specific hopeful visualizations/analogies for life in the US right now
October 31, 2020 9:38 AM Subscribe
I tend to think in metaphors, sometimes in a visual, almost visceral way, and the one that's pervading my thoughts right now as someone in the US is a very panic-inducing, game-over one. I'm looking for something more encouraging to replace it with, but it needs to be somewhat specific, not generic pleasant "imagine you're relaxing next to a babbling brook" stuff.
I haven't really experimented with substituting visualizations before but as an imperfect example of what I'm looking for, a somewhat cheesy thing I've heard before is a guided imagery for people with cancer imagining they were swallowing a star (?) that would destroy the cancer cells. I'm cringing at writing that for a lot of reasons but it's the best example I can come up with on the fly of what I mean - I guess I need for there to be action going on rather than just a restful visualization. Obviously visualization fixes nothing in the long run but what my mind is doing on its own is making unnecessary and un-useful trouble for me. Open to whatever, no visualization is too weird!
I'll share the negative visualization that I'm trying to replace under MeFi's equivalent of spoiler tags in case anyone is curious and doesn't feel like it'll stick in their head and make problems for them, too:
I haven't really experimented with substituting visualizations before but as an imperfect example of what I'm looking for, a somewhat cheesy thing I've heard before is a guided imagery for people with cancer imagining they were swallowing a star (?) that would destroy the cancer cells. I'm cringing at writing that for a lot of reasons but it's the best example I can come up with on the fly of what I mean - I guess I need for there to be action going on rather than just a restful visualization. Obviously visualization fixes nothing in the long run but what my mind is doing on its own is making unnecessary and un-useful trouble for me. Open to whatever, no visualization is too weird!
I'll share the negative visualization that I'm trying to replace under MeFi's equivalent of spoiler tags in case anyone is curious and doesn't feel like it'll stick in their head and make problems for them, too:
[Click for negative visualization/analogy]
Basically, I have been defaulting to visualizing/feeling like an animal that lives in an underground colony--like an ant or a burrowing mammal like a prairie dog--with someone pouring a bunch of hot water on all the openings. I grew up around people who'd been affected by the Holocaust (I have relatives that escaped to the same country that I am considering going to if I can, relatives that were killed, and relatives that lived through it) so I gather my mind is painting all that onto the US even though I KNOW intellectually that it's not the same.You could imagine groups of Republicans and Democrats and Independents, conservatives and liberals and moderates, and all races all looking at each other and smiling and talking and joking and getting along.
Or visualize different groups in Congress all committed to solving issues somehow, instead of arguing and attacking.
posted by gt2 at 10:14 AM on October 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
Or visualize different groups in Congress all committed to solving issues somehow, instead of arguing and attacking.
posted by gt2 at 10:14 AM on October 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
Your analogy makes sense, generational trauma is real, and it has come to the forefront for a lot of third and fourth generation Americans in the past four years. It's okay and I would argue healthy to imagine a US where your fears may come true.
To me the best way to combat the hopelessness inherent in that kind of thinking is to look at this as just one tiny tick of a second in the history of the world, just one of many moments when it feels like the world may be ending. People hid others in priest holes long before they hid them in attics. "There is love in the time of cholera."
posted by DarlingBri at 10:26 AM on October 31, 2020 [5 favorites]
To me the best way to combat the hopelessness inherent in that kind of thinking is to look at this as just one tiny tick of a second in the history of the world, just one of many moments when it feels like the world may be ending. People hid others in priest holes long before they hid them in attics. "There is love in the time of cholera."
posted by DarlingBri at 10:26 AM on October 31, 2020 [5 favorites]
We just went through Hurricane Zeta, and seeing work crews busy fixing things and neighbors helping each other to haul away trees and debris was a welcome sight in this cursed year. Maybe think about people repairing stuff faster than others can break it.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:35 AM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:35 AM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
I have a protection visualization/ritual I do more or less daily that begins with breathing and drawing in good energy that comes from the ground and the universe and form it into a ball around my physical/energetic being. It protects me from harm*, it fuels me, it guides me. It's gold light with an aura of aurora borealis, though color and shape and symbolism tend to shift around depending on what I've got going on or on my mind. I spend a good chunk of visualization time on really fleshing out what it looks like, because I think the more vivid the mental image the more useful and powerful it is to the brain and spirit.
Then I expand the ball to include my home and the people and animals in it. It protects them, it conveys my love for them to them.
