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The rhizome metaphor reminds us that we cannot simply rebuild hierarchical structures to generate change. Instead we must go subterranean to build our own learning networks.
Michael Viard/Getty Images
Can the mighty rhizome teach us how to find a new social paradigm?
Dec 10, 2024
America is grappling with the implications of the election, and many are perplexed, even shocked about just how fast our society seems to be changing. Most people believe that our two-party system of democracy is stable and the uprising of authoritarianism and divisive red-versus-blue tribalism is an abrupt and anomalous change.
If you imagine our civil society as an organism, one would think its reaction would be to try to reclaim its previously perceived stable state. However, in nature, many organisms are well-equipped to embrace new realities and adapt in order to persist. For our society, we need to support and guide social change that can progress our democracy into a new paradigm. We can do this by stepping back and building new relationships for the purpose of understanding across our differences and creating change together.
I study change processes as they occur through transformative learning networks. These loose- knit social networks prioritize learning from others. To move through complex crises and spawn new realities, the people who gravitate to these networks take risks by disrupting their usual social patterns to build new relationships and understanding across ideological, institutional and geographic boundaries. These networks can give way to new professional fields, new schools of thought and even new organizations. For example, the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network started as a group of individuals from different walks of life who all wanted to build community resilience in the face of wildfires; they just had different ideas about how to do it. Acknowledging that wildfire management is too complex for a single approach, they pooled their diversity of experiences and connections to innovate new solutions.
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We have all heard the phrase “the only constant in life is change,”attributed to ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Martin Luther King Jr. is credited with proclaiming, “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”Human communities have evolved with a set of evolutionary biases that enable us to ignore and resist change. A prime example is our collective ability to discount the very real evidence for and effects of climate change. We fail to notice all the pieces of change as they assemble themselves until we are surprised by the qualitatively different state in which we find ourselves.So here we are, stunned and unsure how to make the next move.
In the mighty rhizome, nature demonstrates for us why change may surprise us and how, while we cannot stop change, we may be able to guide the change we want to see in the future. If you have ever weeded a garden you know about rhizomes. Invasive weeds (like Japanese knotweed and giant horsetails) and pretty ones (like wild iris) are all subterranean organizers. Rhizomes have no beginning and no end, they are decentralized, they struggle and spread underground hidden from our view and occasionally surface into the sunlight in bombastic manifestations showing us an organism we forgot existed has only gained vigor while we were not paying attention.
Even though we cannot see most of the rhizome's biomass and activities, underground it gathers energy, branches, twists and turns, breaks through barriers, and expands its network until it is ready to show itself again. The rhizome is a prolific botanical metaphor used by French philosopher Deleuze and his social activist collaborator Guattari along with contemporary organizational philosophers and change scholars to understand the complexities of social change as non-linear, heterogenous, non-hierarchical and subterranean.
The rhizome metaphor reminds us that we cannot simply rebuild hierarchical structures to generate change. Instead we must go subterranean to build our own learning networks, create new bonds, branch out and break through the barriers that constrain us. Engaging in civic society, participating in new relationships and learning from those who are engaged across social and political spectrum can help us reconfigure our understanding of our possible futures and gather our collective strength until we are ready to emerge as something new.
Connecting across our differences is scary. Thanksgiving tables across the country last month were full of anxieties associated with communicating in spite of our differences. We may prefer our instinctual draw to familiar homogeneous social gatherings that reinforce our biases and to fall in line under hierarchical organizational structures that provide clear rules on how we must behave. But, if we take on the rhizomatic view, we can instead be comforted by the knowledge that change happens through subterranean activity and if we want to be part of that change we need to build uncomfortable connections so we can learn together and imagine a new future.
So take a risk, be disruptive and find new people who challenge your assumptions and build friendships that create conditions for you to learn new things. You never know — you may be starting a new social movement.
Risien is the director of transdisciplinary research at Oregon State University and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
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How women can resist autocracy in America
Dec 09, 2024
The Republican president-elect was found guilty of sexual misconduct, has faced a dozen or more allegations of sexual assault and harrasment and ran a very publicly misogynist campaign. The Democratic Party ran a campaign that targeted young women with the promise of protecting women’s reproductive rights but ultimately lost the election. And yet the Republican Party has won a decisive electoral victory.
