Anxiety and Resistance: This is What We’ve Been Preparing For

A reflection of the themes of Creativity, Resilience, and Love in Times of Mass Atrocity as they apply to 2020, for Dr. Marie Berry's Resistance, Creativity, & Love in Time of Mass Atrocities class, spring quarter 2020

The last several months have been in a word...unprecedented. With the combination of a worldwide pandemic and the recent eruption of protests to hold the murderers of George Floyd accountable, this has been a time of heightened anxiety for everyone. But for those of us with preexisting anxiety disorders, there’s definitely somewhat of an urge to tell others, “The world was ending all along, I told you so.” Some kind of sick sense of irony that makes us feel like we’ve been in on it all along and now we’re having to guide everyone else through this. This has been particularly relevant in my life because as all of these events started in March, I was off of my antidepressants...not by choice. There had been a miscommunication somewhere between my therapist, my doctor in Texas, the Nurse Practitioner I saw in Denver, my pharmacist, and my insurance that ultimately resulted in a time of inner turmoil as the outer turmoil started to unfold. I will always remember standing in line at the Walgreens pharmacy for the seventh time in two days when I received the email that DU had made the call to hold all classes online for the coming quarter. This kind of change in something I considered a given felt like a kick in the stomach on top of the hormones in my brain already doing their own damage. Lots of people don’t know this, but going off of your medication suddenly can breed thoughts of suicide, and I felt like I was fighting a war with every thought that crossed my mind, forcing it to be a positive one, or at the very least a neutral one. It took me weeks after this to really accept the reality of COVID-19 and what the coming months might look like because I had been trying to just move on to when I’d have a normal brain again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back at the end of March when things first started to really go South internally and externally, I saw Dr. Berry’s post that she had decided to pivot her Comparative Genocide class to a class focusing on Resilience, Creativity, and Love During Times of Mass Atrocity. I originally reached out asking to audit but eventually decided to enroll full-time. And I’m so glad I did.

I have always been fascinated by resistance. When I was little, it was a fixation on the American Revolution. Then in middle school, after reading a young adult fiction book called, Tamar by Mal Peet about the Dutch resistance to the Nazis. This was the first time it had ever occurred to me that anyone resisted the Nazis, and was very pivotal in my emotional and academic growth. In high school, it was the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution, and in college, it was Scottish separatism and National Park Rangers that used Twitter to resist President Trump. After that, it was working on a revolution on my own in the form of working for Beto O’Rourke’s senate race in Texas. It was at this time I began developing a language for my feelings and pride in general resistance to oppression. It really came to a point when I was at a barbecue hosted by a family that had opened their home to the campaign to run a pop-up office out of. All of our calls for the day had been completed, we had knocked on two hundred doors, and we were simply sitting and enjoying one another’s company. It was this moment that was the biggest act of resistance for us. A group of random people who were practically strangers:

• Myself

• My mother, who was petrified of politics, until she became a Head Start teacher

• A young woman who had recently transitioned from male to female

• Her parents - one a lifelong Democrat, the other a recent convert after the crisis at the border, who gave her home to a campaign that was against all the ideals she grew up in favor of

• Many older white women, the demographic that elected Trump, taking time off work to make calls all day every day to change Texas

• An Indian couple that had just gained citizenship and immediately started volunteering for the campaign

• An older Black woman who had been a precinct chair for 25 years, and her 7-year-old grandson.

To this day, when I think of this moment, of all of us resting after a day of work, telling stories around a brisket, I tear up. It was at this moment that I understood why people, even in the most difficult of situations, choose to resist.

