The Relational Democracy Project Podcast :: Host, Cathy B Glenn, Ph.D.

You know that imagination is as important as rationality, and you know that your imagination died decades ago.

You know that emotions are at least half as important as breathing, and you know you do not have access to or facility with half of who you are.

You understand that your lack of imagination and inability with your own emotions puts you at a significant disadvantage in navigating a rapidly changing and evolving world. You know that there are millions of humans whose whole lives are in front of them, millions who are fully present--in imagination, in emotion, in possibilities—and they terrify you.

You grasp for the pills and the treatments and the infrastructure sold to you by AMAC--to keep your unhealthy, dying body going. You believe their narratives telling you you’re entitled to every single bit of what you “earned” in a lifetime of “self-made” success. You believe the stories about deserving a second chapter, to be a “new” you who is entitled to construct fresh layers of resource-consuming life choices. The tales are nourished by those who are dependent on your resources. And you thrive on their need.

You know that the starved and shriveled half of yourself—where imagination and emotion live--is the half connected to new experience, to the actual, to the body, to the earth—to joy and self-knowledge and pain and hope. It is the half that makes the other half meaningful. You know that your quarterly earnings statement only gives you a sense of fragile security, but no love or light or humanity.

You know that everything you lack is everything that makes it possible for humans to evolve, to become more than their little self-interests. You know that the universe detests stoicism and the empty place where imagination should reside.

You know you drive the slow-moving vehicle of your life sitting backwards, gripping the steering wheel with white hands while fearfully staring out the rear window, throwing molotov cocktails of misinformation and old, poisonous ideas out your passenger side window at those shouting at you to pay attention to the road, and running down anyone and anything in the way of your slow-motion destruction.

(Except you're not really going slow, you? You've hooked yourself on to a fast-moving vehicle of destruction driven by a madman bent on stealing everyone's power, including every living thing on the planet. And now, even if you wanted to, you couldn't get yourself off of there. And there's nowhere for you to go anyway, right, even if you could be convinced to stop enabling and empowering the madman. You know you're toast if you have to justify what you've allowed to happen, so you just enjoy the ride, ignoring the screams of those writhing in pain under the indifferent treads of your hot tires.)

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I was born and raised in the fundamentally democratic San Francisco Bay Area. I’m unabashedly and unapologetically a Californian: I believe in--and work to support--open cultures, diversity, equity, non-violence, transparency, and accuracy of information. I have not always understood or embraced those practices, however. I grew up in an authoritarian family culture, and the relational norms that initially shaped me were closed, homogenous, severely imbalanced, violent, and secretive. ...

https://cathybglenn.com/2021/12/10/my-positionality-or-why-i-write-about-authoritarianism/

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It's April 2017, and I'm beginning to dig out from under the 30-year storm damage that buried Bello, Sparkles, and me for months: the massive, drought-impacted, snow-covered tree that fell on our new house, putting a hole in the roof that wouldn’t be repaired for months because there was no one to fix it; the bounce that landed the tree on my new SUV, destroying the passenger side and putting a hole in the windshield that wouldn’t be repaired for more than a month because no tow truck company would come to Kerby; the grave I dug for Bello, my love, who was killed early on a Sunday morning on his way to find the duckpond across the icy two-lane highway; the blood pressure in stroke territory and the male nurse at the local health clinic screaming that I'll probably get an embolism, that the clinic can’t be liable if I die, that I need to go; the eight months without an internet connection at home and none nearby that wasn’t in a place polluted with rebel flags in the parking lot and/or Fox News on the tube inside; the isolation. Like bootcamp for humbling life lessons.

I live a life where the very basics are often threatened—my health, shelter, and transportation; my heart, my mind, my identity, all up for grabs here. Living this way makes it nearly impossible to think or see beyond the most important thing that has to be done this day, a task that will hopefully keep some essential part of my life from just falling apart. (I magnet a note to my fridge: “Keep calm, take care of Sparkles, and take good notes.” That and “no problem, I’ll do it myself” become personal mantras.) I begin to understand that my privilege is not portable; the thousands in the bank, my education, my plans, and my intellect--my old sources of power--will not save me here.

I learn how to adapt. I'm hacking all the time: using what's available as a tool for my purposes, even though my purposes may not be its. Stopping mid-task, mid-goal; assessing, seeing the direction won’t work, and taking a new approach. Constantly shifting everything in response always new, "no one is going to believe this," wtf situations.

Daily, hearing, seeing, feeling their rejection of my existence--their (justified) hate for the Californian; experiencing the marginalization, the social isolation, but not holding it; noting it, letting it go, moving past it, and leaving it there. Losing my battle to hold onto my familiar sense of self, and, finally, letting her go.

