## Metadata - Author: [[Vanessa Machado de Oliveira]] - Full Title: Hospicing Modernity - Category: #books ## Highlights - I have been a strong critic of prevalent educational approaches that reproduce paternalistic forms of relationships; simplistic solutions to complex problems; and ethnocentric ideals of sustainability, equity, justice, and change. ([Location 489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=489)) - What I present in this book are translations of what I have been taught about modernity keeping us in an immature state; and the need for a political practice of healing, of radical tenderness, that can enable us to step up, to grow up, and to show up differently. This involves unlearning our learned ways: of thinking and imagining; of sensing and feeling; of relating to one another, the earth, and the cosmos; of facing life, fear, pain, loss, and death. The stories are gifted as a compass that points to the need for us all to become healthy elders and good ancestors for all relations: to learn to live, to grieve, and to die well. This requires that we learn how to face our shadows, how to compost our “shit,” and how to weather storms together. For this to happen, we need a container where we can manifest unconditional regard for everyone’s being; while we commit to interrogating our thinking, our doing, our hopes and desires, and our ways of relating in order to breathe and to move together with maturity, sobriety, discernment, and accountability. This book is an attempt to create that container. ([Location 523](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=523)) - What if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic, contagious divisions are preventable social diseases? What if the texts, education, and forms of organization we revere have carried and spread the disease, but also contain latent parts of the medicine that can heal it? What if learning to activate this medicine requires coming to terms with our violent histories (as painful as that may be); learning to see the world through the eyes of others (as impossible as that sounds); and facing humanity (in our own selves first) in its full complexity, affliction, and imperfection? What if the purging prompted by this medicine leads us to confront our traumas and learn to let go of fears of scarcity, loneliness, worthlessness, guilt, and shame? What if we must learn to trust each other without guarantees? What if the motivation to survive alongside one another in a finite planet in dynamic balance (without written agreements, coercive enforcements, or assurances) will come through being taught collectively by the disease itself? What if collective healing will be made possible precisely by facing—together—the end of the world as we know it? ([Location 597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=597)) - If you find yourself wondering, “What political or ideological position does this book want me to align with?” The answer is, “I am not asking you to align with anything!” I don’t know your context; I don’t know what is happening around you. All I am asking of you is to be open to a head/heart experiment. I am also not trying to please you or to play to your expectations—simply because I am not trying to recruit you for anything. The point of this book is not to gather followers. This has been tried before and has failed every time. I (lovingly) don’t care about what you think, but I care deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper and to relate “wider.” In order to make possible deeper engagements and better relationships we will need to reactivate capacities for sensing, relating, and imagining that have been deactivated within modernity. This does not require you to abandon convictions—just the arrogance, indifference, and contempt that modernity has implanted in all of us. ([Location 1207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=1207)) - People who are socialized within modernity are terrified of hearing or sensing their own ridiculousness because modernity codes it as a form of demotion, humiliation, or belittlement. I invite you to experience the absurdity of modernity within and around you as a form of connection, endearment, and liberation from the grip of arrogance; as a way to laugh at yourself and be taught by the precarity, brokenness, and imperfection of our collective existence. ([Location 1508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=1508)) - This book grants you unconditional regard: respect for your being, irrespective of your identity, background, or affiliations. Remember that I lovingly don’t care about what you think, but I do care very deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper, to relate wider, to engage in productive disillusionment, and to fall apart and together generatively, as we face the end of the world as we know it. ([Location 1537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=1537)) - This book maps ways to reactivate exiled capacities and dispositions so that we can face the extremely challenging task of moving noncoercively away from modern colonial desires for human exceptionalism, unrestricted autonomy, and infinite entitlement and start moving toward accountable autonomy and unconditional responsibility, before will. The level of difficulty of this task may be higher than that of interrupting substance abuse, because this has not yet been tried. ([Location 1543](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=1543)) - within modernity, change is only imagined as something that is motivated by self-interest, by people fighting for access or protecting privileges and perceived entitlements (for groups or individuals). The idea that people can noncoercively surrender a violent and unsustainable form of existence as an act not grounded in self-interest is unthinkable—some would even say unnatural (if you see the privileging of self-interest as a feature of human nature, rather than a learned