January 20, 2025

Reading Group Week 1

Hello! Hopefully you have a copy of Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin either in hand or en route to you now.

Readings

This week, let's read and talk about chapters 1 and 2. I've been thinking especially about a few lines from the chapters:

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Chapter 1: Whose Imagination?

... those who are shaping the "future of humanity," as his institute purports to do, are gathered from a very small sliver of humanity, and their views—racist, utopian, both, and—are currently occupying the imaginative space to which the rest of us have a right.

When I lived in San Francisco, I became increasingly sensitive to a specific feeling that self-driving cars were literally taking up and occupying our public spaces. Roads, street parking that might have otherwise been transformed into parklets, cross-walks... and the time these cars spend constantly circling blocks and homes for "training". I didn't really have much more to say about it at the time, or even since then, because other people have written much more persuasively than me about self-driving cars.

But as I got to this passage - that they're occupying the imaginative space to which the rest of us have a right - I remembered very acutely how frustrated I was and how robbed I felt the people of San Francisco (and, increasingly, a lot of cities) were of literal space as well as imaginative space. I thought about living in SF in 2020 during the initial lockdowns and how people started to realize that they actually really liked slower streets. I thought about how entire streets got completely closed for a while to let kids play safely. I thought about how it led to restaurants and open air activities that wouldn't have been imaginable if we were thinking about borrowing space back from an actively-used road.

What we're robbed of, imaginative space, is impossible to quantify and maybe even impossible to estimate. The streets in San Francisco were just one little thing, sure. Self-driving cars are just one (microcosmic) example of tech billionaires experimenting and thus depriving us of space to experiment and imagine things ourselves. But I felt (and now, again, feel) acutely robbed of something unfathomable. I shudder to think about all the spaces where we are denied space to imagine, but I can't help but feel like it's pervasive, and as much as I don't want to think about it... I feel like I need to identify it now.

bluesky, twitter, mastodon

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Chapter 2: Imagining Ourselves

Why can we imagine growing heart cells from scratch in a lab, but not growing empathy for other human beings in our everyday lives, and even more so in our institutions? ... Our collective imagination tends to shrink when confronted with entrenched inequality and injustice.

I had been trying to put words to something related to this, and I might still have work to do on it, but it made me think about how many times I've talked with people about some engineering problem, seen them be enthusiastic, willing and able to do all sorts of mental acrobatics. When someone is motivated, they can think and be clever about all sorts of obstacles.

... But when the conversation turns to history, when I ask them to think about disparate impacts and outcomes, when I ask them to consider some of the looming issues with "engineering-brain" solutions, their faces turn sullen and they suddenly become very tired or something. Now, suddenly, every little obstacle is enough to stop them in their tracks.

I don't really have an insight, except to say that I've seen (and probably been guilty of) shrinking when going from "growing heart cells from scratch" to "confronting entrenched inequality and injustice". And it's so frustrating to try to interact with someone who you know is capable of being intelligent, capable of being creative, capable of thinking critically... and it's almost like they close their eyes and start saying "honk shoo honk shoo" to pretend to be asleep to get out of the conversation as soon as it got a little challenging.

Is there a word for when this happens?

bluesky, twitter, mastodon

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If you have thoughts on these passages, or if you've been thinking about other passages, tell me about them. I'm especially interested if you noticed or reflected on something I didn't pick up on. Or if you agreed with everything I had to say, and had nothing else to add, that would probably be interesting too. I guess what I'm saying is, comment or reply or something.

I'll keep track of replies and comments and share them on Friday, and then if you want to join us to chat on Saturday, we'll get together at 12pm ET on Saturday to chat about chapters 1 and 2 over zoom (or a zoom-like-alternative).

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Other news

Are you thirsty? Take a drink of water. Also, if you got this far, you might want to subscribe. If not, that's fine. But please hydrate either way.

Other things are undoubtedly happening today. But look, here is some future stuff for the reading group:

Next book

After Imagination: A Manifesto, I'd like to read If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose by Refaat Alareer. You can buy the book now at Open Books. I expect us to start reading the week of February 10.

I want to give us a chance to explore different genres - and avoid being emotionally depleted or burnt out - so I'm striving to alternate between literature, poetry & prose, and non-fiction. If you haven't been in the practice of reading poetry in some time, I hope that you'll give it a try this year.

Donations

If you've already purchased the book, or you have extra capacity, you could donate to the Al-Areer family on chuffed. With the ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza are turning to rebuilding, but many of the urgent needs to stay alive - material to keep warm, shelter, food, medical care, and more - continue to persist.

Keep up with the group

I hope this was something worth reading while the world both freezes and burns... and also turns upside down and inside out. If you want to keep up with the reading group, the best way is probably to subscribe. But do whatever works for you.