Dear all,
I'm sorry this is so delayed--I just started thinking about my blog for this week and realized I totally forgot to submit last week's one.
Last week, in week 4, we focused on preparing a presentation for a local community in Iztapalapa, as a way to trial our training methods we were using in our chatbot. However, we found out less than 48 hours before our presentation that the whole thing needed to be in Spanish. After an initial moment of shock, we got to work translating and rehearsing our diction. I used my booming basso and Gilbert-and-Sullivan-trained diction to great effect, and the presentation was very well received. What we suspected about male dominance over financial information, and profound budgetary limits, in these communities was echoed by our audience (thanks to our amazing volunteer Jorge, who helped translate questions--shoutout). We also got to see one of the Utopia community centers in Iztapalapa, that provide food, sexual healthcare, and even a library (inside an old Boeing jet! Intended both to improve educational attainment and keep kids safe off the streets) to the local community, and got to visit an archive with decades of labor union history. Iztapalapa built its own community center in the absence of government funding, and its womens' and labor groups have a distinguished role in Mexican history, remaining vibrant to this day and even forming contacts with the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the 1990s. There were hammer and sickles on every wall in Iztapalapa, practically, and everyone in our audience was so warm, engaged, and committed to one another's flourishing.
We also took a boat tour of Xochimilco (At the Field of Flowers, for those following along at home), the remaining area of canals in Mexico City. (In pre-Columbian times, the entirety of the city was Lake Texcoco, with city-states like Tenochtitlan built on mostly artificial islands. The Spaniards paved over most of it, leaving us with the drainage problems we enjoy here today.) The tour itself was a bit too alcohol-centric for my preference, but people were genuinely super chill and inclusive. I'm never doing a Scorpion Shot with my one and only water bottle again, though... I loved discussing tax policy and social services with Yotam and Mila on the way home. Mila, you're based; Yotam, I respectfully disagree with you.
In terms of changemaker values, this week was Fast and Determined, given the pace of the Spanish recitation practice. In terms of virtues, this week I spent a lot of time wrestling with Transcendence. This is a bit of a non sequitur, but I thought I'd include it, especially in light of where I, your narrator from the future, know things are going. I read a great work of philosophical theology on the Problem of Evil this week, by Peter van Inwagen based on his Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews. For those unfamiliar with this philosophical problem, it's basically the issue of how an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity could be compatible with the existence of both great evils among human beings, and evils occurring in nature. Many explanations I've encountered before, rely on notions of testing, moral entitlement to reward or punishment, or God's self-glorification through the defeat of evil, none of which appeal to me in the slightest and some of which actively horrify me. van Inwagen tries something different, arguing that divine assistance in overcoming evil requires a degree of free human cooperation to even be possible, as if God is emergent from the consciousnesses of those open to universal love and unity. He gives a fascinating depunitivized reimagining of the Genesis narrative of the Fall, and argues that God allows us to err because their long-term goal is not only our right action, or earthly happiness, but our capacity to exist with God in equal (?!?!), independent yet interdependent dialogue and cooperation, which cannot be arrived at through paternalism or coercion. God allows this because of something they want that they cannot have without giving us free will and real responsibility for one another in the material world--a truly independent yet truly interdependent Other, an eventual loving companion in the stewardship of creation. They are always there to help us overcome perils when our minds and societies are open to this kind of influence, but otherwise they will not use force that erodes our ability to organically become ready. Because their omniscience is limited: they may know the answers to the question of preventing evil, but not to the question of how to fully actualize our highest potentials as differentiated, particular moral subjects, abilities that they created without owning, birthed without programming, knitted without dominating. To them, that capacity to be distinct subjects, creator and created co-creating, is worth the torment of the present. If this is true, then, since their wellbeing is intertwined to that of their creation by their omnibenevolence, they must know it will be worth it for each and every one of us too in this world or the world to come.
Why on Earth did I bring this up? Not to win any debates--I don't have any desire to change anyone's mind on theological or philosophical matters, though if anyone does want to argue with me in the comments that is more than welcome. Not to persuade anyone of the obvious analogies to the feminist political thought of Nancy Hirschmann, parenthood and raising (especially neurodivergent) children, or the principles of deliberative democracy. Just to say that I've been struggling a lot with guilt over my own fallibility and stress over the uncertainty and limitations of this project, and this perspective has helped me a great deal with managing that. I've struggled a great deal throughout my life with temptations towards self-abnegation and self-loathing, due to a desire to understand, falsify, or bear witness to the arbitrary and punitive restraints people around me have put upon one another, despite generally exempting me from. The last few years, I've navigated crippling guilt over mishandling some difficult social dynamics with other neurodivergent youth, especially in progressive organizing, back home. I've often feared that attempting to confidently narrate my own life or value system would sever me from the capacity to connect with others. As I face similar challenges with miscommunications, fears of failing the marginalized, and team building across barriers here, I've been reexamining that. Recognizing that I was not created to be an independent entity who narrates life to oneself as their only audience, nor a dependent entity who subordinates their rebellious will (the Calvinistic vision. It is often said that white autistic men are always reinventing Calvinism and I, raised secularly, at times cannot beat the allegations), but rather an interdependent entity who is able to honor the other, mortal and divine, by building my own will that needs no external justification but craves dialogue and sharing. The title of today's post is a reference to the song "Hieroglyphs" by the American folk group the Oh Hellos, which I adore as an exploration of this issue. Please check it out.
And only with this awareness could Peter Tarson possibly confront what awaited him in week five. Barely.
TO BE CONTINUED...