I used to stop there. But now I spend some extra time to expand the ball out to include my communities (literal local community, my various online communities) and thinking of the local orgs and people who are working and protesting and taking on official roles for causes of justice, accessibility, education, food and housing security, labor rights - people literally fighting the good fight. If I'm going to spend the rest of my day doomscrolling - and I am! - I at least owe it to myself and them and the world to spend a minute of my time and energy on them and on ways I can be more like them, help them, do my part. That's the only way we get out of this, and that's the only way we really ever hold fascism and hate at bay. It's a series of small local moves telescoping all the way up to the top. And I find that spending a moment to think about that every day helps me keep it top of mind, to reconsider pointless spending when I could donate instead, and to check and see if I have anything I can contribute to local mutual aid or volunteer efforts.
I have been reminded that even when there is great evil afoot, there is also always - somewhere, somehow - kindness and love; if there wasn't, all that would be left is the evil. If you don't have an ongoing practice to feel it and appreciate it and exercise the spiritual muscles that express it, your ability to do so atrophies.
*Harm is still going to happen, but I do believe that the visualization exercise helps me at least be somewhat less of my own worst enemy, and to roll with the punches a little better with small stuff. Do I personally believe there's something bigger than me also looking out for me? Sure, but I'm fine if I'm wrong and I don't think it's necessary to believe it for it to work.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:38 AM on October 31, 2020 [9 favorites]
Then I expand the ball to include my home and the people and animals in it. It protects them, it conveys my love for them to them.
I used to stop there. But now I spend some extra time to expand the ball out to include my communities (literal local community, my various online communities) and thinking of the local orgs and people who are working and protesting and taking on official roles for causes of justice, accessibility, education, food and housing security, labor rights - people literally fighting the good fight. If I'm going to spend the rest of my day doomscrolling - and I am! - I at least owe it to myself and them and the world to spend a minute of my time and energy on them and on ways I can be more like them, help them, do my part. That's the only way we get out of this, and that's the only way we really ever hold fascism and hate at bay. It's a series of small local moves telescoping all the way up to the top. And I find that spending a moment to think about that every day helps me keep it top of mind, to reconsider pointless spending when I could donate instead, and to check and see if I have anything I can contribute to local mutual aid or volunteer efforts.
I have been reminded that even when there is great evil afoot, there is also always - somewhere, somehow - kindness and love; if there wasn't, all that would be left is the evil. If you don't have an ongoing practice to feel it and appreciate it and exercise the spiritual muscles that express it, your ability to do so atrophies.
*Harm is still going to happen, but I do believe that the visualization exercise helps me at least be somewhat less of my own worst enemy, and to roll with the punches a little better with small stuff. Do I personally believe there's something bigger than me also looking out for me? Sure, but I'm fine if I'm wrong and I don't think it's necessary to believe it for it to work.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:38 AM on October 31, 2020 [9 favorites]
What if you and your fellows begin burrowing up together, emerging from new places and overwhelming the aggressors?
posted by teremala at 10:40 AM on October 31, 2020
posted by teremala at 10:40 AM on October 31, 2020
I had a friend give me a visualization years ago when I was in an abusive situation. I have since found out she kind of cobbled it together from an interest in Wicca & the movie "The Craft" but it works for me.
I focus on the mental image of a person or an image that represents a situation to me and I imagine them being slowly wrapped in a thick leather strap or rope or in once case it was a giant ribbon from head to toe, around and around and I say to myself. "I bind you from doing harm, harm to yourself or harm to others." over & over. As I am picturing this I try to make it feel as real as possible focusing on all my senses, but inside a bubble trapping the energy. When I've bound all the way from the head to the feet. I take a deep breath & let the energy I've built up slowly expand around me until I imagine it filling the world.
posted by wwax at 11:31 AM on October 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
I focus on the mental image of a person or an image that represents a situation to me and I imagine them being slowly wrapped in a thick leather strap or rope or in once case it was a giant ribbon from head to toe, around and around and I say to myself. "I bind you from doing harm, harm to yourself or harm to others." over & over. As I am picturing this I try to make it feel as real as possible focusing on all my senses, but inside a bubble trapping the energy. When I've bound all the way from the head to the feet. I take a deep breath & let the energy I've built up slowly expand around me until I imagine it filling the world.
posted by wwax at 11:31 AM on October 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
Do you know the Yeats poem The Second Coming? It begins:
Instead of looking at current events from the point of view of the falconer, maybe you could look at the falcon and imagine it represents some wild, uncontrollable force in the world that's going to shake itself loose and bring about change. Or picture yourself as the falcon, soaring higher and farther, ignoring the anarchy below and everyone who's trying to control your thoughts, escaping from all of that and looking beyond it to a future no one on the ground can see yet.
