There's good in this world worth fighting for

Walking composition

5% of this quarter’s On the Commons revenue will be given to All Nations Health Care. Next quarter’s 5% will be given to the People’s Food Sovereignty Project.

If you’re in need of a somewhat frivolous half-hour, Christy Hays Pickett had me on her Butte, America, radio show as part of the Dear Butte writing residency. We talked about candy, I read from a section on loneliness in A Walking Life—loneliness seems to be in the air these days—and we somehow stumbled into my wheat-ranching grandfather’s flying days and speculation on the probability that I’m a Russian spy. Christy is a very entertaining radio host and a wonderful singer-songwriter. (The interview starts at about one hour three minutes-ish into the audio on that link and goes for 25-30 minutes.)

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I did a podcast interview last week that ended up spinning itself into three hours of conversation (I’ll share it when it’s out; it will be edited way down), and one of the things we talked about was something that’s come up in conversation hundreds of times over the past several years: how do people connect across divides, across conflicting values and ideas of how the world should be?

Living in a county in Montana from which some of the worst legislation has inflicted itself on this state, not to mention that half my family lives in Russia, whose government chose to invade neighboring Ukraine with no justification, I know there aren’t easy answers to this. I believe in connecting with people, meeting them where they are, all the usual things. And I try to live that life. Aside from the other work I do, I walk three to five miles a day, most days, around town. People stop to talk with me all the time. Old friends, acquaintances, strangers. Sometimes we’re just talking about someone’s dog or their job, and sometimes others are telling me how to fix the world or that the Moon landing was faked and I’m trying to figure out where our common ground is.

When strongly opposing worldviews are between us, connection isn’t always enough. Anyone who’s put at risk by even one powerful person’s ideas of what the world and humans and our societies should be, or of how humans should be allowed to treat the entire living world, or of what some people think they’re entitled to take, knows this.

“Necessary but not sufficient” is one of the most useful metaphors I’ve ever drawn from my mathematics background. Connecting is necessary. Building trust and relationships are necessary. Committing to the place you’re in is, I think, necessary. It doesn’t mean any of it is sufficient enough to change what happens. But fighting for what’s good in the world is worth doing because it’s fighting for good, not because you know you’ll win. To indulge myself in a little Lord of the Rings (movie version) and quote Samwise Gamgee,

“I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

I am frequently worn out with in-real-life connecting and listening and persisting with difficult conversations. I’d like to check out completely and go live in a cabin in the woods, which is a thing that, unlike most people, I actually have the option of doing thanks to my stepfather building one in the 1970s. But even if I didn’t believe in doing the work that allows for a better world, it’s a mirage to think that any of us can truly escape the problems created by paradigms of domination. Frodo and Sam learned that on their quest to destroy the One Ring: the Shire was what kept them going, and at some point they realized also that it could never have been a refuge from what would happen if they failed.

Connection and understanding will not solve a divide created by belief systems that deny others’ right to exist, or only allow existence within narrow parameters. The only thing you can do is work hard enough or fight hard enough to diminish that paradigm’s power.

We all have our own capacities. I hope you are able to honor yours, while knowing that not everybody has that option. I’m not going to give up having difficult conversations, even if I never see one changed mind in my entire life (though honestly I could do with my anti-vaxx neighbor stopping with trying to get me to read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book) and even though I have trouble with anything that feels like confrontation. Spending time alone in the woods and the garden and on the prairie and by rivers and with people I care about restores and re-centers me, and also reminds me of what restores the world herself; it’s not all about me or my immediate family and friends. The more of us who can manage some of that, the better chance we have of leaving a decent world for generations we’ll never see. It’s not sufficient, but it’s still necessary.

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I was listening to a brief, light-on-the-brain podcast on the way to Butte, and ended up going back to it a couple more times for these lines:

“When I post about about how others did me wrong, it gets lots of engagement. Posts about personal accountability, much less. And that says a lot about us as a damn animal.”

I haven’t had a social media account for almost three years now and don’t miss it. I abandoned each platform for different reasons, and each for more than one reason, but the common thread and the fundamental one I’ve kept coming back to (and what keeps me off of Substack’s Notes) is This is not who I want to be. I would rather walk away from my writing career entirely than sacrifice my attention, my compassion, and my humanity to its growth.

I kept playing those podcast lines over and thinking of my quips a few weeks ago about fly-fishing white guys dominating all the environmental literature space. Which I still think is true! But it’s mostly not the fault of the writers themselves, and are acerbic comments the way to change it? Anyone who’s been reading this for any length of time knows my answer is going to be no, at least not for me. And not just because, while I have never enjoyed reading a single thing about fly fishing ever, not even once, I do personally like fishing.

What I was trying to get at was that the structures of publishing and the literary world are, like so many other things, shaped by hierarchies and the false scarcity inherent in the needs of capital and the “free” market. Anyone who thinks publishing is immune from these forces has never looked at the relationship between most books’ marketing budgets and their sales. Publishers (I’m talking about big publishers more than smaller ones) choose which books get those resources, which ones succeed, and there isn’t a lot of reasoning in the choices.