condition) or impossible. ([Location 1572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=1572)) - Thus, critiques of dominant ways of knowing question the construction of what is perceived as natural, normal, and common sense. Such critiques examine how knowledge (rather than ignorance) can be used to rationalize socio-material practices that sacrifice the well-being of certain populations for the benefit of others. Epistemological critiques therefore help to identify the role of knowledge in historical and ongoing slavery, colonialism, imperialism, racism, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and other forms of normativity—although all these dimensions are rarely identified at the same time. Thus, it is deemed necessary to change the content of existing conversations and institutions by rethinking who is considered an “expert,” and ensuring access for more historically marginalized populations, thereby addressing questions of representation as well as redistribution. ([Location 2284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=2284)) - As our attempts to salvage modernity by fixing or replacing it fail, there is a possibility that we will become disenchanted and disillusioned with modernity’s promises in a generative way. This is the point where colonial desires can be reoriented uncoercively toward something outside our realm of intelligibility, and hence deemed impossible within modernity’s walls. As we start to disidentify with the promises of modernity and to disinvest from modernity’s structures of being (not just of knowing), we may find the time and the vitality to be taught by modernity dying, and assist in the death process with attention, discernment, and integrity. ([Location 2530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=2530)) - It would also be interesting if we researched our attachments and investments within modernity as forms of dependence and addiction imposed by modernity itself. One definition of addiction frames it as a physical desire to consume something beyond our capacity to control it and in defiance of all rules of common sense.6 Addiction also highlights the interdependence of neurobiological feedback loops—for example, how we may be intellectually committed to heal a traumatic experience, but stop ourselves from healing because we are not ready to let go of the coping mechanisms we have developed to handle or compensate for the trauma. However, it is important to be careful when we talk about addictions in this way because it may contribute to the stigmatization of addiction as a moral failure. At the same time addiction can also be extremely useful as an analogy pointing to the physical compulsion toward, and mental obsessions with, unaccountable consumption, unrestricted individual autonomy, exceptionalism, and pleasure within modernity. ([Location 2561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=2561)) - Neuroscientists who study psychotropic plants used in ceremonies by Indigenous communities see serotonin as one of the main neuroendocrine modulators that gives us the sense of connection and entanglement with everything else. That is, a sense of connection occurs when something activates the release and reuptake of serotonin in our bodies. Pedagogically and metaphorically, I will use serotonin as a proxy for the sense of metabolic entanglement that is repeatedly and deliberately severed by modernity. Thus, I propose the hypothesis that by imposing separability (by design, although not always in explicit ways); at a basic level modernity reorients the production, release, and absorption of serotonin (as part of a much more complex set of neurofunctional processes). This reorientation causes us to feel separated from the larger metabolism, and it removes our sense of the intrinsic value of our lives and the lives of others. Because of this reorientation, we feel compelled to seek connection and the external validation for our sense of worth through participation in modern affective, intellectual, relational, and material economies. If we fail to participate in these economies, our serotonin pathways are not activated and we feel isolated and worthless, which makes us feel insecure, alone, and unable to relate to others. Because of this state of permanent separability, individuation, and (perceived) disconnection, the quality of well-being afforded for example in Indigenous communities through continuous collective ceremonial practices is exiled from the house of modernity because people within cannot believe or imagine it is possible to feel well in a different way. ([Location 2580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=2580)) - Modernity conditions us to believe that in order to change reality or our ways of being, we first need to imagine what this change looks like, and then make a plan and act to achieve that goal. That is why many people ask me the question: if not modernity, then what? I usually say that this is a logical question—within modernity’s logic. I warn people who start with that question that they will not like my answer, which is: we will only be able to imagine something genuinely different if we first become suspicious of what we desire and are able to imagine within modernity. This is the first step toward hospicing modernity. ([Location 2671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=2671)) - Arrogance is an attitude of superiority based on an exaggerated sense of importance that demands audience and validation. It often manifests in combination with presumptuous claims about the superiority of one’s knowledge, status, power, or virtues. ([Location 3014](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3014)) - One of them, however, became really interested. He asked me what I taught, prefacing that with a smirky smile and saying, “I am interested in philosophy.” I said I worked in education. “Which area?” he asked. I paused again. I thought, how can I explain what