posted by Redstart at 12:14 PM on October 31, 2020 [3 favorites]
Turning and turning in the widening gyreAppropriate for these days, right? Not very hopeful sounding overall. But I love the first two lines and the image they bring to mind, the falcon soaring higher and higher, in wider and wider circles. From the falconer's point of view, it's a disaster. His bird can't hear him, he's lost all control, that falcon is gone. But from the bird's point of view it's buoyant flight, a new perspective, a bigger world, reckless joy, freedom. The words and the image make me feel both things. Everything is out of control, it's getting away from us, it's about to fall apart. But also: We're rising higher, we're getting to a place we've never been before, we're breaking free, something new is coming.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Instead of looking at current events from the point of view of the falconer, maybe you could look at the falcon and imagine it represents some wild, uncontrollable force in the world that's going to shake itself loose and bring about change. Or picture yourself as the falcon, soaring higher and farther, ignoring the anarchy below and everyone who's trying to control your thoughts, escaping from all of that and looking beyond it to a future no one on the ground can see yet.
posted by Redstart at 12:14 PM on October 31, 2020 [3 favorites]
I go for regular walks in various forests, more now than ever, and one thing I noticed this spring were trees that had been knocked over or fallen over, that were obviously dead, BUT had seedlings with green buds and leaves starting to grow vertically out of these nurse logs.
I think they’re a good metaphor for hope. Maybe you could think of the old bad America (including the bad stuff that existed well before this current administration) dying off and being replaced by the new America you want to see: the kind of place where ordinary citizens actively work to change the systems that perpetuate oppression and suffering.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:20 PM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
I think they’re a good metaphor for hope. Maybe you could think of the old bad America (including the bad stuff that existed well before this current administration) dying off and being replaced by the new America you want to see: the kind of place where ordinary citizens actively work to change the systems that perpetuate oppression and suffering.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:20 PM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
St. George & the Dragon
where St George is lines of Americans waiting, sometimes for hours, to vote, and record-breaking numbers have voted already and the dragon is orange and red. I share your fears, but I am a geezer and have never seen so much love for voting.
posted by theora55 at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
where St George is lines of Americans waiting, sometimes for hours, to vote, and record-breaking numbers have voted already and the dragon is orange and red. I share your fears, but I am a geezer and have never seen so much love for voting.
posted by theora55 at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
Maybe not what you're looking for.
Ever seen Aliens? Don't be a Hudson; be a Ripley. (link)
posted by bartleby at 2:26 PM on October 31, 2020
Ever seen Aliens? Don't be a Hudson; be a Ripley. (link)
posted by bartleby at 2:26 PM on October 31, 2020
Positive visualization
There are small siphoning drains near the top of each opening to re-route the water.
Some of that water flows away, toward dry tree roots.
Some of that water surges up, for a ring of geysers.
The water-pourer, defeated, slips in the mud.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:39 PM on October 31, 2020
So Historically where is the States right now?
Let's start with the nightmare: Wiemar Germany? It's got some parallels but oddly despite the depression, the sinking standard of living, lack of upward mobility, sense of frustrated nationalism and progress on gender and sexuality it has nowhere near the nationlistic cohesion of that era. The US is much more divided and not at all likely to turn into the next incarnation of Nazi Germany.
No, the US is much closer to the US under Herbert Hoover- politically divided, struggling with income inequality, economic depression, tensions between the recent immigrants and the descendants of less recent immigrants... - That's a fair comparison. Early 1930's USA not Germany.
So what do we have to look forward to next? All going well, something pretty close to FDR and the New Deal.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:10 PM on October 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
Let's start with the nightmare: Wiemar Germany? It's got some parallels but oddly despite the depression, the sinking standard of living, lack of upward mobility, sense of frustrated nationalism and progress on gender and sexuality it has nowhere near the nationlistic cohesion of that era. The US is much more divided and not at all likely to turn into the next incarnation of Nazi Germany.
No, the US is much closer to the US under Herbert Hoover- politically divided, struggling with income inequality, economic depression, tensions between the recent immigrants and the descendants of less recent immigrants... - That's a fair comparison. Early 1930's USA not Germany.
So what do we have to look forward to next? All going well, something pretty close to FDR and the New Deal.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:10 PM on October 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
Not visualizations, but analogies:
1) regarding the upcoming US election, there have been 6 contested elections before:
If Trump refuses to accept defeat in November, the republic will survive intact, as it has 5 out of 6 times in the past (the 6th was the civil war). In the election of 1800, it got thrown to the House, and they took 36 votes to break the tie. What the hell happened between the 35th and 36th vote?
