You’re a prisoner, held in a dark cave. Your hands are tied behind you and you can only look straight ahead at the cave wall. Your captors keep you occupied by putting objects on it. To pass the time you and your fellow prisoners play games. Who can be the first to shout out the name of the object? Who can correctly guess which object will appear next?

You feel pride when you’re right—because being right about the objects is the only thing of value you have.

One day a fellow prisoner escapes their chains, and looking around the cave, realizes that what you’ve all thought were real objects on the wall were only shadows cast by a fire that’s burning behind you. The escaped prisoner manages to find a ladder, climbs out of the cave, and rushes into the blinding sunlight. As their eyes adjust to the brightness, they realize that the cave isn’t reality at all; it is only a dungeon for the mind.

They decide to go back into the cave to rescue you and your fellow prisoners by telling you the truth about the world as it actually is. But when they try to explain about the shadows and the sunlight and the colorful world outside, you and your fellow prisoners refuse to believe them. When the former prisoner urges you all to come to terms with your delusions and free yourself, you band together and kill them. Rather than follow your liberator out of the cave, you collectively turn your attention back to the shadows.

This story is, of course, Plato’s “allegory of the cave” from his book The Republic, written in the second half of the 4th century B.C.E. But it’s also us, today. Our 21st-century cave is our modern media system, where truth is a spectacle controlled by propaganda. Some of us are prisoners, some of us are creating shadows, and some of us are escapees. All of us are vulnerable to manipulation.

In Plato’s allegory we’re supposed to conclude that the deluded prisoners are both victims and villains and that the escaped prisoner is a tragic hero, motivated only by pure knowledge of the truth. But it’s equally plausible to draw different conclusions about the cave and its prisoners.

What if the escaped prisoner didn’t have noble goals? What if they only claimed they’d escaped the cave and can now reveal the “real” truth—but are instead just selling a dangerous, fraudulent fiction? What if, for example, conspiracy clowns, manipulators, or demagogues (or conspiracy clown manipulator demagogues) tell us they’re the hero freed from the cave’s shadows? If you’re imprisoned in the cave, is it better to believe the “truth” of the shadows or the “truth” of the escapee?

How could you tell the difference? The uncomfortable truth is that you can’t. That’s why we’re all equally vulnerable. We ought to beware of the shadows on the wall, but also, we ought to beware of anyone who claims that the shadows are shadows.

Most Americans cannot have direct, first-hand experience with political events, either in our state capitals or in our nation’s capital. If we want to know anything at all about the decisions that affect us, we have to trust some source of news or another. Those sources “cultivate” political reality for us. None of us really know if we’re looking at shadows or if we’re blinded by the sun. We only know what we think we know through the media we consume.

There used to be a consensus around this political reality because there was a common news agenda set via mainstream media organizations. Like the prisoners looking at the cave wall, most of us agreed on a basic set of facts, and we mostly trusted the government and accepted its policies. That consensus was achieved via the “manufacture of consent” model of propaganda, where political and business elites used media to shape our opinions so that we’d passively accept elite decisions.

When we think of propaganda, it’s usually that top-down “manufacture of consent” model. Examples of this model could be 20th-century war films, posters, and leaflets created by the government and disseminated to the masses; patriotic symbols and slogans, and monuments to political leaders; or messaging foreign governments use against their citizens (in schools, in the news), and more recently, against the U.S. and its elections.

But over the last two decades, the rise of the right-wing media ecosystem and participatory media has enabled a new form of propaganda in our public sphere. Called the “manufacture of dissent” model of propaganda, it uses communication as a weapon to attack established institutions, norms, and the government itself. Its major premise is that politics is war and the enemy cheats. Those who produce dissent propaganda circulate endless conspiracy theories, accusations of hypocrisy, ad hominem attacks, and ad baculum threats. It’s the politics of creating fear and turning people into hate-objects.

This “manufacture of dissent” model of propaganda has challenged consensus media’s ability to control our political reality. It screams that the old propaganda is “propaganda,” while claiming that its own twisted messaging is the truth. All of this has led to a historic crisis of distrust in our government institutions, with an entire political agenda built around dismantling government power.

But whether propaganda is manufacturing our consent or our dissent, both are a kind of force imprisoning our minds—and both are fundamentally anti-democratic.

Propaganda, after all, is communication as force; it’s designed for warfare. It uses strategies like fear appeals, disinformation, and conspiracy theories to deny our ability to consent. It erases complexity and nuance, and it encourages groupthink and partisan discord. It asks us to think too much like others on our side while preventing us from thinking with others on their side.

The powerful point to the things that divide us rather than the things we agree on and use those differences as a wedge. Or, even when we can agree on the problems, the way that the powerful frame them prevents us from agreeing on the solutions. We don’t have a common reality that can help us mediate those differences.

In The Republic, Socrates, the narrator, solves this problem by advising the escaped prisoner not to return to the cave at all. The cave-dwellers, who only perceive the world through their senses, would not be able to absorb the bright light of truth, and the newly enlightened former prisoner would look foolish, Socrates thought. Worse, the escaped prisoner would harm themselves by trying to commune with the deluded—after all, they no longer agreed about reality, how could they find common ground?

Plato thought that the enlightened ought to rule over the cave dwellers as philosopher kings, but Plato’s solution won’t work for us in the 21st-century (and it didn’t work for Plato back then either).

There isn’t an obvious solution, except for people to agree to communicate for the democratic way of life. That means using persuasion instead of propaganda.

