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# Bennett scale
- Also known as the **Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS)**
- Developed by Milton Bennett
- Describes an individual's various responses to differences in [[Culture]]
- The scale ranges from ethnocentrism in intercultural communication to ethnorelativism
- Six part scale, as given below:[^1]
- **Denial of difference:** Individuals experience their own culture as the only "real" one, while other cultures are either not noticed at all or are understood in an undifferentiated, simplistic manner. people at this position are generally uninterested in cultural difference, but when confronted with difference their seemingly benign acceptance may change to aggressive attempts to avoid or eliminate it. most of the time, this is a result of physical or social isolation, where the person's views are never challenged and are at the center of their reality. members of dominant culture are more likely to have a denial orientation towards cultural diversity.
- **Defense of difference:** differences are acknowledged, but they are denigrated rather than embraced. rather, one's own culture is experienced as the most "evolved" or best way to live. this position is characterized by dualistic us/them thinking and frequently accompanied by overt negative stereotyping. they will openly belittle the differences among their culture and another, denigrating race, gender or any other indicator of difference. people at this position are more openly threatened by cultural difference and more likely to be acting aggressively against it.
- **Minimization of difference:** people recognize superficial cultural differences in food, customs, etc. and have somewhat positive view about cultural differences. but they still emphasize human similarity in physical structure, psychological needs, and/or assumed adherence to universal values. people at this position are likely to assume that they are no longer ethnocentric, and they tend to overestimate their tolerance while underestimating the effect (e.g. "privilege") of their own culture. they usually assumes that our own set of fundamental behavioral categories are absolute and universal.
- **Acceptance of difference:** one's own culture is experienced as one of a number of equally complex worldviews. people at this position appreciate and accept the existence of culturally different ways of organizing human existence, although they do not necessarily like or agree with every way. they can identify how culture affects a wide range of human experience and they have a framework for organizing observations of cultural difference. we recognize people from this stage through their desire to be informed or proactively learn about alien cultures, and not to confirm prejudices.
- **Adaptation to difference:** individuals are able to expand their own worldviews to accurately understand other cultures and behave in a variety of culturally appropriate ways. in this stage, multicultural participants start to develop intercultural communication skills, change their communication styles, and effectively use empathy or frame of reference shifting, to understand and be understood across cultural boundaries. at this stage, one is able to act properly outside of one's own culture.
- **Integration of difference:** one’s experience of self is expanded to include the movement in and out of different cultural worldviews. people at this position have a definition of self that is "marginal" (not central) to any particular culture, allowing this individual to shift rather smoothly from one cultural worldview to another. at this point, a will to comprehend and adopt various beliefs and norms begins to emerge, demonstrating a high level of intercultural sensitivity.
- Multicultural backgrounds, such as multiracial or third culture individuals, not well accounted for
- Might experience these stages as an integrated aspect of childhood and early-adulthood identity development
- People of mixed or multiracial background often have to make meaning of their multiple cultural backgrounds in relation to their identity
- Those backgrounds tend to become integrated into their identity as a part of their development
- Also might have to interpret additional cultural differences depending on their environment
- Building ethnorelative communication styles and perspectives is existentially critical for multiracial and mixed people
- Their identities can, and often do, embody multiple cultural backgrounds simultaneously
- Accepting those cultures is closely tied to self-concept
- Awareness of how their cultural backgrounds influence their own identity, behaviors, beliefs, and lived experiences requires adapting to and integrating difference
## References
[^1]: Bennett, Milton J. "A Developmental Approach to Training for Intercultural Sensitivity." *_**International Journal of Intercultural Relations**_* 10, no. 2 (January 1986): 179–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/0147-1767(86)90005-2.

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---
author: Wikipedia
title: A Guide to Alicia's heart (emojis)
source: https://www.aliciabytes.com/a-guide-to-alicias-heart-emojis/
clipped: 2024-06-27
published: 2024-05-23
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# A Guide to Alicia's heart (emojis)
I’m gonna go and wear my heart on my sleeve here. I’m already always pretty open about myself. And I try to be open about intentions, although one can always do better. But that’s not the topic here. The topic is my heart. Well, at least my heart emojis. I’m a very weird and quirky woman. I don’t know how common it is for others, but I have a bunch of meanings for the different heart emojis and colors. And why not share that little quirky bit about me?
## General note
While my hearts have specific meanings you gotta be aware that things in life always depend. There will always be exceptions where I use a heart in a different way than I use it in other general cases. Emotions can fluctuate and change, and I won’t limit myself to following a reference. This is just a general lay of the land kind of thing what each one means most of the time. Also the meanings of my hearts have shifted quite a bit over the last few years and continue to be in constant motion. I can’t guarantee that this guide here will always reflect my newest feelings regarding specific hearts.
And sometimes I completely disregard my general feelings for a specific heart emoji and use a specific fixed one for a person because I know it’s their favorite emoji version or their favorite color. For example each one of my partners also has their individual heart color that I use for them and the general meaning I use that color for doesn’t apply anymore.
## Fancy hearts
Those hearts are really special. I tend to use them a lot for special occasions. I also use them sometimes if I’m feeling good and lucky and really happy in general or something in my life is currently special, but that’s not their main use.
- Growing heart 💗: So this one is the ultimate heart for me. I love you a lot and you mean the world to me. I’m falling more and more in love with you. Or my emotions are growing towards you. Sometimes in a just platonic way it’s used to show that I’m growing closer to you and feeling the relationship deepen. On very happy days I might even use that one more casually towards people I like or show that I absolutely loved the time together.
- Revolving hearts 💞: Usually they mean I’m sending you lots of love. Lots of support. Wish I could support you, help you, hug you, be there for you right now. I want to send you immediate love to make you feel better. Just I care about you a lot. Not necessarily coupled with love or special feelings, just wanting to send support/love/positivity.
- Beating heart 💓: You’re definitely doing something right. I’m excited, enjoying it and loving whatever we have. Again not specifically coupled with special feelings towards you, but things are really positive. _Excited happy heart noises!_
- Two hearts 💕: Usually just to show that I’m feeling a connection. I don’t think I use that one a lot? Do I? Maybe I should really use it more, because right now thinking about it, it feels like I’m underutilizing it.
## Colored hearts
Those are the main hearts that show different feelings and levels of emotions. I use them a lot. I love to show hearts and send them to people. I’m just very open with my hearts. And even if they might mean quite a bit, it might not be a reason to overthink right away.
- Purple heart 💜: Purple is my favorite color. I love this a lot. And maybe I want to get there with you too? Just maybe. I usually use this for people I’m really close too and people I really like, or am crushing on. Also for special occasions or sending really a lot of support.
- Green heart 💚: Green is the color of hope. I usually use this one to send and show support. When I want to be there for others. But it also gets used for good friends or people I’d like to get to know more and maybe become good friends with. Definitely into your vibe! :3
- Blue heart 💙: People I’m not really close with. Someone I’d love to hang out and become more of a friend with. Not as strong as the green one, but still I like your vibe and maybe we can do something together.
- Orange heart 🧡: Casual friends/acquaintances. You’re a good bean and I like you, but probably I don’t know you enough yet to up you further? Or something else maybe I guess?
- Yellow heart 💛: Highly situation dependent. I might use it for various reasons not listed here. But often it’s just a casual heart. An “I don’t know you, but I like this” heart.
- Black heart 🖤: The “Enigma heart”. I use it for situations where I don’t know exactly. Or it might be that you are an enigma to me at the moment still. Maybe I don’t know how I feel about things. Or I’m feeling a bit dark right now in general. It’s often just an unknown random enigma heart and I often don’t know the reason why I use it myself.
- White heart 🤍: It’s a blank heart. For when I can’t decide what heart to use. Don’t interpret too much into it, it could be used for all kinds of reasons. Sorry to not be able to tell you more about it or my feelings when using it. Chances are there’s not really any deeper meaning behind it!
- Gray heart 🩶: I don’t use this one often at all? I don’t know what to tell you. It’s not in my standard use and there’s probably some meaning? Maybe? I don’t know? Chances are you won’t see this one (a lot).
## Thoughts for the end
I just wanna say that this is kind of nice to share. Being open about emotions or how I sometimes share them with others. Again, don’t take this as a strict reference sheet, emotions are weird and quirky. And I’m already quirky enough without focusing on emotions specifically. I’m a bit curious now though if anyone else has special meanings behind their hearts? Or do you have one favorite heart color that you tend to use for almost anything? Really all hearts and emotions are valid and special, but it would be interesting to know how people tick there.

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---
author: Dr. Ilker Kalin
title: "Book Review: How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance by Paul Mason"
source: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2021/12/08/book-review-how-to-stop-fascism-history-ideology-resistance-by-paul-mason/
clipped: 2024-11-17
published: 2021-12-08
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
_In_ **How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistanc****e**_,_ **Paul Mason** _warns readers of the fascist danger that lies ahead and provides a practical guide on how to fight back. Connecting the historical emergence of fascism to today’s conditions, this book is a timely call to consider the emerging threat of a new fascism and offers guidance on how to stop its rise today, writes_ **Ilker Kalin**_._
_If you are interested in this book review, you can_ **[watch a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tg595p-WRI)** _or_ **[listen to a podcast](https://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?id=a0968ad7-a674-457d-92f5-2ca2fdd8d510)** _of Paul Mason discussing How to Stop Fascism as part of an LSE public event, recorded on 14 October 2021._ 
**_How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance_****. Paul Mason.** **Allen Lane. 2021.**
**![](https://blogsmedia.lse.ac.uk/blogs.dir/30/files/2021/12/How-to-Stop-Fascism-cover-188x300.jpg "Book cover of How to Stop Fascism")Find this book (affiliate link):** [![amazon-logo](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/files/2013/02/amazon-logo.jpg)](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141996390/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=lsreofbo-21&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0141996390&linkId=a5e8e0035fbf7e33f694dd7fd3f3787b)
A thought-provoking, uneasy and striking statement of ‘Fascism is back’ opens [_How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance_](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442/442868/how-to-stop-fascism/9780141996394.html)_._ Paul Mason, a British TV commentator and award-winning journalist, sets out to warn the world of the fascist danger that lies ahead and to provide a practical guide on how to fight back. At a time of [democratic backsliding](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege) around the globe, Mason’s book arrives at a timely moment to warn people, especially activists, of what might slip away from their hands.
Mason elaborates on his statement by stating that fascism is back, ‘but of its own accord’. Thus, the book talks about a new kind of fascism, but one which is no less harmful or threatening. On the contrary, what we witness today is as dangerous as fascism in the past, if not more so. Political movements of far-right extremism, right-wing populism and authoritarian conservatism, though different in their organisational aspects and language, share philosophical roots with fascism.
If a group of Nazis from the 1930s hopped on a time machine and travelled forward to the year 2020, Mason argues, they would relax, thinking that their mission had worked. Mason cites some examples from around the world, including [a law passed](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50670393) by the Indian parliament granting citizenship to all undocumented immigrants except Muslims; [violence and demonstrations](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/17/greece-violence-against-asylum-seekers-border) against refugees at the Greece-Turkey border by Greeks; [a group of armed far-right militia](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/opinion/bolsonaro-office-of-hate-brazil.html) threatening the Brazilian Supreme Court for its attempts to investigate President Jair Bolsonaro due to his business dealings; and the revelation of [a cell of neo-Nazi soldiers](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/world/europe/germany-military-neo-nazis-ksk.html) in the German military.
Mason contends that these snapshots of developments in 2020 represent ‘symbolic’ violent actions of fascism that run deeper in their philosophical and ideational roots. While all of these actions aim to undermine the rule of law and intimidate minorities, liberals and the left in general in the short term, their end goal is to ‘trigger, fight, and win an ethnic war’ (20). And online spaces, such as Telegram and Signal, play into the hands of fascists, providing them with easy and anonymised platforms to spread their hatred, fantasies of violence and conspiracy theories, thereby facilitating right-wing mobilisation.
Mason provides a detailed historical account of fascism in an attempt to explain the process by which fascism emerged in Europe (namely, Germany and Italy) during the interwar period and to draw similarities with today. In both countries, fascist groups made their way into the respective parliaments through mass grassroots organisations and the use of violence. They took advantage of the economic crisis of the Great Depression which caused high inflation and mass unemployment, as well as the inability of liberal explanations or interventions of the time to address the needs of people. Fascist groups in both countries gained traction partly by exploiting democratic means, such as elections.
According to Mason, the 2008 economic crisis had a similar effect across various countries, and that is why we have experienced an increasing shift towards the right in the past decade. As such, the neoliberal order has failed people once again, Mason suggests. This not only includes economic concerns, but also faith in the whole system that encompasses the elites and democracy together. This, in return, prepares the ground for the use of protectionist and racist rhetoric by right-wing groups that instigate hate and violence in society.
The line drawn here between ‘fascism’ now and then might appear irrelevant or delusional to some people. Even those who acknowledge decaying democracy and increasing authoritarianism across the world might not agree with Mason’s contention that emerging developments on the right signal a potential revival of fascism. Yet, the book implies a convincing answer to this: neither did the left in Germany and Italy in the 1930s.
This brings us to the main point to be taken from the book. Mason harshly criticises the left of the 1930s for not seeing what was coming. According to Mason, ‘fascism achieved power in the twentieth century because neither the liberal left nor Marxist left understood what they were dealing with’ (163). This prevented them from coming up with a comprehensive strategy to fight fascism. Mason strongly believes that fascism in Germany and Italy could have been prevented had the left realised the gravity of the threat and formed a united front against it.
Mason makes this point most clearly and convincingly by referring to the examples of France and Spain. In both countries the left, consisting of radicals and progressive liberals, formed a popular front to fight fascist parties and eventually won elections in 1936. Although this success against fascism did not prevail in either country, Mason nonetheless notes that ‘the Popular Fronts are the only historical example of democracies effectively defending themselves against a significant fascist threat’ (212).
The book implies that if we fail to see the fascist threat of the present in its true form or undermine its potential, just as the left of the 1930s did, history will repeat itself, but possibly with even more negative consequences this time due to the climate threat. Rising carbon emissions, if not stopped, will cause a rise in temperatures and significantly damage the environment. Right-wing populists have so far proved themselves ignorant of this imminent threat, as in the case of Bolsonaro framing increasing climate change as a ‘globalist’ tactic and former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords (64).
Drawing on lessons from history, Mason’s main solution to fascism is ‘to win the battle of ideas, and well in advance of its electoral breakthrough’ (158). This solution requires two main approaches. First, fascism should be understood as an ideological war, not just based on racism but also misogyny, conspiracy theories, myths, intolerance and violence. To that end, Mason defines fascism as ‘the fear of freedom triggered by a glimpse of freedom’ (xxi). As such, a fascist mindset fears that ‘a group that is supposed to be subordinate to them might be on the verge of achieving freedom and equality’ (17). Today, this potential target group is even larger than in the 1930s, including women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants. We already observe that right-wing populists and authoritarian conservatives put significant efforts into preventing these groups from achieving greater freedom and impeding any gained rights.
Second, the struggle against fascism requires an alliance of the centre and the left. Parties and people of the two ideologies should put aside their differences and unite to defend democracy against fascism. Furthermore, Mason states that this goal could achieved only by involving ‘struggles both from below and coercive action by the state’ (228). Therefore, a large number of people should be mobilised to fight the battle of ideas between fascists and the left. And the state’s apparatus should be used to prevent fascist movements abusing the gaps in democratic constitutions.
Mason’s _How to Stop Fascism_ is a timely call to consider this emerging threat of a new fascism. The book brilliantly connects historical facts to today’s conditions by looking at the increasing presence of right-wing movements from a new perspective. Some of the arguments presented might be hard to digest, especially for those who do not subscribe to Marxist ideology. Mason, as a longtime activist and proud Marxist, by no means offers an impartial account of the world; rather, he presents it through the lens of Marxism – but not in its orthodox form. Regardless, Mason’s point that we need to act immediately seems of high relevance to everyone today, given the increasing authoritarian turn and the climate threat. As such, while reading the book, I often found myself asking: what if we are indeed underestimating the magnitude of the threat ahead of us? This ‘what if’ question is, in and of itself, sufficient to encourage readers to pay attention to Mason’s arguments. After all, [the 2021 Capitol Hill riot](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/capitol-insurrection-visual-timeline/) caught all of us off guard.
The book offers suggestive evidence not only to explain the process by which fascism emerged in the 1930s, but also to provide guidance for both activists and political elites around the world to stop fascism today. The book is also relatable to many other nascent topics in political science, including right-wing populism, the new authoritarianism and political polarisation.
---
_Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books._
## About the author
### Dr Ilker Kalin
Ilker Kalin holds a PhD in Political Science from Wayne State University. He is now a Research Fellow at the Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research (CFPPR) at Bilkent University. His research focuses on the topics of civil resistance, conflict resolution, civil-military relations, state repression and human rights.

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---
author: Wikipedia
title: Calm technology
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology
clipped: 2024-06-23
published: 2022-05-18
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Calm technology
**Calm technology** or **calm design** is a type of [information technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology "Information technology") where the interaction between the technology and its user is designed to occur in the user's periphery rather than constantly at the center of attention. Information from the technology smoothly shifts to the user's attention when needed but otherwise stays calmly in the user's periphery. [Mark Weiser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser "Mark Weiser") and [John Seely Brown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seely_Brown "John Seely Brown") describe calm technology as "that which informs but doesn't demand our focus or attention."[^1]
The use of calm technology is paired with [ubiquitous computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing "Ubiquitous computing") as a way to minimize the perceptible invasiveness of computers in everyday life.[^2]
## Principles
For a technology to be considered calm technology, there are three core principles it should adhere to:
1. The user's attention to the technology must reside mainly in the periphery. This means that either the technology can easily shift between the center of attention and the periphery or that much of the information conveyed by the technology is present in the periphery rather than the center.
2. The technology increases a user's use of his or her periphery. This creates a pleasant [user experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience "User experience") by not overburdening the user with information.
3. The technology relays a sense of familiarity to the user and allows awareness of the user's surroundings in the past, present, and future.[^1]
## History
The phrase "calm technology" was first published in the article "Designing Calm Technology", written by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in 1995.[^1] The concept had developed amongst researchers at the [Xerox Palo Alto Research Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Palo_Alto_Research_Center "Xerox Palo Alto Research Center") in addition to the concept of ubiquitous computing.[^3]
Weiser introduced the concept of calm technology by using the example of [LiveWire or "Dangling String"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jeremijenko#Live_Wire_(Dangling_String),_1995 "Natalie Jeremijenko"). It is an eight-foot (2.4 m) string connected to the mounted small electric motor in the ceiling. The motor is connected to a nearby [Ethernet cable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_cable "Ethernet cable"). When a bit of information flows through that Ethernet cable, it causes a twitch of the motor. The more the information flows, the motor runs faster, thus creating the string to dangle or whirl depending on how much network traffic is. It has aesthetic appeal; it provides a visualization of network traffic but without being obtrusive.[^4]
## Implementation and examples
[Video conferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_conference "Video conference") are an example of calm technology. Information conveyed such as through [gestures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture "Gesture") and [facial expressions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_expression "Facial expression") can be gathered, as opposed to [telephone conferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_conferencing "Telephone conferencing") which do not provide this peripheral information.[^5]
[Smart homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_home "Smart home") are an extension of calm technology due to their emphasis on awareness and adaptability to the user's needs.[^6]
From 2001 to 2003, the [EU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union "European Union") funded 17 projects under an initiative called "The Disappearing Computer". The goal of this initiative was to explore new concepts and techniques that would lead to the development of calm technologies for people-friendly environments.[^7]
## Future research
Due to [mobile technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_technology "Mobile technology") trends towards [pervasive computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pervasive_computing "Pervasive computing"), [ambient intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_intelligence "Ambient intelligence"), and [miniaturization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniaturization "Miniaturization"), calm technology is becoming a more integral part of these devices.[^8]
Another development of calm technology is its transformation into unattended technology, where the technology always exists in the periphery and never requires central attention from the user.[^9]
## See also
- [Human-centered computing (discipline)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-centered_computing_(discipline) "Human-centered computing (discipline)")
- [Human-computer interaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-computer_interaction "Human-computer interaction")
## External links
- ["Short list of classic papers on calm technology"](https://calmtech.com/papers.html). *calmtech.com*. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
[^1]: Weiser, Mark (December 21, 1995). ["Designing Calm Technology"](https://www.karlstechnology.com/blog/designing-calm-technology/). Retrieved May 23, 2019.
[^2]: Tugui, Alexandru (2004). ["Calm Technologies In A Multimedia World"](http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=985617). ACM Digital Library.
[^3]: Weiser, Mark; Gold, Rich and Brown, John Seely (1999). ["The origins of ubiquitous computing research at PARC in the late 1980s"](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=5387055). IBM Systems Journal.
[^4]: Hohl, Michael (2009). ["Calm Technologies 2.0: Visualising Social Data as an Experience in Physical Space"](https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/4065). Parsons Journal For Information Mapping.
[^5]: Tugui, Alexandru (2011). ["Calm Technologies: A New Trend for Educational Technologies"](http://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2011_Tugui.pdf). World Future Review. \[*[dead link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot "Wikipedia:Link rot")*\]
[^6]: Rogers, Yvonne (2006). ["Moving on from Weiser's Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences"](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/hci2020/pdf/Rogers_Ubicomp06.pdf). Microsoft Research.
[^7]: European Commission - US National Science Foundation (2004). ["The Disappearing Computer"](http://www.ercim.eu/EU-NSF/DC.pdf). The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics.
[^8]: Fiaidhi, Jinan; Chou, Wes; Williams, Joseph (2010). ["Mobile Computing in the Context of Calm Technology"](http://piim.newschool.edu/journal/issues/2009/03/pdfs/ParsonsJournalForInformationMapping_Hohl-Michael.pdf). IT Professional Magazine.
[^9]: Levin, Vladimir (2008). ["Evaluating Unattended Technology, a Subset of Calm Technology"](https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/4065). University of Waterloo.

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author: Carrie Kappel
title: "Collaboration: From groan zone to growth zone"
source: https://i2insights.org/2019/05/28/collaboration-groan-zone/
clipped: 2024-06-19
published: 2023-08-11
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Collaboration: From groan zone to growth zone
**By Carrie Kappel**
What is the groan zone in collaboration? What can you do when you reach that point?
As researchers and practitioners engaged in transdisciplinary problem-solving, we know the value of diverse perspectives. We also know how common it is for groups to run into challenges when trying to learn from diverse ideas and come to consensus on creative solutions.
This challenging, often uncomfortable space, is called the groan zone. The term comes from Sam Kaner’s diamond model of participation shown in the figure below. After an initial period of *divergent thinking*, where diverse ideas are introduced, groups have to organize that information, focus on what’s most important, and make decisions in order to move forward into the phase of *convergent thinking*.
Navigating that transition between divergent and convergent thinking is the realm in which creativity and innovation emerge, if we let them.
![Adaptation of Kaner’s diamond model of participation (source Carrie Kappel 2019)](https://i0.wp.com/i2insights.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/kappel_kaner-diamond-model-participation.jpg?resize=1050%2C772&ssl=1)
Adaptation of Kaner’s diamond model of participation (source Carrie Kappel 2019)
My own recent experience navigating the groan zone happened midway through a two-day workshop I was facilitating on oceans and the future of food, where an interdisciplinary, multi-sector group of participants became daunted by the task of integrating their extensive set of ideas and perspectives into a shared research agenda. One of the organizers, Dr. Liz Selig, Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions’ Deputy Director, remarked, “*We’re at the stage where we have taken everything out of the closet and it’s all strewn across the floor. Now we have to sort through it all and start to make sense of what’s important, what to keep, how to organize it so we can find what we need*.”
Every interdisciplinary working group I’ve ever participated in or facilitated has found itself in the groan zone at some point. The good news is you don’t have to be a skilled facilitator to employ the tools for navigating this territory and tapping its creative potential.
*Managing the groan zone*
1. *Don’t Panic*: Half the battle is recognizing that you are entering the groan zone. Just naming the transition from divergence to convergence as a distinct, valuable, and normal phase can help to reassure a group.
2. *Encourage Dialogue*: Dialogue, rather than debate, allows collective insight and creative breakthroughs to emerge in groups. Challenge participants to speak to be understood, rather than to win a point, and listen for understanding, rather than for the weakness in another’s argument. Put a premium on defining terms, unpacking assumptions, and explaining thinking to bridge diverse disciplinary perspectives. When participants interact in this way, they tend to feel more comfortable wading into the groan zone’s uncertainty and trusting the process – and each other – to carry them through to the other side.
3. *Use Tools to Support Convergence*: Build in specific processes to converge on ideas. This involves seeking that collective intellectual tingle that comes from lighting upon an idea that has the potential to unlock new insights.
*Tools to support convergence*
There are countless tools for sifting and synthesizing ideas, such as these that I’ve found useful:
- Use conceptual frameworks to organize ideas and draw connections. Constructing a visual model together helps to reveal the different ways individuals think about the problem, which can build a shared understanding of it and unlock new ways of addressing it. Joint model building supports metacognition, raising awareness of individual assumptions, gaps, and biases (see [Machiel Keestra’s blog post on metacognition](https://i2insights.org/2019/02/05/metacognition-and-interdisciplinarity/)).
- Take a staged approach to prioritizing ideas. Invite individuals to reflect on their own, then share in pairs, then bring their insights and ideas to another pair or small group, and finally offer highlights to the full group. This [1-2-4-all process](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/) offers everyone a chance to speak and allows the group to elevate the most promising ideas rapidly.
- Get the ideas on paper. Give each idea a headline and write a short abstract that distills the problem, why it’s important, and your proposed solution. Review each other’s ideas. Identify areas of confusion or uncertainty. Clarify.
- Specify your criteria for convergence. A simple two-axis plot can help a group decide how to focus its effort. For example, as shown in the figure below, you might assess each idea for its *feasibility* and *potential impact*, and then focus on those scoring high in both. Defining what you mean by feasibility and impact before your start scoring is essential and can be another source of collaborative learning.
![](https://i0.wp.com/i2insights.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/kappel_feasibility_v_impact_matrix.jpg?resize=872%2C564&ssl=1)
Classifying ideas based on their feasibility and potential for impact can move a group toward the sweet spot of convergence (source Carrie Kappel 2019)
*Final words*
Inviting diverse perspectives (divergence), synthesizing to yield new breakthroughs (emergence), and coalescing around a shared vision (convergence) are fundamental elements of successful collaboration, and they don’t just happen once. In fact, a well-designed collaboration will move through these stages over and over again.
In the arc of a project, a group may encounter the groan zone at multiple scales – within an individual discussion, midway through a multi-day meeting, part way through a multi-year project, or all of the above. Group participants often report that their satisfaction ebbs in the messy middle of their project, but rises again as the project approaches the end.
Recognizing that the groan zone is inevitable, our best option is to embrace it and let it spark opportunities for the emergence of novel ideas. Armed with awareness and a few good process tools, could we come to see the groan zone as an essential *growth zone* instead?
What has your experience been with the groan zone? Are there other strategies that you have found useful for navigating it?
**Reference**:
Kaner, S. (2014). *Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making*. 3rd edition, Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, California, United States of America.
A modified version of this blog post is simultaneously published as part of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) commentary series: [https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/news/how-spark-joy-groan-zone-collaboration](https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/news/how-spark-joy-groan-zone-collaboration) .
***Biography:** Carrie Kappel PhD is a Senior Fellow, Research Scientist and professional facilitator of transdisciplinary collaborative working groups at University of California Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), in the USA. Her facilitation work also takes her outside the university where her clients include nonprofits and government agencies. Her research and facilitation are aimed at i) understanding socio-ecological coupled systems and ii) developing the tools and capacities we need as a society to adapt and thrive in the face of high uncertainty and rapid change. This work draws upon synthesis science, integrating knowledge and methods across diverse disciplines and ways of knowing; facilitation and leadership for cross-sector collaborations; and effective multi-channel communication with a wide array of collaborators, policymakers and stakeholders. As a visual thinker, Carrie uses graphic facilitation to help foster the emergence of new ideas and make connections and insights visible. She is deeply interested in the intersection of art and science, and the ways in which the humanities and sciences can inform one another*.

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author: Mahar Mangahas
title: Facets of Filipino identity
source: https://opinion.inquirer.net/139607/facets-of-filipino-identity
clipped: 2024-06-16
published: 2021-04-24
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Facets of Filipino identity
When peoples engage each other (see my “Engage the Chinese people,” Inquirer.net, 4/17/21), it is good to learn about each other as much as possible, using not only popular sources but also scientific sources of information.
For Filipinos to learn more about the Chinese people, one starting point is to learn more about ourselves first.
This is not as straightforward as it may seem. Doesn’t every Filipino already know, consciously or not, what it means to be Filipino? Each of us, alone, has a personal perspective, varying from person to person. But all of us, together, also have a collective perspective on what it means to be a Filipino.
A collective perspective is scientifically obtainable from a statistically representative national survey of adults, as was done by Social Weather Stations on Feb. 19-23, 2014, within the National Identity module of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). That module had, among other things, a battery of eight facets or characteristics of national identity, and asked respondents to grade the importance of each facet for being truly Filipino (sa pagiging isang tunay na Pilipino).
The results were as follows, listed in the order of the national percentages of adult respondents calling them Very Important (Napakaimportante):
1\. To have been born in the Philippines (Ang maipanganak sa Pilipinas): **83%.**
2\. To be able to speak Filipino (Ang makapagsalita ng Pilipino): **81%.**
3\. To feel Filipino (Ang madama ang pagka-Pilipino): **79%.**
4\. To have Filipino citizenship (Ang magkaroon ng pagkamamamayang Pilipino o Filipino citizenship): **78%.**
5\. To have Filipino ancestry (Ang magkaroon ng lahing Pilipino): **77%.**
6\. To have lived in the Philippines for most of one’s life (Ang pagtira sa Pilipinas nang halos buong buhay ng isang tao): **74%.**
7\. To be a Catholic (Ang maging Katoliko): **73%.**
8\. To respect Philippine political institutions and laws (Ang igalang ang mga institusyong pulitikal at mga batas ng Pilipinas): **65%.**
The list of facets tested by the survey had been agreed upon by the ISSP member institutes, by democratic vote. The list is specifically meant for cross-country analysis: Comparison with other peoples is part of the process of learning about one’s own people. Item 7 is mandated to be whatever religion is most common in the country.
The people’s perspective on the meaning of Filipino identity is definitely not unanimous. Anywhere from one-third to one-fifth of the people do not regard a specific facet as Very Important. Yet one can see a clear consensus about it: To us Filipinos, the most important facets are birthplace and speech, while the least important are religion and the laws. I will compare the Filipino perspective to the global perspective in future columns. I do not know if this particular survey was also done in China.
The ISSP module on national identity has been implemented three times already, since 1993, and is set next for 2023. Every new replication keeps two-thirds of the previous questionnaire, to allow scientific monitoring of social change over time.
—————-
### Update from the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, 4/1/21:
“1. The research team previously operating under The University of Hong Kong and now under HKPORI has always abided by the law, and will continue to do so.
“2. HKPORI considers it important to promote the spirit of Science and Democracy under all circumstances, and it will continue to conduct independent and scientific studies on public opinion in Hong Kong and around the world in order to let people’s voices \[be\] heard.
“3. In light of the changing socio-political environment in Hong Kong, HKPORI considers its role as an independent scientific researcher more important than ever. It will constantly review and revise its research methodologies, data security policies and public engagement initiatives accordingly in order to stay at the forefront of local and international research.
“4. Because the freedom of the press, of speech, publication, communication and conducting academic research are guaranteed by the Basic Law, HKPORI will continue to encourage its members, associates and Hong Kong people in all walks of life to express themselves freely under the law.”
HKPORI’s CEO Robert Chung, current vice president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), and past president of the WAPOR-Asia Chapter, is not retired. I erred in naming him as lifetime awardee, but I think the error will self-correct in due time.
Contact: mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph

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---
author: Erin Kissane
title: Fediverse Governance Drop - Erin Kissane's small internet website
source: https://erinkissane.com/fediverse-governance-drop
clipped: 2024-08-25
published: 2024-08-20
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Fediverse Governance Drop
![Labors of the months of April, May, and June as represented in an illustrated ninth-century manuscript produced in Salzburg from a French original.](https://cdn.blot.im/blog_c5a84d0aaf584fc790c52f81ac288ebd/_image_cache/45423df4-c3d8-4781-8d10-679c2e385112.png) *The fediverse governance processes of moderation, server leadership, and federated diplomacy. (Courtesy [Bayerische Staatsbibliothek](https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/details/bsb00047183))*
[Back in the fall, I wrote about a research project I was diving into](https://erinkissane.com/root-branch) with [Darius Kazemi](https://tinysubversions.com/). Now, after a few months of prepping and conducting interviews with people who run Mastodon and Hometown servers about how they govern their parts of the network and then many more months of analyzing and writing up what we found, we’re releasing our findings. We found **so much**.
[The main report](https://fediverse-governance.github.io/) is a little over 40,000 words and 110 pages long, and includes dozens of excerpts from interviews with our extremely generous research participants, who spoke with us for many hours back in the spring. There’s a lot there. Much of it will be familiar to veteran fedi mods and admins, but I suspect most people will encounter at least a few things they haven’t encountered before.
In the findings, we get into…
- Why we think the fediverse’s structure *can* allow for particularly humane and high-context moderation—and which of the cultural, technical, and financial gaps that our participants identified must be filled before the network can achieve its potential.
- The interrelated governance configurations that make a server more or less manageable, and the different ways servers in our sample approached those configurations to serve their various communities.
- The biggest gaps and annoyances in available governance tooling—spoiler, it’s mostly moderation stuff, but it also includes some fascinating things related to shared/coalitional moderation and better communication between servers.
- What kinds of future threats are most on server operators’ minds, and which things they’re not particularly concerned about.
- The things that keep volunteer server runners on the fediverse, give them hope, and make them feel excited about possible futures.
And so much other stuff, too.
The two satellite documents we made—[Fediverse Governance Opportunities for Funders and Developers](https://fediverse-governance.github.io/images/opportunities.pdf) and the [Quick Start Guide to Fediverse Governance Decisions](https://fediverse-governance.github.io/images/quick-start.pdf)—are essentially alternate ways into the knowledge collected in the full findings report. Choose your own adventure!
## Content stuff
I wouldn’t have guessed, going in, that we’d end up with the major structural categories we landed on—moderation, server leadership, and federated diplomacy—but after spending so much time eyeball-deep in interview transcripts, I think it’s a pretty reasonable structure for discussing the big picture of governance. (The real gold is of course in the excerpts and summaries from our participants, who continuously challenged and surprised us.)
There are no manifestos to be found here, except in that our participants often eloquently and sometimes passionately express their hopes for the fediverse. There are a lot of assumptions, most of which we’ve tried to be pretty scrupulous about calling out in the text, but anything this chunky contains plentiful grist for both principled disagreement and the other kind. Our aim is to describe and convey the knowledge inherent in fediverse server teams, so we’ve really stuck close to the kinds of problems, risks, needs, and challenges those folks expressed.
I have a lot of sympathy for journalists and other professional explainers who are trying to make sense of new networks without themselves being deep in the networks’ development or maintenance ecosystems. Partly because of that sympathy, I threw in some basic theory about the fediverse in the plainest, least dashing way I could. I think talking about the fediverse as *a social component of the open web*, with all the joys and horrors that entails, is useful in helping non-fedi people understand that a.) it’s not a platform at all, and b.) that this genuinely does confer benefits for people who want to build communities that interconnect—carefully—with other communities. I don’t think the fediverse is fully equipped for that use, yet, but it’s my hope that the experiences, insights, and recommendations we’ve collected will help the network move in the right direction(s).
## Process stuff
Although we intentionally limited our research sample to servers of a given size and with a fairly strong public commitment to intentional governance, our findings reflect a pretty high degree of heterogeneity in the specifics, which I’m really happy about. I don’t myself think that there’s a right way to approach the fediverse—some ways are obviously bad and destructive to people and communities I care about, but there are a lot of paths toward being together in better ways. I also think, even more now more than before we did this work, that the relatively subtle differences in the way our participants run medium-sized fedi servers are actually extremely meaningful for the shape of the community they end up hosting.
A brief word about how this came together: Darius and I pitched the project last fall, designed the interviews in the winter, and conducted the interviews over the spring and into early summer. When analysis and writing time arrived, Darius crunched through endless hours of transcript corrections and built out the tooling, legal, and financial findings and recs, and I wrote up the other sections of the report and the introductory analysis. Darius also built a great [mini-site for the main report](https://fediverse-governance.github.io/), [which you can also read as a PDF](https://fediverse-governance.github.io/images/fediverse-governance.pdf) if you’re into that.
## Gratitude
Huge thanks to our participants, to Katharina Meyer and the other folks at DIIF, to the many kind experts who read early drafts and offered generous suggestions, and to my partner and kid, who cleared a lot of time and offered a lot of support so I could hole up and write yet another giant crunchy thing about the internet.

