyone how to do it , because I certainly struggle to do , to practice this way every day , but I do think it's a balance . I get what you're saying . We need to .

We need to keep the rage and we need to acknowledge that having a reaction to things that are unjust is , yes , we want to keep that , we should have that and it's not . It's not crazy , it's actually really normal and human . But the trick is in harnessing it .

So we talk all the time about not being a reformist , which is to say not well , I guess it is related a little bit not accepting things , the essence of things as they are , and just frittering around the edges .

And then we talk about a non reformist reform and the question becomes is there such a thing as a non reformist reform due to the actual thing that one seeks , the substance of the thing that you're demanding itself ? Is that what makes a non reformist approach ? Or are reforms just reforms , period ?

And what makes a project to win one non reformist is only due to how one fights for the gain . Was that sort of clear enough ?

Again , what hits home for me is , I guess I'm more no-transcript , having a long-term vision and trajectory in the first place and then trying at each stage , as best as possible , to practice and resist according to that vision . But I don't think that's . You know , there are some reforms that are better than others you know that are more radical .

Well , I think that first there's strategy in that . Is it possible and probable , is it feasible that you could actually win it ? But then on the other side , you have , you know , does it ? Is it key , like ? Is it kind of like on the edge and a great that you won it , but it's not really helping you leverage anything else or lead to more things .

So there are some reforms that I look at , you know , in kind of a visual way , as like in key spots of either weaknesses in the system you're trying to dismantle , or as like cornerstones and building blocks of something you're trying to build , and some are just more important than others objectively , given any situation , but there's .

So I wouldn't say that it , you know , all reforms are just reforms and it only matters about how you fight and your ability to connect them to more reforms and long-term vision .

I do think that , to an extent , some reforms , yes , are more reformist or just less impactful than others , but I do think the majority of the difference lies in , yeah , in how you fight and if you are building a trajectory versus just a one-stop .

But there may be some cases where the actual substance which is you're also saying , I think , the actual substance of the demand , so to speak if you win , it sort of intrinsically pushes you forward . And one of the things that I've thought about on and off over the years for that is a shorter work week .

So , in other words , if you fight for a shorter work week and you win , you've won a reform . It makes life better . So that's true of any sensible reform . But the thing that you won , which is more time off which you can utilize , is sort of in itself conducive to improving your prospects for winning more .

So that's a case where and there's probably some others , but most of the time it's all in how you do it . Sometimes I think maybe it's partly in the thing itself .

We should be fighting for revolution . It's called ultra-leftism . I think it's where you take this right observation we don't solve all the problems until we have a new system and you extrapolate into a ridiculous stance , which is that anybody who fights for anything short of the whole transformation is a reformist enemy of the people or something .

It's a revolution and it arises often . I mean , a variant of that is the election stuff . In other words , you can't pay any attention to any differences among candidates because none of them are for revolution .

But I agree that saying therefore , you should not try and organize for anything short of total revolution all at once which I mean I really don't think most people would really even take seriously , because how would that even happen ? But yeah just to try and offer something positive .

When that does happen , and even when it happens with better intentions than what you're describing like , someone might say well , the electoral system is part of the problem , so why should I care between Biden , Trump or even Cornel West ?

So I think they have a point and instead of just saying , oh , you don't have a point , you're not being realistic , we should say , okay , I see your point , which is , yeah , we agree , the whole electoral system is not really what we're after .

So it helps guide , you know , it helps turn our reform into non reformist organizing , and so hopefully we would be able to bring that person along with us . But yeah , you're right , sometimes not .

And yeah , I think the fringes of any discussion oftentimes do have some kind of point to offer which we should try and take without letting them derail the entire process .

The goal is for it to not be and I think you've probably discussed this on the podcast before , but just so that I say it to start out with it it's not meant to be a rigid blueprint where we're looking for hundreds of thousands of signatories for us to all march and lock step . According to what it says .

The goal , which is stated within the document itself , is that , as best as possible , we'd like this to be a living document which is basically a coordinating tool , a facilitation tool to encourage a culture and a process of collective strategic organizing .

