Breaking the Binary
When dreaming of new futures we have to face the ways we have become attached to, and complacent in, the present. To dream requires breaking the binary keeping us from other possibilities.
You have to believe folks when they show you who they are.
That includes yourself to yourself.
We are in a time of praxis. When theory and practice come together and you truly see what you and others are made of in terms of embodying who you say you are.
And nothing brings this out more than having to face and bear witness to state-sanctioned violence in real time and seeing responses by those in power that contradict what is being witnessed…in real time.
So who do you believe?
What YOU are seeing, hearing, reading, FEELING?
OR
What the state tells you is going on in order to protect “state interests”?
You have to believe folks when they show who they are in.
That includes yourself to yourself.
Currently in the US we are at the start of an ongoing and long Presidential campaign season that will only be ramping up as the weeks go on. While the Republicans figure out who they will put up for the nomination, the forefront runner is a man who is also on trial at the same time with a plan that would continue to consolidate power into the hands of the President alone.
A party that was once anti-“BIG” government has now pivoted into unabashed and full on authoritarian rule. AKA fascism with consolidation of national power into the hands of one leader under an authoritarian-religious ideology.
The Democrats are running the same candidate who has unapologetically supported the actions and continued violence of the state of Israel against the Palestinians while also supporting the suppression of U.S. voices who are against this alliance with no real party plan except that they are not Republicans.
If these are the choices we have, the only choices we have, why are we accepting it?
Are we accepting that the facade of democracy and freedom touted by both sides is finally crumpling at the feet of the state, and so people are just resigned to this being it?
OR
Can we see this as the Emperor truly having no clothes, showing people we actually have more power than we give ourselves credit for. But, how do we harness and wield it for the common good?
You have to believe folks when they show who they are in.
That includes yourself to yourself.
The rigid binary is a foundational logic rooted within Western knowledge production, therefore it is the way we are conditioned to process information and experience life. When your mind is rooted in this binary way of thinking, it impacts how you see and perceive yourself and those around you.
This type of binary thinking is stiff, but can become flexible when concepts/ideologies/identities need opening in order for power to have the resources and support to continue. Think legal scholar Derrick Bell’s concept of “interest convergence” where he argues that the majority will only support minority interests if their interests align, using the ruling of US Supreme Court of Brown v Board of Education and its aftermaths as an example.
The binary ends up binding ones mind and sight to a rigid way to being. When that binary is challenged in anyway, it then challenges an assumption one may or may not have ever faced. Ever questioned.
And now your personal sense of Self feels challenged, so you double down and defend the binary logic. A logic that is not allowing you to understand the ways your possibilities have been predetermined for you, which ultimately benefits the current power structure.
When you have attached yourself to this thinking and rooted in its rigidness you will become a vessel for its continuation. Even if it keeps you subjugated to systems and structures that need your commodification for their existence.
So we have a choice. Break from a binary way of seeing, thinking and imagining and allow ourselves to sit in the duality of life.
Of living.
Of learning how to live in and with the duality of life.
This is a societal crossroads. A hard and direct crossroad that is forcing us all to look at ourselves and see what we do when faced with the inevitability of change - stark change that will impact everyone in one way or another.
See revolution and rebellion sounds good in the theory. We can invoke the stories of the past we are told about those who fought against their oppressors, taking their freedom through coercion AND consent.
Yet, those stories had consequences and many times are told in the present through the eyes of power. This gives us an incomplete portrait of the multifaceted and contradictory nature of freedom making and taking in the historical record.
So the questions you ask about the past, and from WHOSE perspective you are asking them from, will heavily determine how you see, understand, and then attempt to ENACT those practices in the present.
And this is the crossroads we are all facing - globally, nationally, locally, personally.
Are we willing to take action on working with the energy of change that is here? Or will we become complacent to the current structures that keeps us in this loop of dehumanization and violence?
The choice, truly, is ours.
BELIEVE YOUR REALITY!
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My name is Dr. Nicole Truesdell and I am an innovative Independent Organizational and Educational Consultant, Executive Coach, Astrologer, Speaker, and the Founder of Abolitionist Dreamscapes, an imaginative and creative space to explore our humanity outside socio-political identities.
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