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---
author: 18 Million Rising
title: Fertile Ground
source: https://www.18millionrising.org/2021/07/fertileground/
clipped: 2024-06-23
published: 2021-07-02
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Fertile Ground – 18MR
18MR has produced [Fertile Ground, a beautiful illustrated botanical poster and accompanying essay](https://store.alliedmedia.org/products/fertile-ground) that introduces the concept of abolition, provides analysis on our current moment in Asian America, the limits of # StopAsianHate, and examples of community resistance to police violence.
---
Today, Asian Americans are facing a surge, within a long history, of racism and violence. We’ve seen the tragic headlines and footage, and felt the fear in our Asian American communities since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. From attacks on city streets to two mass shootings in Atlanta and Indianapolis within weeks of each other, we are experiencing acute harm across the country. In response, countless Asian Americans and allies have used the hashtag StopAsianHate to spread awareness about anti-Asian attacks. The slogan and hashtag have reached millions as a call to action. This demand for the state to protect us is as much a survival strategy as it is a fight for our dignity and belonging in the U.S.
Many Asian Americans, including celebrities and elected officials, have also turned to policing and [hate crime laws as solutions](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/why-over-85-asian-american-lgbtq-groups-opposed-anti-asian-n1267421) to the attacks and discrimination. **However, we know that if funding the police made Asian Americans safe, we’d already be safe!**
Police have spent years asking for more and more funding in the name of public safety, reforms, and anti-bias and cultural competency training. They say their intention is to make policing kinder, gentler, and more effective. The U.S. already spends approximately [$180 billion every year](https://www.populardemocracy.org/news/publications/freedom-thrive-reimagining-safety-security-our-communities) on policing and incarceration. And yet, for years, our communities have lived with racial violence – including at [the hands](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/us/angelo-quinto-death-police-kneel.html) of [police.](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/christian-hall-police-shooting) That’s because many reforms end up putting more funding into the police in order to implement change, restructure, or conduct training in ways that increase police presence in marginalized communities. We cannot reform this institution to be safer for any of us.
***At this moment, our broader Asian American movement is faced with a decision. Will we keep a privileged few among us safe through hate crime laws and increased policing or will we fight for true safety and freedom for all of us?***
Our continued investment in a punishment system that kills, cages, and surveils people in the name of safety dehumanizes all of us. In our hearts, we know we must choose life. We must move toward abolition.
**Abolition is a movement to end policing and incarceration.** It is a long-term process to reorganize our society and create systemic change so that [prisons are obsolete.](https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf) It is the work to [shift funding, resources, power, and responsibility away from police](https://issuu.com/projectnia/docs/policeabolition101_zine_digital_singlepages) and into community-based safety alternatives. Abolition is not only about dismantling, it is also about creating. As [Ruth Wilson Gilmore](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruth-wilson-gilmore.html) says, “Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.”
In our current system, we are asked to believe the ‘reasonable’ choice is punishment, cages, and death. When we’ve caused harm, are harmed, or are perceived as inherently harmful, our choices for repair and healing are gravely limited. Hate crime laws, calling the cops, convictions. All these false solutions point to our own annihilation.
Abolition is the fertile ground beneath us and between us. Yes, abolition is what emerges between us. It’s not a top-down thing, a savior, or one policy to free us all. It’s us, hand in hand, creating and practicing new ways of being. This is why it is a transformative living practice. We literally grow it, together.
Abolition does not mean replacing the police with another simple solution. It requires a deep diversity of strategies to grow safer communities. Growing abolition comes with making mistakes, experimenting, and being with uncertainty. We can say no to the prison industrial complex, without having all the answers and solutions. [We are learning as we go.](https://18millionrising.org/2021/06/whalberg_2021.html)
In spite of these challenges, we choose abolition and we choose life. By partnering with the land, we begin by listening to these plant guides who teach us how to move beyond a “stop hate” frame and towards a new path. This is a living map for ourselves and other Asian Americans who want to tend the fertile ground of abolition.
Asians have been treated as a foreign threat [since we first arrived](https://18millionrising.org/2020/04/unmasking_yp.html) in the so-called United States. But, the language and framing of “Stop Asian Hate” limits our understanding of anti-Asian racism to individual violent attacks or acts of discrimination during the pandemic. In reality, anti-Asian racism and violence have come in many forms throughout history:
- U.S imperialist wars and colonization across Asia, from the Korean War to the colonization of the Philippines, to the Vietnam War, which led to Asian death and displacement
- The absence of Asian American history in school curricula, which erases both our historic struggles against racism, as well as our contributions to the shaping of this settler-colonial country
- Xenophobic policies from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Japanese American incarceration during World War II, which have reinforced the notion that Asian Americans are perpetual foreigners
- The detainment and deportation of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees by ICE, which separates families and contributes to mass incarceration
- The [surveillance,](https://www.vigilantlove.org/stopcve) deportation, and incarceration of South Asians and Muslims during a wave of [Islamophobic policing](https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/national-security-entry-exit-registration-system-nseers-freedom)and war-making in the post-9/11 era
- Exploitative and imperialist economic policies and trade agreements, which contribute to Asian [labor exploitation](https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/rana-plaza-disaster-8-years) and [resource extraction](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/7/30/philippines-deadliest-country-for-environmental-land-activists) for the benefit of the Global North
- Lack of universal healthcare, housing, and other social services that would combat the [widest wealth gap of any racial group in the US](https://www.vox.com/identities/22530103/asians-americans-wealth-income-gap-crazy-rich-model-minority)
By focusing on individual “hate” incidents, the StopAsianHate frame means that we cannot address these forms of systemic racism against Asian Americans. And what counts as “hate” anyway? Many people use the term “hate crime” to loosely mean a hateful, biased incident. But hate crimes have [specific legal definitions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7MNPXHT0wM&t=2130s) that are regulated by the state. As Asian Americans, we refuse to use state definitions of racism and bias when the U.S. is a major source of racism against us. Especially when [the FBI’s own data](https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime) on hate crime “offenders” reveal these laws are used to disproportionately criminalize Black people.
During the pandemic, many Asian Americans expressed support with BlackLivesMatter, a movement that advocates for abolition and defunding the police. But, with little to no community-based safety options, some of those same people turned to cops to StopAsianHate. Some Asian Americans have also demanded punishment and convictions for those who cause harm by [circulating cash rewards for arrests and supporting hate crime sentencing enhancements.](https://ew.com/tv/daniel-dae-kim-daniel-wu-offer-reward-in-search-of-assailant-who-attacked-asian-man/)
We cannot find justice for Asian Americans within a system that we know is unjust and violent toward Black people. **Creating freedom from violence beyond police requires all of our creativity, resourcefulness, and investment in transformation. What Asian Americans choose to create and practice right now will be the blueprint for not just what keeps us safe, but how we collectively get free.**
**We can create deep, holistic change when we face the root causes of the harm we experience. The system was built this way – it perpetuates a vicious cycle of harm. We’re ready to grow beyond it.**
Policing and the larger prison industrial complex are, in the words of Mariame Kaba, [“death-making institutions.”](https://dailynorthwestern.com/2021/01/13/campus/activist-mariame-kaba-talks-abolition-and-mutual-aid-condemns-campus-police-in-dream-week-keynote/) They do not repair, heal, or generate safety for communities – just the opposite in fact.
Since its founding as an institution rooted in [“slave patrols,”](https://abolitionjournal.org/studyguide/) U.S. law enforcement has been a source of violence, oppression, and surveillance for Black people. Policing also sits at the intersections of misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, Islamophobia, capitalism, whorephobia, and other systems of oppression. Our comrades often cannot turn to police due to this systemic prejudice. **As an Asian American community, we can learn from the work and words of those who have had no choice but to find safety outside the system.**
The trans women of color, Sylvia Rivera and Masha P. Johnson, behind Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) are an example of creating safety when one cannot rely on the state or wider community for resources. In order to survive in a world that criminalized their very existence, Sylvia and Marsha did sex work. Marsha claimed to have been arrested [over 100 times.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-marsha-p-johnson.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=E899E9DC7344AEF6001DDDB2F958F1D0&gwt=regi&assetType=REGIWALL) They [used their earnings to found STAR House,](https://makinggayhistory.com/podcast/sylvia-rivera-part-2/) a building in NYC, in 1970 where they provided shelter and protection to queer and trans youth who would otherwise be unhoused. They built a network of care and resilience in the face of systemic exclusion, and a path to safety where there was none.
Decades later, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project [spoke out against](https://srlp.org/action/hate-crimes/) the use of hate crime legislation to “protect” queer and trans people. They stated, “As we see trans people profiled by police, disproportionately arrested and detained, caught in systems of poverty and detention, and facing extreme violence in prisons, jails and detention centers, we believe that this system itself is a main perpetrator of violence against our communities.”
We know that Asian American women who engage in criminalized and stigmatized labor, including in the sex industry, [are harmed daily](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/03/10383754/red-canary-song-stop-asian-hate-activism-history) by police harassment and criminalization, marginalization, and racial profiling. The perceived “victimhood” of women workers has also been used to justify harsh immigration, anti-trafficking, and criminal policies. It’s no coincidence that the first restrictive federal immigration law in the U.S., the Page Act of 1875, targeted Chinese women due to [orientalist fears around sexuality](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/atlanta-shooting-history/) and sex work. This law set off immigration exclusion for years to come.
Red Canary Song formed in 2017 after the death of immigrant massage worker, Yang Song, during a police raid on her work place in Flushing, Queens. We look to organizers like RCS [for lessons on how to support Asian massage and sex worker safety and empowerment.](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/opinion/politics/atlanta-shooting-massage-workers-protection.html) As it turns out, sex worker activists don’t want to be “rescued” from their work by police, they want their work to be decriminalized.
Many in our community are calling to defund the police and reinvest in mental health support and social services for those who have attacked Asian Americans. We turn to disability justice organizers for their [analysis on the ways policing and ableism intersect](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWku8PZG1E0) to create conditions in which [half of people](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/disability/news/2021/02/10/495668/understanding-policing-black-disabled-bodies/) killed by law enforcement are disabled. They have taught us that abolition does not stop at ending police and prisons, but requires us to [root out carceral thinking and systems wherever they may be.](https://abolitionanddisabilityjustice.com/opening/) This means abolishing psychiatric incarceration and the policing of [neurodivergence and disability](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqaOgVzwCZ4) by mental health systems. We must ensure that the alternatives to incarceration we support do not replicate the policing we are working to end.
In spite of these realities, Asian Americans have often chosen [respectability politics](https://hoodfeminism.com/2014/01/27/the-politics-of-respectability-is-not-revolutionary/) over solidarity with those who are impacted by police violence. **Respectability politics use narratives of Asian conformity, morality, and our alignment with dominant systems to try to “win” social acceptance and political power.** That it is better for Asian Americans to become cops than it is to dismantle policing. That it is more advantageous for us to uphold white supremacy than to resist it.
In 2014, NYPD Officer Peter Liang shot and killed Akai Gurley, a 28 year old Black man, who had been visiting his girlfriend and getting his hair braided. Liang’s attorney claimed the officer [did not provide medical aid after the shooting because he was “so upset.”](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/police-officer-was-too-upset-after-shooting-to-help-akai-gur) [Conservative Chinese Americans rallied to support Liang](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/04/23/475369524/awoken-by-n-y-cop-shooting-asian-american-activists-chart-way-forward) – not the Gurley family and [activists](https://aaww.org/justice-akai-gurley-matters/) seeking accountability for murder. This alignment with the carceral state shows us the limits of organizing solely around our identity as Asian Americans instead of around and across shared values of justice.
Our imagined “safety” cannot come at the expense of Black lives. As Asian Americans, abolition means turning toward one another and building a united vision for community safety that includes all of us. We must build networks of care and healing to make this vision real.
We want our family members and our communities to be safe from violence. But we know that prisons are part of a punishment system that does not heal people or transform the root causes of this violence. What do we want to build instead? And, how should we respond to Asian American calls for more police and prisons?
- **We believe** in listening and affirming the fears of our community members who rightfully want safety and protection from violent attacks. When we listen with love and empathy, we break through isolation and help identify ways we can create more safety through resources and community support.
- **We dispel** [myths about who is most likely to be violent](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/viral-images-show-people-color-anti-asian-perpetrators-misses-big-n1270821) or racist against us. Narratives spread on news media and social media are often based on anti-Black racism and ableism instead of real data.
- **We resist** the belief that cops keep us safe and hold people accountable. In recent attacks against Asians, the police did not prevent violence; they showed up to respond afterward. Reporting a crime usually does not lead to an arrest or a conviction. In fact, data shows that [only about 2% of “serious crimes’’ end in a conviction.](https://theconversation.com/police-solve-just-2-of-all-major-crimes-143878)
- **We collaborate** with our diverse communities to build solidarity, divest from police, and create alternatives through community-based safety resources.
1. Supporting movements to reallocate police funding to community needs such as healthcare, housing, and schools, and reduce contact with police. Examples of this are: Durham, NC’s [10 to Transform Campaign](https://durhamforall.org/campaigns/10-to-transform/), which would transfer 10% of police officer positions to unarmed, cop-free 911 responders.[Freedom Inc.’s Cop Free Schools Campaign](https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1210981102570780&ref=watch_permalink) which brought together Black and Southeast Asian youth to [end a contract that funded police presence in Madison, WI high schools.](https://www.forwardlookout.com/2020/06/cops-are-out-of-schools-whats-next/32784) Anti Police-Terror Project’s [MH First Hotline](https://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org/mh-first-oakland), a new model of response to mental health crises in Oakland, CA.
slug: mh-first-oakland), a new model of response to mental health crises in Oakland, CA.
2. Developing safer communities through relationship building and a strong public presence, such as [Oakland’s Chinatown Community Ambassadors Program.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-25/oakland-chinatown-safety-efforts-could-be-model-for-asian-american-communities)
3. Providing [harm reduction](https://harmreduction.org/about-us/principles-of-harm-reduction/) programs that affirm our agency and wellness over stigma and criminalization.
- **We refuse** [false solutions](http://criticalresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CR_abolitioniststeps_antiexpansion_2021_eng.pdf) through policy reforms that end up entrenching police and prisons instead of dismantling them and [causing further harm.](https://abolitionanddisabilityjustice.com/reforms-to-oppose/)
- **We challenge** ourselves to listen and shift when what we think keeps us safe actually harms others. We must practice being in debate, disagreement, and principled struggle in order to build a new world.