2) I was recently in a place with big fires and evacuations (Think Australia, US west coast, etc). It was very comforting to me to think about the Year without Summer: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1816-the-year-without-summer-excerpt/
posted by at at 5:31 PM on October 31, 2020
1) regarding the upcoming US election, there have been 6 contested elections before:
If Trump refuses to accept defeat in November, the republic will survive intact, as it has 5 out of 6 times in the past (the 6th was the civil war). In the election of 1800, it got thrown to the House, and they took 36 votes to break the tie. What the hell happened between the 35th and 36th vote?
2) I was recently in a place with big fires and evacuations (Think Australia, US west coast, etc). It was very comforting to me to think about the Year without Summer: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1816-the-year-without-summer-excerpt/
posted by at at 5:31 PM on October 31, 2020
Echoing DarlingBri, I study to understand this moment as part of a larger context of history.
I look to the qualities of those who have endured much worse than I have, and for much longer. I honor their determination and intelligence by emulating them to whatever extent I am able to do.
No regime ever has all of the scope or power that it would like you to believe. To quote the scholar Timothy Snyder, "Do not obey in advance."
Plan to outlive your enemies.
posted by Weftage at 6:46 AM on November 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
I look to the qualities of those who have endured much worse than I have, and for much longer. I honor their determination and intelligence by emulating them to whatever extent I am able to do.
No regime ever has all of the scope or power that it would like you to believe. To quote the scholar Timothy Snyder, "Do not obey in advance."
Plan to outlive your enemies.
posted by Weftage at 6:46 AM on November 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm late to this, but a positive visualization came to me when we were walking around a couple of nights ago and noticed that more neighbors than usual have string lights up on their porches already. I think they all just realized it's a year for extra light and cheer. So that's my visualization -- millions of people realizing it's time to add an extra light to the darkness.
posted by john hadron collider at 7:31 AM on November 2, 2020
posted by john hadron collider at 7:31 AM on November 2, 2020
I have really taken to asking myself (and others): what kind of world do I want to live in?
This would be really specific to you and to what would feel like a joyous, connected, healthy society to you, but I really encourage you to think about that question and come up with those images that would resonate for you.
Maybe it would include:
* neighbors of all kinds waving to each other as they go past each others' houses, and helping out with shoveling snow or a kid's school project or a Freecycle swap
* everybody getting a Guaranteed Basic Income check every week and what, exactly, you would do with yours, and what your neighbors would do with theirs
* a community center/enhanced library with a free maker space, a tool lending library, a yarn swap, a plant swap, and a free or pay-what-you-want cafe
* AOC being kind of happy about people primarying her from the left and maybe even winning, in
* a world where everyone, from senators to office job bosses to restaurant managers, makes a point of finding less privileged people to join their staff and then mentor them to move up in whatever way they'd like
Imagine a bunch of that stuff manifesting just five years from now. What specifically and exactly would it look like, and sound like, and feel like? If you can imagine yourself in that library, in that workplace, really specifically, it might help provide an inspiring vision that feels welcoming to you.
posted by kristi at 9:36 PM on November 4, 2020
This would be really specific to you and to what would feel like a joyous, connected, healthy society to you, but I really encourage you to think about that question and come up with those images that would resonate for you.
Maybe it would include:
* neighbors of all kinds waving to each other as they go past each others' houses, and helping out with shoveling snow or a kid's school project or a Freecycle swap
* everybody getting a Guaranteed Basic Income check every week and what, exactly, you would do with yours, and what your neighbors would do with theirs
* a community center/enhanced library with a free maker space, a tool lending library, a yarn swap, a plant swap, and a free or pay-what-you-want cafe
* AOC being kind of happy about people primarying her from the left and maybe even winning, in
* a world where everyone, from senators to office job bosses to restaurant managers, makes a point of finding less privileged people to join their staff and then mentor them to move up in whatever way they'd like
Imagine a bunch of that stuff manifesting just five years from now. What specifically and exactly would it look like, and sound like, and feel like? If you can imagine yourself in that library, in that workplace, really specifically, it might help provide an inspiring vision that feels welcoming to you.
posted by kristi at 9:36 PM on November 4, 2020
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Visualization #2: I think the election itself is going to be like a baby falling off the changing table, usually everything ends up being fine (I heard it said on AskMeFi recently that babies are made of rubber and titanium) but you have to be watchful to see how the baby does after and act accordingly.
posted by forthright at 10:00 AM on October 31, 2020 [4 favorites]