The Cults We Join

I've been thinking about cults, the ones we join, the ones we reject, the ones we leave once we recognize we're in them.  The cults where we STAY when we recognize them as functioning in the structure of a cult around us.

Cult    |    non-Cult x(cross with)    Awareness  |   non-Awareness

I am aware I am in a cult.        |      I am aware of the difference between cult and not-cult enough to 

                                                 |     articulate reasons why I am not in a cult.

_________________________________________________________________________

I am not aware I am in a cult.  |      I am not aware of the difference between cult and not-cult.    

In my upbringing, there are Christian-y scripts against cult-like behavior.  

Don't join things which look like cults--long flowing fabrics, singing, exuberance.  THey're moonies or hippies and definitely doing drugs, so stay far from that. They might even socialize with non-white people as equals.  Keep far from that.

[I'm developing a new writing genre of bulleted listicle of loosely connected ideas which eventually devolves into gibberish, like grains of sand blowing off the page, leaves of grass, representations of nature, or the nature of reality, cliches deconstructed into new cliches, into memes which are really subtweets which are really shade, which are really a way to write one's personal manifesto through coded signals in social media posts "I exist digitally!  And IRL!  And this artifact documents and archives my relations to these places, people, objects, ideas!" "I'm sharing"

I'm laid up with a sore back, and the last time it acted up like this I stayed home from spending the day with people who really didn't want me to be around them.  

It is as if my back pain is an urgent message from my body to stop doing water I am about to do.

A few years ago my bf and his kids went on a weeklong trip together.  Four days in and my back said no.  I stayed behind and it was good that I took it easy rather than push ahead.  But mostly because being with the kids and Marty stressed me so much.  It was an important step towards me recognizing I don't have to try to be stepMom to people who don't want me to be in their life like that.  [me recognizing a cult I'm not in--painfully at first, but now accept and everyone is much happier]

It isn't a failure.  They have a cult to which I don't belong, and that's ok.  I don't have to be in total accord with everyone in my family.  With people who don't recognize me as family.  

Putting clear boundaries around what I'll tolerate and what I won't looks suspicious to people who earlier didn't recognize my boundaries.

I have had them all along.  I am making them explicit so people know where I stand, what and who I will tolerate.  And by putting my word out here, on the line, I'm begging someone to hold me accountable to it.  An accountability buddy in the ether.  Make me do the things I say I want to do. please.

the cults I've joined, the cult of higher education (settler colonial, meritocracy discourse, pedigree/degree, exclusivity.)  The cult of whiteness, of American exceptionalism, of midwestern nice, of Bay View.  The "local food movement". 

the ones I reject, the social registry, 

the ones I leave (am leaving) once I recognized them. Breaking up with white supremacy, as Dr Tressie explains: https://tressiemcphd.medium.com/breaking-up-with-white-supremacy-was-always-the-end-game-e7101f578363

Breaking up with heteronormativity, with compulsory heterosexuality/marriage/procreation, breaking up with father-centric nuclear family model, breaking up with White Feminism (tm), breaking up with accepting that global oil cartels should dictate climate action, breaking up with political structures which do not answer to the democratic will of the people.  White evangelical christianity, breaking with being a "good ____" when that means compromising my standards for some asshole who doesn't reciprocate.

The cults where I STAYed even after I recognize them as functioning in the structure of a cult around us.

My writing cult

My deep listening practice.

My military veteran identity

Music

Dick

Yoga, buddhisty philosophy

feministy theories

---

I'm interested in the cults I STAY in because of the self-awareness.  And the power of denial.  And the possibility of figuring out strategies to deprogram myself.  To leave a guide for others who wish to deprogram.  What's on the other side we wonder?  

To decide which of my cults are worth it, which need to be rejected even if it's painful to me.  Painful to lose a job, to lose status/recognition, the future promise of a retirement account or world travel or whatever it was that I thought I was entitled to because of [education, whiteness, US passport, fill in the blank other subjectivities I am aware of and unaware of].  Painful to lose relationships, lifelong friendships, the esteem of a parent or sibling.  Divorce. To lose opportunities I felt entitled to because of my cult affiliation.

