Yesterday I participated in a celebration held on election day in Germany. The sentiment that motivated this event is “No matter the election results, they can’t take away our joy.”
I was very happy to be among friends as I drew connections and saw the obvious parallels between recent elections in the States and Germany. I understood the magnitude of the fascist wave drowning the world right now, and how these tides have continued to roll throughout history. Instead of losing myself in this whirlpool of hatred induced despair, I floated on the laughter of those surrounding me.
We watched as the votes were counted on the news and commentary in German and English for context. We discussed the hopeful outcomes, plausible realities, and what could go terribly wrong. Among us was an Australian academic and hopeful immigrant, myself (the anticapitalist, expat, young American), and four German activists and artists. We shared food, drinks, smoke, sarcasm, and merriment as conversation rolled through the good, the bad, and the ugly.
These friends, though I have not known them long and we have little in common, are very dear to me. They each are safe spaces where I can play and rest. “Play is the opposite of survival mode” [1] and “Rest is resistance”[2]. These values bear the community that is going to keep me alive through this flood, and we can keep you afloat too.
I wanted to write this down because I believe that communities rooted in resilient joy can make a difference.
I am a botanist. I study the resilience and adaptation in plants as response to climate change, namely saltwater intrusion and glacial melt. I am also a queer femme who has grown up in the United States and traveled the world, both on shoestrings. I know something about surviving when the conditions surrounding you are simultaneously denying your existence and trying to kill you.
Something that plants, queers, and poor people around the globe know is that we are stronger together. Without community, when we are alone, we have nothing. We can make very little impactful change or choice. When an organism is lonely, its fundamental needs are not being met, and maintaining resilient joy in the midst of scarcity is nearly impossible. When an organism is a member of a community, it is bolstered by the network in times of health and stress allowing higher-level functioning to happen and be maintained[3].
Fascism feeds on scarcity. It relies on fear-based limitations and aggression to act as blinders and silencers in all levels of society. Scarcity is not only experienced by marginalized populations, but is a state of mind that anyone can inhabit. To fight fascism with resilient joy we need to bring the people who experience the level of scarcity that implores them to support fascism (passively or actively) into community. Once one’s foundational needs are met, they are able to support the greater ecosystem.
I started thinking about resilient joy in 2011 when I participated in a learning and community-building trip outside of Kigali, Rwanda. We spent most of our time in a youth collective comprised of orphans from the 1994 genocide and their families. The physical collective is a small village reliant on income from a craft workshop, crop fields, beehives, and goats. They are community governed and prioritize their minimal resources on ensuring that everyone is educated, housed, fed, and has access to proper medical care. And damn, they dance! They laugh! They play! They rest! This community shares more resilient joy than I had ever witnessed. I left with the ringing question of “How do they do it?”.
When fundamental needs are not met (and in this collective it was touch and go) one cannot function in the upper levels of Maslow’s Pyramid. My current conclusion is that is correct, one cannot, but community can.
Gathering in community is the first step in collective action. We must work together to create positive impact for our shared planet. If we rally together, election day can be about the change that we want to make in the world, not the change that the world is making on us.
These election day congregations could be bubbles where the same ideas are rinsed and repeated. I believe that is not only a lost opportunity, but detrimental to the larger cause of survival and abundance. Surrounding oneself only with people who have the same history and beliefs can seal the echo chamber of confirmation bias, limiting the critical thinking and diversity of ideas imperative to resilient, legacy-minded action.
Shared values help create safe spaces and this is important. I’m not suggesting that you invite the local nazi to your house (at first)— but be generous. Talk to the clerk at your grocery store, your new neighbor across the hall, or your classmates. Remember that you have relationships with all of these individuals, this is your broader circle of connection.
What would it look like if around the world, every election day, people gathered in community? We share, laugh, cry, and experience the ups and downs together. Do you think the resilient joy permeating from every block would dissipate the floodwater?
I leave you with these questions:
Can collective resilient joy stop fascism?
What can friendship do for collective action?
How can community influence legacy-minded policy?
Are you going to do something about it, what and when?
Footnotes
1 Britchida www.britchida.com
2 Alexis Pauline Gumbs www.alexispauline.com
3 Abraham Maslow www.researchgate.net/publication/383241976_Maslow’s_Hierarchy_of_Needs