Persuasion is a dialogic meeting of minds in which one person asks another person to think like they do, to value the same values, to remember or forget history in the same way. It doesn’t force. It affirms human dignity by inviting. A person who seeks to persuade gives good reasons and formulates arguments in the best way they know how, always affirming that the recipient of the persuasive message has a mind, values, and experiences of their own and may not change their mind.

Unlike the fast, exciting, and entertaining work of propaganda, persuasion is slow, difficult, and unsexy. It doesn’t make good TV or internet content. But until we’re willing to persuade, and are open to being persuaded, we’ll stay in our 21st-century cave, which provides us with a never-ending propaganda spectacle to imprison our minds.

In today’s era of ubiquitous propaganda, the shadows aren’t real, but the sun blinds. We want to know the truth, but it’s hard to know who to trust to tell us the truth. Most of us throw up our hands and give up—avoiding political news altogether—but some of us dig into one version of the truth or the other, motivated by the status and prestige we get as rewards for being right.

There are those of us in the cave smug in the fact that what we believe—what we’re motivated to believe—is actually true. Simultaneously there are those of us standing outside of the cave looking down at the cave dwellers smug in the fact that what we believe—what we’re motivated to believe—is actually true.

One or both of us are wrong, and it’s tearing our nation apart.

The post What Is 21st-Century Truth? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I’ve felt the power of reconciliation wash over me. I felt it at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery and at the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. I felt it when a family of Black descendants approached me at a book talk, with tears in their eyes, to hug and thank me for telling their family’s story in my book Hattiesburg. It is a feeling that inspires wholeness, human connectedness, historical justice, and internal peace.

And so I was eager—and tremendously honored—when Zócalo Public Square asked me to moderate the events in their new editorial and public programs series, “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?” I knew that I would have to harness that powerful feeling in this work. Funded with a grant provided by the Mellon Foundation, these conversations spanned two years and three cities—Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles, California. At each site, I moderated thematic discussions rooted in exploring how we might best confront the most difficult and enduring aspects of the American past.

There is no single rubric for facing challenging histories. But the writers and thinkers involved in this project all have something in common: a sense of forward-looking hope. Courageously and ambitiously, they write and think for people and generations beyond themselves.

I have learned a great deal over these past two years. Some of my early feelings toward reconciliation have grown into more concrete ideas. This series taught me three primary lessons about how societies should remember their sins. They have to do with the nature of memory, scalable action, and the question of who should be invited to participate.

—

The first lesson has to do with the importance of storytelling in shaping our collective memory. People tell stories through many modes—history, fiction, art, monuments, and artifacts. Most importantly, storytelling is available to everyone, which is why it’s the oldest tradition in human civilization and a bedrock of democracy. Stories give lifeblood to our dreams, connecting us with other people from the past and allowing us to imagine and believe. During the fourth panel discussion, “How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future?,” Indigenous environmental activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez observed that artists who tell stories “generate the imagination for the rest of the population to begin to see the possibilities of a different world.” This imaginative space, then, can be a form of resistance, an accessible place where even the most downtrodden and forgotten among us can dare to dream. And that is precisely why so many people want to control whose stories get told.

A problem with our past, and part of the reason so many of our nation’s historical sins remain unresolved, is that not everyone has had a chance for their stories to be told. Some have been intentionally excluded, either by law or custom. There are those among us whose ancestors were never supposed to be part of history. But more than ever, new storytellers are folding the tales of marginalized citizens into an ever-expanding American narrative.

Stories of miners engaged in armed resistance help give the descendants of those miners a sense of belonging, and establish a long lineage of labor action in this country. And the stories of lynching victims can exonerate century-old wrongful and racist convictions and foster a sense of compassion for Black defendants in today’s criminal justice system. Stories also challenge us with tales from the past of people who resisted evil and inspire us to do the same. And fiction, the writer Adria Bernardi told us, can provide a space to “dwell with complex moral investigation.”

At their best, stories both welcome and inspire, inviting us into a space of common humanity, helping us to remember and feel. We still do not live in a society that openly welcomes all stories, but we do live in a moment with incredible technologies that make it possible for everyone’s stories to be told, which gives us the groundwork for an infinite ability to heal.

—

The second lesson is that repair must be local if it is to be urgent and open. National and state-level conversations are important, but repair needs to be driven by local people to be possible and productive. Each community has its own unique needs and challenges.

As panelist Robin Rue Simmons showed us in Memphis during “Why Isn’t Remembering Enough to Repair?,” repair is leading an initiative in Evanston, Illinois, to become the first municipality to approve a formal process of reparations. The people of Evanston did not wait for a national movement. Instead, they moved on their own. They began delivering housing stipends to Black families who have been historically disadvantaged in housing markets, seeking to repair a racial wealth gap set in motion long before our time. Simmons’s organization, FirstRepair, is a nonprofit created to help inform other communities interested in exploring the idea of reparations.

No matter the form it takes, productive repair must include action. Teaching and remembering alone have not been able to solve the problems borne from the sins of our past. Repair requires vulnerability and the shedding of traditional social hierarchies. Wherever one seeks repair, listen to the descendants of the people who have been wronged, and think deeply and hard about what you might say to their bygone ancestors. Their past deserves our attention, and the future desperately needs immediate action.