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Prof Glick's assignment on self-reflection of cult indoctrination behavior

My freshman year at Lawrence, I took Prof Peter Glick's Intro to Psych course (he eventually became one of my advisors).  He had an awesome essay assignment for us to learn about the traits of cult indoctrination/compliance, and then for us to reflect on a time when we were subjected to examples of cult indoctrination.  I had just returned from army basic training that summer, so I had plenty to write about with regards to sleep deprivation, chanting songs and phrases, wearing uniforms (I mean really, even head shaving for the males), identifying a common enemy etc.  I mean, the command chain for basic training is called TRADOC:  training and indoctrination.

So I've been thinking about cult indoctrination since at least 1989.  More formally the past few years as I process my educational experience of grad school in relation to the subject.  In order to survive college ("traditional" college, which I deconstruct elsewhere), one has to leave one's family and social structures.  By definition the process of higher ed is meant for personal transformation--from a child to a "man", an "educated" adult, perhaps even a more valued member of society, raising one's social position and earning power. I  mean, all of these definitions are creepily elitist constructions that we in higher ed just OVERLOOK? wtf. yes, of course higher education is a structure which produces and reproduces structures of inequality.  If you want to read my 270 page dissertation on the subject, click here.

One must "orphan" oneself in order to participate in these structures of Whiteness, Settler Colonialism, Plantation-class: in order to participate in higher education in a "traditional" sense (18 year old unencumbered by bills or dependents or off-campus work, at present usually mortgaging the future with a student loan with the  plan to get a high enough paying future job which will cover that monthly bill(a highly exploitable human commodity, not even a cog in the machine but the fuel which turns the rusty cogs of the higher ed machine, some of the same gears which grind up our students in the process (gumming up--)))

Hannah Arendt (below) wrote of "we refuges" 

and interpellation--having an identity thrust upon you, which doesn't make sense.  Refugees we became as we joined the cult of the college, thereby being rejected by family/supports with whom we used to have reciprocal relations.  Alien to both landscapes.  Unrecognized because untethered by commonality and mutuality.

Many many of us are untethered.  Many more will become so as internally displaced people due to climate change, due to covid disruptions to their living situations.  Due to leaving family structures which had been toxic and finally became untenable because they recognized they had boundaries that their family wasn't respecting and the best thing to do was to reduce access to safe levels for harm reduction.  

People are mobile and are looking to the future, how to build the future.

I'm building the structures.  I'm the welcome wagon.  Welcome to the future--we're glad you're here.

Join this cult.

We fully acknowledge our belief systems--who we are and what we stand for, what we'll tolerate and what we won't.  You're free to come and go as you please, without coercion, but being with us means behaving to our group norms.  You're in or out based on what you do/choose.

___

Joy comes in the Covid Morning

Who survives? What will they need? How do we bring in the orphans?

How to deprogram from a cult?

How to join a cult? (reference Prof Glick's assignment on self-reflection of cult indoctrination behavior)

Valkyries and White Entitlement

Greta Thunberg is a climate Valkyrie--bring us through this battle nordic witch!  Tell it like it is!

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/30/hannah-arendt-jewishness-we-refugees/

Arendt addresses the complexities of that identity in a powerful essay titled “We Refugees,” penned in the 1940s and included in the Arendt anthology The Jewish Writings (public library). Although its subject is Jewishness, the essay speaks stirringly to the broader tragedy of being thrust into refugee status on account of some fragment of one’s identity — be it religion or nationality or gender or ethnicity or any other variable of exclusion and discrimination.

In the first place, we don’t like to be called “refugees.” We ourselves call each other “newcomers” or “immigrants.”

A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical political opinion. With us the meaning of the term “refugee” has changed.