So , to relate it to what we've been talking about today , if you're working in a campaign that relates to the current electoral process going on in the US , the 20 Thesis would be something that your group could utilize and lean on to try and you know if you are a signatory and if you agree in general with the 20 Thesis , you might adopt it as a tool to

help you align your organizing in the much more immediate sense of what do we want to do right now , what's our strategy , and connect that to our long-term vision for the better world that we want .

It could also be used to connect you with other groups who are doing the same to find commonality and build collective power and at the same time , you might find that through your organizing say , you signed on to the 20 Thesis a while ago and now you're in this project and you realize like , oh , we just had this new revelation , based on our experience , that

actually something we feel something crucial is missing from this document . That should be there or something is wrong . And the hope for the 20 Thesis project is that you and your group would then come back to the document and share with other signatories what you found and how you've related and adapted or what new critique you might have .

So it's basically a start of a document that we hope will allow people to come together around shared vision and strategy and then to go out and continue applying it to their struggles over time and facilitate this kind of coming back in , going back out and interweaving with each other . You know just something that is . I feel it's pretty concise .

Now it can definitely be more concise , but something , a concise framework that remains flexible for organizers to be able to just increase their collective power and their sharing and learning from and with other groups .

I still think that there and this comes from a few people raising the issue that there's an important point to make , which may or may not be true , so you can take issue with it if you think it .

You're describing it as a useful tool to employ as you're organizing and you're trying to connect what you're doing to what your long term aims are , and you're trying to learn from , you know , things that others have discovered and embodied in the 20 theses that might help you and your activities in your work around climate or whatever .

It is All true , I think , but I think there's a little bit of another dimension , which is that we have a ridiculous number , looking around the world , of efforts at positive change , of campaigns , projects , institutions , movements , organizations , just all over the place , and many of them have a narrow set of issues .

Some of them are much more broad , many of them are bigger , some are smaller , etc . Etc . Etc . And the question becomes why isn't it one big hole ?

And so one reason you've pointed to a problem with it being a one big hole , which is that it's one big regimented hole and it's an unholy mess because it's so regimented that it no longer is in touch with trying to create a better world . Okay , but there's another reason it doesn't share enough . I mean , this mass of things , of projects , etc . Etc .

Doesn't have enough entwinement , doesn't have enough and doesn't have enough trust , one to the next , and doesn't have enough of a feeling of being part of something bigger .

So there's nothing wrong with having an organization or a project or a movement that's focused on , say , climate , and another one that's focused on , you know , income distribution , and another one that's focused on race and so on .

But there ought to be a way to combine them , not literally , but in terms of the mentality that they all have and their attitude to one another .

And so I think the premise of this thing is that if we did have more shared overarching strategic and visionary ideas , guidelines , that could be more trust between all these , and then they could mutually support one another , so that you're in an organization that's an anti-war organization , but when the global you know , when the climate project proposes something , you

support it . You see yourselves . Their advance is your advance , your advance is their advance . That's what's necessary in order for everybody to be stronger .

And my assumption is or and it is an assumption , I don't know how you prove something like this is that what's missing , for that is this feeling of being part of something larger , and the only thing that can define something larger , I think , is a kind of shared viewpoint , and the viewpoint would be about vision and strategy .

Everybody already shares what's wrong . That's not missing . The people in the global , in the climate movement , know that war is wrong . The people in the anti-war movement know that burning alive is wrong , and so on and so forth . That's all shared . It's the what you're trying to win and , broadly , how you're trying to win it .

That's not shared , and so I think the 20 . Theses are trying to do something about that , not from the 50 or 100 or 200 or 300 signers , but from all who will sign it and will bring more insights .

So it's not necessarily that we all have the same tactics and program , but if we at least agree on a broad shared framework for where we'd like to go and why , that could become a bit of a glue that we really could use .

So part of the 20 Theses project is also to connect with other networks and collectives or even more like manifesto type things that have lots of signatories that are also on this path of trying to establish and communicate and share and interact with what is our positive vision and how , how might we get there .

So , for example , I , just right before we are recording this podcast , came out of a meeting with some folks from the global tapestry of alternatives .

It's a network of people , organizations , media platforms like Z and , you know , various grassroots movements that was started by the coming together of some movements in Mexico and in India years ago and what they're doing is basically trying to build a network of networks to connect a lot of these grassroots struggles all over the world and they're especially led by

and focused on , so far , the global majority , or the global south , as some people say so in in connecting with them . We've been talking about the 20 Theses , because I think we're really on the same path .