My recent feelings of anxiety and this not-so-recent memory of resistance wore heavy on my mind as I read “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl in anticipation of our second class meeting. While I would never, never try to compare my anxiety or current events as interpreted by a middle-class white woman to the Holocaust, or any genocide for that matter, this book gave me the framework needed to interpret not only the course material but also the events of the quarter. In this work, Frankl uses his experiences in four different concentration camps to identify the psychological state of his peers and identify what those who survive have in common. He identified three emotions that the majority of the inmates cycled through over the course of their time in the camps: shock, apathy, and dissociation. Again, not that I would ever conflate the two experiences, but I must say that all of these emotions have been felt since quarantine started and in even quicker succession during the police brutality protests of the past weeks. While those in the camps saw these emotions in the form of not being able to comprehend the gravity of their circumstances, refusing to think of the immense harm they were experiencing, and then not being able to think about, much less face, the damage after they had been released. For those of us now, these emotions cycled in shock as institutions shut their doors or the horror of watching George Floyd’s last breath, becoming apathetic to the social distancing rules and casting aside the police brutality protests as riots not to be taken seriously or feeling as if the distancing or protests aren’t even working, then acting like neither of these events are happening and carrying on life as usual, or at least wanting to. But in both the cases of the camps and the current day, the most successful are those who feel these emotions but then transcend them. Frankl ascertained those who felt these emotions but nothing else, not finding any meaning in their lives, did not survive. In order to survive, even in hell on earth, one must lead a rich inner life, have future-oriented goals, and find meaning. He called this theory logotherapy, or the idea that finding meaning is the driving force of our human lives. We create meaning in three ways: creating works of value or doing good deeds, positive experiences such as love or experiencing the world around you, and finding a point to your suffering. Lastly, Frankl discussed anxiety. He detailed how this search for meaning leads us to two different kinds of anxiety: hyper-intention and anticipatory anxiety. The former happens when one is so set on accomplishing something that their anxiety prevents them from doing it, while the latter is when one is so afraid of the outcome that their anxiety prevents them from being able to do the thing at all. As you can probably imagine, this probably resonated with me most of all. I experienced both of these forms of anxiety just while completing this assignment. But in what ways does Frankl suggest we combat this anxiety and the general weight of trauma? By paying attention. By being present enough to see the moments of positivity, resilience, creativity, and love during a time of any kind of mass atrocity (I understand why this is the first reading on our entire syllabus). While there are many categories of positive actions, Frankl specifies these: humor, art, religion, beauty, imagination, and love. Over the past several weeks, both in an attempt to understand and appreciate the acts of resistance to the atrocities we’ve studied in class, in addition to seeing the joy in the times we are living in, I have composed an example from class and my current life that falls under each of these categories. While all of this was starting, my dad told me, “Look for acts of kindness and creativity, and keep a log of what you are thinking about.” With a few edits, this is that log.

Humor

“But your mom says you are going anyway and you decide to pray to god to intervene because it is the only thing you can think of that can save you and because for some reason you don’t understand, Santa Claus and the tooth fairy are not real but God is, apparently.”

Islands of Decolonial Love, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

During week 3, we watched an Emma Talk by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about her collection of short stories narrating the experiences of many indigenous characters finding love. I was so intrigued by the talk, that I ended up reading many of the stories in the book. While the overall goal of the Emma talk and the collection was to talk about love between those whose lives have been grasped by colonialism and imperialism, the thing that stuck out to me the most was the wit and sarcasm of all the characters. Even with the serious subject matter, this detail made the stories more engaging and believable and made the characters more human. One of the things I learned through this course was the importance of humor to humanize victims and satire to point out the absurdity of systems of oppression.

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As silly as they are, COVID memes and TikToks have been a very large source of comfort for me over the past several months. They present a source of solidarity and a way to laugh at the absurdity of the times we’re living in. While I have had to remove Facebook from my phone and abstain from using Twitter and Instagram as often as usual, both Pinterest and TikTok have served as my connection to other people (mostly strangers) who are living a life similar to mine even though they are all over the world. It is also just a source of joy. This class has helped me pay closer attention to the many sources of joy and laughter that can keep us a community during these hard times.

Art

“Ni Encerradas Ni Con Miedos” (Neither Locked Up Nor With Fear)

“Outside it’s a battlefield and my body has become a trench.