—

The final and most difficult lesson I learned has origins in our first panel, “What Is Our Responsibility for Our Government’s Wars?” Held in July of 2022, this program convened an incredible group—Lt. Gen. (ret.) Robert Schmidle, Air Force veteran and social worker Noël Lipana, and the foreign war correspondent Farnaz Fassihi. It took me over a year—and the experience of moderating all the other panels—to realize the most important lesson from this conversation: the concept of “moral injury.”

Broadly speaking, moral injury is the psychological trauma that comes when a person realizes that a cause or nation they supported was immoral, and that they contributed to that immorality by way of their participation. It’s a term commonly used in veterans’ circles, especially among soldiers who fought in Vietnam and America’s recent wars in the Middle East. As the psychologist Jack Saul wrote, “Moral injury has been described as a ‘wound to the soul.’” It is emotionally crushing to come to the realization that one has committed or condoned violence on behalf of a side that is not just.

In every panel since the first, I have asked our speakers to comment on those who resist the idea of grappling with the sins of our society. Few tried to answer that question, as it’s difficult for those of us engaged in this work to imagine offering a place for people who seemingly want to shut down open dialogue. The people banning books and blocking history lessons, we so often think, are the enemies of progress.

In many cases this may be true. But it is also true that exposure to the sins of America’s past can lead to a form of moral injury among some of our fellow citizens, which makes it psychologically traumatic for them to process new lessons that reveal the dark sins in the American past. Hundreds of millions of Americans have been told since birth that the United States is a moral nation—the most ethical in the world—and that our shared history has been one marked by the advancement of human rights and freedom. During the fourth panel, journalist Krista Tippett said that America has been seen as the country of innocence, but its sins have been left to fester, unresolved and ignored. Some are even celebrated. Slavery, segregation, and war have been described as blemishes, or even revered in twisted ways that celebrate those who have killed and enslaved. These deep, dark American sins, then, must be pronounced and discussed with great care, especially for those they disabuse.

If we are serious about creating a more usable past for a better future, then we must take seriously the collective psychological trauma of citizens who learn new and disturbing things about America’s past. People cannot merely be ambushed by waves of negative histories that fundamentally alter their view of America. They—like the veterans who have experienced moral injury in war—need to be considered and cared for. As Saul writes, our citizens need an “emotional toolbox,” one stacked with the practices of “convening with care and purpose; listening with compassion; grounding, reflecting, and responding; and integrating a view or action and moving forward.”

And so, the final lesson is that there needs to be greater care for the psychology of those who face having their worlds shattered by new information about—and a persistent confrontation with—America’s complicated past. Care is needed even for those who fight societal efforts at reconciliation and repair. In fact, those are the people who might need it the most.

In Mississippi, Patrick Weems of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center told our audience a story of a white man who came out to protest the erection of a historical marker to Emmett Till. Faced with a tense and difficult circumstance, Weems made a gesture of care for the man by listening to his perspective—to “dignify him with space,” Weems explained—that allowed for a more productive conversation. A breakthrough came when the man realized that his own child today was the same age that Emmett Till had been when he was murdered. Moved, the man became involved with the unveiling of the marker.

“I believe in humanity,” Weems concluded.

So do I. It is for that reason that I believe that any effort to remember our society’s sins must operate with a hope that is generous enough to welcome even those who resist the difficult processes of healing.

It is a great American tradition to refuse to confront our society’s sins. But to ignore the opportunity for repair is to simply pass the onus onto the next generation. As a historian, I have always thought about the past. Now, like the writers and thinkers in this project, I think ever more steadfastly about the future. About the need to tell better stories in order to remember, and remember better, and to act on the basis of these histories—always with generosity and care.

We owe far more to the future than we do the past.

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Confronting America’s history is like fixing or maintaining an old home: acknowledging the parts that are in disrepair, and those that are rotten to the core. This is the metaphor historian William Sturkey opened the fourth and final program in the Zócalo/Mellon Foundation series “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?,” and in which the panelists found themselves building upon throughout the night.

“How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future?” featured environmental activist and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (Xochimilco), L.A. LGBT Center communications officer and former editor-in-chief of Out magazine Phillip Picardi, and “On Being” founder, executive producer, and host Krista Tippett.

To open the conversation, Sturkey, the moderator, turned to Tippett: What does it mean when confronting our history also means confronting other people in this society?

Tippett shared that through her work she tries to shine a light on spaces where confrontation isn’t necessarily the key, instead focusing on building “hospitable spaces.” She acknowleged that there are limits to the types of spaces she aims to create, but she still sees value in the work of fostering “quiet encounters and relationships away from the glare of the hyperreactive society and so-called discourse that we have.” Later in the night, she added: “Confrontation is a necessary word, and a necessary act. But it’s not necessarily very pragmatic.”

Next, Sturkey asked Picardi to explain what confronting history looked like to him. Picardi described a moment when he was editorial director at Teen Vogue, in the wake of Nancy Reagan’s death in 2018. As other outlets were publishing laudatory coverage of the late public figure, Picardi and his team decided to run a piece titled “Former First Lady Nancy Reagan Watched Thousands of LGBTQ People Die of AIDS” to reckon with her legacy during the HIV/AIDS crisis. “I understand that the critique was that it may have felt disrespectful of the recent passing of this woman, and I do hold space and compassion for that,” Picardi said, “while also holding a deep-seated rage for the people who died in shame, who were people who I could have built connections with and who could have been proud forebearers of queer tradition that never got to live out the full potential of their lives.” He added: “If we’re not going to be honest with each other about the history, I think we’re just doomed to repeat the sins of our past.”