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---
author: Niels Mulder
title: "Filipino Identity: The Haunting Question"
source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/186810341303200103
clipped: 2024-06-15
published: 2013-04-01
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Filipino Identity: The Haunting Question
Mulder, N. (2013). Filipino Identity: The Haunting Question. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 32(1), 55-80. https://doi.org/10.1177/186810341303200103
## Abstract
With their national origins in Spanish and US imperialism, and in the subsequent wake of intense waves of cultural colonisation, educated Filipinos are often at a loss about what their roots are. In order to bring much needed clarity to the ongoing debate about what it means to be Filipino, this essay will relate the past to the present by tracing the evolution of, and the continuities in, the essence of Filipino social organisation and worldview, drawing frequent comparisons with Indonesian and Thai data. The core approach taken – wherein these issues are examined through the lens of culture – is complemented with (i) reflections on common Southeast Asian principles of social construction and (ii) with the pinpointing of the systemic divides that prevent Filipinos from identifying with the collective whole and from growing into a nation of committed citizens. The paper is of relevance both to scholarly researchers and to others with practical interests in the region, as it will enable them to better know the people that they are or will be dealing with.
## Prefatory
As an exercise in the _histoire des mentalités_, this essay traces the evolution of the characteristic ethos infusing the state and nation in the Philippines. While state-propagated nationalism and its associated rituals are inescapably present in day-to-day life, these dynamics fail to evoke a popular sense of belonging to a shared civil world. It seems as if the public sphere of the state and the private sphere of everyday life do not connect, a reality which is enhanced in practice by the systematic exclusion of the ordinary citizen from the country's oligarchic political process. As it is often expected that a vocal civil society can provide the cultural leadership that successfully moulds the nation, the reasons for the underdevelopment of such a force need to complement the narrative.
## The Problem of Nationhood
The depth to which American cultural imperialism has penetrated Filipino society is demonstrated by the listlessness of the nation-building spirit within it. In a country like Indonesia the erasure of the humiliation of the colonial past was not so much a priority as a matter of course, and it is inconceivable that Indonesians would invoke the Dutch era as a way to explain the history and shape of their present nation state. In the Philippines, however, the granting of independence is still celebrated with the depiction of the lowering of a conspicuous American flag on the current one hundred peso note, while the names of Taft, Harrison, Lawton and the like live on. Even so, after independence, many places have been renamed after national heroes – and many more after not-so-heroic presidents, amongst whom Quezon leads the pack of those obscuring the history of provinces, towns, villages and streets.
Who cares? The very cultural imperialism that thwarts nation-building also destroys historical continuity, and so the Filipino sense of a collective becoming has been obliterated. As a “modern”, American-educated nation, the Filipino people should face forwards and be progress-oriented – thereby basically concurring with Henry Ford's dictum that “history is bunk”. Be that as it may, certain academic circles have recognised that the depth of the colonial impact has led to the “mis-education of the Filipino” (Constantino 1966) and a “colonial mentality” that keeps inferiority feelings alive, while fostering the blind acceptance of the superiority of anything emanating from the United States. As a result, in 1972, the Marcos dispensation promulgated the Educational Development Decree that, amongst other things, was intended to remedy the “problem of nationhood”.
Under Marcos, school education apparently did not succeed in instilling the desired sense of nationhood. Thus in 1987, Senator Ramos-Shahani proposed conducting research into “the weaknesses of the character of the Filipino with a view to strengthening the nation's moral fibre”. In the resulting report, _Building a People, Building a Nation_, a panel of prominent intellectuals concluded that Filipinos showed a deficiency of patriotism and appreciation of their country, and were not in sympathy with their national government. Similar to the earlier appeal of the Educational Development Decree, these thinkers proposed that schools be tasked with propagating such values. As a result, “values education” became part of the national curriculum from 1989 onwards.
## Nationalism
As many columnists, educators and officials would have it, the absence of vigorous nationalist sentiment is at the root of all sorts of social problems; as such, over the years this ever-repeated catchphrase has come to have something of a hollow ring to it. The evocation of “nationalism” as a catch-all for everything that is wrong can be related to the fact that in the native Tagalog language the concept is inherently vague; furthermore, it is used interchangeably with the terms _estado_ (state), _bansa_ (nation, country, state), _bayan_ (country, national home, people) and _pamahalaan_ (government, regime).
Historically, nationalism is a recent phenomenon that was consciously fostered in nineteenth-century Europe as a means of building the strength of the state through creating popular identification with its ruling regime. Subsequently, it became possible to mobilise the populace to celebrate their state and wage war in its name – under the motto “right or wrong, my country”. At its core, such blind loyalty to the state has nothing “natural” to it – it is the result of the propaganda of those who own the state. If the people, however, distrust the message propagated and thus do not accept it wholeheartedly, they will not identify with the state or regime and their loyalty cannot be expected or taken for granted.
In order to impress on Filipino first-graders a sense of belonging to the nation state, they are obliged to study an array of national symbols in line with the American example. While the flag is a powerful force amongst these designators, emblems such as the _bangus_ (milkfish) – revered as the national fish – fail to arouse positive emotions. Even more astounding is the claim that the _lechon_ (roast pig) is the national food, as it arrogantly excludes the Moslem population – and the poor to boot. Alongside these symbols we find an endless cycle of ceremonies. Schooldays begin with the raising of the flag (that in many cases had been up all night), the singing of the national anthem (right hand on the heart) and the reciting of the nationalistic pledge. Following in this track, all sorts of meetings – from the tennis club social to the deliberations of the Senate – go through this same ritual, but in which obligatory prayer takes the place of the vow. Depending on their schedule, Filipinos may have to endure this rigmarole up to five times a day – which could lead one to wonder whether its deeper meaning has not worn thin for many people. In Lucena City, where I conducted my research, the flag was up day and night at the town hall, as it was at the provincial high school as well. This apathy corresponds with the apparent widespread disinterest in national holidays – Bonifacio Day, Rizal Day, Heroism or Bataan Day, Independence Day – that merely remind people of the closure of banks, schools and offices, and of having the leisure to clean their home. For all that, most are happily unaware that such days have been created to celebrate the state and to evoke the spirit of nationalism.
## The Filipino Way
The lack of enthusiasm for celebrating the nation state contrasts with the enthusiasm that greets days that express “Filipinoness” and exemplify Pinoy civilisation. The days in mind in this regard are Christmas Day, Holy Week, Flores de Mayo, All Saints’ Day, the town fiesta and special occasions – such as the common outpouring of grief upon Corazón Aquino's demise (2009), the mass sympathetic mourning of Flor Contemplacion's execution in 1995 in Singapore (Rafael 2000b: 212–227) or when world-class boxer Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao defends his title; then, roads are deserted and everybody is glued to the television. These are the days that – like Pacman's victories – do actually tangibly evoke a sense of national community. A state intent on commemorating itself will stage a military parade; the nation, however, expresses its sense of itself in sporting events, the victory of a beauty queen, or through emotive popular religious observances. It is in such moments, that people spontaneously express their sense of belonging to each other and their way of life.
The problem is not that, as is so often stated, Filipinos do not love their native land or are reluctant to identify with its inhabitants. They do, much the same as almost everybody in this world does. As such, their willingness to sacrifice their well-being – for example, by opting to be overseas workers in the “prison without bars” that is the Middle East – needs to be understood in context. Of course, their earnings are not intended for the republic, even though it often hails them as “heroes of the nation”, but to keep their loved ones afloat in a country without sufficient remunerative prospects. In brief, it is not a shortage of love for the native land that has driven large numbers to seek employment abroad, but a deficit of confidence in the state and the class that runs it.
As a result, Filipinoness is expressed in its “little-traditional” forms in the home and local community. It is there that one finds the shared and distinctive representations of the Filipino ethos; the emblems of it – the diplomas and graduation pictures on the wall, the cute Santo Niño, the serene Lady of Lourdes or the Mother of Perpetual Help, the plaza with its diminutive Rizal statue, the town hall and church, the basketball court, the band, the bus shelter, the fiesta and processions – belong, in fact, to individual families and communities. None of these icons make reference to an overarching cultural centre; they refer to only themselves. Therefore, Filipino civilisation is expressed in a distinct lifestyle and in its characteristic ethos – rather than in abstract symbols that are meant to stand for collective history and the nation state.
Naturally, this little-traditional scope is reflected in the principles of social construction of the Christian lowlanders, who trace their descent bilaterally and whose religious imagination mirrors their kinship organisation (Mulder 1997). In their view, the social arrangement is a moral edifice based on family ties – with the “sacred” position of parents, hierarchy and unequal individuals who are obliged to each other through “debts of gratitude” that determine their measurable worldly life.
In the Philippines, lifeworld existence shades into a morally unobliging “public” space that, to the vast majority, appears as an anarchic domain of pragmatic or impersonal relations where one tends only to one's political and economic interests. It is the arena reported in the media that provides the ephemeral images and scandals by which it is substantiated. Political news holds pride of place, and is consumed as a kind of spectator sport that nevertheless offers no serious competition to the slightly stupefying programmes broadcast nationwide. Hence, everyday culture radiating from the centre offers little to substantially hold on to. Through the interminable bombardment of the populace with fleeting symbols and endless distractions, the Filipino people are anaesthetised against genuine nationalism and identification with the state, against the ideals of active citizenship and contrary to the spirit of hope for the rule of law. They have by these means come to know that politics is too much talk and of little substance. So why bother to speculate about the desirable state of affairs? As a result, people feel they had better focus on survival and the safety of their family and take solace in religion.
At this point, it may be appropriate to note that religion, as a keystone of individual identity, has been patently prospering in Southeast Asia – especially in the Philippines – since the 1960s, and promises to be still going strong for a long time to come (Mulder 2003; Willford and George 2005). Even as this religious drive is individual-oriented in its confirming of a person's moral worth, such religiously incited righteousness can also exert substantial pressure on those who hold political power. It was the Church's appeal that played an important role in the mass demonstrations against Presidents Marcos and Estrada. Similarly, religion was the driving force that ousted the Shah of Iran in 1978, brought down the self-appointed Thai Prime Minister General Suchinda Khraprayoon in 1992 and was a key factor in President Suharto's resignation in 1998, with the subsequent ascendancy of Moslem leader Abdurrahman Wahid.
## Changing Middle Stratum
Whatever changes are occurring in the lifestyle and worldview of the Filipino middle classes, they still remain exemplary for the rest of the country's populace – as the former produce, disseminate and consume both mainstream and alternative ideas. Furthermore, their cultural milieu is the matrix of thought about the desirable order of society. Starting in the 1960s and continuing during the late Marcos and early Aquino years, progressive and nationalist ideas emanating from these quarters seemed to have fired the public imagination. Nowadays, however, the nation seems to have been lost sight of as a meaningful preoccupation in a globalising world, at the same time that primordial and professional bonds are strengthened.
If we compare developments with the long period of gestation of the “nation state” idea in neighbouring Indonesia – significantly present as of 1900, then subsequently organised through the Budi Utomo (1908) association, Sarekat Islam (1912) association and political platforms from the 1920s onwards – post-colonial nationalism in the Philippines has been no more than a flash in the pan. In 1946, when “quasi-sovereignty” was granted, the country was willingly more dependent on the United States than it had been during the pre-war days. Though this trend was emphatically countered by politicians like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo V. Tañada, the historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo, and the social activist and author Amado V. Hernandez in the 1950s, their nationalism was not widely understood – even as President Garcia initiated a “Filipino First” economic policy towards the end of the decade. These early stirrings did, however, result in the efflorescence of nationalistic, social-emancipatory and anti-authoritarian movements in the 1960s that went underground after the declaration of martial law on 21 September 1972.
Following the assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino on 23 August 1983, the ideas of the 1960s once again resounded throughout the society. As former students had meanwhile become professionals, this dissent was most vociferously expressed in their demonstrations in the business heart of Manila, Makati City, and in the evermore-audacious opposition press. When Marcos’ shenanigans came to a head in the events that would catapult Ninoy's widow Corazón to the presidency in February 1986, it seemed as if social reconstruction was within arm's reach. However, it did not last. And if people on the progressive side were still in any doubt about where the tide was heading, then the Mendiola massacre of peasant demonstrators towards the end of January 1987 made it abundantly clear that the now-restored oligarchy was calling the shots. Even so, the legacy of idealism lived on into the early 1990s in a lively NGO scene and amongst the alternative press, but politically the visionaries had been marginalised and henceforward their ideas were rendered irrelevant to the public agenda.
Meanwhile, these visionaries have since been replaced by a generation of professionals vast in number who, as “martial law babies”, went to school under the dictatorship. As this was a time of state developmentalism, the zeitgeist induced in students a career orientation that has continued until the present day. Their formal education was and is precariously lacking in social sciences and humanities content; at best, they are oriented towards “progress”, resulting in generations of Filipino citizens who are socially inattentive and devoid of a sense of history. This runs parallel to the sea change in technology that has overwhelmed their experience of life. As McLuhan commented back in 1964, “the medium is the message” – and new media, new “extensions of man” and new sources of power, production and efficiency irreversibly change the world, and with it, our mindset.
In the wake of the idealistic 1960s, television intruded every Filipino home – and in doing so banished books. Gradually the calculator, and later, the barcode, expelled the ability to perform mental arithmetic. In the early 1980s, the computer came of age and revolutionised information and communication technology at the same time that stereo (and later videoke) drove out the guitar. In the 1990s, the Internet emerged. By the turn of the millennium, people had become mobile phone addicts. The effect of these changes on the way we imagine life to be demonstrates the abyss that separates the 1960s – with its belief in social constructability – from the present era.
In those recent olden days, it appeared as if there was some correlation and integrity between the Filipino way of life and how it was thought to be. Nowadays, however, the outside world seems to have been disconnected from experience as people orientate themselves to industrially and foreign produced images. With television and its illusions, they have entered a pseudo-reality of simulacra à la Baudrillard (1988) – wherein it becomes increasingly problematic to separate the real from the fantastic. As a result, people stick to their identity-confirming inner circles and hold on tenaciously to their career – as all of us are finally coming to experience Buddha's truth that life out there is indeed _maya_ (delusory).
## Civil Society?
In contrast with the activist student generation of the 1960s, the new urban middle stratum is not eager to be involved in “public” affairs. Besides, these days such affairs are obfuscated by the permanent bombardment of the general Filipino populace with messages that emphasise lifestyle concerns and consumption as the raison d'être. So while the demonstrations that finished Presidents Marcos and Estrada evoked the impression of a vigilant civil society, deeper analysis shows that actually hegemonic interests engineered public opinion in these instances. Accordingly, occasional popular mobilisation can be said to occur “in the name of civil society” rather than as the product of it (Hedman 2006).
Apart from these hegemonic interests, where would a vigorous Filipino civil society hail from? In the 1980s and 1990s, with the efflorescence of all sorts of cause-oriented groups and NGOs, people were easily led to believe in the vitality of civic consciousness. At the same time, the very proliferation of such groups demonstrated their basic flaw – often joked about as “two Filipinos equal two NGOs”. To get people to stick to a cause or a programme, even when it is one that is clearly to their advantage, is almost impossible as long as they remain oriented towards leading personalities and perennial interpersonal rivalries keep them from aligning behind common causes. Such misplaced focus makes them easily reduced to the playthings of power-holders and their divide-and-rule tactics.
There is more to this issue as well. A vigorous civil society can only function and flourish as a watchdog against political horseplay and economic manipulation if it has a vast recruitment base of educated, critically minded people. Even though there are quite a few such citizens, we should be aware, as Anderson cautioned in 1988, that the middle stratum of Philippine society is haemorrhaging from emigration, mostly to the United States – and so continually fails to develop into a significant competitor to the oligarchy (1988: 212).
Therefore, in the absence of a significant opponent, the republic is hostage to the political and business interests of oligarchs that have no stake in the strengthening of it; on the contrary, through “loopholing” the Constitution and the personalised political system, corruption has been consciously built in (Villacorte 1987). As a result, politics is held in low esteem by Filipino citizens, even as they are made subject to its interests – over and against which they continue to feel powerless.
## Public Realm
Ever since the 1920s, when Filipinos were given leeway to run their own affairs, the public sphere has been the arena of traditional or money politics – presided over by, first, the colonial and, later, the neo-colonial elite. The members of the elite regard the country as their private preserve and exploit it to their advantage. Consequently, the public realm is perceived as the field of contest of their political and economic interests. For most people, therefore, it represents a sphere either to defend oneself against or to take advantage of, as one's real life and identity belong elsewhere.
The depiction of the public sphere as separate from one's deeper, identity-confirming life is right on the mark. The outer world is there; we need it to earn money, to make a career, to pay taxes and for a thousand other things besides. However, it does not inspire the feeling of belonging, of citizenship, of responsibility; in brief, it is not “ours”. Public space is where politicians broadcast their faces and names; it is where they claim merit for projects funded with tax revenue that they graciously put at the disposition of the voting populace. And as usual, politicians short-sightedly focus on the immediate, on expediency, on the ephemeral; it is like the faces on their billboards: the cult of face value, of opportunity and the corruption that has consciously been built into the personality-oriented system.
In other words, the public realm does not belong to the public as it has been hijacked by officials, politicos and businessmen. They care for it or neglect it and exploit it for their own gain. This is, moreover, what everybody knows and expects, because, as Corpuz (1969) argued, “in Filipino politics nepotism is ethically normal, and thus its practice [should] serve family-based interests”. Following this example, it seems as if everyone can appropriate parts of the public realm as a matter of course, and that there is no policing authority to stop them. Buses halt in curves, on crossings, in the middle of the road, or wherever any descending or ascending passenger may request them to. In town, certain shops continuously blare out the run-of-the-mill radio broadcasts onto the street; people drop their rubbish wherever they go; the drone of the mall's advertising engulfs the neighbourhood; to survive the traffic anarchy, everybody needs to fend for himself – it must be said that most drive defensively. Again, with the exception of the aggressive driver, this is what everybody knows and expects, because in public space one has both to give in and to take care of oneself.
The interesting twin concerns of “giving in” and “caring for oneself” encapsulate in essence an old adage that the Javanese and Thai also go by, with the important difference that the orders of the republican and royal realms command the tangible prestigious public space that in the Philippines is missing. In the Philippines, it is advisable to tolerate erratic behaviour, as obstructing this expectation is a main cause of hot-headedness and long-lasting resentment. As a result, with “Filipino tolerance” standing in the way of order and civility, public space easily becomes a realm of anarchy.
## Individual-Centeredness
In light of this situation, it is little cause for wonder that most Filipinos doggedly pursue their own trajectory irrespective of others. In a way, this is in line with the propagation of consumerism that stimulates people to acquire status symbols as a way to mark their individuality. In other words, where society is lost sight of, its component members come to the fore – and so the focus of public life is on outstanding individuals, rather than on the impersonal “generalised other” or on something as intangible as “the public interest”.
At present, Filipino social life is appreciably open to the wider world, and has become part of a post-national global environment that is not subject to any ideology other than the rules of expediency. Because of people's dependence on the wider world for survival and advancement, it intrudes into private life – which gives rise to frustration. Subsequently, they express their grumbling in newspaper columns and letters to the editor or in sermons and exhortatory speeches that emphasise decency, sacrifice and personal virtue. This self-centred orientation leads away from legal or ideological attempts to come to grips with the public world that remains clouded in vagueness.
This moral myopia conveniently dovetails with the interests of the state-owning class. Its introduction of values education in order to improve the quality of public life seamlessly connected with the class’ roots in family and person-centred morals. Later, this thinking reverberated in the repeated appeals for moral reform that emanated from President Arroyo. Whereas suchlike social imagination necessarily fails to come to grips with society in the abstract, it may nevertheless be soothing to the individual soul. One may even argue that it is a timely arrival in a borderless world that leaves the person thrown back on such comprehensible, identity-confirming areas of experience as family and religion.
## School, History and Identity
The course outline of the subject History and Government is political through and through, and is intended to support an independent state, three branches of government and foreign relations. To anticipate this situation and long before contact with Spain, school texts maintain that primordial communities possessed all of these, which implies that there was nothing to learn or that the continuous process of change and becoming does not apply in these islands. People there had a high civilisation. They even wrote down (some of) their laws as the _barangay_ chieftain (_datu_) – who was also the head of the armed forces – lorded it over the thirty to one hundred families of his jurisdiction.
The school curriculum's approach to history and government is crammed with such ahistorical and irresponsible statements, and keeps the becoming of the state-owning class meticulously out of sight. Instead of presenting the cultural history of the slow evolution of a potential nation – an endeavour that would connect the past to the present – political chronology takes over. By chopping the march of history up into seemingly unconnected episodes – such as the Spanish colonial state, the Philippine Revolution of 1896, the Philippine–American War, the blessings of American colonialism and the Commonwealth, the Japanese occupation, liberation and independence – continuity and becoming have been lost sight of. As if to highlight this violation of history, the last period is presented through individual presidential reigns, martial law, the New Republic, the EDSA demonstrations of 1986 that undid Marcos, more presidential reigns, the EDSA demonstrations of 2001 that ousted Estrada and the intricacies of President Arroyo's administration.
Because this periodisation highlights transient affairs, observations made on the period of independence read like comments in a newspaper. Some school texts are adamant that politics is powered by opportunism, corruption and shady deals – in which sense, the picture of a rotten society is no different from that in the mandatory values education. In spite of such occasional realism, all texts must enumerate every president's noble intentions that, alas, invariably come to nothing – even as it is never actually explained why.
On the basis of such formal education as “legitimate symbolic violence” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977: 13–15, 24–25), it becomes nigh on impossible for Filipino citizens to understand social life, let alone to identify with their nation and its past. When we reflect on the effects of the English language being used as the means of instruction, we see symbolic violence enlarged to such proportions as to cause the outright loss of roots. Mojares illustrates this with quotations from N. V. M. Gonzalez's _Work on the Mountain_, such as:
> My merest jottings were notes not so much from an underground as from another world. […] Rendered in an alien tongue, [that] life attained the distinction of a translation even before it had been made into a representation of reality […] even before becoming a reality of its own (Gonzalez 2002: 297).
For present-day students, such extreme alienation appears to have abated with the gradual patching up of Constantino's “mis-education of the Filipino”, even as those who are submitted to the discipline of English-speaking private schools may still find themselves unsettled when they, upon entering college, discover that they are not living in an English-speaking country and that there is nothing shameful about being able to express oneself in Filipino (Adizon 2010). Be this as it may, the quality of public schooling remains such that it regularly falls short of the mark of inculcating a collective identity on the basis of the bonds of history, language, experience and the geography of the encompassing state.
On the trail of violence such schooling inflicts, doubts about Filipino identity are typically voiced by the better educated who are at ease with the “national print language” (Anderson 2003: 45). Their very ability to understand and write in the language of power sets them apart and excludes them, as it were, from the discourse going on amongst the populace at large (Rafael 2000a: 199). At the same time, because of their access to the language of politics, the courts, the law, the broadsheet newspapers, the teaching of certain subjects and of tertiary education in general, they are made to mediate for the others – even as they experience it as if operating in a no man's land. No wonder then, that in the public realm of the nation and in contrast with the more self-confident Thai or even Indonesians, the Filipino intelligentsia raise the point of an identity that has been damaged or even become lost.
> We take after whatever reaches us from the West, from America. We are imitators who have lost authenticity. How can we ever be self-confident Filipinos who stand identifiably on their own? (Introducer's comment on my lecture at Enverga University).
So if, theoretically speaking, schools should foster a sense of self that comes to include the wider community, we may safely conclude that the way it shapes this demand makes it impossible to imagine that one, as a student, is personally involved. Besides, at the same time that much attention is devoted to the birth of the _ilustrado_ (Hispanicised intellectual) and popular nationalism in the period preceding the revolution, the present invocation of Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini is no better than evoking phantoms of the past that are safely on the far side of the watershed event of the American occupation. Ironically enough, current Indonesian school texts still refer to Rizal, the Revolution and the First Republic as being exemplary of the awakening of (anti-colonial) nationalism in Asia.
## National Transcendence?
In spite of all the phraseology about “nationhood”, “moral recovery” and the underdevelopment of “nationalism”, there is nothing that gives a stronger reminder of a national doctrine than petty lists of symbols, an incoherent inventory of highly localised curiosities and ever-repeated anthem singing and flag-raising. The contrast with Indonesia's Pancasila ideology and Thailand's “theory of the three institutions” is striking, as these teachings evoke a model centre that lends legitimacy to the institutions of the state and that sets certain parameters within which national discourses can thrive. These frameworks also eventuated in Indonesians and Thai identifying with their nation states as matters of course.
As far as the Philippines goes, such a reality is a “could have been”, as the institution of the state has never been held in great esteem by the population as large. Colonial in its origins, the state's contempt for and exploitation of the local populace could never lend it much legitimacy. If anything, the state was something to stay away from or to take advantage of. Accordingly, its local representatives, the _principalía_, developed a political culture of artfulness and deceit in the course of learning to balance the demands of a powerful overlord with their own interests (Corpuz 1989: xii–xiii). When they were finally put to the task of organising the state on their own, they duly inscribed the foundational ideas of “people's sovereignty”, “justice”, “the separation of powers”, “popular representation” and (high-quality) “education” into the charter. However, since most or all of these concepts are no better than the figments of a foreign imagination, they were never actually taken seriously. Thus, when Marcos's remarkable predecessor – Manuel L. Quezon, president of the Commonwealth – established himself as a virtual dictator he held no scruples about editing the 1935 Constitution to his own liking (McCoy 1989).
Since then, a perennial deficit of popular endorsement, poor performance and political manipulation has prevented institutions such as the palace and the Supreme Court from developing into shining, transcendent centres of the nation. As a result, there is little high cultural substance to overarch the little-traditional way of life of the general public. The only nationwide institution that could possibly qualify for such a reach is the Church, but few are those who would point to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines as an authoritative centre. This is not only because it dirties its hands in politics or because of its unpopular position regarding reproductive health, but most particularly because church life belongs in reality to the parish and its local traditions.
Arguably, history authenticates the identity of a nation state. It is the source of emotive symbols that lend pride and reason to the present as the presumed continuation of a semi-mythic past. Even so, whereas the Indonesians have their Majapahit and the Thai their Sukhothai, American imperialism cheated the Philippines of the glory of being the first Asian nation to defeat, seven years ahead of Japan, a Western power – an event that would inspire nationalists from Sun Yat Sen to Sukarno. Unfortunately, the Americans kept the humiliation of being a colony alive at the same time that they were overeager to denigrate the Philippines cultural past and confine it to the dustbin of irrelevance. Through creating, in Nick Joaquin's metaphor, “a lettered generation of people without fathers and grandfathers”, or, in the colonial trope, “little brown brothers”, culture and history were aborted – and with it Filipino confidence and pride in identity and continuity. In brief, American aggression and tutelage brought about a cultural calamity in the Philippines.
## Split History
The history of the Philippines begins with the Spanish _conquista_; if this is our focus, then history has given the Filipinos a bad deal indeed. Political history, however, is ephemeral; if we want history to cohere, we have to be aware of the spirit of the times, of reasons and of motivations. Since these constitute the broader gist of history, we had better follow Febvre's (1973) call to trace the evolution of the ways of thinking and experiencing of the common man, the elite and other relevant groups. Following this advice, we will find the urgency of the past as a way to understand current existence. What began with the introduction of the plough and new crops, the wheel and the horse, Catholicism, the printing press and an opening up to the wider world had repercussions on local mindsets – it would eventually arouse the spirits of popular, _ilustrado_ and elitist nationalisms; the idea of being Filipino; and notions about how to shape these ideas in a free country.
Unfortunately, already during the successful revolt against Spanish rule the nationalist potential of all and sundry imagining themselves as belonging together was effectively debilitated. This happened first through the liquidation of the popular Katipunan leader Andres Bonifacio, soon after the petty bourgeois leadership of Aguinaldo had to all intents and purposes taken over. Then came the blatant self-serving ethos of most members of the leading class (see Guerrero 1982). Third, it came through the explicit exclusion of the common people in the _principalía_-run Malolos Republic (1898–99) that, fourth, lorded it over the populace so abusively that many became nostalgic for the Spanish past (Guerrero 1982: 175–179). No wonder that at the time the republic was fighting the Americans many common folk turned their back on it and even offered organised resistance, such as the Guardia de Honor in Pangasinan (Joaquin 1988).
Apart from the endemic split between the haves and the have-nots, the equally endemic opportunism of the erstwhile republican leadership forced most of them to side with the Americans. Whereas popular-based pockets of resistance against the new supreme authority held out until 1912, the Americans had little trouble in dousing the _principalía's_ nationalist impetus – firstly through opening up political and economic opportunity, then through saturating the privileged class with American-style modernity and school education.
What remained, in spite of the American steamroller, was a steadily evolving Pinoy way of life in which could be recognised the deep past, Spanish cuisine and Catholicism as well as American fast food, Coca-Cola and historical obfuscation. Yet in spite of these vicissitudes, there has been much more continuity in the epic process of Philippine becoming than there has been between the heyday of Majapahit and present-day Indonesia. This continuity demonstrates a culturally colonial past that can usefully serve to create the sense of a nation, such as the one plausibly pioneered by Corpuz, Joaquin and Zialcita.
Focusing on the history of the political economy, however, we find that – no matter what the regime – a self-assured class developed in the Philippines, whose interests are opposed to those of the common people. As the modern day _principalía_, members of this class have no interest in providing the cultural leadership an imagined community needs to be able to refer to. In this they are supported by a social imagination that is myopically focused on the immediate experience of life, and by a media that is almost exclusively centred on political personalities.
## The Ruling Class
In establishing their dominion, the Spaniards were successful in co-opting the former chieftains (_datu_) and the upper echelon of freemen (_maharlika_) of the disparate communities (_baranggay_). Through creating this privileged stratum of native _principalía_ as their henchmen, the separation of the political class from the common people began to emerge and evolve as a phenomenon early on in the colonial era. Through the imperial policy of gathering the population “under the bells”, these original _principalía_ became the kernel of urban – in other words, of _pueblo_ – society.
A separate class that developed in and around Manila was made up of the Chinese who had been attracted by the opportunities that the colonial emporium offered. Many of them took native Christian wives, so that by the time the Chinese were expelled from the islands in 1766, a considerable number of Chinese Filipino mestizos could step into their fathers’ shoes. Entrepreneurially minded, they came to dominate the retail trade of the islands and seized on the opportunities – just as many _principalía_ did – that the commercialisation of agriculture and the opening of the country to world trade offered.
Since a measure of political clout and money invariably attract each other, the two classes fused. As the nineteenth century unfolded, their intermixture gave birth to the identifiable ancestors of the current state-owning elite (Simbulan 2005). During the last quarter of that century, this highly successful middle class had begun to send some of its male offspring to the sites of higher education in the colony and in the mother country, giving rise to a stratum of _ilustrados_ who would mature into the vanguard of Filipino nationalism.
If these “enlightened ones” had had it their way, and if the Americans had not betrayed the revolution, the cultural leadership potential of the former could have created a transcendent national ideology that would have been able to unite Filipinos as a nation. This possibility comes to mind in light of the works of José Rizal; the ruminations on the state of Apolinario Mabini; and the ideas of Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pardo de Tavera and Isabelo de los Reyes as “the brains of the nation” (Mojares 2006). Equally influential were Lope K. Santos's dream of social justice as unfolded in his widely read _Banaag at Sikat_ (_From Early Dawn to Full Light_, 1906), the authors of the hugely popular nationalistic or “seditious” theatre plays and the establishment of the Old Catholic Iglesia Filipina Independiente.
But it was not to be. The emergence of a hybrid middle class has been noted and we should be aware of its petty political position. Hence, when this bourgeoisie joined Aguinaldo's revolution, many did so in the hope of fusing their economic acumen with political influence. As realists, they were not interested in _ilustrado_ idealism – and would soon openly accommodate the new American overlord, who was generous in dispensing political opportunity. When, in the 1920s, the leash to the new master was relaxed, they stormed ahead in plundering the country's resources as if they had never heard of the idea of the common good (Anderson 1998: 202–203). If there was such an idea in currency at all, it was the Commonwealth with the United States that beckoned.
The grant of independence in 1946 resulted in the curious – at least for Southeast Asia – spectacle of a privileged class that had always been subservient to its masters becoming the tutelary heir to the latter's power. Consequently, it is colonial history that legitimises the present elite, which has long since lost its anchorage amongst the ordinary folks. Largely mestizo, and culturally oriented to the West, its members do not feel they have anything more in common with the “common _tao_” (ordinary people) than the vernacular in which orders are given. Besides, as a consolidated elite it also stands in opposition to the modern, educated public as they have and had no interest in allowing for a nation of participating citizens. As a result, ideas about the common good remain underdeveloped and lack a broad social base.
If there is an issue of nationhood or an absence of popular identification with the common weal in the Philippines, the problem should be firmly pinned on the country's oligarchy, whose selfish interests dictate the necessary exclusion of all others. Repeatedly, ordinary people have expressed their desire to partake in the country's direction and destiny. One might think in this regard of the popularity of the Katipunan association that initiated the Revolution of 1896, the socialist and communist movements during the American period, the popularity of the Democratic Alliance (1945), the hope of the _masa_ expressed in the elections of Magsaysay (1954) and Cory Aquino (1986), and the landslide victory of the populist “Erap” Estrada (1998), and his share of 26 per cent of the vote in 2010. Whatever the hopes of the ordinary folk, though, they have been persistently betrayed by a state-owning class averse to their emancipation and nationalism. Ordinary citizens are able to express their belonging through cheering a glorious Pacquiao, but should stay well clear of politics and the affairs of the state – even if they are allowed to cast their vote with regard to them.
## Southeast Asian Social Imagination
While sociological concepts such as “class” have become part of Western imagination and may capture life on the ground there in a somewhat recognisable manner, in Southeast Asia such designations are at best latent tools that are currently not very relevant in understanding social life. Here, at least in my experience with representatives of approximately half its population (Javanese, Thai, Filipinos), sociological thinking is not part of the emic imagination. This is not to say that there are no well-trained sociologists in the region capable of performing all the tricks of Western social analysis. However, in my experiences with locals over the past fifty years, I have consistently been amazed that many steadily reverted to their indigenous moral view at the drop of an unwelcome hat in our discussions.
For most Southeast Asians, social life is rooted in the immediate experience of a hierarchically ordered social arrangement based on the essential inequality of individuals and their mutual obligations to each other. This tangible world blends into the surrounding (not morally obliging) space of nature and wider society that appears as the property of others – be they religious figures, politicians, officials, landlords and/or economic power-holders. Whereas this area may be seen as a “public in itself”, it is not experienced as “of the public” or “for itself”. It is the vast territory where “men of prowess” (Wolters 1999: 18–19) compete for power, the highly admired social good (King 2008: 177).
Accordingly, society is reduced to an aggregate of person-to-person bonds that are supposedly in good order if everybody lives up to his or her ethics of place. As a result, there is nothing naive or amazing about persons high up in politics – be it senators or the president – repeatedly appealing to a moral way of life in order to fight endemic corruption that, to a sociologist, is rooted in the exploitation of privilege in an amoral public domain lying beyond the constraints of the tangibly experienced realm of life.
In the absence of sociological or ideological understanding, people experience their moral inequality as de rigueur. Because of this individual-centred perception, concepts such as civil society, democracy, the public good and the common weal are resistant to explanation and remain – in school texts at least – hidden in vague statements about the equality of citizens, according to the Constitution that is repeatedly invoked as the Mariang Makiling or Godot-like saviour of the nation (Mojares 2002: 1–19).
## Mental Isolation
Melinda Quintos de Jesus’ critique on the English-language press highlights that its shrinking readership has to content itself with the antics of traditional politicians, scandal and (in the main) ad hoc, extemporised commentary. Investigative journalism is seriously underdeveloped in the Philippines, and incisive analysis of national – let alone world – issues is absent. Even so, journalism is a very dangerous occupation there, as “the killings [of its practitioners] are part of a systemic failure, another shameful reflection of the national ‘culture of impunity’” (Quintos de Jesus 2007: 137).
The everyday journalistic fare leaves issues lying beyond local politics and business peacefully out of sight. There is almost no analysis of social or cultural matters aside from the copious supplements provided on entertainment, high society and lifestyles. If we go by the scarcity of international news reported and the arbitrariness with which it has been plucked from the wires, the Philippines appears to exist in a vacuum of broader awareness. Neighbours only exist if they have been ravaged by a tsunami or typhoon; the news from Baghdad is of car bombs; and if we hear anything from the United States, then it will only be about Barack Obama's chances of political survival.
Such mental isolation has its consequences for one's identity, as we normally need “the other” to know who and what we are – and are not. We therefore need history – and we need to face it honestly, otherwise we will end up with a history without sense. On this count, the mental isolation of the country stands out best if we consider the _Pilipinolohiya_ (Philippinology) fad at the University of the Philippines during the 1980s and 1990s. Under the cloak of academe, rabid nationalists proclaimed the pursuit of a _pantayong pananaw_ (a kind of “we amongst ourselves point of view”) that could arrogantly dismiss history, comparison and becoming (Mulder 2000a, b).
The problem of mental isolation is much older though. It was the Americans who virtually foreclosed the process of Philippine becoming. Through the former's hijacking of the latter's history and roots, Philippine being in the world was subsequently steeped in insecurity; so when independence was granted, it became clear that there had been more of a nation in place in 1898 than there was in 1946 (Joaquin 1988). In the nineteenth century, the gradual opening of the country to trade, modern thought, secularism and nationalism provided windows to the world that stimulated mental emancipation and the emergence of the country's public intellectuals; it fostered self-conscious self-confidence. Save for the inescapable window to the United States, American smugness closed each window one-by-one – and so there remained nothing to derive comparative identity from, except the American way.
While it initially seemed as if this umbilical cord stretching the vast expanse of the Pacific was gradually withering away, martial law and economic misery at home came to breathe new life into the colonial relationship after 1972. As a result of expanding overseas contract work and massive middle-class emigration to the United States, aspirations for the good life came to lie on the horizon again – thereby suffocating national enthusiasm, while also putting the country into the position of a foster child dependent on handouts, nostalgia and quest for one's roots of Filipino Americans (de Quiros 1990, quoted in Rafael 2000b: 206–209). This open window to the good life of foreign-based relatives gives rise to feelings of inferiority, as well as insecurity in one's own identity due to the failure to adequately provide. One's own country is thus seen as not being good enough, its quality of life as miserable and its aspirations are directed towards to the United States, which lives “in the heart”.
## Exemplary Centre?
Whereas the public realm obviously belongs to the powerful, it does not seem to be centred on anything other than transitory presidents who command little prestige. For the years that they are in office, they dispense patronage in order to build a “loyal” following – but from the moment they are out, the picture changes. In other words, this centre is in continual flux and represents nothing but a temporary coalition of privately propitious ties that offer little substance to hold on to. Yet, it is in fact these private ties that represent the state.
The self-representation of the state as the institutional guardian of the public realm is – as it is in the school curriculum – almost exclusively political-administrative in nature. Because personalism is in a way constitutional, nepotism has been built in and abuse of the law is a matter of course. In the absence of a national doctrine and in view of the politicisation of the primary institutions of the state – such as the palace, Congress and judiciary – the republic has no authoritative cultural-historical centre that is above politics and to which people can proudly refer. The substitutes for national discourse are the inane productions of the media, their endless parade of simulacra of what life is not and an English-language media that consists of a near-exclusive diet of political exposés.
Because of the chasm between cultural and political life, the state resolutely fails to express the nation. After all, the idea of “nation” is cultural; it is about the feeling of belonging together in a country of staggering diversity. The tedious uniformity that the school curriculum is expected to instil is so unconvincing as to be ultimately self-defeating. In view of my observations in the comparable location of Indonesia, respect for diversity next to a credible cult of the whole enrich the nation and succeed in elevating it above the corruption of politics and the expediency of the state. Filipinos, though, merely have to make do with the overarching politics of Manila's maladministered internal colonialism, which does not manage to evoke the feeling of belonging or wholeheartedly identifying with the whole. As a result, national identity remains spurious at best.
## State and Public
A state that relegates its citizens to the cultural cold cannot be expected to arouse much enthusiasm from them. This condition is exacerbated by an economy that does not deliver prosperity and that leaves a third of the population to exist in dire drudgery below the poverty line. In order to escape from the depressing circumstances at home, millions have sought refuge on foreign soil. In addition to the approximate over two million Filipinos temporarily working abroad are the millions of more highly trained Filipino professionals who have resettled, mainly in the United States. Because of this brain drain, the country's middle stratum will remain inarticulate and demands on the state will remain unconvincing, meaning that agenda-driven action will not be forthcoming any time soon.
There is more to this. With a disastrous social studies curriculum and the near absence of social analysis exercised by the media, the civic imagination is continually failing to develop. At present the prevailing career orientation amongst those better educated means that civic action can hardly be expected to happen in the foreseeable future. Moreover, in a state that is privatised, corruption is the norm. As a result, whistle-blowing represents merely an annoyance to entrenched interests. Because of this, such outspokenness will only be self-destructive and invite a steady stream of personal vilification that has little or nothing to do with the larger issues at hand.
The case of Antonio Calypjo Go is a notable example of this point, as well as an illustration of the general apathy concerning endemic public problems. For a long period of time, and with considerable publicity, Go exposed the nonsensical material and factual inaccuracies that are densely woven into current Philippine schoolbooks. Since almost everybody in the country has children, grandchildren or relatives in school, one might have expected his cause to be supported by a considerable lobby. However, after fourteen years of campaigning he finally decided to throw in the towel in 2010. The quality of public education provided is apparently a trivial issue to the citizenry at large, while those who reviled him are still after his skin.
In this situation, it cannot be expected that the spirit of self-conscious citizenship will come to permeate Filipino society anytime soon. As such, a concerned, critical public – intent on taming the anarchy that currently reigns in the Philippines – is nowhere in sight. These days, individual habitus – or the personal way of being in the world – and competition for personal glory are what matter; at the same time, the mass media seem to do everything in their power to keep it this way.
## Authenticity
Early in my research on the Filipino urban middle-class mentality, my host asked: “Niels, what is a Filipino?” Answering his own question, he characterised the Filipino as a Roman Catholic, English-speaking Malay with a Spanish name and a predilection for Chinese food. This very mix shows that the present-day Filipino is the historic outcome of international exchanges and inputs that, at first sight, may have eroded indigenous roots in the past while dressing up the Filipino in foreign attire. Even so, the denial of Malay or Austronesian roots and the ignorance about Southeast Asia are self-chosen and constitute a grave disservice to the quest for authenticity and nation-building (Mulder 2012). As a result, the spectral voice of the nation state is unconvincingly projected and the harness that it invites students to dress up in does not meaningfully fit anybody.
The widespread ignorance about the country's cultural affinity with its neighbours results in a helpless insularity. The feeling of exclusion from home affairs results in non-participation in public life. Both tendencies deflect from the nation and reinforce identification with the familiar. In this way, the lifeworld has become the fortress of authenticity; there, nobody ever doubts who and what they are. It is the wider world of citizenship and membership of a national community that inspires doubt; this wider world does not arouse the sense of what is collectively “ours”. As a result, people do not feel that they belong to it, let alone that they can imagine belonging to the unknown others out there and sharing an identity. This Filipino problem of identity is home grown and its locus is the underdevelopment of the idea, the feeling and the practice of national citizenship. It is a systemic problem, and the “system” has all the necessary structures in place to keep it this way.
The resulting doubts about what “authenticity” actually is may be aggravated by the Southeast Asian tendency of being open to the world (Reynolds 2006: 23) and of wanting to be up-to-date (Wolters 1994: 4). In itself, this openness and desire for modernity is part of the local way of being. At the same time, in the present era of internationalisation, people the world over are exposed to the relentless advance of new media that is changing and homogenising the outer surface of ways of life. As a result, a characteristic of the globalisation process is the anxiety about the survival prospects of one's own culture on the one hand, and the fear of being behind the times on the other. In the eyes of others, this is no less a characteristic of the self-confident Thai (Reynolds 2006: 277–303) than of the less self-assured Filipino. To speak to this, it is refreshing to realise that “survival of culture” and worry about the loss of authenticity is as old a phenomenon as the generation gap itself. As shown by my focus on the inner core, on the little-traditional ways, there is no need for concern about “authenticity” and creativity, as Filipinos have time and again reshaped the imported according to their own image – as is attested to, for example, by Joaquin (2004) and Zialcita (2005).
Because of their exposure to and absorption of American complacency, the Filipinos may in retrospect be the pioneers of their self-doubt. In any case, societies the world over find themselves exposed to self-uncertainty these days as a result of having come to be situated in the no man's land created by global capital and technology flows. If it is any of succour to the Filipino reader, doubt about who “we” are has even become a characteristic discussion amongst the citizens of the oldest (non-city) republic in Europe, the Netherlands. With a process of nation-building behind them that stretches back to the time Legazpi established Spanish dominion in the country that bears his king's name, the Dutch embarked on their nation-shaping war of liberation from the tyranny of His Most Catholic Majesty Felipe II. These days, however, the Netherlands struggle with the consequences of massive immigration and the resulting multicultural society; with rootless, internationally produced culture; and, with the explosion of individual lifestyling – circumstances that are all gnawing away at the previously assumed Dutch identity. Everywhere one looks, it seems that the reach of “authenticity” stretches less and less far, as we are thrown back instead on the matters of the heart, family, home and religion.
## Conclusion
The deficiency of strength that Filipino national identity possesses and the insufficient adherence that Filipino nationhood attracts lie in the failure of the state to mould the population into an encompassing moral order in which people can distinctly imagine that they belong together. In the absence of a shared narrative of collective emancipation that successfully ties the individual's private life to an authoritative centre of civilisation, we find two opposing “nations” co-existing in the independent Philippine state: the state-owning oligarchy versus the nation of the ordinary people. This cleavage is enhanced by the conflict between the arbitrary nature of politics and the identity-affirming inner core, the each-to-his-own of the public realm versus the reassurance of little-traditional life and the English language versus the vernacular. As a result, it keeps all and sundry – including the members of the new Filipino middle class – from identifying with the collective whole and prevents them from developing into a nation of genuinely committed citizens. Because these cleavages are systemic, nation-building remains a task of which completion will stretch into the distant future.

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---
author: Hannah Love
title: Gradients of agreement for democratic decision-making
source: https://i2insights.org/2021/05/25/gradients-of-agreement-tool/
clipped: 2024-06-19
published: 2024-01-29
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Gradients of agreement for democratic decision-making
**By Hannah Love**
How does your team make decisions? Do you vote? Does the loudest voice usually win? Does everyone on the team generally feel heard? Does your team have a charter to provide guidance? Or maybe there is often just silence and the team assumes agreement?
The next time your team makes a decision, here is something new you can try! Kaner (2014) proposes using a gradients of agreement scale. The gradients of agreement, also known as the consensus spectrum, provides an alternative to yes/no decision-making by allowing everyone to mark their response along a continuum, as shown in the figure below.
*What are the gradients of agreement and the benefits of using them?*
This is a tool to support democratic decision-making. The gradients of agreement has a scale with numbers (1-8) and short descriptions. When someone on the team suggests an action, individuals respond by stating their position along the gradient. One end of the scale is “whole-hearted endorsement” (1) of the action that was proposed, and the other end (8) is “veto!”
Benefits to using a gradient to make decisions include:
- The tool provides an opportunity to practice diversity, equity, and inclusion because everyone on the team has an opportunity to provide specific feedback on their position. (Pro tip: including more voices is also an important step in innovation and knowledge creation.)
- The loudest voice doesn’t necessarily win because everyone’s voice is equally valued.
- The person with the most power can see and be informed by everyone’s opinion.
- Teams often mistake silence as consensus. Using a gradient ensures the variety of opinions in the room are seen and considered by everyone else.
[![love_gradient-of-agreement](https://i0.wp.com/i2insights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/love_gradient-of-agreement.jpg?resize=1050%2C454&ssl=1)](https://i2insights.org/2021/04/21/gradients-of-agreement-for-democratic-decision-making/love_gradient-of-agreement/#main)
The gradients of agreement scale (Kaner 2014, p. 278)
*How to make the decision*
Before you begin, decide as a team: *what level of agreement is necessary to move the group forward?*
And determine: *what steps will the team take when you have lukewarm or ambiguous agreement?*
It’s easy to move forward when there is enthusiastic support. However, that’s not always the case. For example, you’ll probably never have enthusiastic support when you are finalizing or trimming a budget.
Enthusiastic support is important when…
- There are high stakes, and the decision is important
- There is a long-term impact
- There is a tough problem
- There is high investment (including monetary and stakeholder buy-in)
- You need to empower group members.
In many situations, lukewarm support is all you need. Kaner (2014) wrote that lukewarm support is okay when….
- There are low stakes
- There is a short-term impact
- The decision is generally simple
- There is low investment (in monetary and stakeholder buy-in)
- The team only needs low autonomy, meaning not everyone needs to feel empowered.
What do you do when you have outliers or ambiguous support? It’s likely your team is still in what Kaner (2014) describes as the [groan zone, which is also the subject of a blog post by Carrie Kappel](https://i2insights.org/2019/05/28/collaboration-groan-zone/). (Pro tip: this is also the point where a facilitator is helpful because they can ask different questions to help the team get through the groan zone.)
If you don’t have the necessary level of support that you agreed on ahead of time, ask questions and really listen to the outliers. Perhaps they see something you missed. After the outliers have shared, re-vote. It’s likely that your team will need to engage in a process of discussion and sharing their level of agreement two to five times to reach the desired level of agreement.
*How to use the gradients*
Using a gradient is easy: it’s adjustable to use in different settings, and it’s adaptable to many platforms (*eg*., in-person meetings, Zoom polls, and other virtual platforms).
The simplest way to use the gradients of agreement is to ask team members to show their level of agreement by holding up a number (1-8) with their hand(s). This works best when everyone shows their number at the same time.
Another way to use the gradients is in Zoom polls. You can preload the gradient responses even if you don’t know the question or proposition (just use a “?” mark for the question prompt). When team members vote via a Zoom poll, responses are anonymous, and results are automatically tabulated. You can also launch the same Zoom poll over and over again if you need to vote more than once.
Finally, I like to use sticky notes! In virtual meetings there are many platforms that use virtual sticky notes such as Padlet, Miro and Jamboards. It’s easy to create a gradient ahead of time, and then ask team members to move an electronic sticky note along the gradient. When you use sticky notes, you can choose whether or not to make votes anonymous by asking (or not) people to write their name on the sticky note. In person, draw a gradient on a white board or large sheet of paper and pass out sticky notes.
*Variations*
There are a lot of variations to this scale and there don’t need to be 8 points! Below are two options, but the possibilities are endless.
Option 1:
1. I really like it
2. I like it well enough
3. I will support it until I learn more
4. Mixed feelings
5. I prefer something different
6. I just don’t like it
Option 2:
For a lot of decisions, you don’t have to “love it” – you just have to “live with it”.
1. Love it
2. Like it
3. Live with it
4. Loathe it
*Conclusion*
The next time your team makes a decision, consider perspectives beyond yes/no decision-making because a “yes” vote might not mean “whole-hearted endorsement.” Just be sure to decide ahead of time: *what does agreement look like on your team?* And determine: *what steps will your team take when you have lukewarm or ambiguous agreement?*
Do you have examples where the gradients of agreement tool has been or would be helpful in your teamwork? Are there other useful tools that you use? If you are new to this idea, will you use the gradients of agreement with your team? Put your level of agreement, using the 1-8 scale shown in the figure above, as a comment on this blog post.
**To find out more:**
You can hear Hannah Love describe this tool in an Interreach (Interdisciplinary Integration Research Careers Hub) webinar at [https://youtu.be/ZkEIB2vNzGA](https://youtu.be/ZkEIB2vNzGA).
**References**:
Kaner, S. (2014). *Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making*. Third edition, Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Bethany Prykucki from University of Michigan Extension office (2018) provides some additional tips about how to put the gradients of agreement into practice. (Online): [https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/gradients\_of\_agreement\_can\_help\_move\_groups\_forward](https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/gradients_of_agreement_can_help_move_groups_forward)
***Biography:** Hannah Love PhD is a team scientist and professional facilitator. She works full-time doing team science consulting and facilitation with Divergent Science LLC ([https://teamdivergentscience.com/](https://teamdivergentscience.com/)), which she co-founded with Ellen Fisher. Hannah has 12-years of facilitation experience including experience in higher education facilitation, water conflict facilitation, and science facilitation, and since 2015 she has been designing team science trainings, retreats, and workshops for scientific teams. She is based in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.*

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---
author: Jennifer Wilson
title: How to Spot a Cult
source: https://newrepublic.com/article/162856/spot-cult-cultish-language-fanaticism-review
clipped: 2024-06-17
published: 2021-06-28
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# How to Spot a Cult
Among L. Ron Hubbard’s most pressing concerns was a singular problem: how to get his followers to turn their nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns. Like a Californian Hamlet, the founder of Scientology pondered the dilemma of “to be or not to be” and settled on *beingness*. There was no real basis for Hubbard’s morphological experiments, as linguist Amanda Montell explains in her new book, *[Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism](https://bookshop.org/a/1620/9780062993151)*; he simply “liked the sound of technical jargon.” So much so, in fact, that he published two extensive Scientology dictionaries filled with thousands of terms, many of which were borrowed (and subsequently mangled) from fields like psychology and software engineering “to create the impression that Scientology’s belief system was rooted in real science.”
Hubbard also wanted to establish, through language, a clear way of demarcating believers from nonbelievers (or, sorry—“suppressive persons”). A nonbeliever, for instance, would very likely struggle to parse the following exchange without the aid of Montell’s annotations:
> “How are you doing?”
>
> “I’ve been a bit out ruds \[rudiments: tired, hungry, or upset\] because of a PTP \[present time problem\] with my second dynamic \[romantic partner\] because of some bypassed charge \[old negative energy that’s resurfaced\] having to do with my MEST \[Matter, Energy, Space, and Time, something in the physical universe\] at her apartment.”
While this all comes across as profoundly idiosyncratic, Montell says there is in fact nothing unique or special about Scientology’s fascination with language. “The most compelling techniques” espoused by cults have had “little to do with drugs, sex, shaved heads, remote communes, drapey kaftans, or ‘Kool-Aid,’” says Montell. As she breaks down the glossary of terms espoused by members of QAnon, Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown, and even Crossfit, Montell says it is language that can best clue us in as to whether an organization we have joined is a cult or is at least engaging in cultlike behavior to extract resources out of its members. She develops a taxonomy of “cultish” linguistic tendencies from “the crafty redefinition of existing words” (i.e., calling a gym a “box” for no real reason), thought-terminating clichés (labeling good-faith doubts and concerns as “limiting beliefs”), and monikers that establish an us-versus-them binary (the “truth seekers” versus “sheeple” of QAnon).
Montell’s first book, *[Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language](https://bookshop.org/a/1620/9780062868886)* (2019), explored everything from the history of sexist slurs like *skank* and *hussy* to the gendered assumptions about what it means to “speak with authority.” With *Cultish,* Montell is still writing about feminism, arguing that many of these organizations often target working-class and minority women who, feeling failed by capitalism, begin looking for some semblance of a social safety net. Nearly half of the victims of the Jonestown massacre were Black women, she points out, and the majority of people working for multilevel marketing companies are unemployed women living in blue-collar towns. An empathetic listener, Montell takes careful note of the empty words that cult members turn to for solace. Though written in punchy and fun prose style, *Cultish* is more than a fascinating guide to the workings of cults; it’s also an infuriating window into just how starved people have been made to feel for community and structures of collective care.
Montell has a personal investment in cults and how to spot them: Her father grew up in one. In 1969, when he was 14, Craig Montell’s parents joined Synanon, the drug rehab program turned repressive cult. Synanon forced its patients to go cold turkey and cut off all communication from family and friends. Soon it began attracting nonaddicts, some in search of spiritual rejuvenation, others led by an inchoate desire to participate in something unusual (Montell says her grandparents just “wanted to be part of the countercultural movement”). At the Synanon commune, “children lived in barracks miles away from their parents,” and “married couples were separated and assigned new partners.” Infamously, everyone in Synanon had to participate in a ritual called “The Game.” It was an intense nightly session where members would sit in circles and criticize one another in a supposed act of radical honesty. Listening to her father’s stories as a child, what fascinated Montell the most “was the group’s special language,” she says. What was the point, Montell wondered as a child, of all these clandestine codes, from “The Game” to “love marriages” (Synanon’s reassigned partnerships)? How did they fit into the broader pattern of violence taking place within the organization and ones like it?
As she traces just how reliant cults like Synanon and Heaven’s Gate were on jargon and invented language (the latter referred to people as “containers” and parking lots as “docking stations”), Montell concludes that language is the primary means by which any group, and not just a cult, establishes a sense of shared purpose and identity. Specialized terminology allows adherents to feel they have unique access to something. “Whether wicked or well-intentioned,” she explains, “language is a way to get members of a community on the same ideological page. To help them feel like they belong to something big.” In this way, most organizations are cult-ish (her term), and indeed, Montell prefers to see the term *cult* as something that operates on a continuum, with language alerting us that a popular fitness trend or a company we work for has teetered across a boundary into something dangerously exploitative. After all, most cults do not start off as such. Their respective paths to the dark side though, Montell tell us, often begin with increased levels of esoteric terminology and choice epithets for outsiders. “Language,” she explains, “can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.”
One of Montell’s main concerns is how capitalism has made people uniquely susceptible to cults and cultish organizations. In the absence of robust social welfare programs, many turn to tightly knit groups that seem to provide an alternative space that can save them from the worst ravages of the market: “America’s laissez-faire atmosphere makes people feel all on their own.” That was a major appeal of People’s Temple. Led by a charismatic white preacher named Jim Jones, People’s Temple was an integrated church that preached a message of racial equality and anti-capitalism. In 1974, Jones moved his parish from Redwood City, California, to Guyana in South America, where he and his followers would set up a socialist commune called Jonestown. When Jones, unstable and narcissist, feared he might lose his grip on power, he made the residents of Jonestown drink a sugary beverage spiked with cyanide (thus the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid”) before shooting himself with a revolver.
“Jim Jones,” writes Montell, “was a linguistic chameleon.” His message and style of address drew on the Black Power movement (he called the massacre in Guyana an act of “revolutionary suicide”). He labeled his white followers “bourgeois bitches” and used the term “churchianity” to dismiss hypocritical white Christians. With this kind of language, writes Montell, “\[Jones\] created the illusion that the Black majority had more privilege than they did.”
By the 1970s, his congregation had attracted a large proportion of Black women who felt sidelined by second-wave white feminists. Montell takes care to note that Black women were not somehow more susceptible to brainwashing, but as people facing racist economic barriers, they had genuine reasons to be compelled by Jones’s unique message of socialist communalism. So did many others: Jones’s vision appealed to women of all races. Montell located a People’s Temple member named Laura Johnston Kohl, a white woman who survived Jonestown only to join Synanon, so strong was her belief in basic tenets of collectivism that she could find nowhere else in American society. “In the seventies we had a saying,” Kohl tells Montell. “One person can only whisper. You need to be in a group to stay strong.”
Some cults, on the other hand, try to convince followers that they can beat capitalism at its own game, as long as they possess a billionaire mentality and sell enough essential oils and diet supplements to their Facebook friends. Montell spends a sizable portion of *Cultish* discussing the history of multilevel marketing schemes, from early successes like Tupperware to billion-dollar companies like Amway (the source of the DeVos family’s fortunes), to more recent entries on the scene, such as doTerra and Arbonne. These companies, Montell writes, “target non-working wives and moms, and they have since the dawn of the modern direct sales industry in the 1940s.”
After World War II, millions of white American women who had joined the labor force to fill in for men were suddenly ousted from their jobs. Earl Tupper and his most successful recruit, a single mom from Detroit named Brownie Wise, found a way to take advantage of this surplus of women looking for ways to make money doing something that felt professional but not in a way that encroached on their husband’s territory. Selling Tupperware mostly to friends and family was not a job as much as it was an exciting opportunity, “the sort that wouldn’t threaten their traditionally feminine, wifely image.” Yet despite the promises of financial independence, most MLMs require sellers to buy a large amount of inventory up front, sometimes costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and according to multiple studies, 99 percent of recruits never make a profit. “Like most destructive ‘cults,’” observes Montell, “they’re in the business of selling the transcendent promise of something that doesn’t actually exist.”
Their real product, Montell insists, “isn’t merchandise, it’s rhetoric.” Today’s MLMs use the language of empowerment to entice women to join. Phrases like “Build a fempire” and “Be a mompreneur” and other “faux-spirational lingo of commodified fourth wave feminism,” Montell writes, abound in their promotional materials. Like cults, they utilize terminology that distinguishes and elevates their business model compared to traditional employers’. For instance, you will not have a boss but rather “an upline mentor,” and sellers are not employees but rather “entrepreneurs.” People with salaried positions, benefits, and other basic labor protections, on the other hand, are said, with derision, to possess a “J.O.B.” (jackass of a boss). In this way, sellers aren’t buying oils or diet pills but life rafts. With enough esoteric Facebook posts about “opportunities” and creepy D.M.s to old high school classmates, they believe they can transcend the conditions of the working poor to become “boss babes.”
I think most people who read *Cultish* will feel convinced they have, at some point in their lives, been in a cult. It is almost impossible to avoid one, Montell seems to say, in a market economy where corporations have started calling themselves “families” and professional identity is increasingly being offered as a substitute for a living wage. A former academic, I certainly gulped when I read the line: “The glue that keeps this trust intact is members’ belief that their leaders have a rare access to transcendent wisdom, which allows them to exercise control over their systems of rewards and punishments.” It could be, though, that academia is not a cult itself, but rather was a cult for me, because like many of the women Montell writes about, I joined because I hoped it would protect me from capitalism. The student health center was my socialized medicine, and tenure a Scandinavian safety net. In exchange, I willingly participated in language that demoted all other career and life paths. A “job” was an academic one, and all others were “alt-ac” (alternatives to academia). I kept my doubts to myself lest I wanted to hear the thought-terminating cliché: “good people get jobs.”
It strikes me now, having read Montell’s book, that this kind of framing certainly comes in handy for an industry that relies on the aspirations of its contingent labor pool to keep costs down. This, I think, is Montell’s larger point: Cults and cultish organizations rely on precarity and social insecurity. They fill in the gaps, offering a sense of community and shared investment in the future. So when they use the language of “follow me,” you follow, because where else are you going to go?

