Dan Writes Something That Helps Me Center My Thoughts
I have been struggling to examine the issues of us/them for a year now. I have been thinking about the whirlwind of love and invective that comes on the heels of Blogher. First, from Dan.Unfolding Leadership: "It behooves us in this world of Desire — for accomplishment and self-realization, for possessions and love — to know which parts of ourselves are driven by self, and which are expressed from Self. We are so good at fooling ourselves in this hall of mirrors, failing to notice the self-interests in our altruism, the ommissions to our truths, the embarrassing contradictions in our values and inconsistencies of our actions. The point is that we are driven too often and by too much, driven by inner needs that are actually still stronger than we would like to believe — and this, of course, is what makes the hall of mirrors so powerful. We can’t really tell the differences between self and Self, particularly on some of the most important things."
Go and read the rest of Dan's piece. Lots of good thought there to help us look in the mirror first before we analyze everyone else.
I need help articulating what is percolating in my head. What I think, what I sense coming out of Blogher is about identity. Blogher in some ways asked us to define ourselves in a certain way. As women who blog. As mommy bloggers. As edubloggers. As feminists bloggers. As bloggers. So we try on these identities as individuals. We sense how we want to name ourselves, and react to how others try to name us. We react to our desires.
Then we start noticing others, and we form groups and we compare how we are different, separate, "the other." And it surfaces all sorts of things - including a lot of criticism.
So what's next? I think as we more clearly try on and adopt identities as individuals, then as groups, the next step is to see them in the context of an ecosystem. Of all the roles we play, the ones we claim as "labels" (in a postive sense), the ones we simply and quietly wear. We see how our roles interplay with others. How they would not even exist without the others. The "others."
Events like Blogher raise these issues, in their glory and their pain. They provoke and prod. They may even speed up the evolution of these individual and collective identities. So it is going to be messy. Most creative things are.
I don't really know what I'm trying to say, but it keeps trying to come out. So if you have any thoughts to help me, I'd be greatful.
posted by Nancy White at 9:50 PM
3 Comments:
us/them! yea!
This is part of my problem with us/them, with the Blogher aftermath, maybe with life.
At Blogher, I didn't feel like an us/them thing was happening (this is about me, not about the group) so I was a little shocked that so many people felt that way.
Then, I was more shocked to hear that women wanted more us/themness on the GLBT front. What? In one breath you're claiming you were separated from the mommybloggers and in the next you're insisting the lesbians and bis and trans folks be separated from the groups they were already happy to be a part of? Huh?
us/them is such a weird thing. It's easy to use it to help yourself and it's easy to use it to hurt others. It's easy to manipulate a situation or an event or life by claiming "us/them", "us/them", "us/them".
I need a vacation. With just a few us/thems - not 700. That was way too tiring and the aftermath is more so.
I think Nancy, that in IMHO, people bring to gatherings their self-defined identity, but, also feel that they are lacking or threatened if it differs from others.
It's their own baggage, to be sure. Honestly, I was overwhelmed in so many ways at BlogHer. But mostly by a sheer force of the different groups. And I feel that way about many instances - like young people at rock concerts, other mothers in PTA meetings, etc.
I feel I have to be clear on who I am before I can really engage in a group -- so that my foundation is secure enough to a bumblebee in a hive of massive purportions with one purpose.
Well, I wasn't there but it sounds as if the tensions around being one and being many were pretty clear. I like your notion of an ecosystem, Nancy, largely because it harks back to the central theme of community. A friend commented to me that diversity is what we are; inclusion is what we do with it.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home