 The Disposable Single Use School District Infrastructure, thanks to Boomer Rationale

"You Best Keep Moving:  Some Proud Boys Just Checked Into this Hotel"

https://tressiemcphd.medium.com/breaking-up-with-white-supremacy-was-always-the-end-game-e7101f578363

Breaking up with White Supremacy, breaking up Cis-heteronormativity, breaking up with male supremacy, breaking up with christian supremacy, breaking up with bad relations in general

How to get more to break up?

How to bring in the orphaned?

thisishumantrafficking.com. coercion, misrepresentation, how UBI would disrupt the structures of human trafficking

Learning about consent from traumatized kittens

 We got two kittens from the humane society--brothers--who are shy and need human socializing.

When we met them at the human society, one of them didn't even come out of the crate--just trembled and hissed.

I've been socializing these kittens, and it's reminding me of all sorts of things I used to know about positive and negative reinforcement, about how to change behaviors, which seemed like a big part of my job as a middle school teacher.  

I think about parents who feel out of control in their parenting--they don't' have the ability or the authority to reinforce positive behaviors or extinguish negative behaviors.  In fact, some parents reinforce racist and bigoted behaviors and extinguish empathic behaviors. (Article/Book about nice white parents, school choice, nice stuff for white kids but not for other kids, so white kids get advantage, encouraging a sense of entitlement and impunity) (JG: The white world is guarded--don't hear white people talking about this world re equity) (Keep secrets, hidden info, twisted the situation, xenophobia--don't want to have diversity actually, just as a brand enhancement but not the actual work/investment to enact the vision)

Socializing feral kittens has been a master class in paying attention to small indications/gestures, helping someone feel safe, recognizing when it's not a good time, tiny celebrations of building trust.  It's so easy to lose trust with one action.  Relationships are built with hundreds of positive interactions which build predictability, acknowledgement and even affection.

Things I am remembering:

1. Relationships are built on repeated contact.

1.a. Repeated contact requires recognition of an event.  Shared acknowledged recognition of another being, a head nod, a per bow, a "how you doin'?" --these behaviors begin to acknowledge reality by recognizing beings in your environment.  Human people, pets, animals, plants, birds, rocks, trees--whatever you perceive.  Amplify them by acknowledging them.  Eye contact, a smile, wave.  A finger-raise from the steering wheel--you recognize it when someone recognizes/acknowledges you.  That's the first part of my work.  Seeing and recognizing the beings in my path, in my ecosystem, flowing through the Market.

2. Consistency.  Every time.  We build our integrity through every individual interaction with ourselves, our thoughts/feelings and other beings.

3.  Learn the names.  Learn first names or preferred terms of address of people in your sphere.  Learn the many names they may have.  Do the same with plants and birds.   

Clerks at the store with nametags--try using their name in your interaction:  "Thank you, Carol.  Have a good day".  Start simple.  

Get brave and introduce yourself to "regulars" in your life--delivery people, people in your neighborhood.

4.  Part of our problems communicating is that we look past people in our immediate environment because their are different from us, especially white-identifying people.

Look AT people, not past them.

Drive through service workers--yes, they are also people.  Greet them.  Say thank you.  Make eye contact. ffs.  Human--they're a fellow human.  Celebrate that by smiling or nodding or making eye contact or bowing or waving--a gesture of recognition, a ritual of integration.  Namaste--hello--hi, I see you.

CONSENT:  fearful kittens do not consent to interactions with scary people.  How to build trust on the road to consent?  Lots of interactions based in good will, paying attention to their needs, pushing them ever so gently to become bold and brave.  To enact their innate curiosity requires a baseline sense of safety.  When they first came to us, the smaller one JiJi hid from us.  When I would inch closer, he'd hiss and growl.  He came with an upper respiratory infection and meds, and we had to "force" them into the kitty--grab with a towel, fill the syringe, get as much as we can into his mouth.  It was awful.  Within a day we figured out what food they liked and was able to mix the medicine into the food, making it much less traumatic.  Over the next several hours and days, I worked to create conditions for JiJi to feel safe and secure, gradually inching closer and closer during feeding and resting and playing.  There's still a way to go, and perhaps he'll never be a gregarious kitty who approaches strangers.  However, I love that he's allowing pets and purring <3