I do in five seconds, in ways that might keep this conversation going in a positive way? So I said, “I think my job at the university is to try to gently convince very entitled privileged people who think they know everything to shed their arrogance voluntarily and realize what they are missing out on.” All the young people at the table lit up. The young man who had asked me the question said, “I know exactly what you do!” I told him, “That is good news if you have a name for it, because it is usually very hard to explain!” He said, “You work with anti-….” In my mind I was thinking, “He is going to say ‘antiracism.’” But I was overjoyed when he shouted next, “Anti-ASSHOLISM!” Everyone, including myself, burst out laughing. I replied, “Precisely! This is the best description I ever heard; can I borrow it?” He agreed. I said with a smile, “You know, anti-assholism starts at home, in my body. I need to start with my own assholism.” He replied, “Now you are making me look at mine.” I said, “You see, I am really good at my job!” We had a great lunch and I was gifted the best-ever description of my work, although it is not one I can often use at the institution where I work. ([Location 3085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3085)) - While my colleagues in the scientific, medical, and engineering fields assumed that those in other fields could never comprehend their work, this did not go both ways; they assumed that they could easily be experts in the social sciences, humanities, social work, and education. When my social work colleagues would try to describe the paradoxes of their work, several people felt that they could explain the problems better than the person who was actually in that field. If obscure language appeared in presentations of scientists, medical doctors, and engineers, it was a sign of rational rigor and the fact that they were studying something important that most of us wouldn’t understand. When technical language appeared in presentations of lower status disciplines, we were told we were not effective communicators, and that we needed to speak in “plain language” since anyone could be an expert in the kind of work we did. This dynamic is in the DNA of our institutions and is very much connected to the three arrogances described before: the smarts, the throne, and the stage. ([Location 3308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3308)) - In getting to zero we recognize that we don’t know everything, we cannot know everything, we are not a special species, and there is a bio-intelligence in the living planet-metabolism itself that is much older and larger than what human intelligence can fathom. As we start getting to zero, we will need to clear out the things that have cluttered our existence in modernity so that this bio-intelligence can begin to work through us in more profound ways, through the gifts and medicines we carry. ([Location 3477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3477)) - “Zero” is where we face and embrace both unlimited responsibility and accountability—responsibility to continuously compost our individual and collective shit in order to be available to this bio-intelligence. In this space, we sense more deeply our accountability to those, both human and nonhuman, whose lives were taken so that we could live. This accountability compels us not to waste other people’s time and life-force, and not to increase labor unnecessarily for other people or beings. “Zero” is where we sit before the immeasurable mess we have created and choose the path of collective healing over the path of collective self-destruction. It is through the process of getting to zero that we might learn to breathe and to be water, together. ([Location 3481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3481)) - Getting to zero is an ethico-political compass for hospicing modernity. However, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to get to zero from where we currently are. In order to be oriented by this compass, we need to have a deeper understanding of how the plus one/minus one dynamic structures relationships in general, especially those between dominant and marginalized communities in our current contexts. ([Location 3486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3486)) - Within modernity’s hierarchies of worth, difference is understood either as the deviation from a desirable norm (i.e., difference perceived as a liability) or something that can be selectively consumed by the dominant population for individual self-actualization or institutional branding (i.e., difference perceived as an asset). ([Location 3489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3489)) - it is impossible to imagine decolonial futures from where we stand, having our livelihoods underwritten and our unconscious mostly occupied by modernity/coloniality. ([Location 3767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3767)) - Imagining a political practice beyond representation, recognition, and redistribution is almost impossible within modernity. In this context, critiques of colonialism focus—at best—on the subjugation of peoples and the occupation of lands. An understanding of colonialism that starts with separability and the objectification of the earth as property is both largely illegible and unactionable within what is considered real, desirable, and possible. ([Location 3783](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3783)) - The unwritten contract for inclusion is about supporting business as usual by increasing the number of diverse people invested in the same game, rather than in changing the game. In this context, marginalized people tend to expect much more from institutions (e.g., redress, retribution, repatriation) than what institutions are ready to give. ([Location 3792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3792)) - We have plenty of evidence that critique often leads only to cosmetic rather than to substantive changes. This is because the problems are not merely cognitive—they involve affective, relational, and material economies that sustain the world as we know it and that can only fundamentally change when the limits of this world are reached and all easier options are exhausted. ([Location 3803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3803)) - Modernity intends to defeat death and, by setting this intention, it harnesses our fears of death. The fear of mortality (for our bodies, our loved ones, or our species) keeps us seeking projections where we postpone living fully until the ideal something comes along: the ideal partner, ideal job, ideal time, ideal self-image, ideal place.