A Revelatory Tour

Exploring MLK to sooth my agitated mind

Photo by Darold Pinnock on Unsplash

Many of you found me here on Substack via the article I wrote in the Huff Post: My Gentle, Intelligent Brother Is Now A Conspiracy Theorist. I have received so many letters via every platform possible, wondering how we move forward, how to communicate without making it worse, without deepening the wounds. How do we reconcile the two sides of the same coin – love and anger – and communicate without canceling or making things worse?

My brother recently reached out, and we had a few interactions that agitated my mind for days. I re-listened to Ezra Klein’s conversation with the political theorist Brandon Terry which explores the nonviolent philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King called A Revelatory Tour of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Forgotten Teachings.

After downloading, re-reading, and jotting down so many good points and quotes, I was inspired to create this “remix” of their conversation. I wish I could say I’ve mastered these teachings, but I’m still taking the first steps on what looks to be a long, adventurous journey.

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A Revelatory Tour

Paradox.
A political action changes the person taking action 
in the process of becoming.
Calling us to be true to who we always already were,
a more perfect union ,
transcendencing essential American goodness over 
transitory American evils.
Every generation is called on to pick up and try to do 
better than their forebears requiring
inhuman discipline, 
a physical feat, a philosophical one.
imagining … 

Nonviolence. 
An aggressive attack on injustice,
to wedge yourself into the machinery of domination and 
live with evil in ways that won’t unleash 
bitterness, 
revenge, 
retaliation. 
Cut and heal at the same time.

“Cowardice is impotence, worse than violence,”
said Ghandi. 

Love.
Militant resistance and a higher-order ethical practice
toward peaceful reconciliation over the long term,
in a way that doesn’t leave a perpetual midnight of bitterness 
the ends prefigured in the means
informed by a philosophy of love and 
sharing the polity in perpetuity.

Dignity.
In conversation or conflict do  you
beat or convince?
A broader community is watching.
And then there’s you. 
nonviolent resistance turns on the question of 
dignity and self-respect. 
It’s a justice question, 
how you relate to your own sense of 
equality, 
equal standing, 
worth, 
somebodiness.

To acquiesce in the face of oppression and domination, 
without protest, is to abdicate your dignity.
Defend your dignity in a way that doesn’t degrade your character
that doesn’t turn you away from the good, 
from flourishing.
toward hatred, 
resentment, 
violence, 
rot.

Righteous Discontent.
Civility politics?
Virtue signaling?
Respectability?
A concession to people who don’t deserve the concession?
An idiosyncratic response?
in confronting a system of social stigma, shall we
take the dominant norms as unassailable or something to aspire to?
Acquiesce or accommodate ourselves to it? 

There’s a deeper question, 
thousands of years of moral reflection built up into it, 
virtue ethics 
your own flourishing and character. 
how to live a good life, 
crafting of your soul.

Virtue
What does hatred do to your life?
What does anger do to your life?
What does violence do to your life?
What makes this worth doing? 

Retaliation.
It sounds nice, right? 
We don’t want to hate –
hate corrodes our souls, 
But how do we practice a lack of hate?
Nonviolence of spirit? 
How do we acknowledge the legitimacy of anger but
build in a check on those kinds of rationalizations, 
emotional drives to humiliate others, to 
diminish their status. 
Retaliation doesn’t bring back the loved one lost. 
How do we channel our legitimate rage, regain our self-respect, 
shape a world where these evils are less likely to happen?

My own ego sloshes over the sides of my cup. 
My mental monologue is an endless recitation of 
arguments that haven’t yet happened
defending myself against
irresistible reactions to the way 
society and individuals treat us.

Connection
Internally reflect the world you want externally.
You will falter. You will fail.
There’s too much hurt. 
Frustration with how your allies abandoned. 
Open your faltering self up more for reflection, but
not in private.
Love other people by confronting them in public, in
uncomfortable situations where we have to 
endure the look of the other, 
extend these interactions of contentious politics until 
they alter or change ourselves and the people that we’ve 
put our bodies in close contact with.

Saintliness.
Out of reach? 
Or a deep faith in the future, that the universe
is on the side of justice.
Harness the strength to love the struggle, to
have faith that cosmic story is going to play out the way we want –
that evil is not the totality of who we are, that 
the unprecedented, the new, the unexpected.
It happens in this realm, saintliness. 

A complicated, 
complex swirl of contingencies. 
We can only move the ball forward 
We will inevitably fail but will 
do better the next time.

Wonder.
How do I reshape the emotional politics and the emotional structure of myself, of the people I’m in conflict with and then of the people who are bystanders or watchers of that conflict, for the better? It’s just a really different goal to be targeting, and just unimaginably harder than, can I come up with an argument that I think is a winning argument.

It’s easy to say this is wise. 
What it is, is challenging. But
winning corrodes.
When you beat somebody in an argument they feel humiliated, 
they go further into views they already held. 
They don’t come to you. 
They go to the people who will still make them feel good. 
Meeting something with equal and opposite energetic force, 
just adds energy to
an awful system and conversation. 
So you lose by winning.

Love. 
Argue from a sense of agape love, 
goodwill, not to expose them as ridiculous.
affirm their right to make the arguments
affirm their intelligence and judgment
enter into their mind,
reconstruct a position with sympathy, 
Then show why it falls short for the sake of 
justice, about reconciliation, about 
love. 

Cynicism.
We are in a moment of extraordinary cynicism. 
in the short term,cynicism takes advantage of your intellectual honesty, 
Turn the tide against the cynicism 
that has so corroded and corrupted.
Demonstrate humility and authenticity.
Put yourself at risk.
how else do we get out of a 
death spiral of mutually-reinforcing 
cynicism?