The 20 Theses is more of looking at it from like a very zoomed out umbrella vision that is not specific and that could be very widely applicable to many different times and places and struggles , and adapted , and the global tapestry alternatives is a coming together of people on the ground who are living resistance and building radical alternatives day to day in lots

of different ways , even with , you know , certainly with a diversity of politics and ideas and practices .

So what we're hoping to do is to connect not just the 20 Theses with lots of people who can adapt it and use it and hopefully build trust around it , but even to connect with other other projects that are trying to do the same thing , that recognize that we need to link positive vision with radical practice and do it all together , because that's the only way .

That's the same , which is what , which is the long term desire , the long term goal , and it's it's understandings of issues about strategy which , when applied in those different places , yield those different programs , when applied different times , yield those different programs .

So it's the thing that is under the surface or above whatever image you like , which makes them part of the same overall . Another world is possible project .

And the trick is not to and it's very hard to avoid the trick is not to take from your situation not you , but you know take from a particular situation a particular program , a particular set of priorities , all of which are right or good or wonderful in that situation , and say everybody has to do that , that . That's that's the problem , right ?

What we instead have to say is , I think we all share this perspective , the set of Theses that are broad , that are not program and we adapt the program where we are , in our circumstances , and since we know the other is doing that too , we support them .

We're not doing the same thing , we're not using the same tactics , we may not even be making the same demands , but that that other umbrella level set of Theses , unites us , and so we're going to support them . We're going to lend our energies to what they are saying is important . We're going to have real solidarity .

That's what I think it's trying for , and probably others are trying for too . It's hard to put it into words , but if it happened it would mean well , let me go back again to my own past . In the 1960s there was a civil rights movement , there was anti racism , there was the Black Power , etc . Etc .

And then there was anti war , and then there was the women's movement , and each of these things were fine , they were wonderful , they were exemplary . They did not support each other nearly as much as was necessary to do what they all wanted to do , which was win their own agenda and win those other agendas . There's a million different variants of that .

The anti war movement could raise tons of money . The anti racist movement , civil rights movement and the Black Power in particular , couldn't raise that kind of money . If the anti war movement had spread some of that money to the , to the other , the subsequent history might have been quite different and the level of trust would have been infinitely greater .

So somehow it's that , that underlying solidarity based upon , I think , shared vision strategy , but that's a little too simple for what it is . That's being shared really .

There's also this aspect of nuance which is really really important , both in making sure and finding ways to do strategic organizing and to build collective power and to really be serious power blocks that aren't wishy-washy and messing around yet don't stamp out diversity . That that is really key .

And the other nuance that that I think you might be getting at is there is a culture and a and a trust and just new ways of being , like there's this phrase , new education of desires .

That , because we actually all exist in the world that we exist in like your original list of the seven funny things from the beginning of this chat is like yeah , man , look around , we all have to deal with this every day and it does affect our outlook on life .

It affects how we treat each other , affects how we talk to ourself , it affects what we expect in life , and so a big part of strategic organizing that is collective and diverse is going to be an opening up of all these nuances that a lot of times in in political organizing we don't talk about . You know we're not talking about . We don't talk about .

You know we focus on the economy , we focus on institutions that are easier to see , but it's like this kinship and community sphere in interpersonal relations that , no , we don't want to put everything on . You know , individual choice and oh , just be nicer and the world will be a better place .

But we do need to incorporate that and I think that a big part of allowing that , that to flourish among people and to unleash our creativity and our energy and our hope is , yeah , is building trust and knowing how to , how to have shared aims among different practices and even , you know , even just existing in an international context , like doing a lot of stuff

online or reading about a movement .

For me , I'm sitting here in the US and if I'm reading about a movement in South Africa , trying to relate to it in a really meaningful way requires kind of building up that , that that humanists about our movements , and having that trust , so that it's not just , oh yeah , I read that online , but it could never happen here , or what are they doing that ?

You know ? How could they have this interaction between these people ? That seems so wrong to me ? Well , sometimes it's because there's something deeply wrong about it , and sometimes it's it's more cultural and I'm not understanding the context .

