Living Liberation Instead of Trying to Produce It

Here are 13 Things I Have Learned - from Abolishing the Need to be Right to Welcoming my Own Death.

I wrote this essay more than a year ago and it’s been sitting in my Substack drafts since. Now I’m finally publishing it because - I almost don’t need things to be perfect anymore.

For an acknowledgement on who else I learn from and may not have quoted, please check out the text under “Education” on my website.

How do we align our actions with our values while trying to survive under capitalism?

By now, many of us are on the same, or at least a similar enough, page. We want liberation for all, and we want it now. For many of my non-Western friends this isn’t a new endeavour - and with ongoing genocides, fascism being fully alive, and the literal oppressive nature of capitalism engrained in most of what we have to do daily, even those benefitting from relative privilege and little struggle have come to the conclusion that the system, as it is, needs to be abolished.

Understandably, we are impatient to bring upon change as quickly as possible. Yet, many of us are still trying to bring upon liberation with the same productivity capitalism has taught us to do paid labour: in a constant hustle, a scarcity mentality, an intense focus on measurable outcomes, and striving for perfectionism.

I know we're driven by passion and our wish to survive and thrive, and I know it’s urgent. At the same time, we may notice that our tireless efforts to scream into the world for someone to hear us can get us caught in cycles that don’t bring upon long-lasting change. Like @badschoolbadschool explains on some of their Insta posts (I believe they have removed their Insta by now), we are in constant cycles of reaction.

While working towards long lasting change, I notice the drive to be productive in my own body. Posting, trying to educate people, organizing, initiating community projects, giving workshops, engaging in mututal aid. On Instagram, I am getting the impression that we are posting the same things over and over again, just in different words, on different slides. Going on my Instagram feels like sprinting in a circle between horrifying news, how-to-liberation stock quotes, mutual aid fundraisers, virtual offers for people to come together for something liberation-related, and videos of comrades getting beat up by the police.

Of course I learn a lot through what I see online, and I also get overwhelmed and exhausted by the amount of information, offers, and input I am supposed to process. Some of us get trapped on social media doom scrolls, ending up just hopeless, afraid, disconnected from what’s around us. This seems like the opposite of what liberation needs from us as a collective - which is connection, presence, and solidarity.

People coming together in person or online to build community are also experiencing difficulties. Thinking they finally found a place they can find belonging and purpose in, an unfamiliarity and little practise engaging in conflict resolution, accountability, or repair processes, can make it it difficult build trust and sustainable connection with each other. Most of us are traumatized, and healing and learning these skills take time, patience, and effort. Time and space most of us don’t have because we are busy trying to make money to pay rent and buy groceries.

Community projects fail quickly, and people who were initially motivated to engage in community drop out because they feel unsafe in the environment. Trust in our shared humanity, dignity, and deservingness of each other’s respect (even if we have different opinions or just don’t like each other!), however, feels essential to living liberation instead of trying to merely produce it. Living liberation doesn’t mean simply knowing the theory, being on the “right side of history”, or sharing our outrage for oppression and rage for liberation via social media posts. Liberation means deep tissual changes within our own bodyminds and finding true connection and care within community and the ecosystem we live in. They say that only once we ca start relying on each other for care, connection, and mutual aid, will we gain the ability to build a liberation movement strong enough to defy imperial monsters.

Here are a few things that I have learned as a part of my own process, a few things that help me to live liberation instead of fighting to “produce” it as if there was some utopian end-goal.

Mostly, this is a reminder to myself that liberation is a messy, passionate, exciting, terrifying, satisfying, fun, amazing, painful, beautiful process and way to spend my bodily existence on this planet. It is here to remind me of my purpose, to remind me of myself, and to remind me of my story. Like Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba explain their book Let This Radicalize You:

If spitting horrifying facts at people changed minds and built movements, we would have overthrown the capitalist system a long time ago, because the facts have always been on our side. […] Over the course of our movement work, we have learned that people understand the world in stories. This means that organizers must be effective storytellers. […] the currency is not necessarily truth, but rather meaning.”

So here is a small part of my story, and some reminders to myself.

1. Making mistakes and abolishing flawlessness and the need to be right

I don't want or need to proof my values to others anymore. Making mistakes, being wrong, and hurting people unintentionally are part of existing as a person. I know my values and intentions, and people who are open to knowing me, know them too. I don't want to base my actions on how others perceive me, or on receiving external validation or praise for what I'm doing. I’m doing the best I can considering where I'm at on my journey of radicalization. I can't fast-forward, I can only do the things my current capacities, healing, and knowledge allow me to do (credit for this thought goes to my friend Ṣikẹmi who said something along those lines once). I trust my journey of growth and my own process. There’s no “ready” to align myself to a liberation-oriented life. There’s only doing it now, as best as I know how to.

