PirateCare
/
Syllabus
23
1
Fork 1
Code Issues 6 Pull Requests Releases Wiki Activity

!publish!

This commit is contained in:
valerix 2020-08-13 11:19:21 +00:00
parent abc585c3d2
commit 614b7b4b0b
1 changed files with 8 additions and 7 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

15
content/session/wishes.md
View File

@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ title: "Part Two: Wishes"
Nothing makes me feel more alive than helping solve other people’s problems. It makes me feel powerful, useful, connected and of service. It is necessary work, and it uses all my skills: deep attention, creative problem solving, vengeful empathy. But the focus on problems, which tend to arise in moments of or approaching crisis, means we can never plan very far into the future. Because most of my loved ones have very little money or security, we use chewing gum to plug the leaks only long enough to get us to the next disaster. This is the way most of us must live right now at the intersection of many multi layered crises. We feel we can’t dare to wish for anything in case it distracts us from the crisis at hand, as if wishing were an unacceptable indulgence. Sybille Peters is an artist who has theorized wishes as a fundamental part of rigorous research practices. If it wasn’t for her work I think I would be unable to use the word without rolling my eyes at the same time.
But what if we challenge ourselves to see through these emergencies and to go towards our wishes despite all the holes in our boats? After all, those holes are only going to get plugged, not really fixed, until we reach some sort of destination. Right now we keep going in circles. I think that in some way we use our own personal crises as a distraction when we are afraid of what we might wish for. So long avoided in the name of survival, we may not know our wishes, or we may not recognize them, especially if our wishes do not comply with what is on offer. We may feel like our wishes are not utterable, or that we don’t deserve to have wishes, either because we’re obviously a failure or because we already have too much. We may feel that our wishes don’t make sense in a capitalist context. We may have never seen a good wish come to fruition. We may feel that our wishes are too weird or individualistic or simple to talk about in the company of people we respect, who appear to have much better wishes. Or maybe there simply isn’t time to talk about this bullshit, which will keep us from the work of survival... and inevitably lead us to more disappointment. Making wishes in the apocalypse feels risky. But maybe the apocalypse in one way came from too many neglected wishes.
**If all our crises are connected, then all our wishes are conspiring**
***If all our crises are connected, then all our wishes are conspiring***
I have a sixth or seventh sense that your deepest wishes may not be that different from mine. It takes time to be able to understand and articulate them. Even if I knew my wishes I may not be able to describe them because there aren’t many opportunities to practice that type of thinking or speaking. I don’t think wishes can live in a vacuum. Wishes are social. We create them together as we survive and learn what we want to escape and what we want to go towards. We hold them together.
It is hard to wish for what we haven’t yet seen. And what if all we know is that we don’t want any more of what we have been exposed to? This is very scary. We may sometimes fixate on solving problems as a way to avoid having dangerous wishes. Our wishes might demand that we abolish this society and create a new one, one that can meet all our wishes. An honest wish can make it hard or even impossible to continue to participate in this society. How are you going to go to work for minimum wage if you know it is completely disconnected from what you want or believe in? What if the only way to meet your wish in our present society is to do something or benefit from something you hate? Me too. But the dangerous wishes are there, under the bed like a monster designed by you for you.
@ -23,12 +23,13 @@ The work of excavating our wishes, of carefully and optimistically discovering o
## Questions for consideration
• What have you been taught to want?
• What do you wish you wanted?
• What do you want not to want?
• What do you pretend to want?
• What if you do not want what is on offer?
• What do you want?
* What have you been taught to want?
* What do you wish you wanted?
* What do you want not to want?
* What do you pretend to want?
* What if you do not want what is on offer?
* What do you want?
## Activity 2