What, Sturkey asked the panelists, are the most important results that come out of confronting our history that will help us build that better future?

Martinez said that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission—taken in concert with more recent government raids and arrests of Indigenous people opposing the construction of pipelines through their land—is demonstrative of why reconciliation alone isn’t always enough. Instead, Martinez offered the Land Back movement as an example of effective change that can return power and resources to Indigenous peoples. Later, he added that the movement was already steeped in a sense of forgiveness, one of the core tenets of reconciliation: Land Back has nothing to do with revenge or “enacting the same violence that we suffered,” he said. “Land Back for many of us encompasses a liberated future for all of us.”

Picardi commented on the hard task of asking the most impacted people to do the heaviest lifting to enact societal change. “We’re often asking folks who bear the brunt of society’s ills to hold the grace,” he said. “People are fed up right now with having to be graceful.”

Tippett encouraged those that are not the “most vulnerable to being wounded” to step up to do this essential work. She reflected on the ways in which a stubborn refusal to fully reckon with our history has left us haunted and fractured. America, Tippett said, has a way of believing that we’re always getting better. Instead of facing the centuries of atrocities, like lynching—which happened “town by town, tree by tree”—we avoid internalizing hard truths. What we stand to gain, then, in confronting history is “wholeness,” a future of “whole human beings in a whole society.”

Sturkey pointed out that two of the three panelists (Tippett and Picardi) earned a master’s degree in divinity. It’s often said that religious texts point to a “usable past” of redemption and restoration. What do you think about the role of religion in historical confrontations?

While Tippett said she doesn’t look to religious institutions or “the loud voices who stand up to represent everyone else,” she does see some benefit in turning to the vocabulary of religion. “I care about these traditions as the place in the human enterprise across time and space where we have language and practices and rituals like confession and repentance and lamentation and redemption.”

Reflecting on religion, both Martinez and Picardi drew on their personal histories and confliction with the Catholic Church. Martinez: “My understanding of Catholicism is as the primary tool to dehumanize and justify the genocide of my ancestors, and the stealing of our lands, the erasure of our language.” Still, Martinez said he aspired to learn and understand how to reach beyond that violent history to “create reparative conversations.”

Picardi, a gay, ex-Catholic, said he reframed and reclaimed his relationship to the Church after attending divinity school. Now, working at the L.A. LGBT Center has shown him new ways to understand his faith and the work it calls people to do. “If you want to see god, go see a social worker,” he said.

The night ended with a special performance by musicians from the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a Black musical ensemble founded in Los Angeles in 1961. But before the reception, Tippett urged the audience and her fellow panelists to take a moment to reflect on the transformative nature of the very moment they all found themselves in. For Tippett, the very stage that had been set that night was unimaginable to her in the past—“this configuration of humanity, this subject, these questions.”

“Even just 10 minutes after we sat down up here tonight,” she said, “I was listening to the three of you and looking at you and thinking of what we were discussing and how we were discussing,” she said. “When we have these moments of seeing the generative narrative unfolding, the fuller telling of truth, the fuller living into truth—let’s take that in.”

The post The Foundation for a Shared Tomorrow Is Built on Hard Truths appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Since leaving Burning Man, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the role that principles play in a society, and what to do when people don’t live up to them.

Burning Man attracts more than 70,000 people each Labor Day weekend to an inhospitable dry lakebed called “the Playa” in northwestern Nevada. Burners marvel at incredible art installations, boogie to electronic dance music, and create and engage in hundreds of different participatory experiences at camps with a staggering variety of themes. These activities range from walking the catwalk after picking out a new (free) outfit at a pop-up thrift store to hanging from bungees attached to a geodesic dome.

But this year, there was another unexpected activity: waiting out two-and-a-half days of rain and the thick mud it formed on the Playa’s surface. News networks ran breathless stories about how the participants were “trapped,” and interviewed people who fled instead of listening to the requests to stay until the lakebed dried out again.

What really happened, and what lessons can we draw from it given that the event is trying to create a particular type of culture?

The non-profit organization that runs Burning Man was chartered in 2011 to better manage the event, and promote its principles throughout the year. It is very clear about its theory of a good government for society, and that vision is basically libertarian. Among its 10 key principles are “radical self-reliance” and “community effort.” Many of the other principles have to do with the event itself, including a focus on its gifting economy, the immediacy of experiences people have there, and leaving no trace of participants’ presence on the Playa.

For those of us who take these principles seriously, the two days of mud were simply a challenge to be embraced and overcome, even enjoyed. “You get the Burn that you need,” a common saying about the experience goes. The vast majority of people who came this year took the opportunity of the massive rainstorms to connect more closely with their campmates, to create clever art from the mud, and/or to keep on partying their faces off through the deluge.

There’s a growing contingent at Burning Man of newer folks, though, who seem to see it as another version of the Coachella music festival—even though it is held in a patch of desert that might be the most inhospitable place for human life in the lower 48 American states.

I ran into two such party people as the storms were rolling in, and the ground was becoming impassable. “Pretty soon it will be every man, woman, and child for themselves,” one of the women warned me. “This happened before, and people were stuck here for 10 days.”

This precise kind of weather had not, in fact, happened before (at least not since I first came in 2000), and people were not, in fact, stuck for 10 days, nor were we at all likely to be. But two things struck me about her sentiment.

