This week for my class Critical Experiences I was assigned excerpts from the book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown. On its face, this book seemed extremely unappealing to me: a nebulous, vaguely-self help style book full of empty platitudes and fetishization of indigenous practices and cultures. Written by an author who by their own admission does not have data to support any of their conclusions. As I read more, I can’t say my opinion changed much, but that doesn’t mean there was nothing to reflect on or learn from.

What is our purpose in life?

A mushroom is a toxin-transformer, a dandelion is a community of healers waiting to spread… What are we as humans, what is our function in the universe?

…

I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination to break free.

Even before I left the Mormon church, I was grappling with this question. The church approved answer was that this life was to prepare to meet God; i.e. we do good things, profess our belief in God, and go to church so that we would be let into the highest level of heaven. But… then what? Apparently, being in the presence of God was going to be so great that we would feel eternally fulfilled in some way that was beyond mortal understanding. This answer was barely enough for me as a child, but once I left the church, it opened up a whole new search for a satisfying answer. I had to engage my own imagination and define for myself what I was on this Earth to do.

Immediately after leaving the church, the easy answer that came to me was that our highest purpose was to materially help others. I spent long nights thinking about how I could benefit the most number of people in the world. Would it be through dedicating my life to non-profit work abroad? Pursuing a medical degree to develop unique skills to alleviate physical suffering? Or maybe seeking out the highest paying job possible and trusting that I could use Effective Altruism to direct large sums of money to the world’s woes. But none of these sat well with me either. Everyone’s life couldn’t be helping others, and one’s entire life can’t be in service to others in complete replacement of service to self.

This is a point in which I find myself agreeing with a somewhat empty platitude from the reading:

Transform yourself to transform the world.

Where I have settled in my journey for the question, “why am I existing in a world I did not ask to be in” is on the philosophy of Hedonism - or pleasure seeking. Once a ‘dirty word’ for me in my Mormon days, I have now found it to be an extremely enlightening body of research. Questions like: how can you compare the short-term pleasure of eating junk food to the long term pleasure of an able body and high energy levels? How can ensuring the pleasure of others become a reciprocal action that ensures higher levels of pleasures for you?

I think humans have no inherent purpose on this Earth. Purpose in an ecosystem, sure, but there is no inherent meaning in life. However, I think our collective goal should be to build a world of pleasure for everyone. It is something that can be practiced at all levels of community, including personal, and leaves a lot of room for different definitions of the world pleasure. And this can explain how I’m a straight-edge vegan hedonist, who is chasing long-term, sustainable pleasure, while not denying myself indulgence as much as I can in a way that doesn’t disrupt my or anyone else’s long term well being.

What is holding back my pleasure?

Brown identifies a list of patterns that “start small and then become movement wide”

  • Burn out. Overwork, underpay, unrealistic expectations.
  • Organizational and movement splitting.
  • Personal drama disrupting movements.
  • Mission drift, specifically in the direction of money.
  • Stagnation—an inability to make decisions.

As a pretty anxious person, I often have negative thought patterns that start within myself and reverberate throughout my life. One that has been extremely noticeable lately is my frustration with life in New York City. I have days where I was kept up all night by road noise, the train isn’t running, and the streets are filled with garbage and rats. And at the end of the day I return to my too small, too expensive apartment. These negative thoughts have at times completely overshadowed the joy that I have felt in the city, and the many wonderful people and things in it.

Disrupting this isn’t particularly hard either, all it takes is to leave my apartment and do something interesting with other people. I could spend the rest of my life discovering new things in this city, and the fact that I likely won’t be here for the rest of my life is all the more reasons to seize the opportunities now. There are some bigger items that could help my long term pleasures (moving to another city, or at least a nicer apartment), but the smaller, day to day things are just as important.

My first project for this class

For the first project of this class, we are given an assigned topic and have to create a research-based ‘guide’ for it. It can be funny, or informative, as long as it is well-researched. The topic I was assigned is Taxidermy, something that immediately repulsed me as a strong believer in animal rights. To me, taxidermy has often just seemed like another way that humans exert our absolute dominion over non-human sentient beings, continuing to use their bodies for our enjoyment even after they have died.

I did some initial research, mainly consisting of reading Wikipedia, and found some interesting tidbits that I may use as initial directions.

  • The word taxidermy is derived from the Ancient Greek words τάξις taxis (order, arrangement) and δέρμα derma (skin). Thus taxidermy translates to “arrangement of skin.”
  • The phrase ‘stuffed animal’ originally comes from 19th century crude taxidermy that involved taking animals to upholstery shops and sewing animal skills stuffed with rags and cotton.
  • In the late 19th century, a style known as anthropomorphic taxidermy became popular. A ‘Victorian whimsy’, mounted animals were dressed as people or displayed as if engaged in human activities.
  • The “Stoned Fox” meme was a real taxidermied fox
  • The term “rogue taxidermy” was coined in 2004 by an artist collective called The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists and is a form of mixed media sculpture .

As I started thinking about my topic, a stray thought that popped in my head was the phrase “digital taxidermy.” What could it mean to preserve a once living digital being or world after it was no longer alive. This was in large part influenced by a brilliant podcast episode by 99 percent invisible documenting the end of the virtual world EA Live, and subsequent efforts to preserve it. I still don’t know exactly what direction this project will take, but I’m excited to find out!