Care remains my dedication, if no longer my vocation. Weighing how to best apply my care capabilities is part of the dynamic context now, learning how to more clearly see my own needs in the equation.

Perhaps it’s that basis in and focus on care which informs my “first, do no harm” mentality. The context of hospice care being applied to the collapse of society is something that I’ve found intriguing. While waiting for the book, “Hospicing Modernity”, to arrive I’ve made numerous reflections towards this idea. One thing that has majorly resonated from within my own understanding is the notion of palliative care being inherently non-violent.

Disease treatment might involve all manner of violent interventions in the fighting of the disease and the prolongation of life; in hospice care these interventions would be avoided, exchanged for comfort care and acceptance of the oncoming inevitability of death.

The other side of the equation of Hospicing Modernity, as I understand it, is the notion of being both death-doulas and midwifing the new society being born simultaneously. This is tremendously important work. Currently we are witnessing the obliteration of the social safety net with no concept or context for what will replace it. As far as the powers that be are concerned, the resulting vacuum of care is completely acceptable. This is a truly disheartening vision of our society, but it highlights how tentative and fragile these guarantees of security and equity have always been.

A vision of resilience must be rooted in care. But when care is rooted in social systems, it is never guaranteed. Eventually a force of negation will come along and insist it is not society’s job to care. But can a society that doesn’t care about striving toward greater equity survive the vacuum it creates?

Without the context of infinite renewal, our current system finds itself rooted in commodification and waste. Your very life force becomes the ultimate commodity, and the waste such commodification makes of your life is considered inevitable.

Our society maximizes the wastage of the individual in the name of maximizing the profit of the corporate entity. The absurdity of a system which awards such an entity human rights in aid of its suppression of actual human potential is truly the sickest of ironies. Yet… is the intention to exploit as many individuals as possible in the name of a financially incentivized society truly ironic if it’s by design? Is class war ironic in a “classless society”?

 

Subjection to the status quo has been acceptable for a long time now, at least for many people in our society. But the status quo seems to be shifting more and more dramatically, devouring what was once a comfortable middle class, while also devouring the social safety net which did much to address the inherent inequities of our society. While the ultimate success of those programs in redressing inequity is debatable, what’s undeniable is that many will suffer without them.

Somehow a line has been drawn in our political sphere and it’s the meager social safety net of America’s profit-driven republic that has been repeatedly held ransom. What any European society would consider austerity measures so extreme they’d be rioting in the streets is what America weakly clings to as the status-quo.

Defenders of the faith and disenfranchised alike prepare armed resistance. Folk heroes are born out of a murderous response to a healthcare system rooted in economic brutality. In lieu of a healthy flow of interconnection, we all bleed out together in the ceaseless overflowing of violence. Meanwhile hatred is legislated and the very spirit of governance not only inspires hate crimes, but is one itself.

 

“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light.” – James Baldwin

Like a light that is lost in the darkness, hope can become lost in isolation. With no one to see it and nothing to illuminate or be reflected by, the light of hope finally seems to be swallowed by the darkness, lost in the formless void.

We must find this lost light of hope before it is irretrievable, and we must find our greatest path of reflection in doing so. As light emerges from the widening cracks, we mustn’t let it emerge into a hopeless void. We must continuously reflect upon hope, so that when a new possibility, a new society, begins to emerge, it will immediately see itself in that reflection.

The challenge of reflecting hope in times of deep despair is the struggle that will ultimately define the emergence of a better future. If we are indeed approaching some sort of singularity point, as many post-modern thinkers hypothesize, the main thing to recognize about any such point is that it is naturally interdependent. It is not a single train of thought that has proven its ultimate dominance over all other lines; it is rather the convergence point of *all* lines of illuminated thought, woven together in unified expression.

In witnessing the death of the old world, we must be present to the birth of this shared vision. We must continuously reflect upon hope, show up where joy resides, finding realms of reflection to see that light within ourselves and each other. We must shine that light upon justice, upon resilience, and most of all upon love. We must strive to see not a blinding light of egotistic dominance, but a clear light of collective empowerment, and we must shine.