As media pundits, campaign managers, and the politicians within the Democratic Party are still reeling from the results, it is worth pointing out that in electing a party that wants to roll back women’s rights, the United States is not exceptional, but is in fact part of a global phenomenon.
Over 60 countries, including eight out of 10 of the most populous countries in the world, held elections in 2024. Many of them have re-elected parties with dangerous policies against women’s autonomy, often masked in the language of “traditional family values.” And yet, women in countries with right-wing governments have organized themselves, participated in electoral systems, resisted at every opportunity and achieved material gains. These events have occurred over decades, through independent movements. These women have produced collective experience, stories, concrete analysis, tactics and movement-building in the face of atrocities and crackdown.
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Women everywhere are indeed finding creative ways to fight for their rights in every part of the world. The women’s movement in the United States should take this opportunity to learn from their strategies and their successes.
Take for example India, which famously administered the biggest elections in the world in 2024 and chose to re-elect a party known for its campaigns promoting an ethno-nationalist state and for the sexual assault allegations against its members, who continue to act with impunity. When the government tried to bring discriminatory citizenship laws, thousands of women blocked a major artery in the capital in protest for three of the coldest months. Women played an instrumental role in the 2021 farmer’s protest and sit-in that lasted close to a year and led to the repeal of three harmful laws. In the 2024 elections, the party lost its majority in the Indian Parliament.
Another example is South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol has not appointed a minister for gender equality and family since 2022, keeping his election commitment of scrapping the ministry altogether and replacing it with a “Population Ministry” to boost birth rates. Women in Korea have been finding ways to push back on state efforts to confine them to the singular role of mother, emblematic in movements like the 4B boycott of all sexual contact with men.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — a man with a lengthy history of abusive and sexist commentary — appointed an anti-choice lawyer as the attorney-general as he launched an attack on “gender-ideology” under the guise of “Christian values.” Women in Brazil overwhelmingly resisted in mass movements and at the ballot box. Bolsonaro lost the presidency to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, bringing women’s lives back on the radar of the national government.
In 2024, the United States is not alone in handing power to a conservative party that seeks to control women. But U.S. women are also not alone in resisting this government overreach.
Around the world, women have tirelessly pushed back on laws that have historically denied them an equal status, securing fair compensation and opposing harsh labor conditions, or forming grassroots movements against sexual violence. Women have brought attention to and organized action against the underlying cause of the social, economic and political crises they face. From mass protests, community-level organizing and the relentless courage to counter deeply persistent inequality in every sector, women have not stopped under any regime since none have resolved the patriarchal root causes and the systems. All this predates the present global tide of far-right governments, but it will outlive them. In the U.S., Black women, Indigenous women, Latina women, Asian American women and working class women are ready to lead and they will find that they are not alone in this struggle.
The U.S. may not be as exceptional and unique in its conditions and its responses as the media would have us believe. It is true that with the country’s immense resources and consequent influence, the decisions made in the White House have an impact throughout the world. But this is all the more reason to ensure that domestic movements for justice and equality are aligned with the interests of the women everywhere, who have been fighting this for decades.
For the women in the U.S., a Trump presidency will no doubt bring challenges. This is a particularly difficult time for racialized women, Muslim women, immigrants and women without any social safety net. They are not alone. There is a deep history of organizing and advocacy under extremely repressive conditions. This is an opportunity and the time to learn and reflect on how women have successfully pushed back against state abuse of power, often in harsher, violent and dangerous environments. An exercise of genuine solidarity, this would remain necessary under the Democrats or the Republicans or perhaps another system altogether.
The knowledge of women across the world can be a powerful beacon of hope, complementing the existing knowledge among women in the U.S. and explore new arenas for women’s rights — strategies that go beyond established institutions, Wall Street donors and social media campaigns. Instead, building a stronger base of women as a political force can shift the cultural and political tides back.