2. Killing the myth of “fully healed”

The prospect of being “fully healed” is a product the health and wellness industry tries to sell us in a system that damages us every single fucking day. Being “healed” is not something to be achieved within a lifetime nor is it necessary to be okay. Therapy tries to make us buy into a narrative of “once you’re healed, everything will be fine, you’ll be happy.” This, of course - is wrong. At no point in this life will everything just be fine. We don’t need to be healed from all our trauma to be in connection with the world, we need to be connected to ourselves to feel our interconnectedness with everything.

3. Not limiting my imagination in any way

I’m not feeding only of hope, I know change is on its way. While hope gives us strength, it seems to sometimes come from a sense of believing that we have no agency over what will happen. I know that everything is possible. I don’t believe in “but we have to be realistic”. We have to imagine and with our imagination, we create reality. I don’t think that any revolutions were brought into existence by being “realistic”. They were started by people imagining seemingly impossible freedom. I stopped believing that big things or change are not possible. Even on a small scale - if I have an idea and can imagine what it could look like to put it into practise, I can find ways to make it real. That doesn’t always mean that I do, but it means that I can. Oppression made us internalize helplessness, powerlessness, and hopelessness. Imperialists want to oppress our minds, our fantasies, and our newly created realities so they can maintain power and the status quo. Most big things can be made possible with enough willpower, motivation, capacity, minds, and people. By believing in ourselves and what we can do, we become stronger and more powerful every day.

Fire on the plantation. Illustration of slaves from the colony of Saint-Domingue (future Haiti) who rebelled against their masters on August 22, 1791.

4. Spiritual grounding & seeing our fight for liberation as a part of a continuum

Knowing that many of our ancestors (blood or not blood related) also fought for liberation. Knowing that we are merely continuing their fight which is a constant endeavour with no utopian end. Knowing that we won't be "done" within our lifetimes, and are not only fighting for our lifetime but for the earth’s lifetime. While there will be major shifts and changes we will be part of in our living bodies, there's no end to our fight for liberation. It's a mere continuation, and we don't "finish" it, we can’t even. We do all we can to make things better, for future generations but also for each other in the moment. Allowing myself to sense my interconnectedness to my ancestors as well as the presence of everything and everyone who is in this fight of liberation with us, near and far, embodied or spiritually, is helping me to remain steadfast. Being spiritually grounded in a greater purpose and interconnectedness helps me to feel my existence as purposeful. The concept of animism, gratitude for the ability to exist, feel, be, and change; and knowing that my presence impacts the world around me positively, is what keeps my will to exist afloat and thriving.

5. A daily aligning of my actions with my values - in an ordinary way

When I face a decision and I'm unsure what to do, I ask myself: what would I do if I'd live in the world I want to live in? Then I just do that. It’s usually as easy as that, no excuses - and sometimes it can be more complex. For example - I try to make a habit of not ignoring my unhoused neighbours in whatever way seems appropriate in the situation because in the world I want to live in, they are not unhoused - but they’re especially not just ignored on the street if they are unhoused. We would think that it is normal to treat people with respect, dignitiy, and care. The system we live in, however, has taught us to be ignorant (in the quite literal sense) so we can continue with whatever bliss of privilege and comfort or even just survival mode we find ourselves in. But we can stop and listen. We can stop and care. It’s such a privilege to turn away from other people’s pain. Isn’t it already strange to just type this out loud? “Make it a habit to care about people!” I’m still learning this even. It’s so weird to even admit to catching myself in moments were I just walk past someone unhoused without thinking I should stop and care.

6. Actually caring instead of caring to look good - aka moving from performative actions to actually giving a shit

Honestly, it took me a while to get there (I’m not even sure if I’m fully “there”). In a world where not belonging, being excluded, and being cancelled are realities, “looking right” and managing how I am perceived by others felt like a survival mechanism to stay in community, relationships, and be cared about. The following quote titled A Cautionary Note on Fame by Dean Spade (Mutual Aid, pg. 68 on pdf) created a behavioral change click inside of me:

Social media has encouraged our individualism and has enhanced the desire to “brand” ourselves as radical or as having the “right” politics. […] All of this can motivate us to want to be perceived to be doing things, rather than actually doing them. Much mutual aid work is very ordinary, sometimes boring, and often difficult. [...] When we get our sense of self from fame, status, or approval from a bunch of strangers, we’re in trouble. It is hard to stick to our principles and treat others well when we are seeking praise and attention. If we are to redefine leadership away from individualism, competition, and social climbing, we have to become people who care about ourselves as part of the greater whole. It means moving from materialist self-love, which is often very self-critical (“I will be okay and deserve love when I look right, when others approve of me, when I am famous”) and toward a deep belief that everyone, including ourselves, deserves dignity, belonging, and safety just because we are alive. It means cultivating a desire to be beautifully, exquisitely ordinary just like everyone else. It means practicing to be nobody special. Rather than a fantasy of being rich and famous, which capitalism tells us is the goal of our lives, we cultivate a fantasy of everyone having what they need and being able to creatively express the beauty of their lives. This is a lifelong unlearning practice because we have all been shaped by systems that make us insecure, approval-seeking, individualist, and sometimes shallow. Yet we also all have the deeply human desire to connect with others, to be of service in ways that reduce suffering, and to be seen and loved by those who truly know us and whom we love. Mutual aid groups are a place where we can notice these learned instincts and drives in ourselves and unlearn them—that is, make choices to act out of mutuality and care on purpose.

After reading this paragraph a while ago, I stopped actively curating posts on Instagram. I stopped wanting to look right, and started doing what feels right and aligned, even if that didn’t give me any external validation. I started living my values instead of simply performing them on social media. I started just living in the real world, I guess. I feel like a lot of us are just living for how we are perceived by others. It’s sad, really. But very understandable…

7. Sharing resources as they belong to all living beings & curing my scarcity mindset with generosity

In my childhood, I learned that resources and things are to be possessed, not shared. As a kid from a working class family whose grandparents grew up in post WW2, and parents who grew up in East Germany, a scarcity mentality was passed onto me from birth. When I was born, the wall that separated Germany had already fallen and capitalism had reached my family too, so it felt like the mentality changed from: “We have little but we need to be content with what we have” to : “What we have is ours, now that we finally have more.” Hearing my family romanticising life in the GDR (which my grandpa always reminds me of - was scary af!), and how there was no greed because no one had anything, while also raising me with a mindset that centered a certain possessiveness over what we finally had, always confused me but also made sense given the history. There was this mentality that the money you’ve earned with hard work, is yours to keep and accumulate - which, now that I think about it - also must be connected to the fact that all my family where working class people doing hard manual labour for little money. With this in mind under a newly capitalist system, of course you would be possessive of what you’ve earned.

Being generous with money when it matters was admittedly tough for me to learn. That the money I am able to earn is closely connected to the privilege I have in this world, was something I realized quite late, for example, when I saw some of my more marginalized friends getting rejected for job after job and could barely afford groceries. Being able to earn money for survival should be a basic right “under capitalism”, but is a privilege in itself. This means that in order to create a more equal society, I need to give up some of this money - and with that some of my comfort (basic redistribution of wealth logic, I guess).

Money is not the only resource I encourage others to share with others. Sharing our time, food, attention, and care with each other is just as important to create survival and community. Every creature deserves access to all the resources that exist. Human supremacy and human competition is where all of that goes wrong, and where resources are competed to be exploited and possessed instead of divided equally and with care about the planet.

8. Knowing that getting uncomfortable is a reality of liberation & revolution

People say that most of us are not ready to step into the discomfort that is required to bring upon actual change (I think I first read this in one of Ismatu Gwendolyn’s essays). Knowing that my privilege directly relates to someone else’s oppression (learned this from Care @eroticsofliberation), and that giving up my privilege and comfort is necessary for change, was a relatively recent realisation for me. Most of us are not willing to give up our privilege and the comfort that comes with it for the sake of others well-being. That’s wild to me, and at the same time I understand this as it doesn’t seem like we have the collective skills to actually take care of each other when things are critical and shitty. Individualism is killing people so literally. People are used to their liberal comfort, the temptation of individualism or nuclear families to live a happy and satisfied life (which ends up not being truly satisfying at all as it’s separate from greater community or the cause of liberation). We will need to get used to the reality that those of us who are more privileged (=have more money), will need to give up their privilege to create equality for others. Of course we can get defensive and put it all on the rich. The rich are supposed to redistribute money. The people who hold most systemic power are the problem. And of course this is true, but it’s also all of us, it’s also you - and of course rich people will not redistribute their power and money because that’s the only thing that gives them value in their lives.