Security, no more violence in our homes.

Security, no more harassment in the plazas.

Security, no more guns in the streets.

Security. Community. No more soldiers.”

Rebeca Lane

My dad is in a band called the Tone Deaf Cowboys...and a preacher. When people hear this, they make some assumptions about him, and usually by association, me. Lots of people think, “Texas. Cowboy. Preacher. Conservative.” This is far from the truth. For some ungodly reason, people think of “cowboy” or country music and assume it’s all about racists on farms, and this frankly disgusts me. This kind of assumption is a direct insult to John Prine, may he rest in peace, who wrote one of my favorite protest songs, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore” with the amazing chorus: “Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore, it’s already overcrowded from your dirty little war. Jesus don’t like killin’ no matter what the reason’s for, and your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore.” Art is pivotal in understanding the voices of the oppressed and eliciting feelings from those who listen. I especially liked reading about how Guatemalan artists, specifically Rebeca Lane, used their voices to do this.

Throne of Weapons, Mozambique

I love this piece. It’s made of decommissioned rifles that were used during instances of violence but then were given up through the “Swords into Plowshares” program. I think it is another example of how striking art can be when telling a story.

Religion

In the survey of rescuers, only 3 of the 273 said that they were not religious.

“I Decided to Save Them”

The discussion of Rwandan rescuers was one of my favorites that we had in this class. While my personal religious identity is agnostic, I often feel the need to stick up for religion in Korbel classes. I try to avoid confirmation bias, but this tidbit from Dr. Fox’s research is a nice fact to keep in my back pocket. It’s important that those who rescued other Rwandans were for the most part religious. Especially in a study whose purpose consists of finding commonalities between rescuers. As Frankl said, there are lots of ways to find meaning in your life, but I would say religion or spirituality, in general, is one that requires less work because the real philosophical meaning has already been interpreted by someone else, they’ve already done the heavy lifting. And I mean this in the best way. No one should listen to religious leaders and never question them, but having a preexisting language for things like “love” and “reconciliation” is extremely important. This brings me to my personal reflections on religion since the George Floyd protests. The following block of text (yes, it’s a lot, but it’s very important to me) is the Belhar Confession. The Belhar Confession was written to explicitly condemn racism in the Church, and call for Christians to be anti-racist. In 2016, it was adopted into the Presbyterian Church USA Book of Confessions, basically the equivalent of changing our Constitution. I was there as a Young Adult Advisory Delegate. As soon as it was passed, we all interrupted into “We Shall Overcome” and to this day these words and that memory make me weepy.

Belhar Confession:

We believe

2 Corinthians 5:17–21

• that God has entrusted the church with the message of reconciliation in and through Jesus Christ;

Matthew 5:9, 13– 16; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1–5

• that the church is called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, that the church is called blessed because it is a peacemaker, that the church is witness both by word and by deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells;

Romans 6:12–14, Colossians 1:11–14

• that God’s life-giving Word and Spirit has conquered the powers of sin and death, and therefore also of irreconciliation and hatred, bitterness and enmity, that God’s life-giving Word and Spirit will enable the church to live in a new obedience which can open new possibilities of life for society and the world;

James 2:8–9

• that the credibility of this message is seriously affected and its beneficial work obstructed when it is proclaimed in a land which professes to be Christian, but in which the enforced separation of people on a racial basis promotes and perpetuates alienation, hatred and enmity;

• that any teaching which attempts to legitimate such forced separation by appeal to the gospel, and is not prepared to venture on the road of obedience and reconciliation, but rather, out of prejudice, fear, selfishness and unbelief, denies in advance the reconciling power of the gospel, must be considered ideology and false doctrine.

10.6 Therefore, we reject any doctrine which, in such a situation sanctions in the name of the gospel or of the will of God the forced separation of people on the grounds of race and color and thereby in advance obstructs and weakens the ministry and experience of reconciliation in Christ.