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---
author: Johanna Zulueta
title: Identifying “Filipino Identity”
source: https://sabanganpwu.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/johanna-zulueta-identifying-filipino-identity/
clipped: 2024-06-16
published: 2014-11-24
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
> [!INFO]- Original publication
>
> This article was first published in Volume 1, Issue 1 of *Sabangan Academic Journal*, Philippine Women's University.
# Identifying “Filipino Identity”
Had it been published on a broadsheet in the Philippines, Niels Mulder’s essay on Filipino identity would probably spark criticisms from the larger populace as do foreigners’ commentaries on Filipino society and culture that, rather than glorify the Filipino, beset him/her with criticisms that are axiomatic but are nevertheless received with a defensive outburst rather than a critical eye. However, Mulder’s essay may resonate with a lot of middle-class, educated Filipinos who still grapple with the question of a “Filipino identity” – that in the process of problematizing, or rather coming to terms with one’s identity, only ends up in concluding that a Filipino identity is a “bastardized” identity and that we do not have an identity to call our “own” (i.e., “authentic”). Nevertheless, essays from “outsiders” such as Mulder’s serve as wake-up calls to think about what Filipino identity is and whether a Filipino identity truly exists after centuries of colonization that made the country seem to be an “anomaly” among the Asian countries. Indeed, as Zygmunt Bauman puts it, “one thinks of identity whenever one is not sure of where one belongs” (Bauman #).
For this commentary, I would like to bring up the following points:
1. To talk about identity is to also talk of inclusion and exclusion – a “we” vs. “they”, “sameness” vs. “difference”;
2. While the issue of identity has been constructed and de-constructed in much academic discourse, an attempt to talk about this much-exhausted concept should also take into consideration the intersection of class/status, ethnicity, and gender (among others) into the whole problematic; and lastly,
3. Is there a need to define a Filipino identity within the context of authenticity (that is more often than not conflated with the “exotic”, especially when looking at cultures in Asia)?
Defining what Filipino identity is, is to also consider what makes something “not” Filipino. In this case, we talk about the collective sense of who we are as opposed to who we are not. However, the collective sense (of educated Filipinos, in this case) seems, if we follow Mulder’s arguments, that there is a loss or a confusion regarding Filipinos’ sense of belonging amid centuries of colonization (Mulder emphasizes American colonization) and the use of a colonial language that has pervaded every aspect of our lives. Filipinos, so to speak, have been “cut off” from the past. Mulder also states that one has to ask the question, “identity vis-a-vis whom?” Indeed, it is only in relation to the Other that I/We/Us is able to differentiate him/herself/themselves from an Other, thereby constructing one’s own identity. The sense of belongingness embedded in identity discourses tends to be associated with place-centric notions of “roots”; that a shared locality and/or birthplace delineates the “us” from the “them”, as in the case of regional reunions of Filipinos in the United States that bring together several generations of people not known to each other but who trace their roots to a common place of origin (or ancestral origin). Then again, in this globalized world, it is more apt to re-think this and rather situate the discourse of identity in the context not only of “roots” but also of “routes” (Clifford #). I say this in consideration as to how being Filipino, or a Filipino identity, is being defined by Filipinos in diaspora, or perhaps by the Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) – itself an identity imbued with contradictions: wherein tales of victimhood are juxtaposed with nation-state constructions of the modern-day hero – who continuously negotiates between “roots” and “routes”.
This problem of a Filipino identity – or the “vagueness” of it – has oftentimes been regarded as linked to postcolonial legacies and predicaments following American rule of the islands. The use of English as the main medium of instruction in schools, which implies a certain degree of linguistic imperialism, in effect creates and maintains social inequality. In contrast, the elite and the middle-classes have the upper-hand in education and academic achievement, leaving the rest of the populace in a state of confusion regarding their national imagining and sense of belonging, which Mulder says contributes to the underdevelopment of the Filipino’s self-confidence and sense of responsibility as citizens of the Republic.
If one were to ask the marginalized others (i.e., less educated, lower-class individuals, as well as women, indigenous groups, etc.) what and who a Filipino is, is there any chance that they will reproduce what middle-class, elite, and educated Filipinos define as a Filipino identity? The interpretation of what a nation is and what a national identity is (i.e., Filipino identity) has been within the purview of those in power, mostly male, and in the case of the Philippines, colonial elites. This discourse then leaves out a great majority of the population. While people in modern societies now have the benefit of defining and choosing their identity (in this case, I can say to choose and define a Filipino identity) based on reflexive understandings of one’s biography (which is related to the outside world) (Giddens #), many are still left out of this whole project. The fictive construction and non-fictive imagining of a Filipino identity oftentimes is reduced to a myopic class consciousness that is also very much gendered. It is my sincere hope that Neils Mulder would address this issue further in his essay.
Now, is there a need then to define a Filipino identity within the context of authenticity? With this, we need to emphasize that authenticity is not to be conflated with exoticism, and that while Filipino culture and identity may lack what is defined to be “Asian” and rather is seen as disconnected from its past (i.e., the pre-colonial past), it is indeed as Zialcita (*Authentic Though Not Exotic*) says, “authentic”. The Filipino who celebrates in his/her being the Chinese and the Malay, the Christian tradition and the Spanish legacy, as well as the “longing” for an America that is in the minds and hearts of many, is indeed a mix – “we are all mestizos” (Zialcita #). While this historical production and reproduction has led to an “ignorance” and “lack of knowledge” about one’s Malay and Austronesian roots, as Mulder says, to judge that Filipinos suffer from “helpless insularity” may thus be an extreme form of self-doubt, which leads to a loss of one’s sense of identity. While this “lack” of affinity with one’s South East Asian neighbors may be traced to a lapse in historical education and an overemphasis and overconsumption of American culture, contemporary mobilities are changing all these.
I have lost count of the times when colleagues and other non-academics approach me with the following comments/questions: “Do Filipinos consider themselves as part of the West?”, “Filipinos are too Westernized”, “Filipinos are too American and too Christian”. Likewise, the times I invoke the legacies of the colonial past to address their queries have escaped my memory. “Filipinos do not have a (unique) identity because of colonization and what they have now are borrowings from Spanish and American influence” – sums up how most educated Filipinos describe their own identity. Travelogues and museum exhibits often gloss over the Philippines and its “culture”, oftentimes relegating it to a small page or corner, thus enforcing its peripheral position vis-a-vis the “rich” cultures of Asia. Zialcita talks about how much emphasis is given to Philippine indigenous cultures and artifacts (i.e., non-colonized) in these kinds of expositions, while reception towards Philippine lowland culture (i.e., Hispanized, Christian, Americanized – in other words, colonized) has been elusive. The English-speaking Filipino with a Spanish name/surname seems misplaced in an Asia constructed by the West and continues to be defined and redefined by both Asians themselves and others. Is there a need to be exotic? Is there a need to be authentic? Identities are in flux, and with this, Filipino identity itself.
**WORKS CITED**
- Bauman, Zygmunt. “From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity.” *Questions of Cultural Identity*. By Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay. London: Sage, 1996. N. pag. Print.
- Clifford, James. *Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Print.
- Giddens, Anthony. *Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age*. Cambridge: Polity, 1991. Print.
- Zialcita, Fernando N. *Authentic Though Not Exotic: Essays on Filipino Identity*. Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 2005. Print.

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---
author: Waco Tribune Herald
title: Martha Caley obituary
source:
clipped: 2024-06-16
published: 1990-03-31
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Martha Caley obituary
Mrs. Martha Caley, 54, died March 29, 1990 at her home in Waco TX. Services at Rosemound Cemetery by Wilkirson Hatch FH.
Mrs. Caley was born in Spearman TX July 6, 1935, and educated in Petersburg TX. She attended Texas Tech University and moved to Waco TX in 1969. She was a member of South Waco Church of Christ, and the Waco Chapter of the Poetry Society.
Survivors: daughters, Anne Elisabeth Caley of Waco TX and Kathryn Arlene Bynum of San Antonio TX; son, William James Caley of Round rock TX; sister, Dorothy Ann Burrow of Bracketville TX; brother, James T. Cooke of Tulsa OK; and four grandchildren.

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---
author: Wikipedia
title: Occupy movement hand signals
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement_hand_signals
clipped: 2024-06-19
published: 2024-02-11
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Occupy movement hand signals - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Hands_signals-Occupy-A4.svg/220px-Hands_signals-Occupy-A4.svg.png)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hands_signals-Occupy-A4.svg)
Occupy movement hand signals, grouped by function.
The **Occupy movement hand signals** are a group of [hand signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_signals "Hand signals") used by [Occupy movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement "Occupy movement") protesters to negotiate a [consensus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making "Consensus decision-making").[\[1\]](#cite_note-1)[\[2\]](#cite_note-2)[\[3\]](#cite_note-3) Hand signals are used instead of conventional audible signals, like applause, shouts, or booing, because they do not interrupt the speaker using the [human microphone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone "Human microphone"), a system where the front of the crowd repeats the speaker so that the content can be heard at the back of the crowd. The signals have been compared to other hand languages used by soldiers, cliques and [Wall Street traders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_signaling_(open_outcry) "Hand signaling (open outcry)").[\[4\]](#cite_note-4)
Between sharing of information on Facebook, Twitter, and other news reports, the hand signals have become common at other [Occupy movement protest locations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Occupy_movement_protest_locations "List of Occupy movement protest locations").[\[5\]](#cite_note-5)[\[6\]](#cite_note-6)[\[7\]](#cite_note-7)[\[8\]](#cite_note-8) Some protesters go to neighboring groups to assist in teaching the hand signals along with other general cooperation.[\[9\]](#cite_note-9) There are YouTube videos showing the hand signals, though the signals are not universal at all locations.[\[10\]](#cite_note-SF-10)[\[11\]](#cite_note-11)
## Example signals\[[edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occupy_movement_hand_signals&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Example signals")\]
| Meaning | Gesture | Notes |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Agreement | "Up twinkles"; both hands raised with fingers pointing up and being wiggled. | This handsignal was borrowed from the [Green Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_(United_States) "Green Party (United States)"), who borrowed it from the [ASL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language "American Sign Language") word for applause. It may be referred to as simply "twinkles". |
| | [Thumbs up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbs_up "Thumbs up") | Some locations use thumb gestures to show approval, neutrality, or disapproval. |
| Disagreement | "Down twinkles"; arms raised but showing the back of both hands with fingers pointing down and wiggling | One will be asked by the facilitator to clarify one's objection. In Occupy Boston (possibly other sites), down twinkles go by the alternate name of "squid fingers".[[12]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement_hand_signals#cite_note-12) |
| | Thumbs down | |
| Neutral / unsure | Flat hands | One may be asked to clarify one's position. |
| | Thumb to side | |
| Direct response | Both hands moving alternately front to back on each side of the head, directed at an individual | Indicates that critical information was missing from something that was just said. |
| Clarifying question | Single hand formed in the shape of a _C_ | Means that a person has a question that needs to be answered before they can vote on an issue. |
| Point of process | Triangle formed by two hands with the tips of index fingers and of thumbs touching | Conversation has strayed from the original topic. |
| Wrap it up | Both hands moved in a circular motion about each other | Suggests that the speaker should make their points and finish speaking. |
| Raise the roof | Both hands with palms facing up being moved up and down above shoulder level | Suggests that the speaker should speak up. |
| Hard block | Arms up and crossed | Firm opposition to the proposal, a break from the consensus that cannot be supported by this individual. |
## Origins\[[edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occupy_movement_hand_signals&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Origins")\]
In addition to commonalities with various [sign languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language "Sign language"), and cultural gestures, these or similar hand signals have been used by other groups and events prior to the Occupy Wall Street protests. These include:
- [Camp for Climate Action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_for_Climate_Action "Camp for Climate Action")
- [The Woodcraft Folk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woodcraft_Folk "The Woodcraft Folk")
- [Direct Action Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Action_Network "Direct Action Network")[\[14\]](#cite_note-14)
- The [15-M Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Spanish_protests "2011 Spanish protests") beginning in Spain 2011[\[15\]](#cite_note-15)
- [UK Uncut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Uncut "UK Uncut")[\[16\]](#cite_note-howker-16)
- [Civil rights movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement "Civil rights movement")[\[17\]](#cite_note-newyorker-17)
- [Quaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers "Quakers") meetings[\[16\]](#cite_note-howker-16)
- [Global Justice Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Justice_Movement "Global Justice Movement")[\[18\]](#cite_note-18)
## Influence\[[edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occupy_movement_hand_signals&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Influence")\]
[![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/ClimateStrike-Lausanne-August9th2019-078.jpg/220px-ClimateStrike-Lausanne-August9th2019-078.jpg)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ClimateStrike-Lausanne-August9th2019-078.jpg)
Heart signs at a [school strike for the climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_strike_for_the_climate "School strike for the climate") ([Lausanne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lausanne "Lausanne"), Switzerland, 2019).
Some followers of [agile software development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development "Agile software development") processes have drawn on the Occupy movement's hand signs in an attempt to improve communication during meetings, notably the UK's [Government Digital Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service "Government Digital Service").[\[19\]](#cite_note-19)
After the Occupy movements, these hand signals were used by other social movements such as the [School strike for the climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_strike_for_the_climate "School strike for the climate"), [Ende Gelände](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ende_Gel%C3%A4nde_(disambiguation)&action=edit&redlink=1 "Ende Gelände (disambiguation) (page does not exist)") and [Extinction Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion "Extinction Rebellion").[\[20\]](#cite_note-20)
## See also\[[edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occupy_movement_hand_signals&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: See also")\]
## References\[[edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occupy_movement_hand_signals&action=edit&section=5 "Edit section: References")\]
1. **[^](#cite_ref-1 "Jump up")** [*Occupy Portland - DownTwinkles*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaVvzTyMcls), retrieved 2020-05-02
2. **[^](#cite_ref-2 "Jump up")** ["The Colbert Report"](http://www.cc.com/shows/the-colbert-report). *Comedy Central*.
3. **[^](#cite_ref-3 "Jump up")** [Erin Alberty, “Occupy SLC protesters vilify elite, camp with destitute” The Salt Lake Tribune, October 28, 2011](http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52799991-75/park-pioneer-homeless-occupy.html.csp)
4. **[^](#cite_ref-4 "Jump up")** ["Water Cooler Wars: Occupy hand signals » Anderson Independent Mail"](https://web.archive.org/web/20140111090311/http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/nov/11/water-cooler-wars-occupy-hand-signals/). Independentmail.com. Archived from [the original](http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/nov/11/water-cooler-wars-occupy-hand-signals/) on 2014-01-11. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
5. **[^](#cite_ref-5 "Jump up")** DOUG WARD (2011-10-17). ["Human mike, hand signals unify Occupy Vancouver crowd"](https://vancouversun.com/news/Human+mike+hand+signals+unify+Occupy+Vancouver+crowd/5564376/story.html). Vancouver: Vancouversun.com. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
6. **[^](#cite_ref-6 "Jump up")** Andrew, Susan (6 November 2011). ["Checking out Occupy Asheville's 'General Assembly' | Mountain Xpress | Asheville, NC"](http://www.mountainx.com/article/37179/Checking-out-Occupy-Ashevilles-General-Assembly). Mountainx.com. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
7. **[^](#cite_ref-7 "Jump up")** Poisson, Jayme (2011-10-22). ["Hands up, Toronto"](https://www.thestar.com/news/article/1074347). *thestar.com*. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
8. **[^](#cite_ref-8 "Jump up")** ["The Literature Of Occupy Wall Street | The Prague Post Blogs"](http://www.praguepost.com/blogs/blog/2011/11/04/the-literature-of-occupy-wall-street/). Praguepost.com. 2011-11-04. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
9. **[^](#cite_ref-9 "Jump up")** Woolfolk, Daniel (2011-11-04). ["Occupy Oceanside to Send Delegates to Occupy North County - Camp Pendleton, CA Patch"](https://web.archive.org/web/20120515062728/http://camppendleton.patch.com/articles/occupy-oceanside-to-send-delegates-to-occupy-north-county). Camppendleton.patch.com. Archived from [the original](http://camppendleton.patch.com/articles/occupy-oceanside-to-send-delegates-to-occupy-north-county) on 2012-05-15. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
10. **[^](#cite_ref-SF_10-0 "Jump up")** ekai (2011-10-05). ["Consensus Decision-Making Hand Signals Explained at OccupySF"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2yYiULZ0hA). YouTube. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
11. **[^](#cite_ref-11 "Jump up")** KimBoekbinder. ["Occupy Wall Street - Hand Signals"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xV3zTlgu3Q). YouTube. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
12. **[^](#cite_ref-12 "Jump up")** ["Reaching Consensus"](http://www.occupyboston.org/general-assembly/reaching-consensus/). October 17, 2011. Retrieved May 18, 2012.
13. **[^](#cite_ref-13 "Jump up")** Chris Barton ["'Occupy Auckland' protest speaks with many voices", *New Zealand Herald*, October 29, 2011](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10762353)
14. **[^](#cite_ref-14 "Jump up")** Polletta, Francesca (May 2, 2004). [*Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements*](https://books.google.com/books?id=snugO8KeC2EC&q=twinkling&pg=PA190). University of Chicago Press. [ISBN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN_(identifier) "ISBN (identifier)") [9780226674490](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780226674490 "Special:BookSources/9780226674490") – via Google Books.
15. **[^](#cite_ref-15 "Jump up")** ["Signos asamblearios"](https://15mpedia.org/wiki/Signos_asamblearios). *15Mpedia*. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
16. ^ [Jump up to: ***a***](#cite_ref-howker_16-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-howker_16-1) Howker, Ed (2011-04-10). ["Hands up to protest"](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/10/hands-up-to-protest). *Guardian Online*. London. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
17. **[^](#cite_ref-newyorker_17-0 "Jump up")** Schwartz, Mattathias (2011-11-28). ["Pre-Occupied. The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street"](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_schwartz?currentPage=all). *The New Yorker*. Retrieved 2011-11-22.
18. **[^](#cite_ref-18 "Jump up")** Ramírez-Blanco, Julia (2018). *Artistic Utopias of Revolt*. New York: Palgrave. pp. 72–73. [ISBN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN_(identifier) "ISBN (identifier)") [978-3-319-71422-6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-3-319-71422-6 "Special:BookSources/978-3-319-71422-6").
19. **[^](#cite_ref-19 "Jump up")** ["Platform as a Service team takes even-handed approach to meetings"](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2016/10/07/platform-as-a-service-team-takes-even-handed-approach-to-meetings/). GOV.UK GDS. 7 October 2016.
20. **[^](#cite_ref-20 "Jump up")** [NVDA Handouts](https://www.risingup.org.uk/nvda-handouts), [Rising Up!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Up! "Rising Up!") (page visited on 4 October 2019).

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---
author: Eevee
title: On a technicality
source: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
clipped: 2024-06-16
published: 2016-07-23
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# On a technicality
*Apropos of nothing*, I’d like to tell you a story. I’ve [touched on this before](https://eev.ee/blog/2015/07/29/frozen-peaches-sour-grapes/#the-freedom-of-speech), but this is the full version. It’s the story of hypothetical small-to-medium Internet community.
## [Stop me if you've heard this one](#stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one)
You create a little community for a thing you like. You give it a phpBB forum or something.
You want people to be nice, so you make a couple rules. No swearing. No spamming. Don’t use all caps.
You invite your friends, and they invite their friends, and all is well and good. There are a few squabbles now and then, but they get resolved without too much trouble, and everyone more or less gets along.
One day, a new person shows up, and starts linking to their website in almost every thread. Their website mostly consists of very mean-spirited articles written about several well-known and well-liked people in the group. When people ask them to stop, they lash out with harsh insults.
So you ban them.
There is *immediate* protest from a number of people, most of whom you strangely don’t recognize. The person didn’t break any of the rules — *how dare you* ban them? They never swore. They never used all caps. They never even spammed, because *technically* spam is unwanted and automated, and this was a real person linking their website which is related to the thing the community is about.
You can’t think of a good counter-argument for this, so you unban them. You also add a new rule, prohibiting linking to websites.
Now the majority of the community is affected, because they can’t link their own work any more. This won’t work. You repeal the previous rule, and instead make one that limits the number of website links to one per day.
The original jerk responds by linking their website once a day, and then making other posts that link to that first post they made. They continue to be abrasive towards everyone else, but they never swear, and you’re just not sure what to do about that.
A few other people start posting, seemingly just to make fun of the rest of you, but likewise never break any of your rules.
A preposterous arms race follows, with the rules becoming increasingly nitpicky as you try to distinguish overt antagonism from mundane and innocent behavior.
After a while, you notice that many of your friends no longer come around. And there seem to be a lot more jerks than there were before. You don’t understand why. Your rules are reasonable, and you enforced them fairly, right?
## [But it's not really a swear word](#but-its-not-really-a-swear-word)
I’ve noticed that people really like to write rules that sound objective. Seems like a good enough idea, right? Lets everyone know exactly what the line is.
The trick is that human behavior, and especially human language, are very… squishy. We gauge each other based on a lot of unspoken context: our prior relationship, how both of us seem to be feeling, whether or not we skipped lunch today. When the same comment or action can mean radically different things in different circumstances, it’s hard to draw a fine distinction between what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not.
And rules are written in human language, which makes them just as squishy. Who decides what “swearing” is? If all caps aren’t allowed, how about 90%? Who decides what’s a slur? What, precisely, constitutes harassment? These things *sound* straightforward and concrete, but they can still be nitpicked to death.
We give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they’ll try to respect what we clearly *mean*, but there’s nothing guaranteeing that.
Have you ever tried to politely decline a request or invitation, and been asked *why not*? Then the other party starts trying to weasel around your reason, and now you’re somehow part of a debate about what *you want*? I’ve seen it happen with mundane social interactions, with freelance workers, and of course, with small online communities.
This isn’t to say that hunting for technicalities is a sign of aggressive malice; it’s human nature. We want to do a thing, we’re told me can’t because of X, and so we see X as an obstacle to overcome. Language is subjective, so it’s the easiest avenue of attack.
Fixing this in rules is a hard problem. The obvious approach is to add increasingly specific details, though then you risk catching innocent behaviors, and you can end up stuck in an almost comical game of cat-and-mouse where you keep trying to find ways to edit your own rules so you’re allowed to punish someone you’ve already passed judgment on.
I think we forget that even real laws are somewhat subjective, often hinging on intent. There are entire separate crimes for homicide, depending on whether it was intentional or accidental or due to clear neglect. These things get decided by a judge or a jury and become case law, the somewhat murky extra rules that aren’t part of formal law but are binding nonetheless.
(In an awkward twist, a lot of communities — especially very large platforms! — *don’t* explain their reasoning for punishing any particular behavior. That somewhat protects them from being “but *technically*“-ed, but it also means there’s no case law, and no one else can quite be sure what’s expected behavior.)
That’s why I mostly now make quasirules like “don’t be a dick” or “[keep your vitriol to your own blog](https://eev.ee/blog/2014/04/05/comment-policy/)“. The general expectation is still clear, and it’s obvious that I reserve the right to judge individual cases — which, in the case of a small community, is going to happen anyway. Let’s face it: small communities are monarchies, not democracies.
I do have another reason for this, which is based on another observation I’ve made of small communities. I’ve joined a few where I didn’t bother reading the rules, made some conversation, never bothered anyone, and then later discovered that I’d pretty clearly violated a rule. But no one ever pointed it out, and perhaps no one even *noticed*, because I wasn’t being a dick.
So I concluded that, for a smaller community, the people who *need* the rules are likely to be people who you don’t want around in the first place. And “don’t be a dick” covers that just as well.
## [Evaporative cooling](#evaporative-cooling)
There are some nice people in the world. I mean *nice* people, the sort I couldn’t describe myself as. People who are friends with everyone, who are somehow never involved in any argument, who seem content to spend their time drawing pictures of bumblebees on flowers that make everyone happy.
Those people are great to have around. You want to hold onto them as much as you can.
But people only have so much tolerance for jerkiness, and really nice people often have less tolerance than the rest of us.
The trouble with not ejecting a jerk — whether their shenanigans are deliberate or incidental — is that you allow the average jerkiness of the community to rise slightly. The higher it goes, the more likely it is that those really nice people will come around less often, or stop coming around at all. That, in turn, makes the average jerkiness rise even more, which teaches the original jerk that their behavior is acceptable *and* makes your community more appealing to other jerks. Meanwhile, more people at the nice end of the scale are drifting away.
And this goes for a community of *any* size, though it may take more jerks to significantly affect a very large platform.
It’s still hard to give someone the boot, though, because it just feels like a really harsh thing to do to someone, *especially* for an abstract reason like “preserving the feel of the community”. And a jerk is more likely to make a fuss about being made to leave, which makes it feel like a huge issue — whereas nice people generally leave very quietly, and you may not even notice until several of them have been gone for a while.
There’s a human tendency to measure peace as though it were the inverse of volume: the louder people get, the less peaceful it is. We then try to optimize for the least arguing. I’m sure you’ve seen this happen before: someone in a group points out that the group is doing something destructive, that causes an argument, and then onlookers blame *the person who pointed out the problem* for causing the argument to happen. You can probably think of some pretty high-profile examples in some current events.
(You may relatedly enjoy the tale of [the missing stair](http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html).)
Have you ever watched one of those TV shows where a dude comes in to berate restaurant owners for all the ridiculous things they’ve been doing? One of the most common defenses is: “*well, no one complained*“.
In the age of the Internet, where it seems like everyone is always complaining about something, it’s easy to forget that by and large people *don’t* complain. Sure, they might complain on their Twitter or to their friends or whatever, but chances are, they won’t complain to *you*. Consider: either you’re aware of the problem and have failed to solve it, or you’re clueless for not noticing. Either way, complaining won’t help anything; it’ll just cause conflict, making them that person who “caused” an argument by pointing out the obvious.
## [Gamification](#gamification)
Some people are aware of the technicality game on some level, and decide to play it — deliberately. Maybe to get their way; maybe just for fun.
These are people who think “it’d be a shame if something happened to it” is just the way people talk. Layered thick with multiple levels of irony, cloaked in jokes and misdirection, up to its eyeballs in plausible deniability, but crystal clear to the right audience.
It’s a game that offers them a massive advantage, because even if you both know you’re playing it, they have much more experience. Oh, and chances are they don’t even truly care about whether they’re banned or not, so they have nothing to lose — whereas you’re stuck with an existential crisis, questioning everything you believe about free speech and community management, while your nicest peers sneak out the back door.
I remember a time when someone in a community I helped run decided they didn’t like me. They started making subtle jabs, and eventually built up to saying the most biting and personal things they could think to say. Those things weren’t true, but they didn’t know that, and they phrased everything in such a way that their friends could rationalize them as not really *trying* to be cruel. And they had quite a lot of friends in the community, which put me in a pretty awkward position. How do I justify banning them, if a significant number of people are sure they’re innocent? Am I fucking crazy for seeing this glaring pattern when no one else does?
I did eventually ban them, but it contributed to a complete schism where most of the more grating people left to form their own clubhouse. Win/win?
Or let’s say, hypothetically, that some miscreant constructs a fake tweet screenshot. It’s shared by a high-profile person and spreads like wildfire.
Should either of them be punished? Which one, and why? The faker probably regarded it as a harmless joke; if not for the sharer, it would’ve remained one. Yet the sharer’s only crime was being popular. Did the sharer know it was fake? Was the sharer trying to inflict harm, draw attention to troubling behavior, or share something that made them laugh? Are the faker and the sharer the same person? If you can’t be sure either way, does it matter?
What if, instead of the thing you may be thinking about, the forgery depicted Donald Trump plagiarizing Barack Obama’s tweet congratulating Michelle Obama for her speech? Does that change any of the answers?
This is really difficult in extremely large groups, where you most want to avoid doling out arbitrary punishment, yet where people who play this game can inflict the most damage. The people who make and enforce the rules may not even be part of the group any more, and certainly can’t form an impression of every individual person in the group, so how can anything be enforced consistently? How do you account for intention, sarcasm, irony, self-deprecating humor? How do you explain this clearly without subjecting yourself to an endless deluge of technicalities? You could refuse to explain yourself at all, of course, but then you leave yourself open for people to offer their own explanations: you’re a tyrant who bans anyone who contradicts you, or you hated them for demographic reasons, or you’re just plain irrational and do zany cruel things to people around you on a whim.
## [I don't have any good answers](#i-dont-have-any-good-answers)
I’m not sure there are any. Corralling people is a tricky problem. We still barely know how to do it in meatspace groups of half a dozen, let alone digital groups numbering in the hundreds of millions.
Our current approaches kinda suck, though.

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---
author: Alejandro R. Roces
title: Our Philippine identity
source: https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2009/12/22/534495/our-philippine-identity
clipped: 2024-06-16
published: 2009-12-22
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Our Philippine identity
“*The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all tried to lie out of that but life won’t let us.”* **— Eugene O’Neill**
Filipinos are undergoing an identity crisis. Every cultural trait is being subjected to the question: “Is it Filipino?” We are still looking for an answer. The answer to “What is Filipino?” lies in the prejudicial question, “What is culture?” It is culture that makes a Filipino a Filipino and not a Malaysian or Indonesian.
Culture has been defined as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” To be human is to belong to a culture. Four elements present in all cultures are: technology, institutions, language and arts. These can change in only two ways: by invention or by borrowing. Things invented are part of the indigenous culture of the society which brought them forth; things adopted, or adapted, became part of our indigenous cultures; Spanish and English, part of our national culture.
The “real Filipino” had been defined as a “decolonized Filipino.” We take exception to this on two grounds. First, it totally disregards the positive aspects of colonialism. It is true that the Spaniards failed to integrate themselves with the natives. As a matter of fact, they couldn’t even identify with the Philippine-born Spaniards or with the Spanish mestizos. But Spain had more advanced techniques and a much higher degree of civilization than this archipelago. In the process of colonization, they did diffuse their culture and created a new synthesis and a new unity that was richer and more varied than what existed in the islands before.
Second, to decolonize means to bring to a pre-colonial status. To reduce nationalism to colonialism spelled backwards is to emulate the Mediterranean sailors who guarded themselves against the fatal sirenical songs by singing them in reverse. To decolonize the national language would mean the purging of thousands of Spanish words that have been assimilated into Filipino and the abandonment of the Roman alphabet for the syllabic script. If there is anything more reactionary than going back to colonialism, it is going back to pre-colonialism. Prehistoric Philippines was not a Garden of Eden from which our forefathers were expelled because they ate of the tree of colonialism. In every stage of his formation, the Filipino was himself plus his circumstances. He lives in his culture as his culture lived in him. What is needed is redirection. The future is alterable, the past is not. The objective should not be a decolonized Filipino, but a supra-colonial Filipino.
Progress is not a natural law. The wheel was 46 centuries old when Spain introduced it in the Philippines. What one generation gains may be lost by the succeeding ones. Aside from the fact that culture is acquired, shared, transmitted and gratifying to human needs, culture gravitates towards integration. It was Spanish acculturation that homogenized Philippine society. After the initial resistance to Spanish conquest (the Spanish Army in 1590 was composed of 400 men) and the inertia that blocked urbanization had been overcome, the Filipinos were very receptive to Christian acculturation. Some people ridicule the mass baptisms during the initial period of Christianization, but France, England and other major Christian nations were converted in much the same way. There were uprisings against forced labor, feudalistic monopoly, friar abuses, but not against the technological, institutional, linguistic and artistic benefits of Christian civilization.
By the last decade of the 19th century, the descendants of the diverse barangays could already think of themselves as one people with a growing sense of unity and nationhood. They became the first Asians to declare their independence from colonial rule. The Revolution, indeed, signaled the birth of a nation. The placenta was Spain’s. With the American occupation, the mother got buried along with the afterbirth. The Tagalogs have a saying: “Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan, ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan.” It is their folk way of saying that nations without a past have no future.