[I'm using these posts to help me organize ideas/get feedback from my co-writers--forgive their incompleteness/errors as they are process tools]

We are not safe here

 Months ago I had a conversation with a friend about Black students at her university.  It was during/just after the BLM protests were getting attention this summer, and however belatedly, the university or one particular administrator, reached out to her (as a Black woman) to help them brainstorm ways to make Black Lives Matter on campus.  

The more she reflected on it, she could not in good conscience help the university re-brand themselves as suddenly woke, suddenly supportive of the unique needs that Black students in particular might have on a predominantly White campus, with disproportionately White faculty and disproportionate representation of people of color in maintenance roles on campus.  Who is maintaining what here?

It looks like lots of folks maintaining the structures of inherited privilege, of a White settler colonial mindset which posits that all the non-White folks around here can benefit from learning, can make their way up the corporate ladder if only they spend tuition dollars here.  

We realized that not only is it disingenuous to welcome students who are not welcome.  It is dangerous.  Students have been shot by security on this campus.  Heck, staff and faculty have been driven out of town by the structures of Whiteness and preserving privilege.  We are not safe here.

As the summer wore on, we realized that the needs of the NCAA and associated contracts with media were going to make sure college football happened this fall, which necessitated "opening campus".  Even before Covid, we knew that universities didn't give a duck about their athletes as humans, as students.  Risk of Closed Brain Injuries from repeated blows? Don't hate the player, hate the game.  Biology lab is scheduled during practice?  I guess you don't get to major in biology, son.  We are not safe here.     

Two days ago, armed men strolled into the US Capitol, with the assistance of Capitol Police who just months ago were teargassing peaceful protesters.  They placed two explosive devices.  They bragged of plans to execute elected officials.  They took selfies, trashed offices, stole things, posted photos on social media, and walked right back out, back to their hotel rooms and their flights out of town.  

Building the Beloved Community

Martin Luther King, Jr said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation.

Begin in the self and build out: love in the heart, love in the home, love in the block, love in the community.

I've written a lot about Orphaning, Fabricating Legitimacy

What does it look like to come in from an "orphaning"?

--refugees

--homeless

--people struggling with poverty

--people struggling with health problems, including mental anguish

--people experiencing destabilizing health effects (hello Covid!): nutrition, housing, basic needs

--people who have been systematically exploited and excluded from supports intended for people like them--survivors of human trafflicking (including adoptions)

Residential schools with graveyards--as an educator, it galls me to think of running an organization that has so many deaths of children that it has to set aside a plot of land to bury them.

Internment and concentration camps, prisons, detention centers.

Naive pollyanna Karen suggests perhaps this coming in can look like relational food.

I draw a binary between relational food and branded food.

Relational food is food that I know and acknowledge and trust all of the relations who produced it--I trust who managed the soil, who picked it in the field (and who "supervised" that person was just and fair, paid a above-table living wage), who washed it, prepared it, served it, cleaned up after it, composted it.

Branded food--all those relational trust points are obscured by a STORY about the food.  Photos of a heritage farm.  Price points that indicate luxury, which surely must imply that if I pay this much for this steak or whatnot then everyone down the line has also been paid well.  That this isn't in fact raccoon meat ground in with what it is supposed to be because some USDA inspector never has the resources to actually inspect the meatpacking company.

Either I have relationships with food producers

or

I have brand stories which are placeholders for relationships.  Sometimes deceptive by intention.

Room on the Broom

https://fb.watch/2QPnYvnbAr/

Harlem Nocturne

I have been teaching music lessons for a private tutoring and music business since October 2019.  Twice a year they have a recital and encourage faculty to also prepare a piece to perform.