First, in spite of all of the pervasive propaganda around the 10 Principles, the woman had absolutely no idea where she was. Over the course of the next three days, I was overwhelmed with the generosity of the people who were constantly checking on their neighbors, opening up their StarLink WiFi for people to contact their families, or offering an unending stream of food, water, and booze to strangers that became new friends. (Even though very few people actually needed anything since most of us took the radical self-reliance part seriously.)

Had the woman simply asked for anything, she would have gotten more than she needed from a giving community. But she didn’t. Instead, like thousands of others, she and her friends fled or tried to, turning a fine, even fun, situation into a risky one. After folks who waited out the mud finally exited when it was safe to do so—generally no more than a day later than they were planning to leave anyway—they passed a Prius half submerged in the mud. Its driver had ignored all the warnings to just chill out and have fun with what life was presenting us with, and the result was a ruined $30,000 vehicle.

As it’s been reported, the people who fled were generally among the most well-off. I’m looking at you Chris Rock who apparently thought the event was going to descend into cannibalism after one day of rain. Many of those who stayed were the Burners of relatively modest means who make up a big chunk of the event’s attendees, people who spend some or all of their disposable income for the year on a week or two’s escape from the “default world.” And my experience has been that people with disabilities are the very picture of radical self-reliance on the Playa. But a minority of primarily able-bodied well-off folks did panic and the world picked up on that panic, magnifying it.

The second thing that struck me was how much the people who run Burning Man stuck to its view of a good society, especially the fostering of radical self-reliance of the denizens of the Playa. All of the information that we were given over the radio for the better part of a day was to “shelter in place and conserve food and water.” We were eventually directed to find more information on a website that most people couldn’t access.

I do think that the folks who run the event could have put out a less sensationalistic announcement that would have cut down on the panic. “Shelter in place” makes sense as your verbiage if there is an active shooter on the loose or if a tornado is on the way. Less so for what to do during a rainstorm that creates some thick mud. They could have reassured people and told them to reach out to their neighbors if they needed anything.

But the people who run Burning Man are very, even willfully, bad at different elements of event management, including entrance and egress to the Playa and communication during the event. Perhaps this is an intentional call for people to practice those principles of self-reliance and community effort on their own, without their “government” giving them any more additional specific instructions on how to do so when the mud hits the fan?

It got me thinking: What is the obligation of a government to its citizens when the terms of the social contract, so to speak, are so clearly laid out but not followed by many?

In terms of the event itself, I believe Burning Man could do at least a little more to ensure that it has prepared attendees. If you fled the Playa this year, you probably should not have been there in the first place. This may seem to be a violation “Radical Inclusion,” the first principle of the event, and people argue for the importance of acculturation of those who are not long-time Burners into the ethic of the place. Asking people to attend an online seminar or ensuring that they have enough water when they enter the event, however, would not be a major violation of this principle. I do a lot with the Scouts, and the event can probably help folks traveling to this inhospitable wasteland to be at least as prepared as the 11-year-olds that we send to sleepaway camp.

But here’s the rub: societies generally cannot and really should not choose only self-reliant people committed to community effort as their citizens.

This leaves us with the challenge of what to do given the extreme humanness of humans. Libertarianism, like communism, is an interesting theory that is problematic in practice. You can have all of the principles you want, but some people make idiotic decisions and these decisions can have tremendous negative consequences for themselves and those around them. And even though this rainstorm did not actually qualify as a disaster, we clearly need governments that are capable of responding to true crises in a more organized and effective fashion.

Pondering all of these things, I stuck it out to see the climactic “Man burn,” which happened two days late, on Monday. It was a tremendous moment of catharsis for those of us who stayed to see this 70-foot-tall art installation go up in flames after a massive fireworks display. Only the following morning, muddy and tired, did I make my way out of a desert of possibility and back to a world of practicality. In this world, governments generally attempt to take care of us rather than holding us to a standard of self-reliance that most people are not even trying to achieve.

But I hold on to the dream of Burning Man’s governing principles.

You may have heard that Burning Man was a disaster but I “got the Burn that I needed.” The compassion and community spirit modeled by those who stayed behind will remain an inspiration to me. As for those who fled, I will stay curious about how societies can work to help people achieve more self-reliance and avoid panic, in crises both real and imagined. And I will keep working on rebuilding trust in a society that believes that even the minor challenge of a couple of days of mud will quickly lead to people turning on—and potentially eating!—each other.

The post Finding a Good Society in the Mud of Burning Man appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

From a world leader retreating from an unwinnable foreign war (Emperor Hadrian, circa 117 A.D.) to the false promise of automation in the workplace (1950s America), the stories we published provided key context that headline news and hot takes missed. Our favorite essays of the year covered a great deal of territory, from climate change in California and a tragedy in Lebanon to the work of immoral artists and the literature of dentistry. But what we think they all have in common is that, in one way or another, they help us see the world and our place in it anew.

Here are the dozen essays (well, OK, 11 essays and one collection!) that Zócalo’s staff chose to highlight as 2021 comes to a close:

America’s Anti-Chinese Bigotry Has a Very Old Stench

Illustration by Be Boggs.

Almost exactly a year after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the U.S., The Smell of Risk author Hsuan L. Hsu explored how American scientists, doctors, and public health officials, as well as historians and novelists, stigmatized “Chinese air” beginning in the 19th century. Hsu demonstrates how these racist, damaging olfactory narratives originated to target the earliest Chinese immigrants to the U.S.—and why it’s no surprise that they remain pervasive today.