So , yeah , I mean , I can go on and on , but I agree that there there's a nuance to this project that is beyond number of signatures and is more about just the process of trust building and sharing and learning that we can have diversity and collectivity at once , Because that's not how we're trained in our daily life .

What matters is to sign and then organize other people to do so , and then get organizations to host and then get A discussion going about this level of solidarity . You know , this level of . Can the housing movement have solidarity with the global climate movement ? And the answer is yes .

If there is the change that you're talking about , the possibilities in terms of winning things are enormous .

Please sign it just for the fact that if you are On the mailing list you will receive invitations to events of other people engaging with it . But beyond that , what is the petition really for ?

It's for Visibility and putting numbers in general of like constituents to then propose to someone in a decision making role hey , look , all these people want you to do x , y , z .

And if you look at the twenty cities , even if we had , you know , eight million signatures and we took it to a president of a country and said , look , all these people want you to make this our life . What is that president supposed to do with that ? This has to be built .

You know , even if , if Cornell West gets elected and millions of Americans sign the twenty thesis and we bring it to his door and say , cornell , look , we want this . You said you would give it . Now make it happen . Okay , maybe that would be amazing , but really what's gonna happen . It still a slow process of building in .

Yes , it will help if we can influence people in power , but really it's gonna be more of a ground up thing . And so , if you want to engage , if you think this project is worthy and you want to engage , it is about engaging and you don't have to figure out a way to do it all at once and make something huge happen .

But it's a process of continually engaging and using it and you're organizing it , sharing it with others , talking about it , maybe writing about it , finding ways to make it applicable to your community .

If you think , oh , I'm involved in a community garden , but no one's going to read this whole thing and take it seriously , well , try and adapt it and find ways that it could relate to your practice . So it's just a slow process of building that could , like you're saying it could snowball . It definitely could , but what's the ?

And the other part is it's too embarrassing For me to go and talk to my friend who is , you know , a humane person , who has all the good positions about gender and about race and about income and so on , so it's a good guy , personal , progressive person .

I'd still be embarrassed to try and , you know , pursue these discussions instead of talking about last night's movie . That's an impediment , I think a serious impediment .

And then the fear of , or the belief that you're going to fail , and I guess what I would say is that , of all the times I can remember in my life , those two things should not be operative now . And they should not be operative now because Phoenix has been over 110 degrees for over 10 days .

I mean , there has been no clearer time at which you simply have no choice , right ? I know it's hard for people to arrive at that point , but it is the objective situation . Now this has to be done , you know we have . If you can't win without a unified , massive movement in which the participants have vision , have strategy or really participants .

They're not being led around by the nose . If you have to have that , then you have to have that and we have to try and make it happen . And who's we ? Everybody who sees it .

So if you read the 20 Theses and you like them , you don't turn away at that point and say well , if you think shared vision and strategy up to a point are necessary to win things and then to win a new world , then you have to pursue it .

There's a few that you can turn to who have a lot of content available , available for free online , and one of them is listen to a speech by Roger Hallam any of them , anything that he's done recently by he's one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion , roger Hallam .

He is really effective in basically in very plain language , saying look , here's the world we're living in and here's how I'm going to motivate you to get up and do something right now .

So I just offer that as like something helpful where if you're ever feeling like unmotivated or you want to try and motivate others I'm not saying you have to force some guy's YouTube video down , all your friends neck , but you know you might take something from what you know , how other people present it or what motivated you , and find ways to motivate others .

The other thing that maybe it's helpful that I picked up on from what you just said that I could offer is this idea that it can be embarrassing or you could be fearful about bringing up things that you think are existentially important around .

Any kind of justice to others who you don't really engage with about these things Is maybe I often find if something feels like it's embarrassing to bring up , it might be because you haven't found a way to present it in a way that it actually relates to your lives .

So you might go to work every day or hang out with your friends all the time and talk about this and that and do these things , and then you have this kind of whole other intellectual or political life that you you know , even if you are active , and you have this local group that you organize with or you know , you just read stuff online and there's this

disconnect between your , your two lives or the you know the two realms . Very often it happens with people's families . You know they have stuff that's really important to them and then they get back together with their family and they don't even want to bring up anything , and that can be for a lot of reasons .