Since I had just started teaching with them and didn't have anything prepared, I ducked out of the Dec 2019 recital.  When the June recital rolled around, I had the pandemic as an excuse, even though I had started learning Harlem Nocturne.  

 I could not figure out how to play without an accompanist:  my jazz pianist friend Kelly Flemming Dallmann had suggested I learn this awesome piece, and then we found we could not rehearse together or apart.  I started trying to learn how to accompany myself, to record a solo oboe track and then play chords as a second track (oh hi D7b9 chord!).  I also considered tricking my boyfriend into learning these complicated jazz chords to play with me (I did succeed in tricking us both into playing Bach two-part inventions/etudes as a duet).

Kelly and I exchanged dozens of takes of us attempting our parts without the other player.  These takes were very helpful to me and also very frustrating as recording oneself without another player's part causes me to scrutinize every sound, the beginnings and endings of every pitch, the gasps of breath trying to make it to the next phrase without any cover. Cringe after cringe.  It's sort of the worst part of music for me--the solitude of playing out of context, without the magic of communicating with other musicians.

As the deadline loomed for submitting a video for the Dec 2020 recital, Kelly and I stepped up our rehearsing and recording.  A week before Christmas, with all the busyness of that time of year, Kelly made the trip to my house for a masked socially-distanced take or two (or ten).  There were many good moments musically, and this is the one I chose to share:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xsFsVdaCoT8neg5cPIQQ3i3bQG4pQR34/view?usp=sharing

Getting run out of town

"I had no idea that you felt driven out of town and college here, it makes me sad. I thought you left because it was impossible to finish your degree from here. I know academia is often as cut throat as business or government, I didn’t know that this is what happened to you."

It was "impossible" to finish my degree at a distance, which of course, people are now doing due to Covid.  So many things which were "impossible" were just excuses not to make education accessible to more people, part of what is so broken about higher education in general.

In 2007 when I was the interim director of the developmental education program at Adams State, I applied for the position when it was advertised.  The job description indicated MA required/PhD preferred but not required. At the time I had an MA, relevant experience at other schools/orgs, and was successfully doing the job.  The committee decided to change the requirement and told me I was not eligible for the position. They then had a failed search, finding no one to fill the position.  I continued to do the work, and the business office just renamed my position to something else (a "coordinator" rather than a director).  It kept the same budget code for my salary.  I basically did the same work, but seemed to have been reclassified as non-faculty.  No clear answers about who decided what, what things meant, etc, so my boss basically empowered me to keep doing the work I had been doing but to be wary and innovative, to work on grant funding opportunities, so that if at some point they eliminated my position I would have other options. There was a lot of precarity starting in 2008 through to when I left in June 2015 (you'll recall 2008 was a recession year as well).

In 2012 I started a (mostly online/summers) post-masters Specialist in Education degree, because my then boss said I could get a pay increase.  I completed the EdS in 2014.  Was then told there were no funds for a raise at that time.

As you'll recall, the RGFP lawsuit was occurring during that time.  Before I agreed to be a plaintiff, I asked my then boss what he thought about my participation with the case, if there was a conflict of interest, if there was any reason he saw that I shouldn't become a plaintiff.  He saw no conflict, didn't think I would receive retaliation for participating in the lawsuit.

The EdS degree was essentially the first two years of a doctorate of education, and the university where I completed the EdS was willing to accept 24 credits of it into their doc program, which I applied to and to which I was accepted.  Before I applied, I talked at length with my boss about the feasibility of me being able to do a leave of absence for the four semesters that the university REQUIRED to take place in person.  Over several months the doc program director, my boss and I put together a personalized degree plan which would allow me to attend in-person for the sixteen weeks of the semester, to keep my health insurance through ASU, and to do my research projects as ASU-benefitting research projects, including me promising to write my dissertation as an ASU project.  I planned to return to Alamosa during breaks from the semester and summers, and to do my fieldwork for my dissertation in Alamosa.