Look Away

In 1978, Adam Smyer’s junior high chorus performed “Dixie” at the annual school pageant. Of the couple of hundred people in attendance, “only my mother complained,” recalled the Knucklehead author and attorney. Drawing a parallel to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Smyer meditates on why it’s not the Nazis, but rather the “not-sees” who may be our biggest existential threat.

The 20th-Century Rise of the Confederate Soybean

Why did the varieties of soybeans grown in the American South suddenly acquire the names of Confederate generals nearly 100 years after the Civil War’s end? This story, from University of Pennsylvania historian and Magic Bean author Matthew Roth, reveals how the USDA spent decades catering to white farmers, which resulted in a more unequal agricultural landscape that persists today.

The Fires California Grieves—And Needs

It may be counterintuitive, but the hugely damaging California wildfires of the past few years prove that California needs more fire. Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire advisor in Northern California, reflects on the lessons the fires Native Californians set before cultural burning was criminalized can teach us about fighting today’s megafires, and why every flame holds a story of loss and renewal.

The author’s favorite hometown swimming hole, on the South Fork Trinity River in Forest Glen, California, after last year’s devastating August Complex fire. Courtesy of Lenya Quinn-Davidson.

Where I Go: The Poet Sits in the Dentist’s Chair

“Did you know there’s a rich and under-loved canon of periodontic literature?” asks poet and Wabash College English professor Derek Mong. In this entry from our “Where I Go” series, Mong investigates why he transforms his trips to the dentist’s chair into lectures on books and poetry about teeth—from Edgar Allen Poe and Elizabeth Bishop to Zadie Smith and Valeria Luiselli.

Where I Go: My Small, Queer Corner of the Internet

When he moved from Venezuela to Madrid in 2019, journalist José González Vargas thought he might be able to find the LGBTQ+ community that had eluded him. He did, but not at the bars and bookstores he expected. Rather, once the world locked down, the online platform Discord offered him a space where labels didn’t matter and he could just be himself.

The United States Didn’t Really Begin Until 1848

Gold miners in El Dorado, California, circa 1848. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Forget the hackneyed debate between the New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Trump administration’s 1776 report on when American history begins. “Much like a party that only truly starts when the coolest kid saunters in, today’s United States—antically ambitious, deliriously diverse, violently war-mongering, maniacally money-grubbing, and kaleidoscopically cruel—did not really get rolling until California arrived in 1848,” argues Connecting California columnist Joe Mathews.

Lebanon’s Other Explosion

In August 2020, the world’s attention turned to Lebanon in the wake of the horrific Beirut port explosion. Almost a year later, Beirut-based editor Abby Sewell found herself covering another deadly explosion; this time, the world didn’t pay attention, leaving Sewell wondering what it means to try to tell stories that make a difference when you’re writing for an indifferent audience.

After 150 Years, Is L.A. Ready to Remember the Chinese Massacre?

For most of his life, former L.A. City Council member Michael Woo had never heard of the largest massacre of Chinese in California history, which took place on October 24, 1871. In the first essay of Zócalo’s new Mellon Foundation-supported inquiry, “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?,” Woo asked why this chapter of history wasn’t widely spoken about, and how a public memorial might help the city finally start to reckon with its racist past.

Can We Still Bump n’ Grind to R. Kelly?

Wellesley College philosopher and Drawing the Line author Erich Hatala Matthes suggests an alternative to “cancel culture”: engaging with the work of immoral artists as a way of clarifying our emotions. “The artwork,” writes Matthes, “provides a lens for reflecting on our feelings, and perhaps the promise of sorting them out.”

What Can We Learn From the Failings of William Mulholland?

“When I read about the crimes of history, I rail against the wrongness of the thinking, the backwards, shortsighted cruelty,” writes author Kendra Atleework, who lives and writes in the part of California William Mulholland drained dry. Her meditation on Mulholland’s crimes exonerates nobody: “I, too, exist within the sticky sap of an era. The things I hold to be self-evident and undeniable may, in time, be proven false and denied.”

How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?

In January 2021, on the same day as President Biden’s inauguration, Zócalo began publishing a group of essays about why, from Japan and Germany to the American South, societies around the world struggle to acknowledge the crimes they committed—and persist in repeating them all over again. We published too many wonderful pieces to single any out, and we’re looking forward to turning to this question throughout 2022 and into 2023, now with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick.

The post Our Favorite Essays of 2021 appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Since becoming fully vaccinated, I have found the opposite to be true. Instead of paralyzing me with awkwardness, returning to normal social life has been a profound relief—not only in terms of relieving my boredom and isolation, but by finally giving me the clear social norms that I have been lacking for the past year. While it is admittedly the least of our worries, this pandemic year has been one of the most awkward periods of my lifetime. And that awkwardness, however uncomfortable, has a lot to tell us about the state of society’s social fabric.

We tend to view awkwardness as something that afflicts individuals. Either they behave awkwardly in a certain situation, or—in extreme cases—they seem to be inherently awkward people. In reality, though, awkwardness is a deeply social phenomenon that arises when our social norms or expectations break down. We can see this in the way that the feeling of awkwardness spreads. If we notice an awkward situation, we begin to feel awkward, too—even without being directly involved.