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---
author: Wikipedia
title: Prefigurative politics
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefigurative_politics
clipped: 2024-06-26
published: 2024-06-26
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# Prefigurative politics
**Prefigurative politics** are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the [group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_group "Social group").[^1] According to [Carl Boggs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Boggs "Carl Boggs"), who coined the term, the desire is to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement [...] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal".[^2] Besides this definition, Leach also gave light to the definition of the concept stating that the term "refers to a political orientation based on the premise that the ends a social movement achieves are fundamentally shaped by the means it employs, and that movement should therefore do their best to choose means that embody or prefigure the kind of society they want to bring about".[^3] **Prefigurativism** is the attempt to enact prefigurative politics.
## History
Boggs was writing in the 1970s about revolutionary movements in Russia, Italy, Spain, and the US [New Left](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left "New Left"). The concept of prefiguration was further applied by [Sheila Rowbotham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Rowbotham "Sheila Rowbotham") to the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s,[^4] by [Wini Breines](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wini_Breines&action=edit&redlink=1 "Wini Breines (page does not exist)") to the US [Students for a Democratic Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society "Students for a Democratic Society") (SDS),[^5] and by John L. Hammond to the [Portuguese Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution "Carnation Revolution").[^6]
The politics of prefiguration rejected the centrism and [vanguardism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism "Vanguardism") of many of the groups and political parties of the 1960s. It is both a politics of creation, and one of breaking with hierarchy. Breines wrote:
> The term prefigurative politics [...] may be recognized in counter institutions, demonstrations and the attempt to embody personal and anti-hierarchical values in politics. [Participatory democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy "Participatory democracy") was central to prefigurative politics. [...] The crux of prefigurative politics imposed substantial tasks, the central one being to create and sustain within the live practice of the movement, relationships and political forms that "prefigured" and embodied the desired society.[^7]
For Breines, "prefigurative politics" centers on "participatory democracy", understood as an ongoing opposition to hierarchical and centralized organization that requires a movement that develops and establishes relationships and political forms that "prefigure" the egalitarian and democratic society that it seeks to create. Furthermore, she sees prefigurative politics as strictly connected to the notion of community, referring to it as a network of relationships that are more direct, more personal, and more total than the formal, abstract and instrumental relationships that are embedded in contemporary state and society.[^8]
[Anarchists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist "Anarchist") around the turn of the twentieth century clearly embraced the principle that the means used to achieve any end must be consistent with that end, though they apparently did not use the term "prefiguration". For example, [James Guillaume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Guillaume "James Guillaume"), a comrade of [Mikhail Bakunin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin "Mikhail Bakunin"), wrote, "How could one want an equalitarian and free society to issue from authoritarian organisation? It is impossible."[^9]
One of the greatest examples during the 20th century in this regard is the comunismo libertario ([libertarian communism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism "Anarcho-communism")) society organized by anarcho-syndicalists such as the [Confederación Nacional del Trabajo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo "Confederación Nacional del Trabajo") (CNT), or in English the National Confederation of Labour, for a few months during the [Spanish Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War "Spanish Civil War"). Workers took collective control of the [means of production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production "Means of production") on a decentralized level and used mass-self communication as a counter-power in order to give useful information on a wide range of options going from vegetarian cooking to the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
The concept of prefiguration later came to be used more widely,[^10] especially in relation to movements for participatory democracy.[^11][^12][^13] It has especially been applied to [Italian Autonomism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_autonomists "Italian autonomists") in the 1960s,[^14] the [US antinuclear movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_the_United_States "Anti-nuclear movement in the United States") of the 1970s and 1980s and the [anti-globalization movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization_movement "Anti-globalization movement") at the turn of the 21st century.[^15]
## Perspectives on prefigurative politics
Anthropologist [David Graeber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber "David Graeber") in _[Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragments_of_an_Anarchist_Anthropology "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology")_ described the prefigurative politics of those at the [1999 Seattle WTO protest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization_Ministerial_Conference_of_1999_protest_activity "World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity"):
> When protesters in Seattle chanted "this is what democracy looks like," they meant to be taken literally. In the best tradition of direct action, they not only confronted a certain form of power, exposing its mechanisms and attempting literally to stop it in its tracks: they did it in a way which demonstrated why the kind of social relations on which it is based were unnecessary. This is why all the condescending remarks about the movement being dominated by a bunch of dumb kids with no coherent ideology completely missed the mark. The diversity was a function of the decentralized form of organization, and this organization _was_ the movement's ideology. (p. 84)
Political theorists [Paul Raekstad](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Raekstad&action=edit&redlink=1 "Paul Raekstad (page does not exist)") and [Saio Gradin](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Saio_Gradin&action=edit&redlink=1 "Saio Gradin (page does not exist)") define prefigurative politics as:
> the deliberate experimental implementation of desired future social relations and practices in the here-and-now.[^16]
They argue that prefigurative politics is essential for developing agents with the powers, drives, and consciousness to reach a free, equal, and democratic future society.
According to [Adrian Kreutz](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adriankreutz.weebly.com&action=edit&redlink=1 "Adriankreutz.weebly.com (page does not exist)"), Political Theorist at New College, Oxford, the practice of prefigurative politics, or prefigurativism, can be defined as:
> a way of engaging in social change activism that seeks to bring about this other world by means of planting the seeds of the society of the future in the soil of today's. [...] Prefigurativism is a way of showing what a world without the tyranny of the present might look like. It is a way of finding hope (but not escapism!) in the realms of possibility––something that words and theories alone cannot provide. [...] As a form of activism, prefigurativism highlights the idea that your means match the ends you can expect. It highlights that social structures enacted in the here-and-now, in the small confines of our organisations, institutions and rituals mirror the wider social structures we can expect to see in the post-revolutionary future.[^17]
Additionally, Darcy K. Leach wrote in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements that:
> For much of its history, the prefigurative impulse was only characteristic of the beginning stages of a rebellion and faded as the movement became more centralized. From the 1960s onward, however, the approach has become both more clearly articulated and more widespread, such that one can now identify a stable prefigurative tendency or wing in a wide range of movements around the world, most notably in women's, environmental, autonomous, peace, and indigenous rights movements, and on a more global scale in the movements against neoliberal globalization[^18]
Boggs analyzed three common patterns of decline in the prefigurative movements which are the following:
> [Jacobinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobinism "Jacobinism"), in which popular forums are repressed or their sovereignty usurped by a centralized revolutionary authority; [spontaneism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneism "Spontaneism"), a strategic paralysis caused parochial or anti-political inclinations inhibit the creation of broader structures of effective coordination; and [corporativism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism "Corporatism"), which occurs when an oligarchic stratum of activists is co-opted, leading them to abandon the movement's originally radical goals in order to serve their own interests in maintaining power.[^19]
## Examples of prefigurative political programs
- What began as a rebellion of the [Zapatista Army of National Liberation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation "Zapatista Army of National Liberation") (in Spanish: Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) in 1994, quickly morphed into a social movement that criticized both, national and global power structures and looked for the empowerment of local communities through everyday practices of de facto autonomy.[^20] After negotiations with the state failed regarding [indigenous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples "Indigenous peoples") rights and culture, the Zapatistas proceeded to develop their own structures of self-government, autonomous education, healthcare, justice, and agrarian and economic relations, among other transformative practices.[^21] This movement continues to raise important issues such as the role of culture and identity in popular mobilization, social spaces for organizing, the possibility of redefining power from below, and moreover have posed self-reflective questions about conventional definitions of politics, Western positivist epistemologies and about the need of [decolonizing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonizing "Decolonizing") research in general and in oppressed communities in particular.[^22]
- The [community land trust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_land_trust "Community land trust") model provides a method of providing cooperatively-owned, resident-controlled permanent housing, outside of the speculative market.
- In Argentina, the occupation and recuperation of factories by workers (such as [Zanon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaSinPat "FaSinPat")), the organizing of many of the unemployed workers movements, and the creation of popular neighborhood assemblies reflect the participants' desire for [horizontalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontalidad "Horizontalidad"), which includes equal distribution of power among people, and the creation of new social relationships based on dignity and freedom.
- The [occupation movements of 2011 in Egypt and the Arab world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring "Arab Spring"), in Spain, and in the United States embodied elements of prefiguration (explicitly in the case of [Occupy Wall Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street "Occupy Wall Street") and its spinoffs in occupations around the United States). They envisaged creating a public space in the middle of American cities, for political dialogue and achieved some of the attributes of community in providing free food, libraries, medical care, and a place to sleep.[^23] In Spain, the [15-M movements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-austerity_movement_in_Spain "Anti-austerity movement in Spain") and take-the-square movements organized themselves and stood up for "a real democracy, a democracy no longer tailored to the greed of the few, but to the needs of the people."[^24][^25]
- The [Black Panther Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party "Black Panther Party") of the United States led a variety of community social programs from the early 1960s, which sought to realize the Party's [Ten Point Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-Point_Program_(Black_Panther_Party) "Ten-Point Program (Black Panther Party)"). Programs included [Free Breakfast for Children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Breakfast_for_Children "Free Breakfast for Children"), community health clinics, and after-school programs and Liberation Schools that focused on Black history, writing skills, and political science.
- The global [Baháʼí Faith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD_Faith "Baháʼí Faith") community strives to realise a [model of society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_world_order_(Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD) "New world order (Baháʼí)") by developing a pattern of community life and administrative systems in ways which increasingly embody the principles contained in its [principles and teachings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD_Faith#Social_principles "Baháʼí Faith"), which include the oneness of mankind, equality of the sexes, and harmony of science and religion.[^26] Several authors have written about the community's grassroots praxis as a living experiment in how to progressively instantiate religious or spiritual teachings in the real world.[^27][^28][^29]
## See also
- [Interstitial revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstitial_revolution "Interstitial revolution")
- [Consensus decision-making](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making "Consensus decision-making")
- [Counter-economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-economics "Counter-economics")
- [Food Not Bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Not_Bombs "Food Not Bombs")
- [Squatting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting "Squatting")
- [Workers' self-management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management "Workers' self-management")
- [Direct democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy "Direct democracy")
- [Utopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia "Utopia")
## Further reading
- Gordon, Uri. _[Anarchy Alive!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_Alive! "Anarchy Alive!")_ London: Pluto Press, 2007.
- Gordon, Uri (2 October 2017). ["Prefigurative Politics between Ethical Practice and Absent Promise"](https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/886131). _Political Studies_. **66** (2). SAGE Publications: 521–537. [doi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_(identifier) "Doi (identifier)"):[10.1177/0032321717722363](https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0032321717722363). [ISSN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISSN_(identifier) "ISSN (identifier)") [0032-3217](https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0032-3217). [S2CID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2CID_(identifier) "S2CID (identifier)") [54199855](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:54199855).
- Raekstad, Paul and Gradin, Saio S. "Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today" Cambridge: Polity Books, 2020.
- Monticelli, Lara (editor). "The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics, Bristol University Press, 2022
[^1]: Commons Volunteer Librarian; Smith, E. T. (2023-02-01). ["Prefigurative Politics in Practice"](https://commonslibrary.org/prefigurative-politics-in-practice/). _The Commons_. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
[^2]: Boggs, Carl. 1977. Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers' Control. Radical America 11 (November), 100; cf. Boggs Jr., Carl. Revolutionary Process, Political Strategy, and the Dilemma of Power. Theory & Society 4,No. 3 (Fall), 359-93.
[^3]: Leach, D. K. (2013). Prefigurative politics. The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements, 1004-1006.
[^4]: [Rowbotham, Sheila](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Rowbotham "Sheila Rowbotham"). 1979. 'The Women's Movement and Organizing for Socialism'. In Sheila Rowbotham, [Lynne Segal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Segal "Lynne Segal") and [Hilary Wainwright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Wainwright "Hilary Wainwright"), _Beyond The Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism_, 21-155. London: Merlin Press
[^5]: Breines, Wini. 1980. Community and Organization: The New Left and Michels' "Iron Law." _Social Problems_ 27, No. 4 (April), 419-429; Breines, Wini. 1989. _Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal_. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
[^6]: Hammond, John L. 1984. 'Two Models of Socialist Transition in the Portuguese Revolution'. _Insurgent Sociologist_ 12 (Winter-Spring), 83-100; Hammond, John L. 1988. _Building Popular Power: Workers' and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution_. New York: Monthly Review Press.
[^7]: Breines, Wini. _Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–1968: The Great Refusal_, 1989, p. 6.
[^8]: Wini Breines, The Great Refusal: Community and Organization in the New Left: 1962-1968 (New York: Praeger, 1982), 6.
[^9]: quoted by Benjamin Franks in 'The direct action ethic: From 59 upwards'. _Anarchist Studies_ 11, No. 1, 22; Cf. Benjamin Franks, 2008. 'Postanarchism and meta-ethics', _Anarchist Studies_ 16, No. 2 (Autumn-Winter), 135-53; [David Graeber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber "David Graeber"), _[Direct Action: An Ethnography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Action:_An_Ethnography "Direct Action: An Ethnography")_. Oakland: AK Press, 2009: 206; Eduardo Romanos, 'Anarchism'. In Snow, David A., [Donatella Della Porta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatella_Della_Porta "Donatella Della Porta"), Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam (eds), _The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements_. Oxford: Blackwell: 2013.
[^10]: Fians, Guilherme (2022). ["Prefigurative Politics"](https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/prefigurative-politics). In Stein, Felix (ed.). _[Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Encyclopedia_of_Anthropology "Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology")_. [doi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_(identifier) "Doi (identifier)"):[10.29164/22prefigpolitics](https://doi.org/10.29164%2F22prefigpolitics). [hdl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdl_(identifier) "Hdl (identifier)"):[10023/25123](https://hdl.handle.net/10023%2F25123). [S2CID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2CID_(identifier) "S2CID (identifier)") [247729590](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:247729590).
[^11]: John L. Hammond, 'Social Movements and Struggles for Socialism'. In _Taking Socialism Seriously_, edited by Anatole Anton and Richard Schmidt, 213-47. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012. Francesca Polletta, _Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002; Marina Sitrin, ed., _Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina_. Oakland: AK Press, 2006.
[^12]: Jeffrey, Craig; Dyson, Jane (2021). ["Geographies of the future: Prefigurative politics"](https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0309132520926569). _[Progress in Human Geography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_in_Human_Geography "Progress in Human Geography")_. **45** (4): 641–658. [doi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_(identifier) "Doi (identifier)"):[10.1177/0309132520926569](https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0309132520926569). [hdl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdl_(identifier) "Hdl (identifier)"):[11343/252070](https://hdl.handle.net/11343%2F252070).
[^13]: Monticelli, Lara (2021). ["On the necessity of prefigurative politics"](https://doi.org/10.1177%2F07255136211056992). _[Thesis Eleven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis_Eleven "Thesis Eleven")_. **167** (1): 99–118. [doi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_(identifier) "Doi (identifier)"):[10.1177/07255136211056992](https://doi.org/10.1177%2F07255136211056992).
[^14]: Katsiaficas, George. 2006. _The subversion of politics: European autonomous social movements and the decolonization of everyday life_. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
[^15]: Andrew Cornell, [Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 80s](https://web.archive.org/web/20130518071734/http://www.anarchiststudies.org/node/292). Institute for Anarchist Studies, 2009.
Barbara Epstein, 'The Politics of Prefigurative Community: the Non-violent Direct Action Movement'. Pp. 63-92 in _Reshaping the US Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s_. Edited by Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker. London: Verso, 1988; Jeffrey S. Juris, 'Anarchism, or the cultural logic of networking'. In _Contemporary Anarchist Studies: an Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy_, edited by Randall Amster et al., 213-223. New York: Routledge, 2009.
[^16]: Raekstad, Paul and Gradin, Saio S. 2020. Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today. Cambridge: Polity.
[^17]: Kreutz, Adrian. 2020. Review of Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin: Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2020. [https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/17886_prefigurative-politics-building-tomorrow-today-by-paul-raekstad-and-sofa-saio-gradin-reviewed-by-adrian-kreutz/](https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/17886_prefigurative-politics-building-tomorrow-today-by-paul-raekstad-and-sofa-saio-gradin-reviewed-by-adrian-kreutz/)
[^18]: Leach, D. K. (2013). Prefigurative politics. The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements, 1004-1006.
[^19]: Boggs, C., Jr. (1977) Marxism, prefigurative communism, and the problem of workers’ control. Radical America 11–12, (6–1), 98–122.
[^20]: YouthxYouth (2024-03-26). ["Prefigurative Politics in Practice: Examples and Strategies"](https://commonslibrary.org/prefigurative-politics-in-practice-examples-and-strategies/). _The Commons Social Change Library_. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
[^21]: Stahler-Sholk, R. 2019. Zapatistas and New Ways of Doing Politics. Eastern Michigan University. Retrieved the 5th of April from: [https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1724?print=pdf](https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1724?print=pdf)
[^22]: Anderson, J. 2014. The Revolutionary Resonance of praxis: Zapatismo as Public Pedagogy. Reframing Activism. Retrieved the 6th of April from: [https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/activistmedia/2014/01/the-revolutionary-resonance-of-praxis-zapatismo-as-public-pedagogy/](https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/activistmedia/2014/01/the-revolutionary-resonance-of-praxis-zapatismo-as-public-pedagogy/)
[^23]: Andy Cornell, Consensus: What It Is, What It Is Not, Where It Came From, and Where It Must Go. In We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation, edited by Kate Khatib et al., 163-73. Oakland: AK Press, 2012; John L. Hammond,. The significance of space in Occupy Wall Street. Interface 5, No. 2 (November 2013), 499-524; Luis Moreno-Caballud and Marina Sitrin, Occupy Wall Street, Beyond Encampments. yesmagazine.org, November 21, 2011.
[^24]: Rodríguez, E. & Herreros, T. (2011). “It's the Real Democracy, Stupid”. Online: www.edu-factory.org/wp/spanishrevolution/
[^25]: Maeckelbergh, M. (2012). Horizontal democracy now: From alterglobalization to occupation. Interface, 4(1), 207-234.
[^26]: ["What Baháʼís Do"](http://www.bahai.org/action/).
[^27]: Karlberg, Michael (2004). _Beyond the Culture of Contest_. George Ronald.
[^28]: Hanley, Paul (2014). _Eleven_. Friesen Press. pp. 354–373.
[^29]: Karlberg, Michael (3 August 2022). ["The Pursuit of Social Justice"](https://bahaiworld.bahai.org/library/the-pursuit-of-social-justice/). _The Bahá'í World_. Retrieved October 12, 2022.

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---
author: Tim Wu
title: The Problem with Easy Technology
source: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-problem-with-easy-technology
clipped: 2024-06-17
published: 2014-02-21
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# The Problem with Easy Technology
In the history of marketing, there’s a classic tale that centers on the humble cake mix. During the nineteen-fifties, there were differences of opinion over how “instant” powdered cake mixes should be, and, in particular, over whether adding an egg ought to be part of the process. The [first](https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/pop-culture/article/cake-mix-history) cake mixes, invented in the nineteen-thirties, merely required water, and some people argued that this approach, the easiest, was best. But others thought bakers would want to do more. Urged on by marketing psychologists, Betty Crocker herself began to [instruct](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcrCyypYEuI) housewives to “add water, and two of your own fresh eggs.”
The cake-mix debate may be dated, but its central question remains: Just how demanding do we want our technologies to be? It is a question faced by the designers of nearly every tool, from tablet computers to kitchen appliances. A dominant if often unexamined logic favors making everything as easy as possible. Innovators like Alan Kay and Steve Jobs are celebrated for making previously daunting technologies usable by anyone. It may be hard to argue with easy, yet, as the add-an-egg saga suggests, there’s something deeper going on here.
The choice between demanding and easy technologies may be crucial to what we have called technological evolution. We are, as I argued [in my most recent piece](https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/02/as-technology-gets-better-will-society-get-worse.html) in this series, self-evolving. We make ourselves into what we, as a species, will become, mainly through our choices as consumers. If you accept these premises, our choice of technological tools becomes all-important; by the logic of [biological atrophy](https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/if-a-time-traveller-saw-a-smartphone.html), our unused skills and capacities tend to melt away, like the tail of an ape. It may sound overly dramatic, but the use of demanding technologies may actually be important to the future of the human race.
Just what is a demanding technology? Three elements are defining: it is technology that takes time to master, whose usage is highly occupying, and whose operation includes some real risk of failure. By this measure, a piano is a demanding technology, as is a frying pan, a programming language, or a paintbrush. So-called convenience technologies, in contrast—like instant mashed potatoes or automatic transmissions—usually require little concentrated effort and yield predictable results.
There is much to be said for the convenience technologies that have remade human society over the past century. They often open up life’s pleasures to a wider range of people (downhill skiing, for example, can be exhausting [without lifts](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/obsessions/2012/02/backcountry_skiing_is_it_worth_the_risk_and_the_grueling_hike_up_.html)). They also distribute technological power more widely: consider that, nowadays, [you don’t need](https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/12/goodbye-cameras.html) special skills to take pretty good photos, or to capture a video of police brutality. Nor should we neglect that promise first made to all Americans in the nineteen-thirties: freedom from a life of drudgery to focus on what we really care about. Life is hard enough; do we need to be churning our own butter? Convenience technologies promised more space in our lives for other things, like thought, reflection, and leisure.
That, at least, is the idea. But, even on its own terms, convenience technology has failed us. Take that promise of liberation from overwork. In 1964, *Life* magazine, in an article about “Too Much Leisure,” asserted that “there will certainly be a sharp decline in the average work week” and that “some prophets of what automation is doing to our economy think we are on the verge of a 30-hour week; others as low as 25 or 20.” Obviously, we blew it. Our technologies may have made us [prosthetic gods](https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/if-a-time-traveller-saw-a-smartphone.html), yet they have somehow failed to deliver on the central promise of free time. The problem is that, as every individual task becomes easier, we demand much more of both ourselves and others. Instead of fewer difficult tasks (writing several long letters) we are left with a larger volume of small tasks (writing hundreds of e-mails). We have become plagued by a tyranny of tiny tasks, individually simple but collectively oppressive. And, when every task in life is easy, there remains just one profession left: multitasking.
The risks of biological atrophy are even more important. Convenience technologies supposedly free us to focus on what matters, but sometimes the part that matters is what gets eliminated. Everyone knows that it is easier to drive to the top of a mountain than to hike; the views may be the same, but the feeling never is. By the same logic, we may evolve into creatures that can do more but find that what we do has somehow been robbed of the satisfaction we hoped it might contain.
The project of self-evolution demands an understanding of humanity’s relationship with tools, which is mysterious and defining. Some scientists, like the archaeologist Timothy Taylor, believe that our biological evolution was [shaped](http://www.amazon.com/The-Artificial-Ape-Technology-Evolution/dp/0230617638) by the tools our ancestors chose eons ago. Anecdotally, when people describe what matters to them, second only to human relationships is usually the mastery of some demanding tool. Playing the guitar, fishing, golfing, rock-climbing, sculpting, and painting all demand mastery of stubborn tools that often fail to do what we want. Perhaps the key to these and other demanding technologies is that they constantly require new learning. The brain is stimulated and forced to change. Conversely, when things are too easy, as a species we may become like unchallenged schoolchildren, sullen and perpetually dissatisfied.
I don’t mean to insist that everything need be done the hard way, or that we somehow need to suffer like our ancestors to achieve redemption. It isn’t somehow wrong to use a microwave rather than a wood fire to reheat leftovers. But we must take seriously our biological need to be challenged, or face the danger of evolving into creatures whose lives are more productive but also less satisfying.

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---
author: 18 Million Rising
title: We haven’t always been abolitionists
source: https://www.18millionrising.org/2021/06/whalberg_2021/
clipped: 2024-06-23
published: 2021-06-09
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# We haven’t always been abolitionists – 18MR
**18 Million Rising hasn’t always been an abolitionist organization.** Last week, we were reminded of that in [a brilliant essay by Tamara K. Nopper,](https://theundefeated.com/features/dont-conflate-racial-violence-with-crime/) who referenced a campaign from [2014 where 18MR demanded actor Mark Wahlberg not be pardoned for attacking two Vietnamese men in 1988.](https://18mr.tumblr.com/post/104858957281/in-1988-mark-wahlberg-attacked-two-asian-american)
**Nopper explains that equating racial violence with hate crimes, “normaliz\[es\] policing and prisons as socially good.”** However well-intentioned our campaign against Wahlberg was, it did just that.
**[Moving forward, we refuse to normalize policing in the fight for justice. We invite other Asian American activists and organizations to join us.](https://action.18mr.org/asianabolitionpledge/)**
Our campaign relied on the state’s punishment system to hold Wahlberg “accountable” for his attacks – the same system which inflicts trauma and harm across our communities. [Since # StopAsianHate has been trending, we’ve seen the passage of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes bill.](https://www.npr.org/2021/05/20/998599775/biden-to-sign-the-covid-19-hate-crimes-bill-as-anti-asian-american-attacks-rise) On the surface, hate crimes laws may appear to protect Asian Americans. **But in reality, a response to anti-Asian violence through “tough on crime” law expands the very system where ‘safety’ means military-grade weapons, surveillance, and locking people in cages.**
[The U.S. already spends $180 billion every year on policing and incarceration.](https://www.populardemocracy.org/news-and-publications/how-much-do-us-cities-spend-every-year-policing#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20U.S.%20collectively%20spends,spite%20of%20higher%20police%20budgets) Giving more money and collaborating with law enforcement clearly hasn’t kept Asian Americans safe. **More policing in our communities makes us even less safe. What we need is to take that money and spend it on services that actually help our people.** [The FBI’s own data on “hate crimes offenders” reflect that it is disproportionately used to prosecute Black people.](https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/offenders) For South Asians, [this hate crime legislation does little to protect our communities from the Islamophobic policing of the state itself.](https://stopasianhate.medium.com/who-counts-as-asian-and-what-counts-as-anti-asian-hate-37e5b455eedd)
We’re growing a movement of Asian Americans saying no to the prison industrial complex. Join us as we embrace our transformation and create safety, beyond the state.
In solidarity,
sumi, Turner, Laura, Bianca, Charlene, and Irma – the 18MR Team
**[P.S. – # StopAsianHate means stopping the deportations of our community members. Our friend Lam Hong Le is in danger of being deported on Monday. Here’s what you can do to help.](https://action.18mr.org/pardon_lam/)**

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---
author: "Chris Burnell"
title: "Webmention Setup for Eleventy"
source: https://chrisburnell.com/article/webmention-eleventy-setup/
clipped: 2024-06-25
published: 2022-08-25
topics:
tags: [clipping]
---
# Webmention Setup for Eleventy
Here’s a quick run-through of how I retrieve and utilise Webmentions with my Eleventy website.
## 1\. Account Creation [Permalink ¶](#1 "Permalink for 1. Account Creation")
Unless you already have your own Webmention receiver, sign up for one and add the secret key/token to your project. Below are two examples:
If you’re using **[Webmention.io](https://webmention.io/)**, add your **API Key** (found on your [settings page](https://webmention.io/settings)) to your project as an environment variable, i.e. in a `.env` file in the root of your project:
```
WEBMENTION_IO_TOKEN=njJql0lKXnotreal4x3Wmd
```
If you’re using **[go-jamming](https://git.brainbaking.com/wgroeneveld/go-jamming)**, once you’ve set up your server and defined your token, you’ll need add it to your project as an environment variable, i.e. in a `.env` file in the root of your project:
```
GO_JAMMING_TOKEN=njJql0lKXnotreal4x3Wmd
```
## 2\. Installation [Permalink ¶](#2 "Permalink for 2. Installation")
Install the [`eleventy-cache-webmentions`](https://chrisburnell.com/eleventy-cache-webmentions/) package from *npm*:
```
npm install @chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions
```
## 3\. Configuration [Permalink ¶](#3 "Permalink for 3. Configuration")
Create a config file. You may wish to put this file in your [Global Data Folder](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-global/) so you can access the data across your Eleventy project. The location and filename of your config file are up to you, as long as it’s somewhere in your project that you can access with JavaScript using `require()`.
If you’re using **[Webmention.io](https://webmention.io/)**:
```
const { defaults } = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
require("dotenv").config()
module.exports = Object.assign({}, defaults, {
domain: "https://EXAMPLE.COM",
feed: `https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?domain=EXAMPLE.COM&token=${process.env.WEBMENTION_IO_TOKEN}&per-page=9001`,
key: "children",
})
```
If you’re using **[go-jamming](https://git.brainbaking.com/wgroeneveld/go-jamming)**:
```
const { defaults } = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
require("dotenv").config()
module.exports = Object.assign({}, defaults, {
domain: "https://EXAMPLE.COM",
feed: `https://JAM.EXAMPLE.COM/webmention/EXAMPLE.COM/${process.env.GO_JAMMING_TOKEN}`,
key: "json",
})
```
## 4\. Integrate with Eleventy [Permalink ¶](#4 "Permalink for 4. Integrate with Eleventy")
Add both to Eleventy by adding them to your [Eleventy Config](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/config/):
*Note: The path to your Webmentions config depends on where your Data files live, e.g. `./src/data/configWebmentions.js`.*
```
const pluginWebmentions = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
const configWebmentions = require("../path_to_your_config/configWebmentions.js")
module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(pluginWebmentions, configWebmentions)
}
```
## 5\. Attach Webmentions to Pages [Permalink ¶](#5 "Permalink for 5. Attach Webmentions to Pages")
Add some [Directory Specific Data Files](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-template-dir/) wherever your pages and/or posts live. For example, if your pages all live in a `pages/` folder, you would add the following code block to a `pages.11tydata.js` file inside `pages/`:
```
const { getWebmentions } = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
const configWebmentions = require("../path_to_your_config/configWebmentions.js")
module.exports = {
eleventyComputed: {
webmentions: (data) => {
return getWebmentions(configWebmentions, configWebmentions.domain + data.page.url)
},
}
}
```
## 6\. Use Webmentions [Permalink ¶](#6 "Permalink for 6. Use Webmentions")
Webmentions are now attached to each page!
You can access them quite easily on a given page:
```
{% for webmention in webmentions %}
{{ webmention.author.name }} sent this page a {{ webmention | getType }}
{% endfor %}
```
And even when looping through something like a collection:
```
{% for item in collections.pages %}
<h2>{{ item.data.title }}</h2>
<p>This page has {{ item.data.webmentions.length }} webmention{{ 's' if item.data.webmentions.length > 1 }}</p>
{% endfor %}
```
How you want to filter the array of Webmentions attached to each page is up to you, but I recommend using the `getWebmentionsByTypes` Filter to split Webmentions into groups categorised by type—this will make it easier to figure out which Webmentions are binary interactions (e.g. likes, reposts) and which have richer content you might want to display (e.g. mentions, replies).
```
{% set reactions = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['like-of', 'repost-of', 'bookmark-of']) %}
{% set replies = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['mention-of', 'in-reply-to']) %}
```
---
And that's pretty much all there is to it! Let me know if you have any suggestions or issues, and feel free to contribute back to the Eleventy plugin that is the workhorse behind this implementation [over on GitHub](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions) or just [get in touch](https://chrisburnell.com/about/#contact).

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---
author: Angel Martinez
title: When Filipinos Fight with Filipino-Americans, No One Wins
source: https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/filipinos-filipino-americans-filams-filipinx-diaspora-a2819-20220813-lfrm2
clipped: 2024-06-16
published: 2021-11-03
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# When Filipinos Fight with Filipino-Americans, No One Wins
Whenever the term "Filipinx" trends on social media, it’s always the same old story. A group of Filipino-Americans uses the term to refer to themselves, posts about it online, and suffers extreme backlash. Most recently, it was a panel of Fil-Am creatives in pop culture at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. Their argument remained rooted in inclusivity, ours in resistance to Western ideologies. The ending? No one was satisfied. And unfortunately, for all parties involved, the conversation is bound to repeat in a few months’ time.
This isn’t a piece in defense of either camp: At this point, we’re aware that our relations with members of the diaspora were fractured long before the field of linguistics ever entered the picture. Just the language we use when we speak about Filipino and Filipino-Americans–”us” versus “them”–speaks volumes. We’ve been known to police them for the way they [prepare our signature cuisine](https://twitter.com/tasty/status/1286654144049291266), [poke fun at stereotypical depictions](https://twitter.com/RaquelLily/status/1410680131400699904) of those back home, and fail to engage with pressing local issues.
While some of these corrections are warranted, approaching all our sparse interactions with them with the same air of hostility harms more than helps. In our desire to speak over them, we fail to see how Filipino-Americans come packaged with their unique set of struggles that inform the way they interact with our heritage. Choosing to understand why they are the way they are could be the key to finally meeting halfway.
## **Assimilation or Association**
It’s a common misconception among us homegrown Filipinos that those who have escaped the thorns of third-world life are automatically in a better place. But the Filipino-American experience has historically  had to contend with racism and xenophobia, with more organized campaigns to exclude Filipinos occurring since the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Among the first wave of Filipino immigrants in the 1920s to 1930s were generally unmarried, working class, male agricultural workers. Because of their class, occupation, and darker complexions, they were perceived as part of the lower end of the social order,” explained James Zarsadiaz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History and the Director of the University of San Francisco’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. “But things took a turn by the mid-1960s, given the [labor shortage in the US](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1989/06/1989b_bpea_mitchell.pdf). The Hart-Cellar Act widened opportunities for Filipinos seeking a better life in America. Within a decade, thousands of medical professionals, teachers, caretakers, and business people fled to the States for a chance at what they saw as a better life. This is still the case today.”
> But the Filipino-American experience has historically been steeped in racism and white supremacy, with more organized campaigns to exclude Filipinos occurring since the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
These Filipinos arrived in the U.S. at the tail end of the [civil rights movement](https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/civil-rights-movement), when white Americans were grappling with the increasing diversity of the nation. So while they encouraged having a multicultural America, they also expected these newcomers to assimilate. Zarsadiaz elaborated: “Filipinos who settled in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, couldn’t help but wonder, ‘Is it alright to speak Tagalog in public or eat *turon* and *munggo*, or am I supposed to drop my Filipino-ness so I can demonstrate my ability in being a so-called assimilated American?’”
## **Stereotypes and Survival**
Filipino-Americans eventually turned to acculturation as a survival strategy against brutal stereotyping bolstered by Western media. Like many Asians, we’re normally relegated to the role of uptight honor student or funny best friend. But in addition, we’re seen as domestic helpers, cleaning staff, and nail ladies. It’s this inherent subservience in us that some white men are keen to take advantage of. Case in point: the numerous published [books](https://www.amazon.com/Meet-Date-Marry-Your-Filipina/dp/0989900916) and [YouTube videos](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=filipina+wife) on how to bag the hearts of vulnerable Filipinas.
CONTINUE READING BELOW
Now playing :
Meet Eyedress, The Filipino Musician Making Waves In L.A.
To make matters worse, Filipinos are lauded for our ability to take these dehumanizing labels in stride. Anna A., a second-generation immigrant and the Education Development Chair of Anakbayan Washington D.C., observed how Filipino-Americans often fall prey to the model minority myth. “We’re often pegged to be the neutral good immigrants, compared to those who can be instantly villified like Latinos and Black people. They’re often told, ‘Why can’t you just get your job done? Why can’t you be like Filipinos, who shut up and keep everything inside and are generally just proud of this country?’”
Abi Balingit, a first-generation Filipino-American and baking blogger based in New York, noted how Fil-Ams’ romanticized resilience gives way to exploitation in all areas of life. “I see people [brag online](https://twitter.com/sweatystartup/status/1480161176797552640), for example, that they’re building an app and finding ways to get cheap labor and their hack is just exploiting people from the Philippines. Being hardworking isn’t the single signifying marker of Filipinos and that shouldn’t be a reason to commodify us.”
> Filipino-Americans often fall prey to the model minority myth.
From this side of the world, it’s easy to tell them to simply shrug these off. But Fil-Ams situated in places that aren’t cultural hotspots like the Bay Area or New Jersey are far more susceptible to whitewashing. “If you reside in a community with a sizable Filipino population, you likely have more access to products and ingredients from the Philippines or shop at businesses that play programs and music from back home,” Zarsadiaz discussed. “But if you’re in an area that has a minimal Filipino let alone Asian presence it’s a bigger battle to maintain one’s Philippine heritage and to pass down cultural traditions to subsequent generations.”
These echo chambers are much more pronounced in the virtual space, with modern-day algorithms and media bias hampering access to information from back home. “In a way, it makes sense,” Anna said. “The American Dream is built off the notion that you left your worse country to live in this better place. You shouldn’t have to care about what’s going on there anymore. You’re American now.”
## **Hostility from the Homeland**
As if this constant push-and-pull from Americans wasn’t already difficult enough for Fil-Ams, we continue to shut them out despite conscious efforts to engage with the culture.
“There’s a kind of a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ dilemma. Diasporic Filipinos apparently don’t have the authority to speak on XYZ topics that pertain to the Philippines. Unfortunately, even when Filipino-Americans are encouraged to deeply engage with their heritage, sometimes their efforts are dismissed as superficial and trite or they’re ‘trying too hard,’” Zarsadiaz observed.
This judgment manifests in different ways but is a mainstay across generations: Immigrants bear the expectations of those back home to “make it big,” while their children draw flak for not meeting societal standards, for being too Westernized. And in a way, that’s true. Millennial and Generation Z Fil-Ams were conditioned to adhere to America’s rapidly individualistic and capitalist society: to chase after personal fulfillment, even if that means breaking cultural norms and structures of male dominance. This is actually what the usage of the term “Filipinx” aims to combat.
> Millennial and Generation Z Fil-Ams were conditioned to adhere to America’s rapidly individualistic and capitalist society
Zarsadiaz explained: “Longstanding binaries in the West limit Filipino-Americans’ abilities to be their truest selves since these ideas are antiquated and rooted in the patriarchal structures of Christianity. So the usage of x, in a way, goes beyond the expression of gender identity. It’s railing against gendered expectations imposed on our bodies and reinforced through institutions or social ‘norms’ and attitudes. It’s suggesting that you’re someone who wants to disrupt certain pressures.”
Regardless of whether or not this explanation speaks to us, language and culture both evolve in relation to external forces. n example is how we’ve grown to accommodate the usage of the terms SEA/Southeast Asian and Pinoy/Pinay.
## **What Happens Now?**
It would be unfair to pin all the blame on homegrown Filipinos when Fil-Ams also have their share of the work to do. Unlearning age-old norms is a long process, a succession of steps that sometimes poke at intergenerational wounds. But a great, low-stakes way to start is to reevaluate their current sources of information on the Philippines. This could mean both thoughtfully and intentionally curating their feeds to accommodate more credible local news outlets, and reassessing if the media they consume has affected the way they view their upbringing. And yes, this includes comedians whose only go-to punchline is *still* their mothers’ broken English.
Finding a community of fellow Filipinos is crucial to seeing themselves past restrictive stereotypes. “Once we see how we’re part of a much larger community that has historically made so much progress and gone through so much, you find a deeper sense of appreciation and pride in your roots,” said Anna, drawing from her experience as a member of a national democratic mass organization.
For those in search of non-political alternatives, several colleges across the country have student-run organizations that celebrate Filipino culture. Outside of the academe, Filipino-Americans are also banded together by common hobbies and interests like our food or films.
“In U.C. Berkeley, I found a tight network of fellow Filipino students, who I could talk to about all these things I didn’t have to explain but they could instantly relate to,” Balingit shared. “I’ve kept these connections and managed to make new ones with Filipinos in the food community. Through them, I learned a lot about their respective relationships to our common culture and how they inform their craft today.”
> Unlearning age-old norms is a long process, a succession of steps that sometimes poke at intergenerational wounds.
These contexts serve as springboards for difficult but crucial questions and conversations. It may be humbling or even shameful for some Fil-Ams to admit that they’ve never been as interested in their roots as they’d hope to be. But there’s comfort in knowing that filling in the gaps has never been easier than it is today.
For instance, last June, Anna hosted an international hybrid meeting with [Bahaghari](https://www.facebook.com/BahaghariLGBT/) for Pride Month, where they spoke about the history of LGBTQIA+ people in the Philippines.
“I’m a queer Filipino and yet, I had no idea about any of the stories they shared. That’s a very good way to know what’s happening in the Philippines: by being in communities that are immersed in contemporary issues or trying to highlight the struggles of minorities and pass the necessary legislation.”
Balingit, on the other hand, used food as her ultimate gateway to the rest of her culture and is currently writing *Mayumu,* a Fil-Am dessert cookbook.
“Before, I was alright with knowing just facts about my parents’ immigration and the general timeline of it. But I didn’t know the motivations behind it and their feelings that arose from that particular decision,” she admitted. “Now I feel like I’ve been prodded to ask these important questions: to tell my family’s stories and illustrate how I was raised on  Kapampangan food, which was the first introduction to my culture. I feel like just going through life and simply accepting things is not the best way to be anymore: We have such a dense history, and all this context is important to know who we are today.”
As our lived experiences are actively being sought out as a source of enlightenment, our responsibility then is to assist Filipino-Americans in their education process instead of allowing convenient prejudices to cloud our perception of them. Rather than accentuate the glaring differences we have (that are mere products of geographical location), let’s choose to remember the stronger thread that binds us together.
“If there’s one thing I’d like homegrown Filipinos to remember about Filipino-Americans, it’s that we’re actually in our respective positions because of very similar things: dire economic issues, poverty, politicians who only act according to their own gain,” Anna said. “There’s a one in 10 chance that you could have been us: [10 percent of all Filipinos](https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/filipino-migrants-are-agents-change) in the world live in the diaspora. You could have so easily been in my position. You could have so easily been me.”
*Angel Martinez is a cultural critic and social trendspotter with a degree in Communications Technology Management from Ateneo de Manila University. Her essays on the internet, identity, and their intersections have been featured in VICE, i-D, Rappler, CNN Philippines, and The Philippine STAR. When she's not knee-deep in the written word, she enjoys reciting the entire press conference scene from Notting Hill and cuddling with the two best dogs in the world.*

