01.05 | the wisdom of grace lee boggs
To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/spiritual leap and become more human human beings. In order to change/transform the world, they must change/transform themselves.
- Grace Lee Boggs
✉️ letter #22
This year, I challenged myself to read (like actually read, not audiobook - I know this is contentious but I consider them two completely different experiences) 24 books.
I just finished Book 24 a couple days ago, which I rated "barely okay," and felt kind of down about how long it's been since I got to dive into something I considered inspirational. And then I looked over my 2021 Read List and realized, oh dummy, I had been inspired earlier this year, I just have the emotional memory of a goldfish.
Because I had read one of the most inspiring books of my life this year: Grace Lee Bogg's Living For Change, which helped me put words to a lot of the conflicting feelings I was having towards the weird grandstanding "wokeness" and Marxism memeing of the progressive movement in America, and towards volunteering in general.
I took a copious amount of notes and screengrabs from it, and gushed about it to anyone who would listen. This passage, in which she describes the philosophy she, her husband Jimmy Boggs, and her friends reached after decades of activism in multitudes of groups especially spoke to me:
In The American Revolution Jimmy had challenged the validity of Marx’s scenario for a highly developed country like the United States. In order to make an American revolution, he insisted, all Americans, including workers and blacks or the most victimized, will have to make political and moral choices...
Being a victim of oppression in the United States, he insisted, is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother’s womb is not enough to make you human.
People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor.
Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values.
Precisely because the United States is so advanced technologically, precisely because it has developed an economic apparatus so productive that not only our needs but our wants can be satisfied, we cannot make a revolution without developing our human capacity to distinguish between needs and wants and to make responsible choices.
Americans will not “regain their membership in the human race until they recognize that their greatest need is no longer to make material goods but to make politics,” he used to say...
Recognizing the damage that a highly developed capitalist system, pouring out goods from its assembly lines, has done to the humanity of all of us, victims as well as villains, revolutionists have a responsibility to create strategies to transform ourselves as well as the victims of oppression into human beings who are more advanced in the qualities that distinguish human beings: creativity, consciousness, self-consciousness, and a sense of political and social responsibility.
This is the key to the distinction between rebellion and revolution.
Rebellion is a stage in the development of revolution but it is not revolution. It is an important stage because it represents the standing up of the oppressed.
Rebellions break the threads that have been holding the system together and throw into question its legitimacy and the supposed permanence of existing institutions.
A rebellion disrupts the society but it does not provide what is necessary to make a revolution and establish a new social order.
To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/spiritual leap and become more human human beings. In order to change/transform the world, they must change/transform themselves.
In that part alone, she addresses so many things I was finding hard to untangle amongst the noise of armchair activists, twitter feuds, and evocative but ultimately kinda dispiriting meme making.
And it helped me clarify why I'm even bothering with this newsletter. This is my space to help nurture and work through the kinks of my own revolutionary spirit - so that I can develop the fortitude to push throough distractions, the humility to learn from others, and the energy to keep building a road towards a better future for everyone.
You can read the entire book for free online here (I've linked to the part I quoted).
Have any books inspired any you this year?
🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel
- Peter Hessler has one of the best recent reads for understanding the psychology of China's current crop of working adults, through the stories of students he worked with back in the 1990s. "The overwhelming majority of Fuling students, like most Chinese, had grown up on farms: in 1974, the year that North and many of his classmates were born, China’s population was eighty-three per cent rural. But by the mid-nineteen-nineties that percentage was falling fast... The moment my students entered college, they were transformed, legally speaking, into city people."
- Speaking of understanding the psychology of people, here's a hopeful article in Grist about what we mean when we say "rural Americans," and how we talk to them about the environment: "In my experience, there’s only one characteristic that essentially all rural people share: We hate being told what to do, whether by a neighbor who doesn’t like our political yard signs or a state wildlife official charged with enforcing new hunting regulations. When it comes to addressing climate change, this reflexive independence can pose a stubborn obstacle, but it also holds opportunity — renewable energy, for instance, can appeal to those who prize autonomy. Turning opportunity into progress, though, requires a willingness to see rural people clearly."
- Absolutely fascinating (to me at least) is China's ongoing regulation in spaces that America can barely control - like recommendation algorithms. The regulations China's internet authority has now put into place include specific language barring the "generation of fake news," anything that would cause addiction in minors, and user experiences that the elderly can't participate in. More info in this Twitter thread by Kendra Schaefer of Trivium.
- For some good people inspo - I present to you the winners of this year's UNEP Champions of the Earth award: The Sea Women of Melanesia. "The Sea Women were selected because they train local women to monitor some of the world’s most vulnerable coral reefs for signs of coral bleaching and its wider impacts. More than 40 women in wetsuits and fins now work in the Coral Triangle waters of Melanesia and share their skills with other women who want to help protect marine life."
- And finally, book recommendations! I subscribe to writer Ann Friedman's weekly newsletter and she's put out a book list of her own audiences' "books you couldn't stop thinking about." Definitely some on that list that was already in my "To Read" list, but even more to add. By the way, can I just say how excited I am to have access to actual physical bookstores (and libraries!!!) again???
🎵 song of my week
When I was in Osaka, I remember complaining to whatever random stranger I'd managed to convince to see shows with me that it felt like all these "little indie bands" I saw were just copying the latest in popular anime opening songs.
Kaho Nakamura is not that. Her music is haunting and soulful and folksy in a way that still feels emotionally complicated.
They do have an album version of Sono Inochi ("This Life") on Youtube, but I really liked this live show that combines it with another great song of hers, 忘れっぽい天使 (wasurrepoi tenshi "Forgetful Angels").
✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun
I blame last week's jet lag for making me completely forget this by the time writing the newsletter came around: on the plane ride over, I watched one of the most gorgeous movies I've ever seen - The Green Knight.
It was moody, fascinating, filled with strange turns and unmodern lengths of expositionary monologue. It basically gave me the same feeling as actually reading one of these old myths, where throughout its run time I was challenged to fit my attention span to it, but when it ended I actually felt like I had known true magic.
I bet it would be even better to watch on a giant screen.
While this is the first A24 movie I've watched, apparently the studio is known for sumptuous visual feasts. I'm looking forward to checking out two more movies they're releasing (or have just released) this year that also look both intriguing and beautiful: The Tragedy of Macbeth (starring Denzel Washington & Frances McDormand) and Everything Everywhere All At Once (starring Michelle Yeoh).
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