But if , if , a big reason is that it seems embarrassing or you feel fearful , then what I find really effective is that's recognized that as a sign that you know all these things are important and you need to find a way to relate it to why it's important to you and the person you're talking to here and now .

So you might not be able to do everything at once and explain to them how you feel about how the world works in every single way , but if you just start with something that they relate to and they can have a reaction to , then that's that's how it works .

So , for for trying to make these discussions you know helpful for people and applicable , I think that's really important in organizing is if , if you feel embarrassment , it's a sign that you just haven't found a way to make it what you're saying in touch with the person you're interacting with .

What you did instead was to say it's my problem , right , it's my inability to communicate in the way that that reaches them . That , I think , is another big divide , and you know . I am saying that I am capacity to decide that it doesn't doesn't accomplish anything , to blame it on the target audience . Right , that gets you nowhere .

You have to find a way that it's that you can do better and people don't see that they they reflexively blame it on the other .

Yes , but I'm saying it more in that , like there's a lot of people who would love to , to organize their workmates or , you know , their , their sports friends or whatever , but they feel embarrassed , and it's not that they're blaming their friends , they just don't know . Oh , how do I even start this conversation ?

How do I connect this part of my life that's so important to the people I spend most of my day with . So I'm saying it in a way , you know , not to say , oh , you just need to get better at communicating , but to highlight that it's not because your thoughts and your positive vision for the world is embarrassing .

If you're feeling embarrassed , the embarrassing thing is you just haven't found a way yet to connect it to the here and now of the people that you're communicating to . So I just wanted to clarify it's not . It's not for some people . Yeah , it's like easier to blame that . Oh , other people are too dumb to understand my lofty ideas and vision .

Of course , don't do that . But it's also not that like you need to beat yourself up because you feel awkward discussing politics or politicizing any part of your life that you want to . It's just that that that means not that you don't , you're not good enough to talk about it or you don't understand it well enough .

It just means you have to find a way , maybe to simplify it and make it into bite sized chunks for yourself , so that you can then relate the simplest thing , like going to the grocery store or clocking in and out at work , to a little something more systemic that you feel is important .

We have to start to succeed it's and so whatever the obstacles are , whatever you deem them to be , you have to tackle them . I find it incomprehensible each day that that it's not incomprehensible .

I do understand it , but it is very hard to to just see that so many people , which is basically almost everybody , is going about their lives the way they did five years ago or 10 years ago , even though they've had it blasted into their face that they're on a doomsday path . I mean , I can see people .

I can see people who I know turning themselves off , understandably , to acknowledging what's going on because they feel like they can't succeed against it and so there's no point wallowing in it .

It's like you drive down the highway and if there's an earthquake someplace on the planet and some people will read about it endlessly and other people will totally avoid it , and we treat global climate change or war like we treat the earthquake , and it's not the same .

And certainly if you're listening to Revolution Z , you're thinking about this stuff . So for me , something that's helpful is to frame it as okay for climate change , for global inequality , even for nuclear war , like there's so many things that need our pressing attention , and we know we can't individually fix everything all at once .

It's going to be a process , so we know that , but sometimes that doesn't really make you feel any better .

But to me , for people who might feel burned out or like they just need to turn off or throw their hands up , that it doesn't even matter what they do anymore because they should just try and enjoy life as best they can while they can Okay , maybe , but to me it's .

I look at it as look especially in the context of climate change but even without that factor , life is gonna go along and if we have an idea of where it might be going and we might need to plan for it or make changes to respond to it .

Like in climate change , we can try and build alternatives and resist and do the work and do the organizing and build community so that we're engaging , as if we have hope that we can change the world . And that in itself gives me hope , like doing that work strengthens my hope .

And the other option is well , okay , do nothing , and eventually some big fire or heat wave or tsunami or something is gonna happen . And even if I do my little organizing every day now , that might not make a difference when the tsunami comes . So why should I do anything ?

And I just look at it as look , that's kind of how life works , no matter what , no matter what is happening , whether there's climate change or not , you should at least for me , I feel I should live each day trying to build community and build the future that I would like to live in , and maybe it will happen and slowly , your life can actually improve in

the here and now based on that work . And if and when , inevitably , either something that is predicted , like all the climate crises , or something that's not predicted , like , say , a big hurricane comes through or an earthquake , there can be all kind of natural disasters that come through .