These are really cool words. But why do they matter? Those of us who are members are bound to this commitment because it was voted on and approved by ruling elders like myself and my mom and my pregnant pastor and lots of little old Presbyterians and put in the equivalent of our constitution. So when we have an issue like the police brutality protests happening right now, or even the cases of churches being vandalized or broken into like what happened with First Presbyterian Church in Dallas, it’s not a question of whether we do anything or not. We’ve made that decision. We have vowed to be actively anti-racist, and we’ve backed that up with Scripture, so it doesn’t really matter what your political affiliation is, saying something like “Black Lives Matter” is not a partisan statement. And while we can and must always, always be doing better, that makes me kind of proud.

Beauty

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I honestly don’t have that much to say about beauty, other than the fact that it’s different for everyone. For me, this picture from the Sudanese protests is one of my favorite images in the world. It reminds me a lot of Marc Chagall’s painting White Crucifixion. To me, beauty is about the aesthetic of something...this picture is well-composed, the illumination of phone screens is a lovely touch and this woman just completely exhibits the power, strength, and confidence that I associate with beauty. The other side of beauty, separate from the aesthetic is the story she tells. This woman represents the anger and hope of all the Sudanese women like her, who are fighting for their communities and children.

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Since the beginning of the quarter, I have experienced many instances of beauty, especially when I meander through the mountains and try to recreate watercolor renditions of the spaces I’ve so painstakingly tried to perfect in my house. I feel like it’s at least somewhat a consequence of misogyny when people try to say aestheticism and beauty are frivolous and not something to be too worried about, but I agree with Frankl. Beauty is part of what makes life worth living. Why on Earth would we discount that?

Imagination

“Indigenous Futurism also advocates for the sovereign. It dares to let Indigenous creators define themselves and their world not just as speaking back to colonialism, but as existing in their own right. That is not to say that the past is ignored, but rather that it is folded into the present, which is folded into the future—a philosophical wormhole that renders the very definitions of time and space fluid in the imagination.”

Wakanda Forever: Using Indigenous Futurisms to Survive the Present, Adrienne Keene

I love futurism so damn much. Again...creativity and imagination are not valued nearly enough in our field. But Adrienne Keene’s article about rephrasing futures with the words we use didn’t so much speak to me as it yelled at me. Folklore was a very important aspect of my undergraduate education and I think it’s a tragedy that we don’t incorporate it into our curriculum as regularly now. This article manages to incorporate the ways we look to the past to understand and the future to imagine how our future could fit perfectly with the scope of using the events of COVID and the BLM movement to be brave in what we demanded at the commencement of these events. Necessary demands like healthcare and police reform. I hope to do more work with futurism in the future, both as a caretaker of the past and as a proprietor of the future.

Love

Surprisingly, there was a lot of love in this course about genocide. Even with Dr. Berry’s pivot and naming love specifically, I was skeptical. But sure enough, it turns out that love is everywhere in times of mass atrocity. The example of this that stood out the most to me, which I discussed in class, was the adoptive fathers in Invisible Children. Fathers married the victims of horrible rapes by Serbian soldiers and adopted their children as their own. These stories are so moving to me, as they show those who completely reject the negative sides of their community to love unabashedly. I’ve seen lots of these instances of love since March. It turns out that when faced with atrocity, even those you would least expect to go out of their way to show love to others. From small children drawing pictures and passing them out in my neighborhood, to extremely conservative people on my Facebook offering to be bodyguards for BLM protesters in my hometown, there’s been so much love around me. Even when I had the weirdest birthday in my life, my family and friends from so many walks of life surprised me with a Zoom party.

Even with everything going on these last months, I have had plenty of time to think, and having Dr. Berry’s class has definitely helped give me some perspective into what we should be looking for. White it’s true these times have been unprecedented in negative ways, they have also been times marked by unprecedented humor, unprecedented art, unprecedented religion, unprecedented beauty, unprecedented imagination, and of course, unprecedented love.