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---
author: David Brooks
title: You Might Be a Late Bloomer
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/successs-late-bloomers-motivation/678798/
clipped: 2024-06-27
published: 2024-06-26
topics:
tags:
- clipping
---
# You Might Be a Late Bloomer
The life secrets of those who flailed early but succeeded by old age
By [David Brooks](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-brooks/)
![Paul Cézanne](https://archive.ph/huoof/83a5c99bf1383742645b4944f94bb8386bdfb51a.avif)
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Archivio GBB / Redux.
June 26, 2024, 9:40 AM ET
![Paul Cézanne](https://archive.ph/huoof/82caae0d2aff91954780600c219ddca66c8ef428.avif)
Listen to this article
00:00
32:18
Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.
_This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter._ _[Sign up for it here](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/sign-up/one-story-to-read-today/)__._
Paul Cézanne always knew he wanted to be an artist. His father compelled him to enter law school, but after two desultory years he withdrew. In 1861, at the age of 22, he went to Paris to pursue his artistic dreams but was rejected by the École des Beaux-Arts, struggled as a painter, and retreated back to his hometown in the south of France, where he worked as a clerk in his father’s bank.
He returned to Paris the next year and was turned down again by the École. His paintings were rejected by the Salon de Paris every year from 1864 to 1869. He continued to submit paintings until 1882, but none were accepted. He joined with the Impressionists, many of whose works were also being rejected, but soon stopped showing with them as well.
By middle age, he was discouraged. He wrote to a friend, “On this matter I must tell you that the numerous studies to which I devoted myself having produced only negative results, and dreading criticism that is only too justified, I have resolved to work in silence, until the day when I should feel capable of defending theoretically the results of my endeavors.” No Cézanne paintings were put on public display when he was between 46 and 56, the prime years for many artists, including some of Cézanne’s most prominent contemporaries.
In 1886, when Cézanne was 47, the celebrated writer Émile Zola, the artist’s closest friend since adolescence, published a novel called _The Oeuvre_. It was about two young men, one who grows up to be a famous author and the other who grows up to be a failed painter and commits suicide. The painter character was based, at least in part, on Cézanne. (“I had grown up almost in the same cradle as my friend, my brother, Paul Cézanne,” Zola [would later write](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.artforum.com/columns/the-letters-of-paul-cezanne-221188/) in a French newspaper, “in whom one begins to realize only today the touches of genius of a great painter come to nothing.”) Upon publication of the novel, Zola sent a copy to Cézanne, who responded with a short, polite reply. After that, they rarely communicated.
Things began to turn around in 1895, when, at the age of 56, Cézanne had his first one-man show. Two years later, one of his paintings was purchased by a museum in Berlin, the first time any museum had shown that kind of interest in his work. By the time he was 60, his paintings had started selling, though for much lower prices than those fetched by Manet or Renoir. Soon he was famous, revered. Fellow artists made pilgrimages to watch him work.
What drove the man through all those decades of setbacks and obscurity? One biographer attributed it to his “_inquiétude_”—his drive, restlessness, anxiety. He just kept pushing himself to get better.
His continual sense of dissatisfaction was evident in a letter he wrote to his son in 1906, at age 67, a month before he died: “I want to tell you that as a painter I am becoming more clairvoyant to nature, but that it is always very difficult for me to realize my feelings. I cannot reach the intensity that unfolds before my senses. I do not possess that wonderful richness of color that animates nature.” He was still at it on the day he died, still working on his paintings, still teaching himself to improve.
The year after his death, a retrospective of his work was mounted in Paris. Before long, he would be widely recognized as one of the founders of modern art: “Cézanne is the father of us all,” both Matisse and Picasso are said to have declared.
Today we live in a society structured to promote early bloomers. Our school system has sorted people by the time they are 18, using grades and SAT scores. Some of these people zoom to prestigious academic launching pads while others get left behind. Many of our most prominent models of success made it big while young—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan. Magazines publish lists with headlines like “30 Under 30” to glamorize youthful superstars on the rise. Age discrimination is a fact of life. In California in 2010, for example, more people filed claims with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing for age discrimination than for racial discrimination or sexual harassment. “Young people are just smarter,” Zuckerberg once said, in possibly the dumbest statement in American history. “There are no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed, in what might be the next dumbest.
## Recommended Reading
- [![A row of fax machines](https://archive.ph/huoof/f1e379d88868a746993fa6327fd62339375ba91c.avif)](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/why-people-still-use-fax-machines/576070/ "Read More: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete")
### [The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/why-people-still-use-fax-machines/576070/)
[Sophie Haigney](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/author/sophie-haigney/)
- [![An illustration of two women with a downward arrow.](https://archive.ph/huoof/4c8ca3c5850c282b0258157da36f46628c1784e8.avif)](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/millennial-grandparents-unequal-generation/618859/ "Read More: Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up")
### [Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/millennial-grandparents-unequal-generation/618859/)
[Annie Lowrey](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/author/annie-lowrey/)
- [![Izidor Ruckel near his home outside Denver](https://archive.ph/huoof/7370b41a06b6dfba40e459c50b42c30b1afda885.avif)](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/ "Read More: 30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact")
### [30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/)
[Melissa Fay Greene](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/author/melissa-fay-greene/)
But for many people, the talents that bloom later in life are more consequential than the ones that bloom early. A 2019 study by researchers in Denmark found that, on average, [Nobel Prize winners made their crucial discoveries at the age of 44](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/215281397/NP_article.pdf). Even brilliant people apparently need at least a couple of decades to master their field.
The average age of a U.S. patent applicant is 47. [A 45-year-old is twice as likely to produce a scientific breakthrough as a 25-year-old](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1102895108). A study [published in _The American Economic Review_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aeri.20180582) found 45 to be the average age of an entrepreneur–and found furthermore that the likelihood that an entrepreneur’s start-up will succeed increases significantly between ages 25 and 35, with the odds of success continuing to rise well into the 50s. [A tech founder who is 50 is twice as likely to start a successful company as one who is 30](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883902619302691). A study by researchers at Northwestern University, MIT, and the U.S. Census Bureau found that [the fastest-growing start-ups were founded by people whose average age was 45 when their company was launched](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45%23:~:text=Among%20the%20top%200.1%25%20of,they%20were%2045%20years%20old.). The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation produced a study that found that [the peak innovation age is the late 40s](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-of-innovation.pdf).
Successful late bloomers are all around us. Morgan Freeman had his breakthrough roles in _Street Smart_ and _Driving Miss Daisy_ in his early 50s. Colonel Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s. Isak Dinesen published the book that established her literary reputation, [_Out of Africa_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9780679600213), at 52. Morris Chang founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s leading chipmaker, at 55. If Samuel Johnson had died at 40, few would remember him, but now he is considered one of the greatest writers in the history of the English language. Copernicus came up with his theory of planetary motion in his 60s. Grandma Moses started painting at 77. Noah was around 600 when he built his ark (though Noah truthers dispute his birth certificate).
Why do some people hit their peak later than others? In his book [_Late Bloomers_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781524759773), the journalist Rich Karlgaard points out that this is really two questions: First, why didn’t these people bloom earlier? Second, what traits or skills did they possess that enabled them to bloom late? It turns out that late bloomers are not simply early bloomers on a delayed timetable—they didn’t just do the things early bloomers did but at a later age. Late bloomers tend to be _qualitatively_ different, possessing a different set of abilities that are mostly invisible to or discouraged by our current education system. They usually have to invent their own paths. Late bloomers “fulfill their potential frequently in novel and unexpected ways,” Karlgaard writes, “surprising even those closest to them.”
[Jim VandeHei: What I wish someone had told me 30 years ago](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/journalism-politics-life-lessons/678233/)
If you survey history, a taxonomy of achievement emerges. In the first category are the early bloomers, the precocious geniuses. These are people like Picasso or Fitzgerald who succeeded young. As the University of Chicago economist David Galenson has pointed out, these high achievers usually made a conceptual breakthrough. They came up with a new idea and then executed it. Picasso had a clear idea of Cubism, and how he was going to revolutionize art, in his mid-20s. Then he went out and painted [_Les Demoiselles d’Avignon_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766)_._
Then there are the “[second-mountain people](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9780812983425),” exemplified by, say, Albert Schweitzer. First, they conquer their career mountain; Schweitzer, for instance, was an accomplished musician and scholar. But these people find their career success unsatisfying, so they leave their career mountain to serve humanity—their whole motivational structure shifts from acquisition to altruism. Schweitzer became a doctor in the poorest parts of Africa, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1952.
Finally, there are the people Galenson calls “the masters.” In his book [_Old Masters and Young Geniuses_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9780691133805), he writes about people like Cézanne or Alfred Hitchcock or Charles Darwin, who were not all that successful—and in some cases just not even very good at what they did—when they were young. This could have been discouraging, but they just kept improving.
These people don’t do as much advanced planning as the conceptual geniuses, but they regard their entire lives as experiments. They try something and learn, and then they try something else and learn more. Their focus is not on their finished work, which they often toss away haphazardly. Their focus is on the process of learning itself: _Am I closer to understanding, to mastering?_ They live their lives as a long period of trial and error, trying this and trying that, a slow process of accumulation and elaboration, so the quality of their work peaks late in life. They are the ugly ducklings of human achievement, who, over the decades, turn themselves into swans.
Let’s look at some of the traits that tend to distinguish late bloomers from early bloomers—the qualities that cause them to lag early in life but surge ahead over the long haul.
_Intrinsic motivation._ Most of our schools and workplaces are built around extrinsic motivation: If you work hard, you will be rewarded with good grades, better salaries, and performance bonuses. Extrinsic-motivation systems are built on the assumption that while work is unpleasant, if you give people external incentives to perform they will respond productively.
People who submit to these extrinsic-reward systems are encouraged to develop a merit-badge mentality. They get good at complying with other people’s standards, following other people’s methods, and pursuing other people’s goals. The people who thrive in these sorts of systems are good at earning high GPAs—having the self-discipline to get A’s in all subjects, even the ones that don’t interest them. They are valuable to companies precisely because they’re good at competently completing whatever tasks are put in front of them.
People driven by _intrinsic_ motivation are not like that. They are bad at paying attention to what other people tell them to pay attention to. Winston Churchill was a poor student for just this reason. “Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn,” he wrote in his autobiography, _My Early Life_.
But such people can be great at paying attention to things that do interest them. The intrinsically motivated have a strong need for autonomy. They are driven by their own curiosity, their own obsessions—and the power of this motivation eclipses the lesser ones fired by extrinsic rewards.
Extrinsically motivated people tend to race ahead during young adulthood, when the job is to please teachers, bosses, and other older people, but then stop working as hard once that goal is met. They’re likely to take short cuts if it can get them more quickly to the goal.
Worse, as research by scholars like the psychologist Edward L. Deci has established, [if you reward people extrinsically, you can end up crushing the person’s capacity for intrinsic motivation](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.apa.org/members/content/intrinsic-motivation%23:~:text=People%20certainly%20can%20be%20motivated,project%20and%20undermine%20intrinsic%20motivation). If you pay kids to read, they might read more in the short term—but over time they’ll regard reading as unpleasant work, best avoided. A 2009 London School of Economics study that looked at 51 corporate pay-for-performance plans found [that financial incentives “can have a negative impact on overall performance.”](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.management-issues.com/news/5640/performance-related-pay-doesnt-encourage-performance/)
I once asked a group of students on their final day at their prestigious university what book had changed their life over the previous four years. A long, awkward silence followed. Finally a student said, “You have to understand, we don’t read like that. We only sample enough of each book to get through class.” These students were hurrying to be good enough to get their merit badges, but not getting deep enough into any subject to be transformed. They didn’t love the process of learning itself, which is what you need if you’re going to keep educating yourself decade after decade—which, in turn, is what you need to keep advancing when the world isn’t rewarding you with impressive grades and prizes.
Intrinsically motivated people, by contrast, are self-directed and often obsessed, burying themselves deep into some subject or task. They find learning about a subject or doing an activity to be their own reward, so they are less likely to cut corners. As Vincent van Gogh—a kind of early late bloomer, who struggled to find his way and didn’t create most of his signature works until the last two years of his life before dying at 37—wrote to his brother, “I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.”
In [_Drive_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781594484803), the writer Daniel Pink argues that extrinsic-motivation models work fine when tasks are routine, boring, and technical. But he cites a vast body of research showing that intrinsically motivated people are more productive, more persistent, and less likely to burn out. They also exhibit higher levels of well-being. Over the long run, Pink concludes, “intrinsically motivated people usually achieve more than their reward-seeking counterparts.”
_Early screw-ups._ Late bloomers often don’t fit into existing systems. To use William Deresiewicz’s term, they are bad at being [“excellent sheep”](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781476702728)—bad at following the conventional rules of success. Or to put it another way, they can be assholes. Buckminster Fuller was expelled from college twice, lost his job in the building business when he was 32, and later contemplated suicide so his family could live off his life insurance. But then he moved to Greenwich Village, took a teaching job at Black Mountain College, and eventually emerged as an architect, designer, futurist, and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Colonel Sanders was fired for insubordination when he was a railway engineer, and then fired again for brawling with a colleague while working as a fireman. His career as a lawyer ended when he got into a fistfight with a client, and he lost his job as an insurance salesman because he was unsuited to working for other people. Then, at 62, he created the recipe for what became Kentucky Fried Chicken, began to succeed as a franchiser at 69, and sold the company for $2 million when he was 73.
Late bloomers often have an edge to them, a willingness to battle with authority.
“_Diversive curiosity_.” Our culture pushes people to specialize early: Be like Tiger Woods driving golf balls as a toddler. Concentrate on one thing and get really good, really fast—whether it is golf or physics or investing. In the academic world, specialization is rewarded: Don’t be a scholar of Europe, be a scholar of Dutch basket weaving in the 16th century.
Yet when the journalist David Epstein looked at the lives of professional athletes, he found that most of them were less like Tiger Woods and more like Roger Federer, who played a lot of different sports when he was young. These athletes went through what researchers call a “sampling period” and only narrowed their focus to one sport later on. In his book [_Range_,](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9780735214507) Epstein writes that people who went through a sampling period ended up enjoying greater success over the long run: “One study showed that early career specializers jumped out to an earning lead after college, but that later specializers made up for the head start by finding work that better fitted their skills and personalities.”
[Jessica Lahey and Tim Lahey: How middle-school failures lead to medical-school success](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/how-middle-school-failures-lead-to-medical-school-success/274163/)
Many late bloomers endure a brutal wandering period, as they cast about for a vocation. Julia Child made hats, worked for U.S. intelligence (where she was part of a team trying to develop an effective shark repellent), and thought about trying to become a novelist before enrolling in a French cooking school at 37. Van Gogh was an art dealer, a teacher, a bookseller, and a street preacher before taking up painting at 27. During those wandering years, he was a miserable failure. His family watched his repeated downward spirals with embarrassment.
During these early periods, late bloomers try and then quit so many jobs that the people around them might conclude that they lack resilience. But these are exactly the years when the late bloomers are developing what psychologists call [“diversive curiosity”](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4635443/)—the ability to wander into a broad range of interests in a manner that seems to have no rhyme or reason.
The benefits of this kind of curiosity might be hard to see in the short term, but they become obvious once the late bloomer begins to take advantage of their breadth of knowledge by putting discordant ideas together in new ways. When the psychologist Howard Gruber [studied the diaries of Charles Darwin](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.google.com/books/edition/Darwin_on_Man/HuHaAAAAMAAJ?hl=en), he found that in the decades before he published _On the Origin of Species_, Darwin was “pen pals” (as David Epstein puts it) with at least 231 scientists, whose worked ranged across 13 broad streams, from economics to geology, the biology of barnacles to the sex life of birds. Darwin couldn’t have written his great masterworks if he hadn’t been able to combine these vastly different intellectual currents.
Epstein notes that many of the most successful scientists have had diverse interests, and especially in different kinds of performing: Nobel Prize winners are 22 times more likely to spend large chunks of time as an amateur actor, musician, magician, or other type of performer than non-Nobel-winning scientists are. Epstein quotes Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the founder of modern neuroscience: “To him who observes them from afar, it appears as though they are scattering and dissipating their energies,” Cajal wrote, speaking of these late-blooming Nobelists, “while in reality they are channeling and strengthening them.”
Late bloomers tend to have a high tolerance for ambiguity, and can bring multiple ways of thinking to bear on a single complex problem. They also have a high tolerance for inefficiency. They walk through life like a curious person browsing through a bookstore. In old age, the historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, “The amateur spirit has guided my thinking and writing.” He had wandered from subject to subject throughout his life, playing around.
_The ability to self-teach._ Late bloomers don’t find their calling until they are too old for traditional education systems. So they have to teach themselves. Successful autodidacts start with what psychologists call a “high need for cognition”—in other words, they like to think a lot. In his book [_Curious_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9780465097623), Ian Leslie presents a series of statements that, when answered in the affirmative, indicate a high need for cognition: “I would prefer complex to simple problems”; “I prefer my life be filled with puzzles that I can’t solve”; “I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours.”
Leonardo da Vinci is the poster child for high-cognition needs. Consider his famous lists of [self-assigned research projects](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/11/18/142467882/leonardos-to-do-list): “Ask the master of arithmetic how to square a triangle … examine a crossbow … ask about the measurement of the sun … draw Milan.” Benjamin Franklin was similar. After he was appointed U.S. ambassador to France, he could have relaxed on his transatlantic voyages between home and work. Instead, he turned them into scientific expeditions, measuring the temperature of the water as he went, which allowed him to discover and chart the Gulf Stream.
Successful late bloomers combine this high need for cognition with a seemingly contradictory trait: epistemic humility. They are aggressive about wanting to acquire knowledge and learn—but they are also modest, possessing an accurate sense of how much they don’t know.
This mentality combines high self-belief (_I can figure this out on my own; I know my standards are right and the world’s standards are wrong_) with high self-doubt (_There’s a lot I don’t know, and I am falling short in many ways_).
The combination of a high need for cognition and epistemic humility is a recipe for lifelong learning. Late bloomers learn more slowly but also more deeply precisely because they’re exploring on their own. The benefits of acquiring this self-taught knowledge compound over time. The more you know about a subject, the faster you can learn. A chess grandmaster with thousands of past matches stored in their head will see a new strategy much faster than a chess beginner. Knowledge begets knowledge. Researchers call this [“the Matthew effect”](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.matthew.effect.htm): “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.” Pretty soon, the late bloomer is taking off.
_The ability to finally commit._ Of course, late bloomers can’t just wander forever. At some point they must grab onto some challenge that engages their powerful intrinsic drive. They have to commit. Ray Kroc endured a classic wandering period. He got a job selling ribbons. He played piano in a bordello. He read the ticker tape at the Chicago stock exchange. He sold paper cups and then milkshake mixers. In that latter job he noticed that one restaurant was ordering a tremendous number of milkshake machines. Curious, he drove halfway across the country to see it, and found a fast-food restaurant that was more efficiently churning out meals than any he had ever encountered. “There was something almost religious about Kroc’s inspirational moment when he discovered McDonald’s,” Henry Oliver writes in his forthcoming book, [_Second Act_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781399813310). Kroc just cared about hamburgers and fries (and milkshakes) more than most people. He bought the restaurant, and brought to it his own form of genius, which was the ability to franchise it on a massive scale.
_The mind of the explorer._ By middle age, many late bloomers have achieved lift-off and are getting to enjoy the pleasures of concentrated effort. They are absorbed, fascinated. But since they are freer from ties and associations than the early achiever, late bloomers can also change their mind and update their models without worrying about betraying any professional norms.
We have a notion that the happiest people are those who have aimed their life toward some goal and then attained it, like winning a championship trophy or achieving renown. But the best moments of life can be found within the lifelong learning or quest itself. It’s doing something so fulfilling that the work is its own reward. “Effort is the one thing that gives meaning to life,” the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck once wrote. “Effort means you care about something.”
“The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life,” the sculptor Henry Moore once [told the poet Donald Hall](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://danagioia.com/essays/reviews-and-authors-notes/donald-hall-work-for-the-night-is-coming/). “And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do.”
_Crankiness in old age._ So far, I’ve been describing late bloomers as if they were all openhearted curiosity and wonder. But remember that many of them have been butting against established institutions their whole lives—and they’ve naturally developed oppositional, chip-on-the-shoulder, even angry mindsets.
In his essay “[The Artist Grows Old](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.amacad.org/publication/artist-grows-old),” the great art critic Sir Kenneth Clark wrote about painters—like Titian, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Cézanne—who produced their best work at the end of their lives, sometimes in their 80s or even 90s. He noticed that while these older artists painted with passion, this passion was inflected with what he called “transcendental pessimism.” The artists who peak late, he found, “take a very poor view of human life.” They are energized by a holy rage. The British artist William Turner felt so hopeless late in life that he barely spoke. “Old artists are solitary,” Clark writes. “Like all old people they are bored and irritated by the company of their fellow bipeds and yet find their isolation depressing. They are also suspicious of interference.”
The angry old artists fight back with their brushes. They retreat from realism. Their handling of paint grows freer. “Cézanne, who in middle life painted with the delicacy of a watercolorist, and was almost afraid, as he said, to sully the whiteness of a canvas, ended by attacking it with heavy and passionate strokes,” Clark writes. “The increased vitality of an aged hand is hard to explain.”
Younger painters, like younger workers in any field, are trying to learn the language of the craft. Older painters, like older expert practitioners in other fields, have mastered the language and are willing to bend it. Older painters feel free to jettison the rules that stifle their prophetic voice. They can express what they need to more purely.
Clark’s analysis is insightful, but I think he may be overgeneralizing. His theory applies to an angry, pessimistic painting like Michelangelo’s late work _The Crucifixion of St. Peter_, a painting of an old man [raging against the inhumanity of the world](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.michelangelo.net/martyrdom-of-st-peter/). But Clark’s theory doesn’t really apply to, say, Rembrandt’s late work _The Return of the Prodigal Son_. By the time he painted it, Rembrandt was old, broke, and out of fashion; his wife and many of his children had preceded him to the grave. But _Prodigal Son_ is infused with a spirit of holy forgiveness. It shows a father [offering infinite love](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/return-of-the-prodigal-son/5QFIEhic3owZ-A?hl=en) to a wayward, emaciated, and grateful son. It couldn’t be gentler.
_Wisdom._ After a lifetime of experimentation, some late bloomers transcend their craft or career and achieve a kind of comprehensive wisdom.
Wisdom is a complicated trait. It starts with pattern recognition—using experience to understand what is really going on. [The neuroscientist Elkhonon Goldberg](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://elkhonongoldberg.com/) provides a classic expression of this ability in his book [_The Wisdom Paradox_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592401872/?tag=theatl0c-20). “Frequently when I am faced with what would appear from the outside to be a challenging problem, the grinding mental computation is somehow circumvented, rendered, as if by magic, unnecessary,” he writes. “The solution comes effortlessly, seamlessly, seemingly by itself. What I have lost with age in my capacity for hard mental work, I seem to have gained in my capacity for instantaneous, almost unfairly easy insight.”
But the trait we call _wisdom_ is more than just pattern recognition; it’s the ability to see things from multiple points of view, the ability to aggregate perspectives and rest in the tensions between them. When he was in his 60s, Cézanne built a study in Provence and painted a series of paintings of a single mountain, [Mont Sainte-Victoire](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435878), which are now often considered his greatest works. He painted the mountain at different times of day, in different sorts of light. He wasn’t so much painting the mountain as painting time. He was also painting perception itself, its continual flow, its uncertainties and evolutions. “I progress very slowly,” he wrote to the painter Émile Bernard, “for nature reveals herself to me in complex ways; and the progress needed is endless.”
“Old men ought to be explorers,” T. S. Eliot wrote in _East Coker._ “Here and there does not matter / We must be still and still moving / Into another intensity / For a further union, a deeper communion.” For some late bloomers, the exploration never ends. They have a certain distinct way of being in the world, but they express that way of being at greater and greater levels of complexity as they age.
Wisdom is an intellectual trait—the ability to see reality as it really is. But it is also a moral trait; we wouldn’t call a self-centered person wise. It is also a spiritual trait; the wise person possesses a certain tranquility, the ability to stay calm when others are overwhelmed with negative emotions.
[Arthur C. Brooks: How to succeed at failure](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/01/happiness-after-failure/621236/)
When I was young I was mentored by William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman, both at that time approaching the end of their careers. Both men had changed history. Buckley created the modern conservative movement that led to the election of Ronald Reagan. Friedman changed economics and won the Nobel Prize. I had a chance to ask each of them, separately, if they ever felt completion, if they ever had a sense that they’d done their work and now they had crossed the finish line and could relax. Neither man even understood my question. They were never at rest, pushing for what they saw as a better society all the days of their lives.
My friend Tim Keller, the late pastor, was in some ways not a classic late bloomer—his talents were already evident when he was a young man. But those talents weren’t afforded much public scope at the church in rural Virginia where his calling had taken him.
Tim didn’t feel qualified to publish [his first major book](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781594483493) until he was 58. Over the next 10 years he published nearly three dozen more, harvesting the wisdom he’d been gathering all along. His books have sold more than 25 million copies. During this same time, he founded Redeemer, the most influential church in New York and maybe America.
When Tim got pancreatic cancer at the age of 70, he was still in the prime of his late-blooming life. Under the shadow of death, [as he wrote in _The Atlanti_c](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/tim-keller-growing-my-faith-face-death/618219/), his spiritual awareness grew deeper. He experienced more sadness and also more joy. But what I will always remember about those final years is how much more eager Tim was to talk about the state of the world than about the state of his own health. He had more to give, and he worked feverishly until the end. He left behind an agenda for [how to repair the American church](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/christianity-secularization-america-renewal-modernity/672948/)—a specific action plan for how to mend the Christian presence in our torn land.
I’ve noticed this pattern again and again: Slow at the start, late bloomers are still sprinting during that final lap—they do not slow down as age brings its decay. They are seeking. They are striving. They are in it with all their heart.
[David Brooks](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-brooks/) is a contributing writer at _The Atlantic_ and the author of the forthcoming book [_How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen_](https://archive.ph/o/huoof/https://tertulia.com/book/how-to-know-a-person-the-art-of-seeing-others-deeply-and-being-deeply-seen-david-brooks/9780593230060?affiliate_id=atl-347).