 

His disciples said to <Jesus>, “Show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it.” He said to them, “Whoever has ears, let him hear. There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness.” – The Gospel of Thomas

Perhaps the strange paradox of inner light is that when it shines, it reflects the light of others, and yet only by providing that reflection can it ever truly shine. That which amplifies the light beamed outward also reflects the light which reaches it from outside. But that prismatic reflection is not possible without the light that shines out from within. An inner light unshared fails to reflect the light it encounters. The person of light that does not shine reflectively shines out blindingly, obscuring the light of others rather than amplifying it.

A new society will not emerge in opposition to the cracks of the old. Rather, I am convinced it will come through them. “There’s a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in”, Leonard Cohen once sang, and it still rings true. A new society must emerge as a light within the divide, rather than a deepening of the darkness of that divide.

 

Cultural resilience must be seen as the base of empowerment for any movement of resistance. A culture rooted in both healthy, full-spectrum individuation, and interconnected cooperation is essential. We must learn to see ourselves and each other much more clearly. The masks of divisive ideology must somehow be shed in the search for common ground. Masks close us off from truly open expression. They serve a defensive purpose, but perhaps in such polarized times they provide less protection and more provocation. But also, perhaps, the most provocative posture is the most defenseless one. Vulnerability rooted in joyful expression is one of the most powerful revolutionary forces there is.

I saw a travel show about Estonia recently that featured the country’s first post-communist prime minister explaining how their acts of cultural resistance led to their independence. “The Singing Revolution”, it was called. In 1988 over 300,000 citizens, almost a quarter of the entire country, took part in a protest where they demanded independence from the USSR, with their primary resistance being the singing of Estonian folk song that the Soviet authorities had banned after they gained control of the country at the end of WWII.

How could the authorities violently suppress such a demonstration without becoming the overt villains? How can you run a tank through a sea of people joyfully singing, reveling in the unbroken strength of their culture, without revealing the vacant violence at the cultural heart of empire?

The next year Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians would join hands and sing in a 370 mile chain that spanned the length of their three countries. In 1991, when the USSR was in collapse, the three countries declared their independence, with protestors forming human chains around the radio and television towers, facing down the tanks of the falling empire with their voices raised in song, determined to reclaim the media for the people and keep it out of empire’s hands.

 

Jesus said “That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves.” – The Gospel of Thomas

The joyful exchange of vital culture encourages self-expression and honors living tradition as the ultimate contribution to the beloved community. It is the revolution which empire dreads. For empire, society is meant to be an expression of its dominance, a reflection of its eminence. For community, society is meant to be a reflection of its vibrant essence in dynamic cultural exchange.

In a society dominated by empire, we see the realm of acceptable expression in the culture rapidly contracting, like a brain shrinking into a dementia of duality, too impaired to conceive of even a simple spectrum of expression in social roles, gender representation, language, art, and all other aspects of culture. The idea that a beautiful culture is infinitely complicated and ultimately ungovernable by force in its most dynamic expression is irreconcilable to empire’s aims.

Any part of culture which survives the colonizing attempts of empire holds a vital spark of resistance. Any resistance that wants to achieve sustainable results must root itself in decolonizing and decolonized cultures. These cultures are found everywhere one looks, especially within levels of displacement within society. Every time I witness a vital resistance movement, it is always vibrantly multi-cultural.

 

“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.” – Dan Savage

Every time I see resistance movements contract, it is when vibrant voices are drowned out by voices of domination and restrictive orthodoxy, “radical” elements who ultimately embody empire’s violence in their counter-revolutionary approach to resistance. Emotional abuse is dismissed as “tone arguments” by abusive individuals, while circles of protection are built around them. It is the collapse of dynamic anarchy’s fluid approach to leadership into the deference to the loudest, most confrontational voice, the ultimate failure of applying the values supposedly being fought for. It’s the fight without the dance. When a movement forgets how to dance in solidarity, the only thing it is left embodying is the fight, and that fight inevitably turns inward upon the movement itself.

“A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.” -Emma Goldman

La Resistencia represents the fight for migrant rights as a vital expression of culture. At their presentation on the ICE detention center in Tacoma, they began with a Native American musical performance, served up delicious nourishing food, and sang and danced like the future of humanity depended on it. Maybe it does. If a context of resistance is rooted in what we strive for, perhaps as cooperative allies we can all begin to understand what it means to be free.