Rebecca Solnit is usually worth reading, and this short essay is a well-crafted example: This was a useful personal reminder that I ought to work on outgrowing my 'nym.
Rebecca Solnit is usually worth reading, and this short essay is a well-crafted example:
Someone at the dinner table wanted to know what everyone’s turning point on climate was, which is to say she wanted us to tell a story with a pivotal moment. She wanted sudden; all I had was slow, the story of a journey with many steps, gradual shifts, accumulating knowledge, concern, and commitment. A lot had happened but it had happened in many increments over a few decades, not via one transformative anything.
People love stories of turning points, wake-up calls, sudden conversions, breakthroughs, the stuff about changes that happen in a flash. Movies love them as love at first sight, dramatic speeches that change everything, trouble that can be terminated by shooting one bad guy, and other easy fixes and definitive victories. Old-school radicals love them as the kind of revolution that they imagine will change everything suddenly, even though a change of regime isn’t a change of culture and consciousness.
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Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite: an argument that the status quo must be changed, and it will take steadfast commitment to see the job through. It’s not accepting defeat; it’s accepting the terms of possible victory. Distance runners pace themselves; activists and movements often need to do the same, and to learn from the timelines of earlier campaigns to change the world that have succeeded.
This was a useful personal reminder that I ought to work on outgrowing my 'nym.
Rebecca Solnit is usually worth reading, and this short essay is a well-crafted example:
This was a useful personal reminder that I ought to work on outgrowing my 'nym.
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