No One’s Ever “Educating” Me Again

The End of Cultocracy

“It is a war. And you have to commit to a side.”

Oh really? What side is that? The one true way? Do tell.

It’s been rumored this election constitutes the end of democracy. To essay is to attempt, to try, and I will attempt to unpack how Tuesday’s historic outcome affected me. Let’s start with the root word of democracy:

-cracy

A combining form from Greek, meaning “rule, “government,” or “governing body” (e.g., aristocracy, democracy). It’s used to form abstract nouns from stems of other origins.

On Wednesday after the election, I woke up with a realization: as far as I’m concerned, both the Democratic Party and the GOP are dead to me. I’ve always been registered as an Independent, voting for the candidate over the party. But in the last decade, I switched my registration to vote in primaries—mainly against the GOP—because, let’s face it, the two-party system is the only game in town. I don’t align with the Republican party’s stances going back to Ronald Reagan, whose policies set the stage for what we’re experiencing in America today.

I’m not an activist or political animal in the conventional sense, but yes, the personal is political. My arena is making art in the face of fuck—using words, not canvassing or knocking on doors. My arena is how I live one day at a time: not just surviving but rewriting the story made of me. That’s the most political thing I, or you, can do.

I’m knocking on your soul. Calling out to your spirit. My medium is my life.

My solution is organic. You could say spiritual. It’s not religious, political, secular, scientific, intellectual, or tied to identity or an ideology, including whatever the idea of spirituality conjures up for you.

I’m a change-maker, and the only thing I can change is myself. Now that’s radical.

Don’t tell me what it is to be American. I get to define that. Duh.

Throughout my life somebody has always tried to set the boundaries of who and what I will be allowed to be. What is common to these boundary lines is that their most destructive power lies in what I can be persuaded to do to myself — the walls of fear, shame, and guilt I can be encouraged to build in my own mind. - Dorothy Allison

Another thing that is dead to me? Cancel culture. The policing of my language, the shaming for disagreeing, the pressure to align with anyfuckingbody. I’m done. The only church I attend is The Poetry Church of Misfits—a sanctuary I created myself. Where is it? In my imagination. And anyone who wants to join is welcome.

The Poetry Church of Misfits will have no saints:

""What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low.All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart." -- Van Gogh

"Competition, prizes and awards are part of a patriarchal construct that destroys love and creativity by creating and protecting a singular hierarchical commodification of quality that does not, ever, represent the myriad successful expressions of art and art making. If you must use that construct, you use it the way one uses public transport. Get on, then get off at your stop and find your people. Don’t live on the bus, and most importantly, don’t get trapped on it." ~ Ocean Vuong

“I have never been a joiner. That’s why it’s time for a Poetry Church of Misfits. Unlikeable kids only.” ~ Kelly Thompson

The Poetry Church of Misfits prayer:

Goddess, grant us the serenity to accept the good. . .

The Poetry Church of Misfits welcomes hungry females. The hungrier, the better.

As the beloved Dorothy Allison might say, “GLORY!” 

Allison died from cancer at her home in Northern California, on November 6, 2024, at the age of 75. 

I’m so grateful I had the chance to sit in a workshop with her in November 2020 at Writing by Writers and connect with her in person. Afterward, I wrote to her, and she responded with a long letter. Her generosity in responding to me is astounding. I have heard writer after writer describe how she touched them. Dorothy preached anti-religion like a true evangelical.

I lost my faith. I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination to shape a life, and create a literature, that was not a lie.

— Dorothy Allison, ‘Believing in Literature’, in Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature, (New York: Firebrand Books, 1994), p. 167

But I digress. The last thing I want is to start another cult. 

But community? Yes, I’m up for community. Now we’re talking evolution:

In his book, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, M. Scott Peck defines a true community as one that has the following qualities:

• Inclusivity

• Commitment

• Consensus

• A sense of realism

• The ability to be contemplative and self-aware

• Feelings of safety in all members

• The ability to fight gracefully

• A place where all members are leaders

• A spirit of peace 

Peck also outlines four stages of community development: pseudo-community, chaos, emptiness, and true community. 

Peck believed that to prevent civilization from destroying itself, we must rebuild on all levels, local and international. He believed that people should learn to welcome and celebrate individual differences and that forming a true community requires emptying ourselves of our prejudices and preconceived notions. 