Two weeks before the end of the fiscal year (and my contract renewal date) in June 2015, I learned that my boss' job and my job, our whole division, were being eliminated and reorganized.  He had tenure, so he lost his VP role but is now warehoused in an academic department awaiting his soon retirement.  My position was eliminated.

I had a few short weeks to figure out what to do.  I wasn't planning to sell my house or step away from my relationships with the LFC (I was board president) or the other organizations I was involved with, but suddenly I was faced with lost income I had planned on, trying to rent/manage my property from a distance, or find a house sitter? Plus manage my expenses with out of state tuition, (no tuition support from my employer) and full-time student status?  I needed to liquidate the equity from my house. I decided it would be best to sell and make a clean break since there was no future guarantee of employment there. I ended up selling my house at a loss to the university because of the short time frame of getting my affairs in order after losing my job (and health insurance) with so little notice.  I had also just started long-distance dating my now partner and knew I would be attending classes in North Carolina starting in the fall--it was likely I could find full-time work there if I was open to it.  So I made the decision to sell the house, give away everything that didn't fit in the trailer, and start a new life wherever I landed.  

That isn't exactly getting run out of town, but it certainly didn't feel like I was "appreciated" for all the work I had done in the community.  I know I'm an asset to employers, but ASU definitely didn't signal that to me.  In fact, since the strange job search that wasn't in 2008, I had felt like I constantly needed to justify my existence, to take on more and more responsibilities in order to legitimize my role there.  As if I was merely tolerated.  I had always been a high-achiever kind of person, but that specific set of pressures caused me to throw myself into grant-writing, creating new programming, developing and teaching new courses, bringing the AmeriCorps program to campus (Mary Hoffman had been trying for years to make that happen), partnering with TSJC, partnering with all the Valley K-12 districts, organizing an all-valley HS junior visit to campus for ACT academy, teaching faculty development workshops, integrating service learning into the curriculum of a dozen different departments, serving on planning and hiring committees, inaugurating the common reading program, redesigning the library/renovation.  There were days I was on campus at 7 am.  Sometimes I'd be in my office late into the night. Unsurprisingly, my marriage ended in 2009.

I cannot claim that I lost my job because of my involvement with the Farm Park, but I know the lawsuit created a rift in the broader community as well as the university employee community.  As I said, I felt like I was merely tolerated because ... maybe I made people look bad because I was doing so much?  And also the only way I could make a little more money was to get supplemental contracts for projects and teaching overloads--there was no promotion line for me to any salary higher than $40k.  Forever.  I also wrote grants in order to have money to do programming--there was never enough money for things like tutoring and supports (ADA required) for students with disabilities, mentoring, service learning, etc.  My AmeriCorps program alone brought in $250k of scholarship money for our students.

Five years later, I see my leaving ASU as saving my life.  It was a toxic environment.  My inputs were not appreciated, or perversely were simultaneously required and yet scorned.  I gave a lot of loyalty to that place, and it was not reciprocated.  I was made promises which were broken, such as getting a raise if I pursued a terminal degree.  I fulfilled my promise to write my dissertation project about ASU and did my field work in the valley in the fall of 2017.  After I defended my dissertation in 2019, I emailed it to everyone whom I interviewed for the project.  The only feedback I got back from anyone at ASU came from someone who said they were deeply disappointed that I had chosen to characterize the university--I used a pseudonym in the manuscript--in a negative light.

I also need to say that the campus police department extorted $250 from me during those weeks.  As you probably recall, my house was across the street catty-corner from the McDaniel building.  As I was cleaning out my house, I threw a few empty 5 gallon buckets (clean meadmaking equipment) and trash into that dumpster in the parking lot, which is technically illegal dumping according to the campus police chief.  I repeatedly asked for the police chief to give me an email or something explaining what the $250 was for, and not getting an answer and yet feeling intimidated, figured it was safer just to pull out my checkbook and be done with it.  To be a smartass, I wrote in the memo line: "paid in full".  He never deposited that check.