202605171120 No Straight Road Takes You There

Essays for Uneven Terrain

#source #wip #new

A collection of essays from Rebecca Solnit about 202203231646 Affecting long-term change and hope for the future.

In Praise of the Indirect, the Unpredictable, the Immeasurable

I’ve become a love of slowness, patience, endurance, and long-term vision, because these things seem like crucial equipment for changing the world or even understanding it. (pp. 2)¹

as the poet Antonio Machado famously said “Walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking.” (pp. 6) #thread get original source and put in note

A Truce with the Trees

• Beautiful telling of the artistry of violin making and the global nature plus harmony of renewable craft, contrasted with the permanent harm we’re doing to it, the breaking of the truce.

A Sky Full of Forests

• We must tell stories: of how we got here, how things used to be, and how they could be, of how they should be. We must pour water on the fires and provide rafts in the flood. We must change minds and hearts. We must envision a humanity as it should be. (pp. 23)¹

On Letting Go of Certainty in a Story That Never Ends

When it comes to real life, this state of unknowing is both normal and so wildly uncomfortable that we engage in foolish and delusional imitations of knowing. (pp. 29) ¹

• Be absorbed in the act of becoming. (pp. 32)¹

Tortoise at the Mayfly Party

• Be the tortoise at the mayfly party. 202109251140 Play long term-games. Take the long view. Pay attention to the genealogies and evolution of power and ideas. Change is invisible if your timeframe is shorter than the change itself.
• The short term view breeds defeatism. Thread on the attention deficit of product development #thread.

Even when the rock’s on the bottom of the pool, the ripples are still spreading. (pp. 34)¹

In Praise of the Meander

• Page 43 There was a very funny moment... #thread

Insurrectionary Aunthood

• We should consider that we are all mutually together. We are a symbiotic and evolving species of interconnectedness, not isolationist. We show up for our communities because of our interconnectedness, not in expectation of reciprocity.

Despair Is a Luxury

Whether you feel assured that everything is going to hell or will all turn out fine, you are not impelled to act. All these postures undermine participation in [...] life (pp. 65)¹

• We should leave room to act — room for agency — instead of despairing. “This could happen” is very different than “this will happen” even in dire times and stark warnings. It is a luxury that makes our lives easier when we despair to an outcome instead of understanding the responsibility and opportunity we have to act.
• Not Too Late Climate Project

To hope is to risk. It’s to take a chance on losing. It’s also to take a chance on winning, and you can’t win if you don’t try. (pp. 73)¹

On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

• It is better to bring people out of their delusions with kindness and invitation, but you do not compromise. We know the world is not flat, we don’t compromise that it’s somewhere between flat and round.
• We have no responsibility to appease, pander, or compromise with racist, sexist, or bigoted people. We must not get mired in moral relativism with amoral people.

Against Centrism and Its Biases

• The notion that there is some mythical center position that is apolitical is ridiculous. A “center” does not exist between a rapist and moral people. Further, “centers” have the inherent bias of the status quo, the systems they exist in, a neutral acceptance of injustices that exist, the institutional bias

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

MLK sourced from (pp. 86)¹