Upon tiring of anti- and non-
Let’s try this:
Instead of nonviolent, gentle. In place of anti-racist, fair. Anti-capitalist becomes sharing. Anti-fascist morphs to kind.
Gentle, fair, sharing, kind: is this not the society, the world we want to live in? The banner we wish to wave?
Gentle, fair, sharing, kind: it’s a pretty good road map, an enduring policy prescription.
It is simple, not simplistic.
The little boy who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes was speaking simple truth; there was nothing simplistic about it — it was spot-on, necessary.
The simple resists bowdlerization, mystification, euphemism. It gets to the heart of the matter in a way that the multisyllabic, the heavily footnoted, rarely can. Experienced and transmitted directly, its openness has no folds or pockets for disingenuousness and manipulation to hide in. Generally avoided, it remains fresh, a gong cutting through ambient noise.
Don’t mistake simple for easy; they are seldom the same.
Straightforward, free of jargon, the simple generously welcomes all. It contains no barriers to entry, no qualifiers, no whiff of the tribal, of affiliation. It goes everywhere, pairs with everything.
Thus this, our simple and serious challenge: to be gentle, fair, sharing, kind. With ourselves, with each other, as a society, in the world.
’Tis the season.
