Back into the post apocalyptic skies!
Added 2019-12-03 06:12:24 +0000 UTCWaiting to fly back to London. Thinking about a friend who is working on coal sustainability and talking about how to build “fusion” movements (across racial/country/class lines).
I see activist movements being built in this way (relatively) effectively with my very activist, very Christian friend and repeat teacast guest Jarrod McKenna, but it’s such an undeniable phenomenon that people prefer working like-to-like.
I guess the Christian thing is enough of a common language to transcend other identities/idioms.
I think that’s one of the (many) reasons, for example, it’s hard to carve out a place in green-rooms for women. Or get working class people into internships and think-tanks. People are bad at articulating or acknowledging why they might seem to get on with some people more than others, and when it comes to trying to make changes in the world, there’s a natural bias towards building what feels intuitively like a “smooth” team. People who you just click with might be people who speak the same dialect of the same language, have the same reference points or similar opinions.
It’s not a bad human quality, but it can lead to bad outcomes. Not just in terms of closing out diversity from your space, but because like-mindedness can lead to boring outcomes.
I imagine building dynamic and coherent groups that effectively cross cultural boundaries involves building or finding crossover identities (like, but I hope not limited to, religion). Identities that transcend obvious signifiers of selfhood - whether it’s sport fandom or forging bonds through a shared experience.
Anyway, taking off now.
Xx
