Reflections: Power, Post-Oppositionality, & Belonging

Bringing people I like together to meet each other is one of my favorite things in the world. Perhaps it’s the middle-child in me. There’s always anticipation, and a bit of nervousness: will they gel? Will they see in each other what I see in them? Will everyone show up well and be kind and generous?

Holding a space for folks to connect with each other thus feels both very natural and very daunting at the same time. Under the best of circumstances, they not only go where I hoped they would go, but they open new insights and connections that I hadn’t even contemplated. It was that experience I found myself enjoying in today’s Conversation on Transformation, taking up the complex topics of Power, Post-Oppositionality, and Belonging.

The tension I always feel in these spaces is this: can we do justice to the depth of wisdom and experience each person embodies as individuals… AND explore the unique conversation that is only possible among them as a collective? It’s that perennial tension between structure and emergence that continues to bedevil me (us?). I drew some comfort being in the company of June Holley, a master network weaver who graciously co-hosted this conversation to engage with the live audience.

I’m still processing the “impossibly rich conversation” (to borrow a line Bo used in describing the discussion on Societal Healing). If you want to process together, we are hosting (with thanks to fellow Building Belonging member Sara Huang) an informal gathering November 24th from 10:30am-noon Pacific to continue the conversation. Come as you are, ready to explore power, post-oppositionality, and belonging with curious minds and kindred spirits; register here.

A few themes I’m sitting with (and which we may explore together next week):

Radical interconnectedness

• AnaLouise used this term to describe the core aspiration of post-oppositionality as a concept: it seeks to recognize that we are all inextricably related.
• Cyndi picked up this thread, noting that if our core issue is our disconnectedness (the feeling of not-belonging as core to our trauma), then the obvious antidote is connection.
• Tim talks about this as “ecological politics,” drawing on natural phenomena and indigenous wisdom (he mentioned Tyson Yunkaporta’s new book Sand Talk).

Transcending binaries

• Lorella spoke to the need to “sit in the contradiction,” to not simply reject the binary but to hold the tension.
• Cyndi proposed “multiplicity” as one response to binary thinking: designing for multiple possiblities, and inviting people to choose among them, and maintain the freedom/agency to change their choice.
• Tim brought in the concept of agonism, noting that while our adversarial system often devolves to zero sum politics, we can instead see conflict as positive, as a necessary part of a pluralistic process.
• AnaLouise spoke to the need to learn to embrace difference, to see it not as something deviant from a dominant norm, but as a source of insight.

Supremacist vs Liberatory power

• Cyndi offered this distinction for distinguishing between dominant paradigms of power (supremacist) and the kinds we are seeking to cultivate (liberatory). Liberatory power springs from joy and abundance; supremacist from scarcity and fear.
• Lorella connected that frame to the social movements currently animating change around the world, usually led by youth and women of color — people on the margins, who “don’t have the luxury of walking away.” They are offering and embodying a new form of power (she cited Alicia Garza’s new book The Purpose of Power).
• Tim contrasted his vision for ecological politics (liberatory power) with our current framework of “supplicant politics” (which inadvertently reinforces the supremacist paradigm we are seeking to overcome).

Agency, Self-sovereignty, and Safety

• The group returned repeatedly to the theme of agency as a core feature of how we understand power: Tim talked of the work of democracy as cultivating people’s sense/experience of their own agency.
• Cyndi connected this to the notion of “self-sovereignty,” an inherent right to a sort of sacred personal/psychic space free from state intervention.
• Lorella sees the core principle of organizing as recognizing people’s agency to transform their own conditions… and wondered about the possibility of self-sovereignty for people who are systematically devalued/marginalized by dominant culture: surely safety is a precondition for self-sovereignty?

The power of embodiment

• The group resonated with the need for more expansive ways of knowing and learning, to incorporate feeling, sensing, and more embodied practices. AnaLouise spoke to the power of embodiment (via yoga, e.g.) as a way to attune to our intuition in a deeper way.
• Cyndi spoke to the transformative potential of art and theater (echoes of Social Presencing Theater), while Tim (a musician himself) spoke to the power of improvisation in music as another example, and cited emerging experiments around play that move us toward a “yes, and” approach.
• Indeed, everyone offered a practice that incorporated some element of embodiment: breathwork (AnaLouise and Tim), completing our emotional cycles and allowing others to experience their full emotions (Cyndi), and staying physically active to experience our bodies changing states (Lorella).

The need for new forms and structures

• Tim put it nicely: “We need to move from collective grievance to collective construction.”
• Cyndi also offering an attractive invitation, encouraging us to “design from our desires, not our pain.”
• Lorella offered a timely example from her native Peru, where youth protestors just forced a corrupt Congress (who had deposed the elected president and instated their own preferred candidate) to cede to popular demands and offer some modicum of democratic accountability — a recognition that existing structures don’t — and can’t — serve our needs.

I’m just scratching the surface here, amid so much depth, wisdom, and areas for further exploration. One other theme I’ll name in closing is the expressed desire —both in the conversation and raised by those joining the livestream — was a deep hunger for practice, for an opportunity to learn and develop these competencies. The art of holding space. Of navigating conflict. Of facilitating conversations across difference. Of emotional and embodied self-regulation.

That is an explicit goal of this series of Conversations on Transformation: an effort both to name the core competencies we are trying to develop as a species, and to share learnings from some of those practitioners most advanced in the state of the art.

To learn more from and with AnaLouise, Cyndi, Lorella, and Tim, please follow their work! Cyndi is launching a new initiative — conceived as a liberatory space for social change practitioners of color — called Edge Leadership — and Tim is finalizing a manuscript for a new book elaborating his ideas. Stay tuned!

If you want to explore this topic in community, we hope to see you next week. We look forward to continuing to learn and deepen our practice — together.

In gratitude and community,

Brian