You're still in a better position , having done that work and having that community , and then you would have been if you had done nothing at all . So it can still be a selfish . Well , I'm just gonna make my life the best I can and not worry about changing the world .

I'm not saying take the pressure off and forget about changing the world , because that actually keeping that in mind is gonna make you more effective . It can inspire hope .

But doing that work , even if it feels very small and very local I mean , I've experienced this I've lived through major hurricanes and my experience in the aftermath which can be scarier than the event itself , when all infrastructure and systems are gone , which a lot of us can expect to experience in our lifetimes based on the science , if you have some kind of

community , or at least you've developed yourself into a communally minded person who can organize and who can react in ways that seek something better and have that building mentality , that will serve you very , very well .

Because I know my experience in the aftermath of natural disasters compared to other people that I know who have never engaged communally at all , my experience was much , much better and I was less afraid I had more options and I immediately jumped into . Okay , now what do I do of this situation ?

And others who sat there holding their knees and shaking just had meltdowns , and I'm not saying it's because they're weak , I'm saying it's because they were not practiced in the art of living communally or communally minded .

The reaction to that was it sounds good , noam , but I don't think that that's enough . I don't think that that argument is going to win the day with most people to get heads out of the ground and people confronting reality and trying to make things better .

I think we need to have some notion that better is possible and some notion of how you can actually win .

If we try , we have some hope of averting disaster , and what ?

Regardless of if we win or lose , odds are it's gonna be something in the middle and it will help you , it will prepare you , and the other thing is that the act of resistance and building in itself makes your life today better , regardless of what happens tomorrow , and it gives you hope .

So I think that practice is what we need to be more upfront about people Like we're afraid .

Where are you normally afraid of being like , oh , you know , it's the , we don't wanna drag people into it and you have to do this and you have to do this because they're like okay , the positive vision sounds nice , but I just think we need to lead with the practice a little more , the day to day .

And because the proof is in the pudding , it actually improves your life now and people can see that and regardless of how much hope they have for your vision of the future , they will probably wanna improve their life now .

It would be far more compelling if it looked like to people who view the left . The left was indeed a caring , humane place where your well-being is improved and your confidence goes up and you have a greater .

Regrettably , I don't think it looks that way right now , probably because it isn't that way right now , and so that's just points to another thing that we have to try and fix .

You can objectively see how your life can be improved now by organizing somehow where you're at with other people for collective change . So take again your original list from the beginning in , my reaction was okay , if all these things are true and we can mostly agree that we don't like that , it's true , so we need to ask why .

And from there is what I'm talking about , you know trying to change your life together with the people around you from that point and okay , maybe that's a leftist point , but you don't have to join the left diverse and inundate yourself with all our drama to do that- Well , that's true .

They're improving their lives , they're actually feeling better and they're helping other people to feel better , but they're not part of a organized or even sort of amorphous effort to make the world better . And you know , who do you identify more with ? A sectarian , obnoxious leftist or a person working in a soup kitchen ?

Who do you think is closer to being an exemplary force for real , positive social change ? I actually think the person working in the soup kitchen is probably closer to being a potentially exemplary human being trying to make the world a better place than a whole lot of people on the left . That's been sad for me for 50 years .

I think it's more likely and easier to radicalize the person in the soup kitchen , to continue pushing more and doing more and asking more questions , than it is to take your sectarian leftist who's not really engaged otherwise on the ground and to make them an effective member of some kind of you know community experience in their real life .

And again , I don't wanna generalize that there's this one verse , the other , but I'm just saying that the left needs to take back that on the ground and inclusive and inclusive way that we can do the actual struggles in all our diverse contexts and ways . And this brings it back to the 20 Theses .

If what we meant by the left was something like what the 20 Theses is trying to do not exactly what's written in it and what it proposes , but the idea that it's trying to connect positive vision and strategy to diverse movements , to bring them together in a power block then yeah , to me that's what the left needs to lean on , and very often in both , in

order to inspire people and to actually do the work . Yeah , we need to get a little bit more back on the ground and have this mind of inclusivity rather than sectarianism .

So , yeah , I hope it was useful and I hope people will continue to engage with the 20 Theses over many years to come and other projects like it , because I also agree with you , it's urgent and we need to come together . Everything depends on it .