Banana
I want to think a little about institutions in terms of their susceptibility to pressure. Popular pressure, donor pressure, political pressure, pressure from outside activist groups, pressure from organized labor. The list goes on.
Add to this the typical factors of conformity and tail-ism. Add to this the continually destabilizing factor of out-of-touch entrepreneurial types. Add to this the dangerous politics of resentment from above.
If we wanted to feel hopeless we could go much further down this line, but I want to emphasize that that the pressures I’ve listed are ordinary, and can come from all sides. Sometimes you’re on the pressure side of the game, and you wish institutions would fold easily. Other times you might find yourself glad that it isn’t too easy. Broadly I would say that institutional resistance breaks down into:
the institution’s defence of its own conventions and integrity against further manipulation, regardless of principle — think career bureaucrats protecting process and their own careers on a relatively non-ideological basis.
counter-pressure — this appears in adversarial and non-adversarial ways.
principled negotiation — broadly, the sphere of reasons.
I want to think of a fabric of institutions in terms of their correlation: are they all vulnerable to the same kind of pressure? When they crack, will they crack all at once? Is there a cascade? And who cracks first? The richest or the poorest? The richest, because of their exposure to intra-elite soft pressure? Or the poorest, because the money simply runs out?
One thing I am seeing is that no one’s principles seem to be failing in moments of actual need or duress. It’s much more the society pages set that seem jumpy now. Have you noticed that? Perhaps they function as reverse canaries. They lose their nerve.
I want to suggest that what keeps us safe, or at any rate keeps us going, is not actually the “champion ally” strategy, which counts on the alignment of elite institutions and individuals. What is of more help is to know there are many small friendlies, each of whom might not be very friendly. Friendlies who crucially have their own reasons, their own organization, and which do not coordinate, so cannot be folded all at once without a tremendous show of repression.
To break it down to bananas, we might think about the fate of so many cloned Gros Michels. Seems quite likely that our familiar Cavendish will go the same way. I’ll miss ‘em. But what we’ll really miss is variation.
To be clear, I’m not talking about support groups. I’m talking about places where on a basic level one doesn’t feel like a novelty or like a threat or like things will go irreparably wrong for you at the first sign of conflict. Or where, for example, there is no way to avoid an ungraceful overstatement of your position even if it wasn’t what you meant to say. I hope you’ll think a little about what those places are for you and that you won’t list them anywhere public.
I think this might connect to why a lot of people want to run away to the city. What’s really so different here? People answer a survey to the effect that you’re alright ten percent more often? It might be a little bit easier to wage a costly lawsuit to defend your rights? None of that explains it. But what we have here, and what might hold, is a high density of independent institutions. Somewhere between what people mean when they speak of “community” and “civil society” and “each other 🌈🍄💙🍆📈.”
I seem to have placed a long bet on this kind of disaggregated cosmopolitanism. That’s my habitat. But I don’t often speak up for it.
What I am asking for in the world is for more people and more institutions which are a little bit out of touch and which have a little bit of spine. And sure, I hope you have a heart too, and that we agree on at least some of what matters.
But in the end I think that your autonomy protects mine more than our perfect agreement ever could. And I hope that feeling’s mutual.
More eggs, more baskets, and keep ducking that flu,
Jackie
P.S. After trying and failing to find солод, I’ve started adding brewer’s malt to my bread, at a baker’s percentage of 4 or 5 percent, and it makes all the difference in the world. I don’t know why it took me so long to try it. I had used diastatic malt powder before, and had tried various tricks for dark rye including using cocoa powder and molasses and so on, but a little bit of high lovibond malt turned out to be the missing thing. Have any of you tried this?
P.P.S. Have any of you read Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason? After years of being put off by its length, it's bad reputation, and my sense that I already knew what Sartre would have to say, I’m letting it surprise me, and it’s surprising me. I feel somewhat convinced, and convinced of the stakes, and somehow stirred up. I got here by way of Iris Marion Young’s 1994 article, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective.” Why the hell don’t the people I know who think about this kind of thing ever tell me about the good stuff? If you know the IMY or JPS stuff well, or if you go and read it on my recommendation, I’d like to talk to you sometime.
P.P.P.S. Listen to this one sometime.