… But if you know your days are numbered—and they are—you can’t wait for the ideal anything. The ideal day is today: today is as good a day to die as any other day, as the Indigenous saying goes. Once this realization sinks in, there is a chance we may start to notice the multiple deaths that happen within and around us every day so that we can remain alive, and to be grateful for each extra day we have before finally exiting the body. Living well is inseparable from dying well and these two things are happening at the same time. ([Location 3858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3858)) - modernity emerged as an attempt to control change and resist and defeat death, which is done partly by dissociating ourselves from nature (as if we were not part of it). ([Location 3881](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=3881)) - As I complete this rite of passage, I have started to realize that “home” is right here, in the imperfect, wounded, wounding, and vulnerable body and land we inhabit. I also realize that the desire to transcend the body does nothing to scar and heal its wounds. Being in an imperfect, wounded, wounding, and vulnerable (individual and collective) nested body is understandably overwhelming for an individual person. In this entangled metabolic context, healing is not something we can compartmentalize or do on our own—we need all hands, heads, hearts, guts, and feet on deck. However, those around us will be as fallible, faulty, and fabulous as we are: they cannot guarantee betrayal won’t happen and we cannot guarantee we won’t betray them. Everyone will seriously mess up and hurt others at some point and we will all need to hold space when it happens and figure out how to grow down, and then up and out of the mess, together. We also need all the forces we can summon to start to heal our thinking; our feeling; our modes of relating; our exchanges; and our capacity to face pain, grief, and joy in the cycles of life and death. This includes the erotic forces (both sexual and not) that belong in and work through the body—the same body I intended to refuse and transcend. These forces have been plasticized, commodified, and weaponized within modernity. Thus, figuring out how to reestablish healthy relationships with our bodies and the erotic forces that work through them is one of the greatest challenges we need to face together—if these forces are to help us to heal rather than to continue to wound one another. The hummingbird that has, for the course of its lifetime, been obsessed with forest fires and dragons and driven my attention outward now turns around, looks at me, and tells me to integrate body and spirit, space and time, form and movement. She wants me to work toward the dragons within me, not scorching forests; the settlers within me, not amputating arms; the Indigenous relations within me, not self-harming; and all other animals within me, shaking themselves out of indifference. I am slowly learning that rather than being “in” the spirit or the body, I can be “with” both, and everything they are entangled with. “Home” is much larger, more diverse, and more complicated than I thought it would be. ([Location 4311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=4311)) - Picture a large group of obnoxious children who throw a temper tantrum every time their unrealistic expectations and demands are not met. Now multiply it by a couple of billion. This is us. ([Location 4736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=4736)) - Imagine a storm between the ways of knowing and being that are dying (within and around us) and those that are being born. On the one hand, there is the work of offering palliative care to assist with what is dying (i.e., hospicing). On the other hand, there is the work of assisting with the birth of something new, without suffocating it with projections (i.e., assisting with midwifery). In between death and birth, in the eye of the storm, we need to keep balance-in-movement, moving with the storm herself: if we walk too fast, we get caught in the vortex; if we walk too slow, we also get caught in the vortex. ([Location 4772](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=4772)) - Intellectual surrender is about discernment, learning to let go, tapping collective exiled capacities, developing metabolic literacies, dissolving individuality and separability, and enabling a bio-intelligence to guide us. Intellectual surrender is not about surrendering the intellect, but about surrendering the imprints of colonialism that frame our interpretations of reality so that the land can dream through us. ([Location 4782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=4782)) - Modernity’s colonization of our unconscious means that, if left with a choice, most people will gravitate toward what is easier, most comfortable, and most familiar, toward what will fulfill their modern desires and temporarily address their sense of depletion. The possibility of emptying ourselves of these desires, of letting both our securities and insecurities go, is only viable when everything else fails, or when we grow bored with our own delusions. ([Location 4808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08R5PFRLW&location=4808))