In its simplest form, awkwardness occurs when someone acts in a way that is inappropriate for a particular context. Jokey familiarity at a formal event can be awkward, for example, just as over-formality can be awkward in a more casual setting. When that kind of violation occurs, we often don’t know how to respond; the (mostly tacit) rules governing social situations do not provide guidance for totally unexpected human behavior.

This feeling of uncertainty gives rise to discomfort and anxiety, leading us to scapegoat the person whose faux pas has made us feel so awkward. But only seldom is the awkward person simply screwing up. Usually they are acting according to different norms or expectations based on a different view of the situation. Someone who shows up to a house party in a tuxedo is probably not doing so to make others uncomfortable—they were expecting a different kind of event, with different social norms.

These social norms help us make sense of our world, they clarify our place in it, and they guide our actions. Aristotle famously declared that man is a political animal, meaning that we are hardwired to create rules and institutions to govern our lives together. Some contemporary evolutionary theorists have come to similar conclusions. Our more sophisticated brains are largely devoted to learning how to navigate our social environment. In place of in-born instinctual patterns of behavior, humans have society. In one sense, this is a good thing for the human species as a whole: Social evolution is much quicker and more reliable than biological evolution, allowing us to adapt to a huge number of environments. But it’s not necessarily useful for each individual. Once learned, social norms are often harder for us to disobey than biological demands. Perhaps most dramatically, the average adult human being will hold their urine to the point of poisoning themselves rather than wet their pants.

Being deprived of the comfortable framework of social norms, especially suddenly or unexpectedly, is a painful experience—and that is exactly what happened to all of us last March. But unlike an everyday flare-up of awkwardness, which can normally be resolved fairly quickly, pandemic awkwardness lasted 15 months and counting, as we have had to navigate a continual churn of unfamiliar and constantly changing social expectations.

I remember vividly how the most mundane of actions suddenly became minefields of awkwardness. Going to the grocery store became a minor nightmare every week. We were told to keep six feet away from others, but nothing in the layout or capacity of the store was changed to make that possible. Trying in good faith to maintain our social distance, we wound up hovering around our fellow shoppers—until everyone agreed, tacitly but seemingly spontaneously, that quickly darting in to grab something from the shelf was acceptable. No sooner was that settled that we then learned, quite suddenly, that we should all be wearing masks—which became the most common and confusing source of awkwardness.

Early in the pandemic, the CDC and other health authorities recommended against masking for the general public, only to reverse course shortly thereafter. President Trump resisted and then undercut these guidelines with his refusal to wear one—resistance which was adopted by his followers.

The expectation of indoor masking became the closest to an unambiguous, universal social norm we had in many parts of the country; yet instead of relieving awkwardness, the masking norm often exacerbated it. The problem was one of enforcement, which largely relied on persuasion and social pressure, putting retail and restaurant employees in exceedingly awkward positions. For the masked, the closest thing to a solution—other than shouting matches or threats to call security—was simply to avoid unmasked people whenever possible.

On one level, the fact that masking became such a highly charged issue—even a sign of personal morality—reflects the extreme political polarization of American society. But it also reflects how desperate we were for some kind of stable norm, some way to know for sure that we were doing the right thing. Conservatives talked themselves into believing that refusing to mask was an important moral issue. Meanwhile, liberals reacted to the CDC guidance allowing the vaccinated to go unmasked almost with regret.

Awkwardness is always a sign that something has gone wrong, but we should not let our haste to relieve our discomfort and anxiety lead us to misdiagnose the problem. That guest who shows up to your house party in a tuxedo may not be an idiot who needs to go home and change. The problem may be that your invitation was unclear. In the same way, the social awkwardness that we experienced under COVID, and our clumsy responses to it, reflect more than the inevitable effects of an unexpected catastrophe. Rather, they show us that our norms were already inadequate to help us navigate serious social problems.

Part of the issue is that many American social norms are, paradoxically, anti-social. There is a strong norm against anything but the most superficial conversation among strangers: At no point in the pandemic did my fellow shoppers and I think to talk through how to coordinate our dance amid the aisles. The emergence of masking as a, quite literal, “virtue signal” also fits this pattern—allowing the masked to simply stay away from the unmasked, and vice versa. We successfully avoided awkwardness, but also missed any opportunity for collaboration or persuasion.

The supposed land of the free is also a deeply hierarchical society. The anti-maskers who got into fights with waiters and retail clerks were reacting not just to being told what to do, but to being told what to do by someone they believed should be serving them. For their part, liberals present themselves as some combination of educator and preacher, proclaiming the truth from on high. Few of us have developed the habits and skills required for meaningful discussion on truly important issues. Such conversations tend to devolve into either a monologue or a shouting match—outcomes that minimize awkwardness by either giving one person full control over the situation or allowing everyone to walk away from the encounter altogether.

Overall, what the awkwardness of pandemic lifestyle has shown us is that American society isn’t awkward enough. In our haste to avoid awkwardness, we have cut ourselves off from each other. We treat our fellow citizens as servants, as students, or simply as obstacles—choosing the comfort of clear hierarchical norms over the awkwardness of open-ended and unpredictable encounters with our equals. What is most important in life—and what we desperately need more of as a society—happens in those awkward in-between spaces that the rules did not anticipate.

The real danger is not that we will forget how to behave in “normal” society, but that we will use our discomfort with awkwardness as an excuse to return unthinkingly to our anti-social social norms. To rebuild our life together in a truly human way, we need to get past snap judgments and risk the painfully awkward dialogue that is the unavoidable prelude to real change.

