Politics and the beautiful soul

And it takes us back to the question of how one relates to a collective when it goes wrong or seems to fail. The BS has a simple solution: if the party lets you down, you leave it. Cancel your subscription. That’ll teach them! Except it won’t: a political party isn’t like a girlfriend or boyfriend. You may get the pleasant sensation of having been cleansed of something disappointingly compromised, but leaving and sulking has no effect on it at all. Meanwhile the world rolls on.

This quote stuck out to me, as I feel like it captures a truth that's resonant beyond just politics. Disposability is embedded into nearly everything: a product of widespread choice and convenience. If I don't like the video I'm watching, I turn it off and move on. If I'm done with my plastic fork, I toss it in the trash. If I'm not happy with someone, I shut them out. Disposability is enabled by replaceability. There are plenty of new videos to watch; there's a whole box of plastic forks in my kitchen drawer; there are plenty of other people I can spend my time with.

While disposability certainly has its place, it also has its weaknesses too. Nothing is built; nothing transforms; nothing changes. You simply shuffle your resources from what's available to you; bringing new things to the forefront. But what happens when you can't shuffle? What happens when there isn't a replacement?

Let's say I was a Bernie supporter and I don't like the DNC. I can decide to toss them out, but then I'm stuck with the reality that there isn't a replacement being shuffled in. There isn't some other entity that can take its place, save the RNC, but if I'm a Bernie supporter then that's a complete non-starter. The idea that sometimes disposability is not possible and we have to work through difficulty, imperfection, and philosophical difference is challenging, as anyone who's ever had a difficult teammate for a project can tell you.

I fear it's only going to get more challenging moving forward. People are increasingly siloed in like-minded communities, and modern consumption habits encourage disposability seemingly everywhere. I've talked before about how I like Tildes because our community size inhibits disposability of interpersonal relationships. There are people on the site who, initially, rubbed me the wrong way with their commenting. On any other site it would have been easy to just block and move on, but here, I get to see and coexist with them, in thread after thread. The upside to this is that this coexistence has given me a more complete and textured picture of them. They are so much more than the one bad comment I saw from them initially. They are significantly more complex than just that one hot take I didn't like, or that one combative back and forth I happened to observe. This has helped me better appreciate them as people, to the point that I now value them in our community. If I'd disposed of them in the beginning, I never would have gotten to the appreciative place I am now in the first place. The disposal would have locked in a negative opinion, seemingly indefinitely, and it would have locked out avenues for change. How can my opinion of someone change if they have no presence in my life?

Admittedly, this is a hard line to walk. I've also talked before about how I'll no longer abide people who refuse to treat me with dignity or respect for being gay. I suffered through a lot of it, and I admittedly did a lot of really important work in hostile communities and with hostile people. I've had many people personally thank me for changing their minds about gay people. In fact, early on in being out, I was the first openly gay person many people had ever met. A good friend once told me "I think I'd be a raging homophobe if it weren't for you", and it was some of the most affirming personal praise I've ever received. People's minds can change. Relationship building through difficulty can be transformative. There is so much more to each of us than the elements for which others would regularly "dispose" of us.

When I was younger, I had the energy, patience, and mindset to do strong advocacy work like that, but I'm not that person any more. It's too tiring, too personally upsetting, and I no longer have it in me to fight that tide. So, when presented with someone who is openly hostile to me, I would just as soon dispose of them than try to engage with them, give them the benefit of the doubt, and learn to see their individual and complex humanity just as I hope they learn to see mine. But again, how can I expect them their opinion of me to change if I have no presence in their life? Disposing of them cuts me out of their life as well. I lose my seat at their table, but I also have to ask myself, is it worth sitting at their table at all?

I, like much of what I post here, don't have good answers to any of this. I think there's also a huge part of this that I've left unexamined that ties into the idea that this widespread "relationship disposal" is encouraged by social media platforms who thrive on novelty of content as well as the quickly burning flames of interpersonal conflict that lead to such disposals in the first place.