In truth, we, as a society, have experienced little genuine community in recent years—if ever. Being in true community doesn’t mean joining a cult or agreeing on everything. It doesn’t mean shaming and lecturing each other. Yet social media has significantly fueled the divide we’re living through—a role we’ve yet to fully examine or comprehend.

The great divide. How about both/and/neither instead?

I can already hear the protests: "We can’t be in community with racists, sexists, and the like." And sure, you can—anyone can if they choose. But if our goal is a true community, as defined above, then such relationships wouldn’t qualify as a genuine community. That’s my intention moving forward. Not that it wasn’t in the past. It’s just maybe I’ve lost the plot. Maybe we all have. 

I know what isn’t community for me. An imposed sameness, with an entry fee of any kind, and I don’t necessarily mean money. Communities can be wonderful. They can likewise be destructive. Rilke’s definition of love, “two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other,” seems adaptable to a definition of a productive community. Just change “two” to “a number of solitudes,” and elaborate on the “protect.” ~ Diane Seuss

I’m changing my voter registration back to Independent. Not the Independent Party, either, if there is one. I won’t align with a party—I must stay true to myself. Anything less feels like death. We may find common ground, but I refuse to turn it into a religion. We might agree on principles, or we might not.

I had an awakening this week. Now I’m woke if I ever was—LOL. And this is one virus I’ll gladly pass on.

I was born and raised in a cult. Tuesday’s election reminded me: don’t drink the koolaid. Grape or Cherry. Neither.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. ~Shakespeare

A Way Forward

I pulled out Diane Seuss’s books of poetry on Wednesday, the day after the election. For a real way forward. For comfort.

 There’s this thing I do—bibliomancy. I picked up the book on top of the stack and let it fall open. It’s like drawing a Tarot card. Are you surprised at what I pulled? This from Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss:

I commented on someone’s thread on Facebook that there are 15-20 million Democratic votes that appear to be missing in the vote counts:

”Now is the time for education, not conspiracy.” a person shamed me responded in the comments.

No one’s ever “educating” me again.

You know what I mean, don’t you? 

Cameron Awkward-Rich

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One Thing

Create A Listening Circle compliments of Mairead Case. This is a smart thing to do right now. We need safe spaces to be. Inclusive. Diverse. Room for disagreement. True community.

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Shoutouts:

One of my favorite practices to do is Bibliomancy: divination through the random selection of a text. You saw it in this essay where I randomly picked up the book Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss, which opened to the poem, “Coda,” which is the perfect poem to go with this essay. Seuss is my favorite contemporary poet. Incidentally, she won the Pulitzer Prize for frank: sonnets, and, like me, grew up in the Midwest across the street from a cemetery. For me, Diane winning the Pulitzer was like if Van Gogh had been admitted to the cannon while he was still alive instead of dying in obscurity. Diane is brilliant but she’s not precious; she’s not Ivy League, or privilege with a capital “P;” she’s like one of the cool girls I grew up with, smoking behind the Taco Bell, hitching rides to downtown rock concerts. She’s an American poet and educator whose work is influenced by her experiences growing up in a working-class family and her time as a social worker. “Poems,” she says, “Are smarter than me.” Except she’s a genius.

Speaking of listening circles, Gina Frangello and Emily Rapp Black of Circe’s Circle are prolific and brilliant writers and teachers. JOIN THEM FOR THEIR FREE SIX-WEEK SERIES: CIRCE’S CIRCLE Monday Nights, 5pm-7pm PST/8pm-10pm EST starting November 25th. Email info@circeconsulting.net with questions or to register.

From Hacking Narcissism, the phenomenal Nathalie Martinek, PHD, who dipped her toe in cultocracy and observed how easily we can be influenced, writes:

“The Social Justice cult, the Medical cult, the Corporate Wellness, and the DEI cult. I learned about many other cults through clients and associates over the years including the Hollywood cult, the Multilevel Marketing cult, the Yoga Community cult, the Psychedelic Medicine cult and the list goes on.”

Check her out.

From George Saunders, of Story Club, on my list of recommended Substacks, an article in The New Yorker this week: Five Thought Experiments Concerning the Underlying Disease This resonated along the same lines as my thought experiment that constitutes this essay.

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Don’t let them take your power.