This can take the form of broad-based alliances. Purposefully reaching out to women organizing in rural areas, in different labour sectors, in community groups, and bringing them in to share knowledge and developing points of unity is necessary, and the only way we can survive the rise of the far right. In addition to learning, the American movements must amplify the calls to action and the demands. After all, the patriarchal and capitalist institutions are well-organized and well-connected, and if we are seriously planning to defeat them, our movements have to be even more organized and connected to each other.
Misra is an international human rights lawyer who has worked with women's rights movements in Canada, India, Iran, Argentina, Somalia and Kenya, among other countries.
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The National Summit on Civic Education was hosted by the Jack Miller Center last month.
Jack Miller Center
After the election, a civics renaissance
Dec 09, 2024
Just a week after the election, the Jack Miller Center — a nonprofit organization focused on civic literacy where I serve as president — convened about 185 leaders, educators and philanthropists for a two-day National Summit on Civic Education in Philadelphia. We knew in planning the summit that there was some risk it would be ill-timed in the aftermath of a contentious election.
We decided to press forward. We would lean into civics. After all, what could be more important to the health of our constitutional democracy than to join together around shared civic meaning and purpose?
The summit theme was “Educators and Innovators: Our Civics Moment.” With a lot of work by our extraordinary program team, we put together an agenda that would highlight the voices of educators and innovators who are doing game-changing work to elevate civics as the cause of our age.
In my opening remarks, I told the group that we were there to lift up solutions, not, as a friend likes to say, “to admire the problem.”
Then, Citizen University founder Eric Liu gave a rousing address and made it clear that we had come together for an important cause at just the right moment. Liu spoke of the need for a civic education that emphasizes “better arguments” for the causes we believe in even as we respect one another as fellow citizens, and that emphasizes the importance of “union” even as we embrace our commitments to local community.
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An opening plenary session featured inspiring educational entrepreneurs including Ian Rowe of New York’s Vertex Academy, Stephanie Almeda Nevin of Yale’s Citizens Thinkers Writers Program and Matthew Brogdon of Utah Valley University’s Center for Constitutional Studies. These leaders are part of a new wave of innovation in civic thought and leadership studies happening in K-12 schools, higher education and a host of nonprofit organizations educating youth and adults alike.
Participants joined in breakouts focused on civics in classical schools such as Emet Classical Academy in New York, the nation’s first Jewish classical school; religious schools such as those served by the nonprofit organizationCivic Spirit; community colleges such as those supported through a new professional development program organized in partnership between the Jack Miller Center, the Great Questions Foundation and the Teagle Foundation; and civics competitions such as the new National Civics Bee organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Repeatedly throughout the two days, speakers and panelists talked about a “civics renaissance” that is getting underway.
Anika Prather, an extraordinary champion for classical learning, took part in the panel on civics in classical schools and later wrote her reflections on the summit. The gathering, she wrote, was about “celebrating democracy and the passion for training the next generation on how to participate in this great American conversation. There were people from different political affiliations, organizations, and faiths Some I agreed with, and some I didn’t….But we all agreed on one thing: that we each have the equal right to exist, think, believe, and speak as we do, and to show respect for others’ right to do the same.”
She continued: “What struck me even more was that there was little talk about the election (thank you, Jesus). Instead, we simply enjoyed being in a democratic community. It was like water for my soul. It was exactly what I needed. This gathering reminded me of my sense of purpose in this work, even after the heartache of the election. It felt like a family room—where we could gather, eat, laugh, hug, debate, and just breathe.”
If a civics renaissance is in the offing, it would be a movement like Prather described — one that brings people together, that builds community and that reminds us all of our shared commitments to constitutional democracy. And it would be a forward-looking movement.
In a plenary session on “Depolarizing Civics,” Jane Kamensky, the CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, said celebrations marking the 250th anniversaries of the American Revolution and founding should center on the theme of “launch and invest,” rather than some kind of completion. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look to our history to inform our actions in the present. According to political philosopher W.B. Allen, we should “relive the moments of the founding so that re-founding is second nature to us.”
Could there really be a civics renaissance in the works? Let’s pray so. There could hardly be a more fitting way to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
Zeiger is president of the Jack Miller Center, an educational venture to advance the history, documents and ideals we hold in common as Americans.