Seeing the connection to all marginalization, to all those ignored humans; living with the pain and invisibility all outsiders feel, all us bottom-of-the-culture dwellers just trying to get through the day alive and sane. Whole. ...

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The gold went first. That warm light. It took months to recognize it for what it was. Surprisingly, the sudden shift to cold LED white isn’t really evident to the eye. Seeing is in the reflection, though; off the slant, if you will. Thousands of blown out shots. A monochromatic gray-green backdrop in the valley. Lightened blue eyes from shooting straight into the sun. Color that fades in weeks. This is not a basking sun. It is a force that demands respect, without question. It is the authority. Submission is the only appropriate response. Nothing democratic here.

An overwhelming sea of whiteness. Of white people. Visceral, immediate, consuming. Something to be endured. Drowning in white people. No eye contact from anyone not white. Difference must be passing-careful or withdraw entirely to feel safe or trusted. To embody a full range of expression. To have any chance at a lasting sense of well-being. To have the choice to feel fully human. Whiteness is the authority. Submission is the only appropriate response. Nothing democratic here.

Power is scarce. Steal for it, lie for it, cheat for it; debate, fight, kill. No collaboration. Nothing student-centered or client-centered or customer-centered or patient-centered. No power-sharers. No old people sharing power with young people. No one practicing with power. No. No. No. An enduring wall of no. This is not a place for the soft, the sensitive, the young. There is no place in a power scarce culture for vulnerability, for the grey areas, for uncertainty. They eat their young. Power is the authority. Compliance is the only appropriate response. Nothing democratic here.

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I sit in the middle of the mess, in a world far away from what I now understand to be my own. I've finally set it all down, what I’ve been observing and noting and saving and carrying for three life-changing years. The volumes of notes, the thousands of pictures, all the recorded voices speaking to me from places I could never have imagined before experiencing them, worlds I still struggle to hold. The dozens of documents, all containers for content, all being shaped to share. It sinks in, the strong sense of purpose that the lifetime of meaningful work in front of me represents.

The new skin on my right hand is hot and red this morning. The puncture wound mends, the one I accidentally inflicted on myself in a rage at my inability to do anything about the psychosis and obscenity of this ugly new world order. A broken glass candle holder and violent downward force stop—dead—my frustrated intellect’s drive to fix everything, to account for it all, to make any sense of any of it. To redeem itself for having been buried alive and useless when it all went down. In the moment of impact—of glass punching through skin and flesh--the pain and shock of what one part of me has done to another part of me suddenly illuminates, in sharp hard cold white light, a formidable intellect with a lethally overdeveloped sense of responsibility. (It is the last time my intellect will hurt my body.)

(Hey, want to radicalize a human being? Instill at a very early age an overwhelming sense of responsibility, the belief that if he doesn’t do his duty, the world will end as he knows it. Hang a cause around his neck that must be addressed, or his family and friends will perish. Then, isolate and ignore him. Knock him down and tie his hands behind his back. Watch him push himself up, over and over, trying to meet his obligation, only to be punched back down again by those with free hands. Watch his rage rise, righteously. Watch it ignite. Watch it burn.)

I feel my intellect creeping around my emotions this morning, sizing up my newly forming creative process, angling for advantage in its instinctive competitiveness. My intellect's need to categorize, evaluate, judge—its innate push to convince, control—works in the background, making a hard structure it eagerly waits to clamp down on the soft new pink skin of my reforming self. It is my mother's work, this attempted emotional imprisonment, this effort to show creativity who’s really boss, this aim to annihilate the soft and sensitive.

Over its lifetime, my intellect inflicted wounds--some surface, some deep--on humans it was fundamentally incapable of feeling. My emotions were in hiding; my vulnerability lost in a black hole. Only half of a human being was present. Many of the wounds my half-self inflicted on other humans never healed, and I lost all of those connections.

Now, surrounded by artifacts from the last three years on the outside of everything, I remember my little sister. I say her name out loud. To make her real in my world, so far from her world. I haven't said her name in years, but a possibility I didn't even know existed brought us together recently to try again. To build something new. To see each other with new eyes. To know each other, again. To love.

The deep burning itch in my right hand pulls me out of my daydreams. My hand's new skin reminds me that even the deepest physical injuries can heal, even stupidly self-inflicted ones (the only kind I've ever caused).

The scar, though, will be permanent. It is also a reminder.

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In this version of the story, the woman cannot emerge from childhood. She lives in a fantasy world where she is loved and cared for, a world whose boundaries hold off her actual life of words as weapons and arguing and judgement. The trauma in her background keeps her pinned to her past, like a dragonfly's wings stuck to styrofoam.