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---
author: "Chris Burnell"
title: "eleventy-cache-webmentions"
source: https://chrisburnell.com/eleventy-cache-webmentions/
clipped: 2024-06-25
published: 2022-01-15
topics:
tags: [clipping]
---
# eleventy-cache-webmentions
Cache webmentions using eleventy-fetch and make them available to use in collections, layouts, pages, etc. in Eleventy.
There are 21 stargazers [on GitHub](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions) and it has over 9,150 downloads [on npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions).
![A hand with a tattoo reading, “Cache up Sucker” with a dollar sign in the middle](https://chrisburnell.com/images/built/eleventy-cache-webmentions-395.png "A hand with a tattoo reading, “Cache up Sucker” with a dollar sign in the middle")
[![eleventy-cache-webmentions on GitHub](https://img.shields.io/static/v1?label=chrisburnell&message=eleventy-cache-webmentions&color=5f8aa6&logo=github)](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions "Go to Repository: @chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions") [![eleventy-cache-webmentions Releases](https://img.shields.io/github/release/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions?include_prereleases=&sort=semver&color=5f8aa6)](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions/releases "Go to Releases: @chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions") [![eleventy-cache-webmentions License](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-5f8aa6)](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions/blob/main/LICENSE "Go to License: @chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
Breaking changes for v2.0.0!
Version 2.0.0 introduces a breaking change for those migrating from earlier versions of the plugin. This affects usage of the plugin from JavaScript files; specifically, you will need to make a small change to the way that you `require()` the plugin by removing an extra set of parentheses:
**v1.2.5 and below**
```
require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")()
```
**v2.0.0 and above**
```
require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
```
## Installation [Permalink ¶](#installation "Permalink for Installation")
[Available on npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions):
```
npm install @chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions --save-dev
```
You can also download it directly [from GitHub](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions):
[https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions/archive/main.zip](https://github.com/chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions/archive/main.zip)
Inside your Eleventy config file, use `addPlugin()` to add it to your project:
```
const pluginWebmentions = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(pluginWebmentions, {
domain: "https://example.com",
feed: "https://webmentions.example.com?token=S3cr3tT0k3n",
key: "array_of_webmentions"
})
}
```
Full options list
```
const pluginWebmentions = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(pluginWebmentions, {
domain: "https://example.com",
feed: "https://webmentions.example.com?token=S3cr3tT0k3n",
key: "array_of_webmentions",
directory: ".cache",
duration: "1d",
uniqueKey: "webmentions",
allowedHTML: {
allowedTags: ["b", "i", "em", "strong", "a"],
allowedAttributes: {
a: ["href"],
},
},
allowlist: [],
blocklist: [],
urlReplacements: {},
maximumHtmlLength: 2000,
maximumHtmlText: "mentioned this in",
})
}
```
## Usage [Permalink ¶](#usage "Permalink for Usage")
`eleventy-cache-webmentions` comes with a number of ways of accessing your Webmentions as [Global Data](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-global-custom/) in both JavaScript and Liquid/Nunjucks as well as a series of [Eleventy Filters](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/filters/) and JavaScript Functions for filtering, sorting, and reading properties about each Webmention:
### Global Data
JavaScript
```
const {
defaults,
webmentionsByUrl,
} = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
```
Liquid / Nunjucks
```
{{ webmentionsDefaults }}
{{ webmentionsByUrl }}
```
### Filters
JavaScript
```
const {
getWebmentions,
getWebmentionsByTypes,
getWebmentionPublished,
getWebmentionContent,
getWebmentionSource,
getWebmentionTarget,
getWebmentionType,
} = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
const webmentions = getWebmentions({
domain: "https://example.com",
feed: "https://webmentions.example.com?token=S3cr3tT0k3n",
key: "array_of_webmentions"
}, "https://example.com/specific-page/")
const responsesOnly = getWebmentionsByTypes(webmentions, ['mention-of', 'in-reply-to'])
webmentions.forEach((webmention) => {
const published = getWebmentionPublished(webmention)
const content = getWebmentionContent(webmention)
const source = getWebmentionSource(webmention)
const target = getWebmentionTarget(webmention)
const type = getWebmentionType(webmention)
})
```
Liquid / Nunjucks
```
{% set webmentions = ('https://example.com' + page.url) | getWebmentions %}
{{ set responses = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['mention-of', 'in-reply-to']) }}
{% for webmention in webmentions %}
{{ webmentions | getWebmentionPublished }}
{{ webmentions | getWebmentionContent }}
{{ webmentions | getWebmentionSource }}
{{ webmentions | getWebmentionTarget }}
{{ webmentions | getWebmentionType }}
{% endfor %}
```
## Attach Webmentions to Pages using Directory Data [Permalink ¶](#attach-webmentions "Permalink for Attach Webmentions to Pages using Directory Data")
Using [Eleventy’s Data Cascade](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-cascade/), you can attach Webmentions to each page by using [Directory Specific Data Files](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-template-dir/).
For example, if you have a folder, `/pages/`, and want to attach Webmentions to each page, create or add the following to a `pages.11tydata.js` file within the folder:
```
const { getWebmentions, getPublished } = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
module.exports = {
eleventyComputed: {
webmentions: (data) => {
const webmentionsForUrl = getWebmentions({
domain: "https://example.com",
feed: "https://webmentions.example.com?token=S3cr3tT0k3n",
key: "array_of_webmentions"
}, "https://example.com" + data.page.url)
if (webmentionsForUrl.length) {
return webmentionsForUrl.sort((a, b) => {
return getPublished(b) - getPublished(a)
})
}
return []
},
},
}
```
This attaches an Array containing Webmentions to each page (based on its URL). You can then access this Array of Webmentions with the variable, webmentions, within a [Layout](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/layouts/), [Include](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/includes/), or from the page itself:
```
{% for webmention in webmentions %}
{% endfor %}
```
These Arrays of Webmentions can even be accessed when building [Collections](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/collections/), allowing you to create a Collection of pages sorted by their number of Webmentions, for example:
```
module.exports = (eleventyConfig) => {
eleventyConfig.addCollection("popular", (collection) => {
return collection
.sort((a, b) => {
return b.data.webmentions.length - a.data.webmentions.length
})
})
}
```
## Without Directory Data [Permalink ¶](#without-directory-data "Permalink for Without Directory Data")
If you would rather get Webmentions for a given page directly from a Layout/Include/Page itself, you can do so using the Filter, `getWebmentions`:
```
{% set webmentions = ('https://example.com' + page.url) | getWebmentions %}
{% for webmention in webmentions %}
...
{% endfor %}
```
## Get specific types of Webmentions [Permalink ¶](#allowed-types "Permalink for Get specific types of Webmentions")
Instead of getting all the Webmentions for a given page, you may want to grab only certain types of Webmentions. This is useful if you want to display different types of Webmentions separately, e.g.:
```
{% set bookmarks = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['bookmark-of']) %}
{% set likes = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['like-of']) %}
{% set reposts = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['repost-of']) %}
{% set replies = webmentions | getWebmentionsByTypes(['mention-of', 'in-reply-to']) %}
```
## Get all Webmentions at once [Permalink ¶](#all-webmentions "Permalink for Get all Webmentions at once")
If you need it, the plugin also makes available an Object containing your cached Webmentions organised in key:value pairs, where each key is a full URL on your website and its value is an Array of Webmentions sent to that URL:
```
{% set count = 0 %}
{% for url, array in webmentionsByUrl %}
{% set count = array.length + count %}
{% endfor %}
<p>This website has received {{ count }} Webmentions!</p>
```
## Webmention.io [Permalink ¶](#webmention-io "Permalink for Webmention.io")
[Webmention.io](https://webmention.io/) is a in-place Webmention receiver solution that you can use by authenticating yourself via [IndieAuth](https://indieauth.com/) (or host it yourself), and, like *so much* other publicly-available IndieWeb software, is built and hosted by [Aaron Parecki](https://aaronparecki.com/).
### Add your token
Get set up on [Webmention.io](https://webmention.io/) and add your **API Key** (found on your [settings page](https://webmention.io/settings)) to your project as an environment variable, i.e. in a `.env` file in the root of your project:
```
WEBMENTION_IO_TOKEN=njJql0lKXnotreal4x3Wmd
```
### Set your feed and key config options
The example below requests the [JF2](https://www.w3.org/TR/jf2/) file format, which I highly recommend using; although, there is a JSON format available from [Webmention.io](https://webmention.io/) as well. The [official documentation](https://github.com/aaronpk/webmention.io) has more information on how to use these two formats.
The key difference between the two feed formats is in the *naming* of the keys: the JF2 format holds the array of Webmentions in the `children` key, whereas the JSON format holds them in the `links` key. The JF2 format, however, provides keys and values that more tightly-align with [microformats](https://indieweb.org/microformats), the method I recommend the most for marking up HTML such that it can be consumed and understood by search engines, aggregators, and other tools across the IndieWeb.
```
const pluginWebmentions = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(pluginWebmentions, {
domain: "https://example.com",
feed: `https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?domain=example.com&per-page=9001&token=${process.env.WEBMENTION_IO_TOKEN}`,
key: "children"
})
}
```
If you want to use the JSON format instead, make sure that you replace `mentions.jf2` in the URL with `mentions.json` and change the value of the key from `children` to `links`.
## go-jamming [Permalink ¶](#go-jamming "Permalink for go-jamming")
[go-jamming](https://git.brainbaking.com/wgroeneveld/go-jamming) is a self-hosted Webmention sender and receiver, built in Go by [Wouter Groeneveld](https://brainbaking.com/) and available with more information on his [personal git instance](https://git.brainbaking.com/wgroeneveld/go-jamming).
### Add your token
Once you’ve set up your *go-jamming* server and you’ve defined your token, you’ll need add it to your project as an environment variable, i.e. in a `.env` file in the root of your project:
```
GO_JAMMING_TOKEN=njJql0lKXnotreal4x3Wmd
```
### Set your feed and key config options
```
const pluginWebmentions = require("@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions")
module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(pluginWebmentions, {
domain: "https://example.com",
feed: `https://jam.example.com/webmention/example.com/${process.env.GO_JAMMING_TOKEN}`,
key: "json"
})
}
```

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# Defining Kapwa Leaders
Kapwa leadership pulls together a variety of models and ideas from leadership and organizational theory. I began building this concept to provide a framework for elevating student leaders, grounded in Filipino culture and my personal experiences as a Filipino American student. This framework is offered to all, not only Filipino students, who might find it applicable to their leadership or educational practice. Under this model, a kapwa leader is one who embraces _kapwa_, the core concept of Filipino psychology as introduced by Vergilio Enriquez, as a guiding value through which leadership is expressed and transformed.
_Kapwa_ refers to a shared sense of self in Filipino culture, which has implied moral and normative aspects and bridges even the deepest individual parts of a person with other beings, including people considered external to one’s culture as well as plants, animals, and inanimate objects. A kapwa leader seeks the transpersonal awareness found in _kapwa_, where the self, "I" or _ako_, and the other, "we" or _tayo_, do not disappear but unite to become a greater whole and share a codependent, collective existence. An archipelago, like the Philippines, provides a fitting analogy: although the islands appear as distinct parts and can be described as such, they are connected, rather than separated, by and under the water. An event, change, or transformation taking place on one island has a perceptible impact on the other islands. By this analogy, the actions and experiences of one being are understood as imparted on and experienced by all other beings.
While a kapwa leader broadens their existential awareness to include others, one starts to recognize spectrums of difference in the world around them. Rather than taking guidance purely from one's own perspective, a kapwa leader comes to find multiple purposes, in their own and in others' perspectives, for being, knowing, doing, and living. Beyond leadership, they might practice other roles: follower, teacher, student, culture worker, change agent, or liaison. Kapwa leaders seek involvement within their community, investing in others' well-being in addition to their own, and they become oriented towards change and service. As this embrace of _kapwa_ grows, a multiplicity emerges in leadership identity and self-concept.
The concept of _kapwa_ includes all beings and the differences and similarities which arise between them. This awareness of others definitively includes and recognizes marginalized people. Consequently, according to Enriquez, _kapwa_ is "definitely inconsistent with exploitative human interactions." Kapwa leaders work to expose and understand contradictions in society and in the cultures they inhabit, and a leader's sense of _kapwa_ compels them to pursue resolutions to said contradictions. As such, a kapwa leader seeks to reject authoritarianism, domination, and systems of oppression; furthermore, they promote justice, restoration, and inclusion. Developing a practice of interrogating and dismantling injustice is central to this realization of kapwa leadership.
While my concept of kapwa leadership integrates other models, understandings, experiences, and ideas, _kapwa_ is a critical value which I use to contextualize the primary elements of kapwa leadership. My writing on the subject here simply establishes a foundation for my concept, and I expect to incorporate newer perspectives into kapwa leadership's development as I encounter other ideas and my perception changes.

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Cultural sociology seeks to systemically analyze culture. Although cultures may vary from one another, cultures contain certain elements which can provide a means to compare them. Some elements of culture include:
- Social organization
- Customs and traditions
- Symbols
- Norms
- Religion
- Language
- Arts and literature
- Forms of government
- Economic systems
- Artifacts
- Social institutions
- Values
## Schein's model of organizational culture
Schein described organizational culture as "*a pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group learns as it solves its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.*"
From visible to invisible:
- *Artifacts and behaviors* (visible, audible behavior patterns, surface elements)
- Are easy to observe
- Are hard to interpret or understand the deeper meanings of
- *Espoused values* (social norms, underlying behavioral patterns)
- Includes how we rationalize our actions and what our reasons are for them
- Require some digging to figure out
- *Basic underlying assumptions* (biases, pre-conscious or subconscious ideas)
- Are often unspoken and taken for granted
- Provide underlying reasons for an organization's values and behaviors
## Artifacts and physical space
- How is space organized in your organization?
- Where does your organization conduct its activities, formally or informally?
- Where are members and leaders physically when the organization meets? How do they intermingle?
- How are they separated physically? Does everyone sit close together, or do people prefer to spread out? Do people break into their own groups? Is anyone isolated or left alone?
- How accessible is the space? Is it somewhere everyone has easy/convenient access to?
- When does the organization usually conduct its activities? How does this affect members/leaders and their abilities to participate?
## Language and narratives
- What stories are told in your organization? What do they mean?
- Who are your organization's heroes or prominent figures?
- Why do you tell these stories or choose these heroes? What does that say about what your organization considers important?
- What stories do you tell your members? What stories do leaders in your organization share with each other? What stories get shared outside the organization?
- How do leaders and members talk about the organization?
- What language do they use with one another?
- What does this language convey about individual or collective attitudes in your group?
# Norms
- What do your organization's constitution and bylaws say? What other written rules does your organization have?
- What unwritten rules and policies exist in your organization?
- How does your organization typically make decisions or handle situations?
- What are the expected behaviors or social norms of leaders/members in your organization?
- When your organization has conflict or disagreement, how does your organization handle it?
- Who is included in your organization or given power?
- What does all this say about your organization's priorities?
- Who do the rules work for, prioritize, or benefit? Who is not represented by them?
- What does that say about your organization?
- What roles or hierarchies exist in your organization, formal or informal?
- When you meet, who does a majority of the talking? Who decides the group's agenda?
# Rituals and reward
- What traditions exist in your organization, formal or informal?
- How are new members welcomed into the organization?
- What activities does your organization participate in? Who is included in those activities?
- Why are these traditions or activities important to your organization?
- Do you reward/recognize members or leaders in your organization?
- How do you reward or recognize people in your organization, formally or informally?
- What do you reward or recognize people for?
- How does this recognition relate to the things your organization considers important?
# Values
- Without looking, how would you, other members, or leaders describe your organization's mission? What do your mission and vision actually state?
- Is there a discrepancy between what you or others think the mission is and what it really says? Why?
- Do others have different ideas about what the mission or purpose of your organization is?
- What do your stated mission and vision communicate about your organization's purpose?
- On what premises or assumptions are your organization's mission and vision based?
- Look closely at what language is used or what language is avoided — what values are conveyed?
- Who is represented in your organization's mission and vision?

23
Ideas.md
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- [ ] Start a webring
- [ ] Start a webring
- [ ] Intersectionality theory
- [ ] Inclusive culture
- [ ] Bias
- [ ] Antiracism
- [ ] Microaggressions
- [ ] Pamphlets and zines
- [ ] Podcast
- [ ] Songs
- [ ] Posters and prints
- [ ] Videos/TikToks
- [ ] Power structures, dismantling
- Resisting [[institutionalization]], creating separation from TTU
- [ ] How to identify culture in a space and act on it
- [ ] [[Key advice for SILC]] -> Things I found particularly pertinent to the work + important to remember
- [ ] From Secretary-General to President - Positional leadership in [[Leadership]] and guiding thoughts
- [ ] Landscape of Texas Tech -> Student organizations, community stakeholders
- [ ] Leadership theory - Relational leadership model and why it matters
- [ ] [[Restorative justice]] framework, communities of care
- [ ] [[Representation]], political power
- Quality > quantity, why quality of representation matters just as much
- [ ] Revise [[Personal mission]]

5
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This is the index page for my digital garden. My eventual goal with this is to grow it into something which will replace my website.
The [[Liberationist manifesto]] documents my personal perspective on [[Liberation]] and what being a liberationist means to me.
I also keep a scratchpad of [[Ideas]] here.

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# A Kapwa Kind of Love
## The liberatory capacity of *Kapwa* for elevating love
We cannot trade love for *Kapwa* as *Kapwa* alone cannot displace the great power of love. We must instead understand how *Kapwa* can enhance and deepen our love. Conceiving oneself as a shared existence which includes others, increases our capacity for loving others, loving ourselves, and loving our community. Learning how to love can allow us to grow in *Kapwa* as well – recognizing that loving oneself enables loving others and vice versa. Much like *Kapwa*, love is neither automatic nor incidental; we choose to love, willingly embracing and intentionally building it in parallel. When we cultivate *Kapwa*, we open ourselves to love, and our nourished sense of *Kapwa* encourages us to ground our love in justice.
> Truly cultivating *Kapwa* – to recognize a shared identity, of a self in unity with others, and embrace the emergent power thereof – can enable within us a transcendence into radical love. To explore my personal concept of *Kapwa*, I've written this meditation on *Kapwa*, containing my personal reflections and thoughts. I hope that you'll find these ideas enlightening and that they'll broaden your perspective. Thank you so much for reading and supporting my work.
## A Foundation for Love
> The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.
-- bell hooks[^a]
M. Scott Peck defined love as "the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth."[^b]
bell hooks outlined six critical values which, when expressed together with honest, open communication, enable us to love:[^f]
- Care
- Commitment
- Knowledge
- Responsibility
- Respect
- Trust
## Freire's Radical Love
We cannot truly love unless we let love in and let go of indifference or hatred.
Paulo Freire's vision of radical love is one that is "never about absolute consensus, or unconditional acceptance, or unnecessary words of sweetness ... instead, it is unconstructed, rooted in a committed willingness to struggle persistently with purpose in our life ... to be lively, forceful, and inspiring, while challenging and insistent... and intimately connected to what it means to 'be human'"[^#]
critical community building, dialogic space, and critical reflective practice
In Teachers as Cultural Workers (2005), Freire gave us seven indispensable qualities that teachers who embody radical love should possess:
- a commitment to humility
- Dialectical ability
- Courage
- Tolerance
- Decisiveness
- the ability to recognize the tension between patience and impatience
- joy of living
[^a]: hooks, bell. 2006. _Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations_. New York, NY: Routledge.
[^b]: Scott Peck, M. 2003. _The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth._ New York, NY: Touchstone.
[^f]: hooks, bell. 2018. _All About Love: New Visions_. New York, NY: William Morrow.
[^#]: Darder, Antonia. 2002. _Reinventing Paulo Freire: a pedagogy of love_. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Liberationist manifesto/Growing your circle of care.md
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Who we care about is limited - this always has been and will be true. This is a foundation of our lives and who we think of ourselves to be - what we care about and how we act from that care. It is deeply important to liberation because liberation is fundamentally about economy - specifically building liberatory economies that meet everyone’s basic needs.
Moral circles - philosopher Peter Singer - the number and type of entities you give moral consideration - provides a model for
Moral circles - philosopher Peter Singer - the number and type of entities you give moral consideration - provides a model for
The seventh generation

6
Liberationist manifesto/Liberation is change.md
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One difficult aspect of this liberated vision is the grief we experience upon realizing we haven’t attained it. This is a reasonable reaction to the world’s suffering — to the unnecessary pain, harm, or other afflictions we could’ve avoided if we or those before us acted differently. But we can’t affect what the human condition *was* before us, before we were even born, and we can’t reverse the course of human history; we can only influence what it is and what it becomes. When we’ve sat with our grief and can openly confront how things truly are, then we can work to change them. What comes with our vision and our grief that it doesn’t align with the current state of things is the call to act: to make our vision into reality. Yes, we are not free yet — but what are we going to do about it? Liberation responds to the material conditions of un-freedom and, with that being the case, it requires that we make change. Liberation *is* change.
Now, here comes caveat #1: You could go into your neighborhood or your friend group or your family and find plenty of people who certainly agree that change is needed. It’s a whole other task, however, to imagine even what you’re building towards and how you will get there. And when you or your group comes up with that, then you have to actually convince others to make it happen.
Now, caveat #1: You could go into your neighborhood or your friend group or your family and find plenty of people who certainly agree that change is needed. It’s a whole other task, however, to imagine even what you’re building towards and how you will get there. And when you or your group comes up with that, then you have to actually convince others to make it happen.
Then arrives caveat #2: Supposing you *do* convince some others, there’s no hard guarantee that the change you’re making — the vision you’re building towards — is really what’s needed or actually improves anything. Even if you plan carefully and think long and hard about it, you could make things worse, sometimes in ways that won’t be apparent to you.
Next, caveat #2: Supposing you *do* convince some others, there’s no hard guarantee that the change you’re making — the vision you’re building towards — is really what’s needed or actually improves anything. Even if you plan carefully and think long and hard about it, you could make things worse, sometimes in ways that won’t be apparent to you.[^1]
(There is, actually, another caveat. Caveat #3: Change will happen whether you’d like it to or not — it is inevitable, irresistible, alive.)
[^1]: (There is, actually, another caveat. Caveat #3: Change is inevitable and will happen no matter what.)
This is why I say that liberation specifically needs *radical* change, driven by a cycle of action and reflection. It’s a process that requires time, effort, care, intention, curiosity, and adaptability. I say “radical” because to transform people’s material conditions you have to examine their root causes and strike there. This is the same sense that Angela Davis uses when saying that “radical simply means grasping at the root” (echoing Karl Marx). This process requires a balance of action and reflection: action because without action, nothing is achieved and reflection because without reflection, the work lacks direction and intent. They’re connected like this because as you act and reflect, you learn and adapt — and this actually loosely derives from Kolb’s experiential learning theory. Learning goes hand in hand with making change; in the process of change-making, you are also transformed.

2
Liberationist manifesto/Liberation is freedom.md
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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ Freedom to: thrive (live as our fullest selves, connect with others)
## On soup theory
Before I fully explore this topic of freedom, I want to take a brief look at a simpler metaphor for explaining freedom within liberation, one called “soup theory.” As originally formulated by progressive minister Rev. Oliver Snow, soup theory asks “Do you believe everyone deserves to vibe and eat their favorite soup?”[^1]
Before exploring the topic of freedom, I want to take a brief look at a simpler metaphor for explaining freedom within liberation, one called “soup theory.” As originally formulated by progressive minister Rev. Oliver Snow, soup theory asks “Do you believe everyone deserves to vibe and eat their favorite soup?”[^1]
[^1]: This was first presented on their TikTok page @revpoppopandfriends (where you can also find a playlist of discussions regarding soup theory).

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Movements, especially ones organizing for liberation, are not leaderless. They are leaderful.
In an interview with IBW21, Patrisse Cullors used the term ‘leaderful’ to describe the Black Lives Matter movement, which she had co-founded alongside fellow activists and friends Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Cullors said that “all movements have many leaders, our movement doesn't believe in a single charismatic leader.”
Revolutionary leadership & critical consciousness (Freire)
The shape of liberation - many connected circles → The Millionth Circle - Black Elk poem, non-hierarchical, aimed at building power and empowering, a web or a network not a pyramid. No top or bottom → equal distribution of power around a center.
The work is spiritual and sacred
“The medium is the message”
- dual power
- prefigurative politics
Leaderful because choosing liberation also means accepting responsibility in creating it - “love is as love does”
We don’t rely on single charismatic individuals in structuring our movement → collective leadership
- We also strive to prefer construction over deference
- “group-centered leadership” (Ella Baker)
- Focus is on building power and sharing it
- Strategic, radical, and with global scope
Within our organizing we continue radical traditions while critically examining them and making new ones - everything we do, we should do with a critical understanding of its meaning, intention, and impact
We have to acknowledge power - power exists even when it isn’t formally defined → understand the risks of abuse and lack of representation and avoid “tyranny of structurelessness” (Freeman 1973)
- Democratic delegation
- Distributing power to as many people as possible
- Rotating tasks and responsibilities
- Equal access to resources and knowledge/info
- Allocate tasks according to reasonable criteria (e.g., ability, passion, etc.) (ECON, Hughes, Tota, et al.)
- Clearly define roles
- Accountability (whom are we accountable to? if we’re actually building something radical, significant, and positive then there should be accountability to a group/community/society)
- Clarity as form of kindness while also not being too rigid/strict about control
Collective power → communal power → power is shared, it is not property owned by a single person or entity but belongs to everyone and everyone has a responsibility for stewardship
- We borrow from communal power and work together to tap into it to realize change
- We need power to be able to rise up against unjust hierarchies and counteract the work of violent institutions, corporations, governments
- Resistance to the atomization of individuals, erosion of communities, fragmentation of society
- Promotion of empowered individuals, organized communities, and communities of solidarity (ECON)

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@ -9,4 +9,5 @@ The Liberationist manifesto is a collection of my writings on [[Liberation]] and
7. [[Personal evolutions]]
8. [[On soup theory]]
9. [[On symbols]]
10. [[On thought and theory]]
10. [[On thought and theory]]
11. [[Growing your circle of care]]

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# Together for liberation
Wokescolding and infighting- American leftists and liberals sabotaging themselves and each other
Spending much time keeping down what we are against but not promoting what we are for - viewing everything as a zero sum game and seeing each other as in competition rather than working in tandem
Using educational opportunities to scold or parade ideological/intellectual superiority rather than teach or exchange info
Not saying we necessarily have to stop criticizing people- keep critiquing leftists and liberals alike but recognizing that doing individual/individualistic attacks and callouts harms the work we have mutual interest in and prevents building coalitions. Do I love liberalism or progressivism? No! But am I interested in shouting at every liberal that pops up in my mentions? No! Yes some people need to be called in or laid out but you have to use discretion on whether that's necessary or even something they're receptive to.
Liberation to me is a goal worth fighting for and it's worth butting heads with people along the way to achieve, but it has to be built up through consensus-building and forming coalitions. We have to be able to work with people in different organizing spaces with different values and ideas about society in order to open the path to liberation.
Liberation requires steady inner work and outer work- the inner work of realigning our own behaviors values habits biases ideas beliefs and actions with the cause of liberation and the outer work of teaming up with other people and teaming up with other teams to further the cause of liberation.
We all have been free before. Some of us never stopped being free.
Fundamentalism among leftists and liberals will kill us all.
We have to destroy the authoritarian in our heads, the cop in our heads who polices and does their bidding - at a deeply internal level destroy our own violently coercive and authoritarian hierarchical tendencies
We have to do that to make way for radical love, to open our hearts up to the masses, to have minds and spirits engaged in perpetual revolution for the sake of liberation. We have to create the immaterial (mental, psychological, emotional, social, spiritual, cultural, etc.) conditions which will counteract the material conditions of power and wealth and money and property which have corrupted our immaterial condition. To create a new cycle and a new system and a new mode of being.
The first revolution begins in the heart and does not end.
The greatest enemy of liberation is anomie, loneliness, anti-community — we have to embrace a mindset which responds to the anomie, the loneliness, the alienation within ourselves and within others… which is open to being loving to others and opens ourselves up to being loved.
A major defining feature of the far-right radicalization path is the exploitation of people’s feelings of anomie, alienation, and loneliness, the furthering of alienation in order to make people more receptive to more and more anti-community, bigoted ideas.
A lot of leftists end up falling into the same dark patterns that right wingers and cult leaders use because they haven’t done the work of unlearning the fundamentalism which underlies many aspects of our culture. This is why it’s so important to kill the cop in our heads — so that as we turn leftward we don’t inherit the pathology of the far-right.
Due to stratification in our society we see tendencies of asociality, alienation, social isolation, and loneliness and an overall reduction in hope and increase in sense of powerlessness… these are the things which seek to crush our spirit. To adopt a revolutionary spirit is to intentionally counteract these effects — to counteract these effects is to open oneself up to community building as means of generating collective power.
Being in community with other human beings is part of our essence — our ancestors survived because of the power they had together. Because they could care for each other. Because everyone brought something different to the table which could help the group thrive and improve everyone’s conditions. We cannot allow material conditions to deprive ourselves of senses of belonging and community which have kept us alive all these millennia. To love and trust and care for and commit to and work for one another is to build up a society. To be wary of and distrust and ignore and harm and isolate from one another is to break it down.

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The Nine Laws of God are a concept introduced by Kevin Kelly, a founder of Wired magazine, in his book *Out of Control*.[^1] They describe rules for how systems organize themselves and come to grow. Susan Komives adapted these rules for organizations:
- **Distribute being:** The essence of the organization exists in all of its members.
- **Control from the bottom up:** Empower members at all levels of the organization.
- **Cultivate increasing returns:** Focus on what your organization does well and do it even better.
- **Grow by chunking:** Organizations grow, not one piece at a time, but in bunches.
- **Maximize the fringes:** Honor your creative members and their ideas, even if they're really "out there."
- **Honor your errors:** It is only through trial and error that learning happens.
- **Pursue no optima, have multiple goals:** There is no one "right" answer to complex problems, there are only many partial solutions.
- **Seek persistent disequilibrium:** Disequilibrium brings energy into the organization.
- **Change changes itself:** Change leads to more change, which changes the initial change.[^2]
[^1]: Kevin Kelly, _Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World_ (New York, New York: Basic Books, 2003).
[^2]: _Reproduced from_ Susan R Komives, Nance Lucas, and Timothy R McMahon, _Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference_ (San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 251-252.

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During a virtual student conference, I drafted a mission which focused on justice work through healing, teaching, and leading myself and others. Claiming a role as a healer and a teacher felt really appropriate for me, since I strive to view the world through the lens of healing, teaching, and leadership. I try to make connections between things, looking for patterns in what I see and what I know about the world. I like to take those connections and share them with others. Finding a creative outlet for my learning and sharing the results with others is important to me. I see how learning these things helps myself and others make meaning and understand the world better. When we look to experiences we've had and we're given a new way to make sense of them, it allows us to heal. I really want to take that healing and share it with others, and I want to inspire others to learn and teach others as well.

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do you feel the wind watching you?
the moon's monsoon exhibitions
as wraiths consume our wrinkled bodies
beyond venn diagrams, the disjunction between you and yours,
vivisected and given a patch of drywall for you to become.
when the holes open, do you confess them to the counselor?
three chairs are juxtaposed in the crowded bus; you, alone in the middle,
wishing for an oar, a first mate to be your deliverance.
you wish for him as your helmsman,
a hard port to starboard,
howling wind howling sin, harshly wailing,
"you aren't welcome here, you do not belong,"
"existence is a rebellion, an unforgivable mistake,"
"you'll fail, you'll give up, you'll deal in, you will sink anyway."
as the seafoam, chopped in the wake of your disfigured course,
licks the lobe of your ear, trailing slime,
like the hungry men, in your bed before you learned to drive.
you only know alone in that packed room of better-looking brown,
marooned on a windswept island in the queer sea,
a hanger-on in the moonlight, a remnant of the party, an S.O.S.,
yearning for a ship to pick you up,
for a lyft from a merman to be your handsome, aquatic uber,
for mitski's siren song to blare about the knife,
for peering over trenches, and fantasizing about the deep.
you pass charybdis and scylla, girl-bossing your new odyssey,
a chorus of indie filipino american girl jams, chanting over your skiff.
your red blood stripes into the murky blue, tattooing the sea with a dividing line,
your sails propelled, filled by bad habits and destructive behaviors,
your tongue eagerly engaged to the man from the sea,
your abba interlude, the remastered fantasy soundtrack, fading into the background,
as he, ocean lover, too recesses into your abyssal imagination.
awash into reality, the tyrannical sofa in the counselor's office chokes you.
ripped apart by hegemonic tides, delusions, contemptuous breeze,
the friendships, the partnerships, the mentorships, the relationships,
the neglected ships in your despaired disrepair.
built for escape and abandoned when worn.
the ships you ride
to escape.

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at once an empty
reaches for infinite,
a caress of unrealized potentialities.
feeling - loosely leftward, rightward, and cock-eyed sideways -
swelling cuts in my finger webbing, welling up in the world's sleeping.
sacrificed hands embrace all the nothing, the nothing just beyond our reach.
time as a lake and its tide, the ebbing and flowing sea of forevers.
space as a mountain of insurmountable disappointment and nausea.
atoms speak their insolent peace to distance,
radiation sucks away inadequacy, and
helplessness gushes from fibrous nothing.
i haven't engineered enough contentment
to bear the weightlessness, the chaos of these scattered moments.
should you look at my crawling empty,
the folded-in pieces and holes - which know no other destiny than to settle -
i beg you not to reach for stardust or finer fabrics of space-time,
but choose such
to love an empty.

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the new ceiling fan uncovers old stains
and old pains we mop and mop and mop away.
old hurts are blurred in my mind like daffodils,
waiting for their turn to speak at the table.
my cargo short days have turned into fable,
i don’t remember but i still get the chills.
on the shelf i keep all the things which stay,
and on that thought whirr all the trains.

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she saves a place for me in a casket for two,
in a plot full of littler things, all slaughtered
in a glittery genocide. a kiss to dream about,
shackled rhythms. vinyl shards to our hearts.
we are shrouded in a divided loneliness,
under striated rock and folded metal,
survived by luminous smoke, plastic madonnas,
and mosaic altars of mirror balls, drugs samples, & the absence of absence.
one day you’ll rediscover our bodies, me
and my velvet lady, rhythms still beating
while the boiling sun is wet with indecision.
buried where bean sí wailed boogie from bog.
you’ll resuscitate us, when heaven and earth are the color purple,
when wonderland and love cleave the stones
under the mound at comiskey.

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every summertime
i always think of your
glistening forehead, of the queen city
southern solstice summer sun on your freckled cheeks
and your eyes hopefully honing in on my heart,
where all your american dreams lay their heads.
you are always dancing to the radio in my heart,
in our cramped one-bedrooms,
off potholed streets all over town.
we are forever united at the asian king buffet
by prawns and crab carcasses,
under the grand opening banner which has been up
all spring, the pepsi-blessed, post-racial future
where you eternally wipe the mucus from my nose,
clipping my hair til it can stand on its own two strands,
and hold my head close and hand
me a plate of palabok at parties to protect
myself, messy in many multitudes of methods and means.
i want only to wither with the burnt rice in the backyard,
but every day you save and redeem me
you say "you’re all i have," i cry, cry, and cry
i cry and still you esteem me.
because every summertime is movies and malls
and mother and son
getting picked up from school in your '06 kia spectra.
nothing more magical than the way you love me.
i’m terrified knowing that one day you will be done,
but please still kiss my forehead, number one,
and pretend i’m seven again,
and let me live forever
in your summertime.
in every summertime you called me "langga."

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hey girl,
you remind me
that i have two hearts,
two kasingkasings whose beats sing
for you, for me, for us, for we,
brown girls and brown queers, who rise
like the sun after gentle rains and eastward winds.
hey girl,
you remind me
of the south plains sky,
stretched wide over the lands,
colonized, where we rebelliously learned
to thrive, to live, to flourish, to give
to all society's cast aside, all who have lived and died
and will live again on the breath of justice.
hey girl,
you remind me
that we have high hopes,
manifested destinies and techniques
to achieve all the dreams, at first unimaginable
by our ancestors, by our lovers, by our oppressors, by our detractors,
culturally rich and getting richer, immeasurable
like the grains of rice from the eons harvested over paddies.
hey girl,
you remind me
that our words are more powerful
than any fist, any sword, any bomb, any gun—
that our hearts beat louder than boots, drums, or speakers.
you remind me that our spirits fight harder
for love and for liberation, for life and for nation.
hey girl,
you reminded me
to stay connected even over sea,
to practice my meditations and see the unseen.
you reminded me to fight
until we are all free.

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in the care of dog days
rest forgotten birthdays
restless fog of summer daze
sweaty shadows
elongate over days
with the same faces
blasts at night undistinguished
the battlecry of boots
trampling afar oceans
the cicadas holler to the world listless
into dull ennui of endless sun

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i am friends with the floor and
deeply do i know her
her cracks and her grooves
and the way that she spins
and she moves
i know i’m going there
i know i’m going there
i know i’m going there
to see what lies behind her
when i feel the eyes
staring dull-ly at me
or tearing away
you can become a word
or a word can become you
never quite fully stretching over your body
not expecting anything but the changing of the seasons
and in the other room are all my dreams coming to life
i will weave into existence
the piña shirt i will wear
for the rest of my days
made of all the things i should’ve been
words, acts never realized
hemmed with promises
we will dance like fairies
as paradise burns
waking after the passing dawn
autumn dreams remember
the memory of the sun
what makes jerusalem a special city
in the second semester of elecromagnetic fields,
i was asked to solve maxwell’s equations:
for the magnetic pull of scattered places, changing places
for the wavelengths of violet light, passing through calloused fingers
for the electric potential, built up charge between father and son
for the current density, always running back to mother
tomorrow i will not show up to class
so tell me, are we immigrants or abductees?
i am a stranger on stolen land
i would be stronger in my home land
it's you, a warm robot beaming jubilantly in the corner,
livening up my life in empty thickets.
my delusional beauty decays from my scalp and drifts off in the water,
i wade into the swamp to chase it, forgetting to go where you can’t follow.
in my lockbox, i have stored a parcel of yearning
why do you let me live,
passing me like trucks on the freeway?
all i know are the streams of lives i glimpse into
which will not fit around my waist
your voice cuts like a radio on the wrong frequency
"i remember
you were a boy
grow up
i want to be a writer"
when i grow up, i want to be
neither a fox nor colder.
i want to write a remedy
which sings the world bolder -
a bright, brown or gold, glittering
stain to ruin your whitened wedding.
i've never seen so many roadkill coyotes before,
pink like bare mesquite branches, rickety like a promise.
our texas is an ocean, deeper than the moon;
i will miss your company when the sea rises to applaud.
soft-footed whispers on the cold tile,
drowned in the seismic tremors
choking me with your smoke
at the dinner table
coveted reunion of a fragmented people
with their messiah, drafted a soul only to die
to martyr for the greater lie and lessen
the burdens of idols of grass and gasoline
all the women of my life, singing
"merry christmas" to dead men.
jesus never grew up in a broken home
so you fall asleep wondering if angels struggle
speaking in tongues their fathers and mothers
cannot speak
we eat off dinner tables donated by our dear, diligent dead
a few tears ago

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Hey girl,
you remind me
that I have two hearts,
two kasingkasings whose beats sing
for you, for me, for us, for we,
brown girls and brown queers, who rise
like the sun after gentle rains and eastward winds.
Hey girl,
you remind me
of the south plains sky,
stretched wide over the lands,
colonized, where we rebelliously learned
to thrive, to live, to flourish, to give
to all society’s cast aside, all who have lived and died
and will live again on the breath of justice.
Hey girl,
you remind me
that we have high hopes,
manifested destinies and techniques
to achieve all the dreams, at first unimaginable
by our ancestors, by our lovers, by our oppressors, by our detractors,
culturally rich and getting richer, immeasurable
like the grains of rice from the eons harvested over paddies.
Hey girl,
you remind me
that our words are more powerful
than any fist, any sword, any bomb, any gun—
that our hearts beat louder than any boots, drums, or speakers.
You remind me that our spirits fight harder
for love and for liberation, for life and for nation.
Hey girl,
you reminded me
to stay connected even over sea,
to practice my meditations and see the unseen.
You reminded me to fight
until we are all free.
——
This next piece was inspired by kind of a funny moment I had at a restaurant while I was student worker in diversity equity and inclusion at texas tech.
——
i was 23 at buffalo wild wings
she says
are you filipino
i say only half
she says
me too
without skipping a beat she asks
it’s the dad, right?
i’m at a loss
for words, i’m totally
flummoxed, i clutch my chest,
bright orange buffalo sauce staining
my white shirt.
i am mortified
like a ghost, surprised she even saw me.
a karabaw in jeepney headlights,
crossing the road from evergreen forest
to narra tree jungle.
but i don’t tell her about the time my dad and i were driving home from the movie theater, circa 2014, American Sniper, Clint Eastwood film, Bradley Cooper first billing
i’m riding shotgun on the freeway in
our white truck.
he says,
“how come western countries can’t
have borders without being called
racist?”
“i mean, what about all of
us white people?”
but there is no us.
because i am the conspiracy,
i am the mythical replacement that will never be,
i am that feared brown-eyed yellow sun,
so cover your eyes, green like grapes
green like rumors. green like dollar bills.
i don’t tell her about being in the jollibee parking lot in san antonio,
listening to vst, and asin, and cinderella
in a fugue, making my spicy chickenjoy extra spicy using my eyes.
or about craving distance from the crowd
at the filipino student leader retreat,
wondering if this pain in my chest is really kapwa.
i don’t tell her, that sometimes i feel untouchable.
that sometimes all i want
is a hug from mom.
to hear the word
“palangga.”
i don’t tell her that my race, beyond the boundary, feels like a costume
that i wear every morning, a show for other people. that i can’t look back at those
who stare
in the middle of the target or the walmart,
during my classes in college,
on the bus or the sidewalk,
or else i am breaking the fourth wall.
that i am a border given life, not in or out,
existing only in the mind.
i don’t tell her that i’m like okra,
floating slimily in the pinakbet
beloved flavors, reviled in america.
that i live on even in this climate crisis drought
miraculously living through the heat of this life.
that i’m a square peg in a round hole world.
i don’t tell her that i feel like i’m repenting
for a sin i did not commit. an accident to the world. that when the spanish colonized us, they introduced terms like mestiso,
terms drawing comparison to animals,
discounting the humanity of anyone not
of pure european birth.
“mestiso” - mixed - European and indio ancestry.
self and other, human and non human. less human than them, but still more human than others.
halflings, half humans.
i don’t do else but look shocked, then laugh nervously,
at the buffalo wild wings in lubbock texas
where dust blows across the land
like a curse.
but i want to tell her.
and i want to tell her - tell others like us -
that we’re not math, not solvable, like an equation or a problem
not a fraction or divisible.
not mass-produced sandwich cookies, dipped in milk.
not whitewashed, not weak color analogies.
that we are today’s saints, bilocating across oceans.
born anew katipuneros and members of la liga filipina, rightfully beside others in the cause.
donning ten gallon hats and red horses, mounted on the hill before the battle, shouting “makibaka.”
that we - all of us, all our kin Black and Brown - won’t go away with the stroke of a pen on capitol hill, or the closing of the border.
that a knife at my neck or a gun to my head won’t break my composure, my hope, my all.
that we won’t vanish into the moon but shine like the sun, like the rays and stars on the flag we bear.
that every day we still stand, is a win against white supremacy and the settler colonial state
a day won for generations after us
another day we eat the fruit of life
another day we, like Bulosan, let them know who we are
another day we say yes, thank god, thank our ancestors, that still, we rise
i want to tell her.
i want to tell you.
but i’ll show you instead.
——
i went to a community townhall for dfw about a month ago. and while i was there one of the people there came up to me and was telling me about his organization and asking me to reach out to him about volunteering and job opportunities. while we were talking it came up that i speak a few different languages, so suddenly he tells me,
“oh, you should get into the vlogging, there are lots of people who go to the philippines and do vlogging and get lots of followers and make a lot of money. you should be a travel vlogger!”
and as he’s talking i’m thinking “man i can hardly focus during a conversation, or coordinate enough to get a degree let alone run a youtube channel and be a high-output content creator”
but it had me thinking about a side project i do and how a close friend of mine, a very special person to me, and i started our own social media website, to make a place for filipinos and other people of color and queer people to have community without corporate involvement. so this next piece is inspired by that - our desire to create a space that we can share with others: community.
——
welcome to our holographic nation
if you’re hearing this it means you’ve already been naturalized
this place is borderless and stateless,
this place is a window, this place is a song.
here we’re all bridges, over rivers which flow faster than light.
where “kumain ka na ba” is “i love you”
it’s just beyond the riverbend and right within our hearts, liminal space
gather here, liberated ones, beloved multitude
palm tree canopies like mirrors over this glassy gem landscape,
if you hold another hand in it, that’s a gloria
and if you overlap your whole heart with another, that’s kapwa
we built this city with our love, we made the whole world blush
and with great ecstasy, joyfully we shout in unison - our own cry of pugad lawin
because we are the online anito
because we are the voices
because we are
——
that’s all i had planned for you all tonight, so i have just one thing to leave you with, i just want to say that i love being Filipino and i love us so much, and i hope you all do too. if you’re not Filipino i hope you love being you as well. we are all so powerful when we come together as a community, especially to support our local artists and performers and community organizations.
that being said thank you all very much for having me! remember to vote and enjoy the rest of the show!