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New York's daily newspapers had very different headlines the morning after Donald Trump was convicted in s hush money trial.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Why the American media and their critics won’t stop telling the same lie
Dec 09, 2024
The American media has a bootleggers-and-Baptists problem.
“Bootleggers and Baptists” is one of the most useful concepts in understanding how economic regulation works in the real world. Coined by economist Bruce Yandle, the term describes how groups that are ostensibly opposed to each other have a shared interest in maintaining the status quo. Baptists favored prohibition, and so did bootleggers who profited by selling illegal alcohol. And politicians benefited by playing both sides.
There’s an analogous dynamic with the press today.
Across the ideological spectrum, from the Chomskyite left to the Bannonite right, partisans, politicians and journalists themselves inflate the power, influence and importance of “the media.”
Let’s stay with the journalists for a moment. Members of all professions have a tendency to hold themselves in high regard. Nearly everyone, from politicians to plumbers, wants to believe that what they do matters. But with the possible exceptions of politicians and actors, journalists probably have the highest estimation of their own importance.
My point isn’t that they’re wrong — heck, I like to believe what I do matters. It’s that they exaggerate not just their power and influence but also their celebrity and personal authority. Heart surgeons are famously arrogant, but there is not an endless stream of conferences, books, editorials, essays and academic courses dedicated to the indispensable role of cardiothoracic medicine. I doubt there is any sanitation or plumbing trade journal that proclaims “Democracy Dies in Sewage” on its front page.
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In psychological terms alone, it’s in the interests of journalists to encourage the widespread obsession with the Fourth Estate. But the media are a mess in part because they believed their own hype.
I should be clear: I’ve had my own obsessions over the years, working as a conservative media critic and writing scores of columns about liberal media bias — which is real.
But I’ve grown weary with media criticism, again not because the criticisms are necessarily wrong but because they overestimate the power of the institutions they question. That’s the Baptist and Bootlegger problem: The outsize power and influence of the media is a lie that all sides have agreed on.
It’s like American journalism is an exhausted prizefighter on the brink of collapse, held up by his opponent to give the crowd a good show.
According to many on the right — who often unwittingly repurpose old left-wing formulations first introduced by progressives, “cultural Marxists” and other lefty bogeymen — “the media” create narratives and manufacture consent (a term coined by Walter Lippmann and adopted by Noam Chomsky) that the rest of us are powerless to overcome.
Consider climate change. The press has invested vast resources to climate coverage and has been hectoring and catastrophizing about it for 20 years. And yet, climate change remains at or near the bottom of every public opinion survey about the “most important issue.” If the media can manufacture consensus, why is there so little consensus about climate change?
This is just one example of the media thinking not just that it should — but can— define the interests of the public. The amount of energy and handwringing that has been put into, say, AP Stylebook revisions over terms like “illegal immigrant” or whether to capitalize “Black” or “white” when discussing race is premised on a grandiose theory of the role of the press as guardians of the American mind or soul. The whole “defund the police” conversation in the press transpired amid near-zero support for the idea among most Americans.
Or consider Donald Trump. I’m no fan, but I look like a MAGA rally front-seater compared to many in the media (and not just among opinion columnists), and yet Trump not only won but improved his standing with nearly every demographic group.
The response from some on the left is a variant of the old “but real socialism has never been tried!” trope. If only the media had really held him accountable — or took climate change, race, etc., more seriously — things would be different.
The response from many in the media is to wrap themselves in the mantle of heroic martyrdom as Trump attacks them.
And on the right, the ineffectiveness of the media to control the narrative is occasionally celebrated but it never diminishes the hysteria about its alleged omnipotence. The media, Michael Shellenberger insisted last summer, “is arguably more powerful than the government itself.”
Really? It has a funny way of showing it. The industry has been shrinking for decades. Since 2000, of the 532 industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspapers saw the single sharpest decline, 77 percent. Trust in the media is in the gutter.
So here’s an idea for the press: Just tell the truth as best you can and stop worrying about narratives. The American people will write their own.
Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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