She is drowning in her illusions, and she knows they are killing her, day after day after day. She is empty; she has given everything she has to work, and there is no more. She has no idea how to be a whole human being; she has never had to learn. She imagines that if she can escape people, she can save herself, find a way to be whole, in herself.

What would it be like to be truly alone with herself, unplugged and isolated?

She practices at first, going away for weekends, staying at Airbnb rentals, cabins in "the country," in the trees. She leaves behind infinite layers of "civilized" life in the city, all the interlocking pieces that keep her clamped to social structures, that create the infrastructure of a life.

She finds little moments of what feel like connection to a little girl, someone she knew for a little while. Someone she believes she needs to know again.

She slowly writes herself out of everyone's life, out of their worlds. She withdraws and no one follows. She resigns her position at the college, sells her house, arranges her finances to live without debt for two years, and moves to a tiny cottage on a little mountain. No internet access, no human relationships, no outside expectations, no talking, no arguing. Her time is hers, for two years.

She begins a journey back to herself.

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She wakes, the top of her head like ice. She feels around near her pillow, her arm’s skin revolting against the cold with an army of goosebumps. Goddammit, where’s the fucking hat? A little grumpy this morning. Sparkles woke her—twice--way too early. She reaches down between the wall and the floor, feels the familiar soft knit, grabs it, and shoves it on her head. Fuck it’s cold in here. She stifles a “god-i-hate-rural” and ducks under the gloriously warm well-used comforter.

Reaching out and up to the head of the bed for her phone, she remembers: No Instagram. She turned all the accounts off yesterday. Oh, yeah, and she’s almost out of Facebook for now, too. They were dangerous placebos, making her think she was connected with people who cared and thought her work and her life were valuable enough to support. She also had no other choice but to shut down the distractions. She has 52 dollars and some change left to her name. She has no choice but to accept that, after three years of rural field research, she has now become rural poor. She's documented the near impossibility of escaping this condition. She cannot afford placebos.

Her gut clenches, and that feeling she’s disappearing threatens to drown her. She’s galaxies away from any world she knows. And, no one knows her—not a soul. Some think they do, but they only know a ghost of who she was—just a set of skills. Not a single mind has met hers. Not a single heart has felt hers. Not a single body knows hers. How long can a human mind last with no reflection? How long can a heart live without another? How long can a body remain whole without touch? The pain is overwhelming this morning. Fuck. She doesn’t have time for the pain. She’s got so much work still to do to exist. She's losing herself in a world without human mirrors.

Pushing her head out from under the comforter, she lies still, eyes closed, letting the powerful emotion move through her until it releases itself in tears and clogs her head so she can’t breathe. It comes hard this morning as the world lies down on top of her, making itself comfortable. The world's weight is not interested in her comfort. She presses her hands to her chest, repeating the same words she’s used so many times over the years in this work: “Breathe, calm. Everything is okay in this moment. Trust the universe. It’s been there for us every single time. Just keep working and moving forward.”

She knows she can’t go back, to anyone or anything. She’s had that conversation with herself for the millionth time. There’s just no “there” there anymore. It and they all disappeared while she was gone. She shouts this lesson at the little person in her mind who relentlessly keeps looking and trying, who refuses to see what’s actual: “THERE IS NO ONE THERE FOR YOU! THEY ARE ALL GONE! YOU NEED TO STOP LOOKING! STOP TRYING TO SHOW HOW YOU’VE CHANGED! NO ONE CARES! NO ONE KNOWS YOU! NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND THE WORK! YOU HAVE TO LET GO OF IT AND THEM. YOU HAVE TO START OVER AGAIN!”

She leaves the phone on the nightstand, pushes her body out of the warm comforter, and jumps naked into the cold room. Finding 2 of the 3 pairs of warm leggings she owns on the floor next to the bed, she quickly slides one on, then slides the second pair on top. Shivering, she grabs the too large and too long tank top (1 of 3 she currently owns) and shrugs it on. She looks for the Bombas she kicked off under the comforter when it got warm last night; she finds them and slides them over cooling feet. Her two well-worn fleece zip-ups and an ugly warm-up jacket round out what make up her current core work-life wardrobe. It’s just a slight variation of what she’s been wearing for years living, working, and surviving at the bottom of rural cultures.

She remembers that she sorted it out again last night. Wrote it on the whiteboards. She’s changing course. Again. ...

The Relational Democracy Project Podcast :: Host, Cathy B Glenn, Ph.D.: Recent Episodes

Cathy B Glenn, Ph.D.