The post America Isn’t Awkward Enough appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We Californians are fortunate that we receive so much guidance, official and unofficial, about how to respond to these emergencies. All we have to do is follow it. Which is easy-peasy, if you are broad-minded (and we do have a reputation for being broad-minded).

For starters, go outside. You must avoid the indoors, because COVID spreads best in enclosed areas. Spending time outdoors now is good for your health.

Also, don’t go outside. Don’t you know there’s a pandemic on, and you should isolate yourself? Plus, with six of the 20 largest fires in California history burning, you’ll just be breathing smoke. Spending time outdoors now is bad for your health.

By the way, it’s important that you see family right now. Particularly if they are elderly or in a facility. Because you know what’s the biggest killer out there? Loneliness. That’s the real epidemic.

Just one caveat, though: don’t see your family. It’s too dangerous. Public health officials, even the governor, say family gatherings are where the virus spreads. Haven’t you heard the latest PSAs on the radio? If you visit your mother or grandfather, it’s pretty much murder.

Speaking of matters of life and death, you shouldn’t call the cops unless you’re absolutely sure there’s a crime or emergency; try to deescalate matters yourself. Cops carry dangerous biases, so your call puts vulnerable people at risk. And, big picture, we should defund the police, and have other kinds of experts handle crime.

Of course, though, you should call the cops. Violence and property crime are up. This is a heavily armed society. If something suspicious occurs, a trained law enforcement professional—not you—should be the one responding. We already have too many vigilantes out there. Haven’t you seen the signs? “See something, say something.”

Speaking of say something: You must speak out. In this moment of reckoning, silent isn’t just assent; it’s complicity in injustice. We need whistleblowers to call out wrongdoing. We need to hear from people of color, whose stories and perspectives have too long been ignored. White people have a special obligation to challenge racism. And mass protest is essential to keep the pressure on unjust systems and people in power.

Still, don’t speak until you’re sure you’re adding to the conversation. There are already so many voices talking that it’s hard to hear ourselves think. White people need to stop talking about the cultures and histories of other people. People of color shouldn’t have to keep explaining themselves. And mass protest is dangerous—don’t you know there is a pandemic on?

In raising our voices, it’s important to remember not to attack people personally. We are confronting systems of oppression, that hurt all people. Focus on ending those systems, and replacing them with better systems, designed for equity. That’s how you get unity, which is vital.

And never forget that this is about individual morality, not systems. When people misbehave or say the wrong thing, they need to be called out forcefully, and held to account, no matter if they’re in power or not. This is about changing individual behavior. And if that’s divisive, so be it—unity is overrated.

Because this is a moment to choose sides and rally your base.

Because what better time than now to reach out to people who disagree with you—that’s how we change things.

Just don’t reach out on social media—those companies are doing terrible things to our democracy, and making us anxious and even sick.

But we need to use social media because it empowers citizens, and allows us to go around the corrupt corporate media.

On social media, you must speak your own truth, and recognize that your lived experience is what counts.

But we can’t rely on anecdote or emotion; we need to make decisions based on facts and data.

In this pandemic, it’s essential that we trust our scientists and public health officials.

But we can’t trust our scientists and public health officials, who are compromised by politics and corporate money.

Speaking of business, you need to open yours as soon as possible. We need some semblance of normalcy, and we must bolster the economy, so that people have jobs and income to pay rent, and there are enough tax dollars to recover from all these crises.

Of course, you should keep your business closed, so that you don’t contribute to COVID’s spread—and so that you protect yourself and your employees, too.

And if you live or work in a dense city, you might want to leave the metropolitan area and head somewhere with fewer people and less COVID, especially if you’re in an at-risk category.

At the same time, you shouldn’t move to far-out or exurban places on the urban-wildland interface—you’re just putting yourself in the path of fire. Instead, embrace the density of our cities!

Wherever you’re living, your kids need to be back in school immediately. Pediatricians say getting back to class is crucial. Kids are losing educationally and socially when they’re at home. Kids who miss months of school end up less educated, less wealthy, and less healthy. You don’t want to shorten kids’ lives, do you?

But be careful: Sending the kids back to school is a rotten idea. Look at the outbreaks at universities that reopened. Kids can be spreaders, too. And we have to protect our educators, who didn’t sign up to risk their lives. You don’t want to shorten teachers’ lives, do you?

If you’re a parent, now is the time to step up and prioritize your kids; find ways to collaborate with other parents to make up for the lack of in-person instruction and socialization, maybe even hire teachers so kids can gather in small groups.

But don’t do too much, and don’t just focus on your kids. When privileged parents intervene, they worsen inequality.

And kids, you need to avoid sitting in front of your screens for hours. Screen usage is up, and it’s bad for your eyes, your body, and your mental health.

Also, kids, you must be diligent about distance learning, and you need more time with your teachers online—even if it means sitting in front of your screen for hours.

Remember, we’re all in this together. We have to stay connected and help one another.

But don’t forget, to survive this, we must isolate ourselves. Keep your distance.

In these unprecedented times, we must comply with all of these clear directives, in service of stopping disease, preventing catastrophe, and insuring justice. When you don’t follow all these messages, you are putting everyone else at risk.

In these unprecedented times, it’s impossible to comply with so many mixed messages. Whatever you do, you will be wrong. So prioritize taking care of yourself. All anyone can reasonably demand is that you do the best you can.

The post California, Where Whatever You Do, You Will Be Wrong appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.