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Madame Martha had eight years before me blown away.
Words scattered on Waco winds as posthumous wings, and with life,
ceaseless. They fell like snow on two tonsured heads, hovering
and near crashing over family found, her white-covered name.
"Hi, mom!" dripped and became frost, and that was when I knew -
you and I were always the same.

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like the residue collecting on once white dishes,
dulling porcelain to gray, plastic to smoke.
like boredom accumulates on the windowsill
on a humid day and rises as steam.
like falling in love because you were bored,
and getting married because you were mad.
like promises collapse into the arms of independence,
and forget to bring your lunch to school.
like words in other dimensions which crawl on your skin,
but don’t burrow and make homes when they’re needed.
like lovers who appear on wanted posters in vacant suburbs,
for trying to cash the check from your pink checkbook.
like the grocery store changes the refrigeration units in the dairy section,
so the milk can still taste like stomach cramps.
like brown eyes which well up with tears,
but bitten tongue leads to ruined orgasm.
like missing hand pressed against hand, lip to lip,
tenderness you cannot trust yourself with.

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all the ground around was a mirror of the sky
full of clouds, shadows, and dancing shrubbery
i want to skid around in my flats, maybe
i’ll make my mother worried, but i’ll paint
beautiful portraits of her favorite saint
with the most unthreatening shade
of white. imagine how i once played.

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the okra heart makes your ankles itch
and its slimy pods, a chore to love.
fried up feverishly, breaks to bits,
though roasted, enduring tougher stuff,
okra hearts grow into rattling husks.
beaten to mush or soaked in a batter,
even on platters, it’s just too much,
and nobody wants it - growing mangled together
in hatred of the sun, to chagrin of the farmer.
okra, stay soft - nourish daughter and father.

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now that i am one of the last big boys,
i still like to play where's waldo,
especially the books with the waldo-less puzzles.
a collection of my favorites:
waldo learns to lead - community edition,
in which the filipino students united to ensure
a hopeless search, a fool's errand.
waldo goes to the drag show, which
went out of print earlier this year
because of conservative backlash.
where's waldo: at a party where it almost seems like
they went out of their way to crop him out
but still capture everyone else's faces.
where's waldo: like the normal ones you remember,
except waldo stopped going outside,
and his friends stopped noticing.
the representation alone is reason enough to buy,
but it's a shame they're so difficult - you won't find
any solutions at the end, or a youtube walkthrough.

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!!! NOT DONE YET !!!
i was born beneath the rocks of a single-minded destiny: cutting cords.
sharpened by the first hominins to loosen them from their cages,
with no mind to the wrath beset, on mnemonic devices or lexical anchors,
or the amnesia befallen on transient states, belonging to history's annals.
i was configured beneath the waves, with patterns of curls and divergences,
for disfiguring fjords and highlands, for turbulently separating archipelagos.
lamentations are forgotten by the riverbed, rested as recanted, condolences
to my estranged siblings. generational recessions of pride trapped in our throats.
to be untangled from pain, to be freed from freedom,
striking entries from an endless list of somewheres.

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in the backyard with dad, who insists on releasing a mouse
from a glue trap into the backyard, and i, with the hose,
having dirtied brand new shoes,
which mom and i bought on pilgrimage to jc penney.
the mouse stares at me with omniscience,
wriggling against sightless demons.
she limped off - lime green glue matted into her fur -
i thought to leave her for the vultures, and the tomcats,
but i knew her name
and brushed mud off suede
in the kitchen sink.
you live, and i die again.

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the void was invited to the poke restaurant in my place
because i was too busy counting all the pearls in my head
i am splashing in the endless emerald sea,
scooping as much brine as i can handle
into my mouth, eager to be filled with anything
but heartbeats and dreams
a haggard eldritch hag, made of tentacles and ether and draped in tourmaline, embraces me by the reef.

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honey mustard, and no honey for the house,
slices of carefree pizza, and no money for blood.
frost on the windshield, and the smoldering blouse,
dear-life connections, stemming a flood.
a lead-footed slumber for pain in your chest,
forgetfully yawning and american frontier.
depression, a road in the desert southwest;
i'm sorry, a windmill - i love you, a steer.

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the dentist pries my jaw apart
and plucks a lump of love
stuck between my teeth.
he says to remember to brush
two times a day and let the love out
before it rots un-flossed, unspoken.

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we - i - lie to my dad about where i’m going
just to be together at the waffle house -
two coffees, one swelling with too much sugar.
breakfast of diasporic all-stars with hashbrowns
and pancakes topped with chocolate chips
for two of a milk chocolate people.
the diner vibrating like 2010, a flapjack fairy
dressed in all green and bouncing to daft punk.
from here the sky looks wider than ever;
the tables are crowded with futures.

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This is the index page for my digital garden. My eventual goal with this is to grow it into something which will replace my website.
The [[Liberationist manifesto]] documents my personal perspective on [[Liberation]] and what being a liberationist means to me.
I also keep a scratchpad of [[Ideas]] here.
## Bullet reference
This is a reference for the icon bullets in my Obsidian theme.
### Basic
- [ ] regular to-do
- [/] incomplete `/`
- [x] done `x`
- [-] canceled `-`
- [>] forwarded `>`
- [<] scheduling `<`
### Extras
- [?] question `?`
- [!] important `!`
- [*] star `*`
- ["] quote `"`
- [l] location `l`
- [b] bookmark `b`
- [i] information `i`
- [S] savings `S`
- [I] idea `I`
- [p] pros `p`
- [c] cons `c`
- [f] fire `f`
- [k] key `k`
- [w] cake `w`
- [u] up `u`
- [d] down `d`

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- **relational leadership** is a relational and ethical process of people, together, attempting to achieve positive [[change]].
- relational leadership is ethical and grounded in the values of the organization, empowering of all in the group including oneself, and inclusive of all both internal and external to the organization and understanding, engaging, and valuing diverse viewpoints. it is focused on building a shared vision and seeking common ground in order to facilitate the positive change the group is committed to. it is also, lastly, process-oriented: the process of the group is just as important as the group's desired goal or outcome, and intentionality is treated as crucial to the process.[^1]
- a relational leader:
- creates commitment through participation,
- recognizes how teamwork plays a key role,
- manages politics within team and outside of group, and
- works within existing structure and culture.
- implementation of relational leadership might involve reframing typical tasks. as an example, for planning an agenda and holding a meeting, one might:
- take time to get through topics, rather than rush,
- involve the most people in the agenda,
- empower voices usually excluded,
- make fair decisions,
- involve others in building agenda, and
- use collaborative practices.
- one could also change the mode of decision-making to be more collaborative. rather than a mode where issues are voted on with little discussion - and consequently, a majority winning while a minority is left dissatisfied - one might:
- involve everyone and hear everyone's views before determining a resolution,
- present an issue and break into small groups to discuss,
- identify questions or major considerations in small groups before reconvening as a larger group, and
- encourage everyone's involvement and participation in the process.
## References
[^1] Susan R Komives, Nance Lucas, and Timothy R McMahon, Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference (San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2009).

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# Social Change Model
- the **social change model (scm) of leadership development** is a model originally created in 1994 by the higher education research institute (HERI).[^1] under the social change model, leadership is viewed as "a purposeful, collaborative, values-based process that results in positive social [[change]],"[^1] and assumes that:
- leadership is concerned with effecting change on behalf of others and society,
- leadership is collaborative,
- leadership is a process rather than a position,
- leadership should be value-based,
- all students, not just those that hold formal positions, are potential leaders, and
- service is a powerful vehicle for developing students’ leadership skills.
- it is built on seven values, or 7 C's:
## individual values
the individual values are leadership capacities which are fully part of the self and enhance both the inward concept of an individual (how they feel about themselves) and their outward concept (how they perceive or are perceived by others). they include:
- ### consciousness of self
- consciousness of self, not to be confused with self-consciousness, is the awareness of one's own beliefs, values, attitudes, and emotions. this might also include an understanding of how one's identity influences those aspects of oneself and how those aspects motivate one's actions. having consciousness of self is a cornerstone to recognizing beliefs, values, attitudes, and emotions in other individuals as well as those promoted by the organization and its culture.
- ### congruence
- congruence refers to the ability of an individual to act in accordance with their own beliefs, ideas, and convictions and behave in a manner which is genuine, honest, and authentic. congruence and consciousness of self are interdependent.
- ### commitment
- commitment is an intense, deeply-felt motivation to pursue a particular end or serve a certain purpose. it requires consciousness of self, and it implies lasting personal investment in said goals. for a leader of a group, commitment also means a dedication to not only intended outcomes but also group activities.
- ## group values
- group values are shared among members of the group, and each value's effectiveness increases as more members of the group, ideally all, develop their capacity with it. they are:
- ### collaboration
- collaboration is one's competency to work jointly with others towards some result. collaboration both necessitates and builds a trust between members of the group, which also empowers each member. it collectivizes the process of leadership, and it encourages members to go beyond their own interests and behaviors and witness differences between individuals as they manifest.
- ### common purpose
- common purpose unites group members under a set of shared goals and values. it provides for an easier collective analysis of current situations and tasks, and it is easier to achieve when all members share in the vision and participate actively in articulating the purpose and goals of the activity.
- ### controversy with civility
- controversy with civility involves recognizing the natural inevitability of disagreement within groups. it calls not only for an open, honest expression of disagreement, but also a civil dialogue aimed at conflict resolution, wherein members necessarily possess a mutual respect for others, are willing to actively listen to and seriously consider others' views and ideas, and exercise restraint in criticizing others' views and actions. this demands trust between group members, and the group integrates its common purpose into its strategy for resolving conflict.
- ## society value - citizenship
- citizenship, the final value, describes the process whereby an individual and the group become connected to the community and society and recognize their involvement in and responsibilities towards both. this occurs in parallel and in unison with the group's leadership development activities. citizenship is expressed by working towards positive change on the behalf of and in concert with others and the community, and it is practiced at each level of the social change model.
- ## References
- :[^1] Sheriff, Sarah. "Social Change Model of Leadership Development." SLCE Program Mapping. Dickinson College, August 29, 2019. https://www.dickinson.edu/info/20380/student_leadership/3795/social_change_model_of_leadership_development.

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# A social archipelago: Against social media colonialism (DRAFT)
## The Fediverse is dead
So we’ve admitted it — [The Fediverse is Already Dead](https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/). Many have gone in-depth into what the Fediverse’s issues are. Nora, in that same article, points to the following:[^1]
- Right-wing extremism
- Racism
- Instance drama
- Misattribution of malice[^2]
And that’s a pretty solid summary on its own. Those who pay even a little attention to Fediverse meta discussion will note how the same kind of anti-Black harassment happens every other day. Moderators often get burnt out playing a game of “whack-a-mole” with wave after wave of bigotry and spam. And as if that wasn’t enough, many instances rely exclusively on one person or a very small handful of people, mine included, despite instance administration requiring more skillsets than just technical operations.[^3]
Beyond these cultural issues, a lot of ActivityPub software simply lack the tooling to effectively moderate an open network. Some maintainers don’t even care or try. But even with the proper tooling, an open network would still struggle with harassment, oppressed and marginalized groups facing most or all of it. Open federation spreads us thin and pulls us away from actually leading our communities, and missing moderation features and safety controls just make it all worse.
These problems, just a drop in the bucket of social media colonialism, aren’t entirely addressable with one single solution; however, one approach stood out to me as a place to start – the “Social Archipelago.”
## What’s a social archipelago?
In the most basic sense, a “social archipelago” is a network of “islands,” or social media communities, which forms through more selective federation. Nora describes the “social archipelago” as “the way those communities interact, and don’t; the way they form strands and islands and gulfs.”[^1] [Oliphant took the concept further](https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/islands-an-opt-in-federated-network), suggesting opt-in, strictly closed “island” networks, which would change how groups of instances organize and grant their moderators shared responsibility over an entire network instead of just one instance.
In my view, the Fediverse has always been and *had to be* archipelagic in nature. In practice, fully open federation is extremely rare; few people *actually* want to federate with everyone. We’ve always had the ability to discern which instances to connect to, which parts of the network to associate with.[^4] How we choose our connections and form relationships with other instances is a core part of instance culture. If we just federate with everyone, people get fed up with dealing with the worst of the worst or repeatedly butting heads with people they’re not aligned with at all. There’s just no sense in forcing together people who don’t like each other one bit, or in allowing bigots, assholes, and spam bots unfettered access to our networks. Everyone just gets alienated.
Switching to an allowlist changes how we make these choices of who to federate with — trust and consent become more important, if not fundamental, to how allowlist networks take shape. If we build a social archipelago based on allowlists, we’ll take a more active role in creating and cultivating our network, with a lot more intention than what goes into open federation.
I’m interested in building a social archipelago in resistance to social media colonialism and imperialism.[^5][^6] I see these social archipelagos like [webrings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring) but for federated social networks — like old-school forums but with superpowers, where instances (“islands”) come together around common goals, shared interests, or themes. People join islands and islands join archipelagos. As with webrings, people can make accounts to inhabit islands, and islands can inhabit multiple archipelagos at once. There’s room for diversity in how archipelagos form and what shapes they take. Consider these examples for just some possible variations:
* One archipelago might ask its islands to limit sign-up counts or to require approval for registration, another archipelago might be indifferent to each island’s joining process
* One archipelago might require its islands to pick Pokemon as representatives, another archipelago might require its islands to have all black-and-white profile pictures
* Archipelagos could write and adopt an archipelago-wide pact with formal rules for adding or removing islands, or they could have a short list of principles and just work from a consensus.
It’s all up to the people who organize these archipelagos, to the cultures these islands and archipelagos cultivate, to determine how their archipelagos work. Using allowlisting is really the main thing.
## You’re on an island
Before I thought about social archipelagos, I had considered my personal goals for our instance, hol.ogra.ph, which gave more shape to my ideas about allowlisting. Much of social media revolves around timelines, and when I was picturing my ideal hol.ogra.ph experience on an allowlist, I imagined specifically what two particular timelines would look like:
- The local timeline (which shows all our local posts)
- The bubble/global timeline (which would show posts from our federated instances)
I envisioned our local timeline as a small island or village — [people wouldn’t just be strangers passing through a train station](https://www.marginalia.nu/log/82_killing_community/), you’d recognize familiar names or faces and instantly know the person you’re talking to, whose posts you’re reading.
On the other side, the bubble/global timeline would be busier than the home or local timelines, but slower and more curated than what we currently have. It’d be like taking a ferry to neighboring islands and exploring their public spaces. You might still be able to notice recurring names and faces, and you’d *want* to be on this timeline more often than you do now, because you could trust the other islanders to be just as pleasant to interact with as those on your own island.
It’d be a small community, growing at a sustainable pace, but not surpassing what we could effectively moderate. Participating in a social archipelago could be just one part of how we encourage this type of experience.
## Looking across the water at other islands
A social archipelago would bring together our islands, such as the one I just described. In my archipelago network, moderators and administrators wouldn’t be, or have to act like, cops and police. An intentionally constructed network-as-a-community would steward a culture in which many moderation issues are more trivially dealt with.
In this social archipelago, moderation emphasizes prevention, facilitated by:
- Registration limitations
- Limited federation and allowlists
- Change-oriented community leadership
- Strong relationships and conflict resolution
- Island culture
We would have a public allowlist, but each island could apply silences to new instances, larger instances in the archipelago, etc. to curate their unique experience. I would call this “soft federation.” Ideally, we wouldn’t necessarily *need* to create our own legalist system or develop lots of policy just to have a safe, functional network.[^7] We’d have rules to provide a baseline for moderation, but our archipelago’s culture would do most of the work.
Our archipelago would provide an island listing, which islands would regularly[^8] pull to build their allowlists. We could then host a website which would host documentation, instructions on joining and how it works, and even a map of the islands in the archipelago.
As far as rules, I would start with at least these simple rules for member islands:
1. **Limit sign-ups**
- Closed, by invitation, by application, or by numerical limit
- If the sociopelago is to grow, it will grow by chunking, so that moderation can keep pace with the growth, any assholes/disruptors can be quickly and trivially dealt with. Growth is not the priority — the ability to nurture the community and meet baseline expectations of safety is
- Members of your instance should know/recognize who your people are - people have to pass a “vibe check” to get in, people should be easily removed if they can’t act right
2. **Allowlist the archipelago**
- Use allowlisting to cultivate your island’s network, rather than blocklisting
- It’s okay to allowlist instances which aren’t part of the network or aren’t using allowlisting themselves — your instance just has to use an allowlist
- Prevent whack-a-mole moderation and keep mods from becoming cops
- Join other networks to build more bridges, vouch for instances you believe work in good faith
- Invite small instances or single-user instances, which might be on the open fediverse or not part of any network, to join this network
3. **Keep these principles**[^9]
- Be nice
- Acting in good faith
- Assuming good intent unless otherwise shown
- Engaging sincerely with other experiences
- Making space for others, especially oppressed people
- Honor others’ boundaries
- Have zero-tolerance policies towards bigotry, harassment, and other harm
The archipelago would also have a public chat for all islanders and a private chat for all moderators, where decision-making would take place. Decision-making in the archipelago would be almost exclusively through consensus — if anyone had strong opposition to a proposal, we could talk through it and revise our solution. Join requests would be submitted through an online form or a Git repo, and islands would be accepted through group consensus before being added to the list.
## Moving forward
This is just one concept, but I welcome anyone who wants to join and co-build it together. I also encourage others to borrow all or part of this concept for their own archipelagos. You can copy this idea without any need to credit me specifically, although it would be nice. If you’re interested, you can always reach out to me on Matrix [@kalanggam:matrix.org](https://matrix.to/#/@kalanggam:matrix.org) or on my Sharkey instance [@gil@hol.ogra.ph](https://hol.ogra.ph/@gil).
[^1]: [The Fediverse is Already Dead](https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/)
[^2]: To be specific, how outsiders to the Fediverse incorrectly attribute malice to the entire network, while insiders to the Fediverse narrowly blame these issues on a small set of instances/individuals, ignoring how “the rest of us” feed into the problems.
[^3]: Beyond system administration, instances need community leadership, content moderation, and dispute and conflict resolution (and potentially other skills). Our communities have these skillsets, but [instances require teams](https://hol.ogra.ph/notes/9wkvxo0gwtqunuu1) to fully benefit from them.
[^4]: Mastodon, for example, has offered the ability to block domains since its earliest releases.
[^5]: E.g., “Open Federation” as a sole, dominant paradigm for how our communities should federate, an exclusive focus on “the right rules/tools” (i.e., stricly emphasizing legalism/rule-following/excessive policing or purely technical solutions to social and cultural problems), racist harassment, the repetitive violation of oppressed peoples’ spaces in the Fediverse, the hegemony of mastodon.social, etc.
[^6]: We’ve been living under social media colonialism since we started using social media; the Fediverse has simply continued a lot of the same problems of Big Social, in some ways making them worse.
[^7]: Having a lot of strict policies (such as requiring CWs on politics) can sometimes result in people following only the letter but not the spirit of the rules, being overly literal in how rules are interpreted, or cherry-picking the rules. I find that people often employ these things in ways which target marginalized/oppressed people moreso. It’s important to have some kind of rule(s), but bad rules and structures have *a lot* of potential for harm and abuse.
[^8]: This could be automated on the server side, which is preferred for a few reasons, but you could manually do it if necessary.
[^9]: These principles could encompass other rules or be stated in other ways, but I would present them minimally on the archipelago side, so moderators can use their own discretion and further specify their own rules as they see fit.

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# Tamed Savages (working)
- Alternative title: Converted Subjects
- The white imagination of Filipino America
## Talking points
- The Model Minority Myth, like with other non-East Asian Americans, does not completely encapsulate Filipino American experiences and images
- Filipino Americans are perceived as a "successful conversion" from a savage race of barbarians to civilized colonial subjects - we are viewed as tamed savages of Asian America
- We inhabit the modern colonial idea of colonialism's end goals - a docile, though flawed, Christianized people in compliance with the global white supremacist order
- In heteronormative relationships
- Women who make "good wives" because they "readily submit" and "obey" white husbands
- Men who are queerified and feminized and do not pose the threat of "stealing" white women from white men
- People who are seemingly "post-racial" - who get along with other Americans regardless of race, but do not challenge pervasive anti-Blackness and other manifestations of racism
- Unique problems exist for Filipino American Muslims (and other religious minorities), queer and trans Filipino Americans, Filipino American women, disabled Filipinos, poor Filipino Americans
- White America takes credit for teaching Filipinos "how to be civilized"
- Filipino involvements with the civil rights movement and with the labor movement are largely erased from history, along with other major historical events like the American colonization of the Philippines, the Philippine-American War, and earlier stereotypes and caricatures of Filipinos
- Filipinos, especially Filipino men, were formerly stereotyped as being promiscuous, violent, and dimwitted plantation workers especially during the early 20th century
- Prior ideas of Filipinos as "little brown brother" or "white man's burden"
- Philippine American war fought especially by a force of volunteers with experiences in the massacre and forced migration of Native Americans
- Filipino Americans being depicted in racial caricatures of the early 1900's with the same features as Black Americans
- Following the P-A war, the mestizo class was groomed by and collaborated with the Americans in instituting a postwar democracy assimilated with American ideals -> this is why the modern Philippines is entrenched with political dynasties, and it is the ensuing conditions in the Philippines which lead to more immigration from PH to the US
- The Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes
- "In establishing the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, staffed by educated Filipinos, the “civilizing” mission of the American colonial policy created an enduring process of differentiation among Filipinos, leading to the marginalization of indigenous peoples. For instance, it took a hundred years before the Agta community could see one of its own graduate from the University of the Philippines"
- We are not white America's equals - we are more like pets, trophies, exhibits
-
## Further reading
- https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/03/jonathan-okamura-ethnic-stereotypes-are-difficult-to-eradicate-but-we-all-need-to-try/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/43823407
- https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/the-colonial-legacy-of-racism-among-filipinos
- https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/clemensmoromassacre.html
- https://frontierpartisans.com/13550/civilize-krag/
- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramp!_Tramp!_Tramp!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramp!_Tramp!_Tramp!)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Model_1892%E2%80%9399
- *Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America* by Mae M. Ngai
- *Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines* by Warwick Anderson

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# The Garden of Kapwa
Even before I became more involved in Filipino community space, I knew of *Kapwa* through the Filipino American leaders I encountered, online or in person, who employed it in their work. Although at times the Filipino American discourse around *Kapwa* could be a bit facile or even misinformed, *Kapwa*'s novelty, being a uniquely Filipino approach to understanding my own experiences, still allured me. For that reason, I still sought to incorporate *Kapwa* into my personal philosophy, yet I worried my own awareness would fall short if I spoke too broadly. It wasn't until I had read bell hooks' *All About Love* that I acquired a new framework for deepening my interpretation of *Kapwa*. It was last August, as I was leaving the Philippines last August and doing serious reflections about identity and leadership, when I began considering radical love, *Kapwa*, and relational leadership not as disjoint concepts, but as converging paths to liberation. I realized that truly cultivating *Kapwa*[^1] – to recognize a shared identity, of a self in unity with others, and embrace the emergent power thereof – can enable within us[^2] a transcendence into radical love.
To explore my personal concept of *Kapwa*, I've written this meditation on *Kapwa*, containing my personal reflections and thoughts. I hope that you'll find these ideas enlightening and that they'll broaden your perspective. Thank you so much for reading and supporting my work.
## The Garden of *Kapwa*
> Kapwa is a recognition of a shared identity, an inner self, shared with others. This Filipino linguistic unity of the self and the other is unique and unlike in most modern languages. Why? Because implied in such inclusiveness is the moral obligation to treat one another as equal fellow human beings. If we can do this – even starting in our own family or our circle of friends – we are on the way to practice peace. We are Kapwa People.
– Virgilio Enriquez[^3]
While our bloodlines may contain a tremendous wealth of shared, generational experience, which contributes to our sense of interconnected humanity, our *Kapwa*[^4] is not purely preprogrammed. As we partake in our earliest experiences with Filipino communities and cultures and internalize important cultural lessons about our humanity, we plant our first seeds of *Kapwa*. Still, we are subject to other influences within cultures and societies which raise us, internalizing the injustice, pain, and dysfunction we witness, especially when we are young and just starting to learn our cultural, social, and behavioral norms. A sense of *Kapwa* can be with us from an early age, but it will not flourish unless we choose to nurture it – and ourselves – and let go of unhealthy behaviors, harmful beliefs and biases, or other oppressive patterns. Without the intentional endeavor to fulfill its moral, ethical obligations or embrace the communal love which a concept like *Kapwa* implies, we may inadvertently act as *ibang tao* and behave dysfunctionally or cause harm to ourselves and others. This is why it is important for our *Kapwa* to be consciously cultivated, not simply inherited.
I speak very matter-of-factly regarding *Kapwa*, as if it is a natural part of our lives; however, the average Filipino may not acknowledge this concept in their daily life. But they – we – do not necessarily require a scholarly concept of *Kapwa* to exercise it or pursue it. As I said previously, *Kapwa* is a culturally based framework of analyzing and understanding our humanities, our selves, and our psyches. It is but one Filipino cultural embodiment of communal self-concept, which you can see at work in ordinary life: how we build community, how we nurture and love one another, how we acquire knowledge and learn, or how we confront problems. When my mother's rosary group meets and sets aside time to share their thanks, struggles, and hopes, that too can be *Kapwa*. When my fellow Filipino American organizers speak against discrimination in our spaces, that too can be *Kapwa*. Exploring and developing *Kapwa* through conscious effort is only one method for expressing it and building it.
Cultivating *Kapwa* can also be a spiritual journey. Seeing ourselves as connected with others, or *pakikipagkapwa*, can bring us closer to our friends, our family, our colleagues, and our peers. It encourages us to show more concern for our community, our nation, and our environment. In addition to an awareness of these connections, within *Kapwa*, who we are and what we do are just as important; *Kapwa* development involves personal commitments, invested emotions, and congruent actions directed both inward and outward, in response to our interconnectedness. Following spiritual guidance, which directs us to connect with others and our community, allows us to demonstrate our connectedness with feelings and actions as well as to reflect on and grow in *Kapwa*.
[^1]: As I had previously written in another article, I use *Kapwa* primarily in reference to "*a shared sense of self in Filipino culture, [with] implied moral and normative aspects*," the same terms in which it was coined by Virgilio Enriquez and reasserted by Katrin de Guia. My discourse in this article builds on that definition and seeks to provide an additional framework for understanding *Kapwa*'s manifestation in personal relationships and community work.
[^2]: Here, I use "us" to refer to Filipino Americans and Filipinos as a primary audience for this discourse; however, this usage does not preclude members of other communities from engaging this concept. I simply focus on these communities as the terms discussed here – both *kapwa*, the Tagalog word, and *Kapwa*, the concept in Filipino psychology (_sikolohiyang Pilipino_) – are contextually, but not necessarily universally, Filipino and/or are based on Filipino experiences.
[^3]: Enriquez, Virgilio. "Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Perspektibo at Direksiyon." In _Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Teorya, Metodo, at Gamit_, edited by Rogelia Pe-Pua. 1976. Reprint, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1995.
[^4]: I capitalize "*Kapwa*" in reference to the Filipino psychology concept to draw contrast from the Tagalog word "_kapwa_," which means "fellow" or can be short for "_kapwa tao_," as in "one's fellow person."
​Nippy earlobes
# The Garden of Kapwa
Even before I became more involved in Filipino community space, I knew of *Kapwa* through the Filipino American leaders I encountered, online or in person, who employed it in their work. Although at times the Filipino American discourse around *Kapwa* could be a bit facile or even misinformed, *Kapwa*'s novelty, being a uniquely Filipino approach to understanding my own experiences, still allured me. For that reason, I still sought to incorporate *Kapwa* into my personal philosophy, yet I worried my own awareness would fall short if I spoke too broadly. It wasn't until I had read bell hooks' *All About Love* that I acquired a new framework for deepening my interpretation of *Kapwa*. It was last August, as I was leaving the Philippines last August and doing serious reflections about identity and leadership, when I began considering radical love, *Kapwa*, and relational leadership not as disjoint concepts, but as converging paths to liberation. I realized that truly cultivating *Kapwa*[^1] – to recognize a shared identity, of a self in unity with others, and embrace the emergent power thereof – can enable within us[^2] a transcendence into radical love.
To explore my personal concept of *Kapwa*, I've written this meditation on *Kapwa*, containing my personal reflections and thoughts. I hope that you'll find these ideas enlightening and that they'll broaden your perspective. Thank you so much for reading and supporting my work.
## The Garden of *Kapwa*
> Kapwa is a recognition of a shared identity, an inner self, shared with others. This Filipino linguistic unity of the self and the other is unique and unlike in most modern languages. Why? Because implied in such inclusiveness is the moral obligation to treat one another as equal fellow human beings. If we can do this – even starting in our own family or our circle of friends – we are on the way to practice peace. We are Kapwa People.
– Virgilio Enriquez[^3]
While our bloodlines may contain a tremendous wealth of shared, generational experience, which contributes to our sense of interconnected humanity, our *Kapwa*[^4] is not purely preprogrammed. As we partake in our earliest experiences with Filipino communities and cultures and internalize important cultural lessons about our humanity, we plant our first seeds of *Kapwa*. Still, we are subject to other influences within cultures and societies which raise us, internalizing the injustice, pain, and dysfunction we witness, especially when we are young and just starting to learn our cultural, social, and behavioral norms. A sense of *Kapwa* can be with us from an early age, but it will not flourish unless we choose to nurture it – and ourselves – and let go of unhealthy behaviors, harmful beliefs and biases, or other oppressive patterns. Without the intentional endeavor to fulfill its moral, ethical obligations or embrace the communal love which a concept like *Kapwa* implies, we may inadvertently act as *ibang tao* and behave dysfunctionally or cause harm to ourselves and others. This is why it is important for our *Kapwa* to be consciously cultivated, not simply inherited.
I speak very matter-of-factly regarding *Kapwa*, as if it is a natural part of our lives; however, the average Filipino may not acknowledge this concept in their daily life. But they – we – do not necessarily require a scholarly concept of *Kapwa* to exercise it or pursue it. As I said previously, *Kapwa* is a culturally based framework of analyzing and understanding our humanities, our selves, and our psyches. It is but one Filipino cultural embodiment of communal self-concept, which you can see at work in ordinary life: how we build community, how we nurture and love one another, how we acquire knowledge and learn, or how we confront problems. When my mother's rosary group meets and sets aside time to share their thanks, struggles, and hopes, that too can be *Kapwa*. When my fellow Filipino American organizers speak against discrimination in our spaces, that too can be *Kapwa*. Exploring and developing *Kapwa* through conscious effort is only one method for expressing it and building it.
Cultivating *Kapwa* can also be a spiritual journey. Seeing ourselves as connected with others, or *pakikipagkapwa*, can bring us closer to our friends, our family, our colleagues, and our peers. It encourages us to show more concern for our community, our nation, and our environment. In addition to an awareness of these connections, within *Kapwa*, who we are and what we do are just as important; *Kapwa* development involves personal commitments, invested emotions, and congruent actions directed both inward and outward, in response to our interconnectedness. Following spiritual guidance, which directs us to connect with others and our community, allows us to demonstrate our connectedness with feelings and actions as well as to reflect on and grow in *Kapwa*.
[^1]: As I had previously written in another article, I use *Kapwa* primarily in reference to "*a shared sense of self in Filipino culture, [with] implied moral and normative aspects*," the same terms in which it was coined by Virgilio Enriquez and reasserted by Katrin de Guia. My discourse in this article builds on that definition and seeks to provide an additional framework for understanding *Kapwa*'s manifestation in personal relationships and community work.
[^2]: Here, I use "us" to refer to Filipino Americans and Filipinos as a primary audience for this discourse; however, this usage does not preclude members of other communities from engaging this concept. I simply focus on these communities as the terms discussed here – both *kapwa*, the Tagalog word, and *Kapwa*, the concept in Filipino psychology (_sikolohiyang Pilipino_) – are contextually, but not necessarily universally, Filipino and/or are based on Filipino experiences.
[^3]: Enriquez, Virgilio. "Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Perspektibo at Direksiyon." In _Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Teorya, Metodo, at Gamit_, edited by Rogelia Pe-Pua. 1976. Reprint, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1995.
[^4]: I capitalize "*Kapwa*" in reference to the Filipino psychology concept to draw contrast from the Tagalog word "_kapwa_," which means "fellow" or can be short for "_kapwa tao_," as in "one's fellow person."