The crux of the issue is that the successes are then held up as the model for what any particular subject or genre is meant to be, whether it’s environmental writing or science fiction—their style or tone or perspective becomes the only acceptable way to approach whatever is being written about.

Taking science fiction’s relatively recent renaissance as a huge example, it’s obvious that this model is simply wrong. Falsely limiting the variety of any type of writing chokes off creativity and narrows the chance that any given person out there in the world will come across—or write!—a story they sorely need.

Someone shared a passage from an interview with poet and essayist Ocean Vuong recently that speaks to the heart of how the literary world’s structures attempt to co-opt creativity:

“Competitions, prizes and awards are part of a patriarchal construct that destroys love and creativity by creating and protecting a singular hierarchical commodification of quality that does not, ever, represent the myriad successful expressions of art and art making. If you must use that construct, you use it the way one uses public transport. Get on, then get off at your stop and find your people. Don’t live on the bus, and most importantly, don’t get trapped on it.”

(Not sure I exactly get the bus metaphor, and also not sure patriarchal constructs are the only issue here, but I agree in general and always like knowing someone’s a fan of public transit.)

That construct works in tandem with publishing itself. Only a few people receive awards and accolades and big book advances, which doesn’t negate the fact that everyone has a right to creativity. To write. To tell their stories. To express their own ways of seeing the world’s beauty and talking about their own pain. To see the worth in their own stories without needing an audience of thousands or millions to validate them. A system of scarcity constrains that ability, and limits the kinds of stories we get to read.

We all connect with different work. Science fiction and fantasy have brought a tremendous amount to my life, and will continue to do so, while for many people those genres hold no interest. There are nonfiction writers who have changed thousands of people’s lives for the better but whose narratives I can’t seem to connect with. None of these things makes the work good or bad, worthy or not.

I’m as judgmental as anyone else, and on this I’m trying to do better. Just because I don’t want to read anything about fly fishing ever again doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who want and even need that writing. I just don’t want the publishing and literary worlds to cede those books and writers every possible resource and bit of space and attention at the expense of all the other stories and storytellers who make this world a more interesting and complex place.

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Human societies always, always need connection and relationships and trust, much of which is built or broken through the stories we tell one another, and the stories we believe—the stories we think we know—about one another. I don’t think that will ever change, and at the same time connection and relationships aren’t always enough. Sometimes we are forced to fight against or walk away from those who would harm us.

Trying to figure out where that line is—where talking works and where fleeing or fighting back in some form is the only option—might be one of the more slippery questions that comfortable people face. It’s that very comfort that misleads many into thinking things are fine or action is unnecessary. This was pointed out to me in several different ways when I was interviewing researchers for an essay on riots that I wrote for Aeon a few years ago:

“People don’t engage in unrest for the fun of it, or because they’ve lost their rationality to a mob mentality; they do it because they feel they have no other choice.”

It’s very easy to think people who are not ourselves do have a choice when our own safety or comfort isn’t what’s under threat, when we can tell ourselves a different story about what’s happening. But the structures and systems supposedly in place to make democracy and justice work are often broken, dysfunctional, or intentionally undermined, and that has always been the reality.

This is something stories help us to do: to enter into suffering that isn’t necessarily one’s own, and to understand what’s at stake. To work for what is right rather than for what benefits us. Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, and the rest of the surviving Fellowship of the Ring didn’t go into battle assuming they’d survive it and be covered in glory; they did it to give Sam and Frodo, and therefore the rest of Middle Earth, a chance. They imagined lives other than their own.

When we can encourage as many iterations of as many stories as possible to be told and heard, what people imagine is possible becomes multi-dimensional rather than one, linear, acceptable way of being.

We need imagination and courage if we’re ever going to see change for the better, if we’re ever going to see a world where everyone can read the books, smell the flowers, write the stories, go for the walks, be fed and sheltered and loved without fear, be their full, true selves on a living planet that has no need to restrict who that is, a planet who has, and always has had, enough for all. A planet who herself needs our love, care, stories, and courage. There’s good in this world of so many kinds, and it’s always worth fighting for.

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Thunderstorm over Butte. Montana summers used to have a lot of thunderstorms when I was growing up, especially in August. They’ve been almost daily here and it’s made me nostalgic.

I know too many people in pain right now for all sorts of reasons, with societal pressures adding not-so-slowly to the crushing weight, and am hoping you can take a minute to check in with yourself. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about these kinds of things recently, whether over email or in interviews or personal conversation, mostly about connecting across divides and about loneliness. A lot of us are not doing well.
Loneliness and isolation are weapons used by totalitarian and authoritarian governments for a reason: to make us forget our interconnectedness, to make us believe that whatever our struggles, we are alone. But none of us, truly, is alone, no matter how convincingly the deadening weight of loneliness creeps into the limbs. You are not alone.