Here a quote from Ismatu Gwendolyn (Threadings.):

And we might actually have to give up creature comforts so embedded into our infrastructure we consider them human rights. What happens when the trash collection and sanitation workers joining on our national strike, right? When it's not just the work from home, corporate baddies? When the teachers and the childcare workers and the grocery store stalkers and the migrant hands employed on farms, […] strike as well. What happens then? How do we care for one another in our basic material necessities if we successfully stop the machine? No one wants to think about that, so we engage in beautiful, historic, I was there on the right side of history and took a picture for the textbooks spectacle. Then we return to our house cubicles to sit on our cushions and share the footage of massacres in Palestine. We are a class that is enticed into too much comfort to voluntarily revolt. Revolution means death. To call for revolution is to call for death. It calls for the death of everything that you have known to be true about your day to day. It's an upheaval of society. It calls for death. And it usually comes with a lot of bloodshed. The people that get to a point where they are willing to revolt against their government are usually doing so because they are chronically starving. That's not us.

9. Using my critical thinking and intuition to make decisions

Instead of blindly following insta “rule book” posts that tell people what's right or wrong, usually from a place of white or western or whatever guilt and a need to feel good about themselves, I have started to finally use my own critical thinking in absorbing information I read online. I don't believe in one right way to revolution and liberation. Things are complex and depend on context. As long as we understand the bigger picture of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism, there are a myriad of inclusive ways to be revolutionary and to practise liberation.

10. Welcoming mistakes, conflict, accountability, & repair - and practising those skills

Ufff this one is the hardest but maybe one of the most important ones right now. Disagreeing while remaining connected. Apologies and accountability while remaining in your truth. Choosing vulnerability and repair over winning (“being right”). Getting curious about the parts of you that shut you down or make you exit communities as soon as one thing goes wrong. Someone on Instagram said that we are made to believe that we are those little individuals who have to be right. That we essentially live to be right. But what for? Making good experiences in conflict is so essential for maintaining connections and deepening trust. We need to be allowed to have nuanced views and can disagree on things. We learn and grow together. And if you are looking for a “safe” community space I don’t know what to tell you except that it doesn’t exist.

11. Finding ways to be in Community & relate to others in a non-Western Way

Something I recently learned is that my whole way of trying to connect with people was based on how much capacities and space I had. I wouldn’t really push myself to be there or connected to others if I felt like I wasn’t able. “Putting my mental health first” was what I thought to be necessary to be able to hold space for people. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t actually think that’s true. Yes, I do need to take care of myself and I know I can hold space for people much better if my basic needs are met (good sleep, food, and rest), but I am well able to also hold space for people if I am unwell myself.

And the post of @counseling4allseasons continues:

These are lies. Bc we know factually that people in the global south and many ppl having to survive oppressive in imperialist countries live with ACTIVE trauma daily and still show up regardless of their “capacity”. Teaching ppl that trauma is a justification to opt out of community building or liberation building is a means to pacify the masses. And the irony is, we heal within communities. Western mental health systems have lied to you. Using trauma as a means to check out is an actual privilege that we must understand serves a purpose in maintaining imperialism.

12. Rest & Rejuvination, allowing myself to take it slow (if possible), & sensing my interconnectedness

While making sacrifices for the community is essential, connection and community will also, ideally, feed into your well-being. Balancing investing into connections, mututal aid, and building liberation with rest, rejuvination, and being able to take it slow when you’re reaching your limits - if possible given the circumstances. Ideally, community and liberation building go hand in hand with rejuvination, play, and the ability to rest, but I feel like sometimes we are not at that stage yet - communities are forming and right now, so it might be taking more effort than what you’re getting back. And if I am in emotional pain, and I want no human presence around, knowing that my sense of interconnectedness allows me to sense how bodies of water (the ocean), and the ground (earth, plants) can hold my pain, can speak to me, can soak up my grief and transform it into growth (though I learned an important thing from @haleytialisaintuitive’s Insta post a while ago, and that is the importance of a reciprocal relationship with earth and nature as she holds our pain and grounds us - makes sense).

13. Not being afraid of dying

I am not afraid of death. Maybe I will be one day. Right now, when I think about my own death, I mostly get worried about people I leave behind. I won’t be physically able to be with them anymore, though spiritually always be with them. I am not afraid of my body being gone, and my soul existing among other ancestor’s souls. This is because, I know that I am already serving my purpose. There is a lot more work to do as a living body on this earth, but if it ends, it ends - I cannot predict when this will happen and I fear that I’ll die of something rather silly. Usually, I know my worth (though ofc I have parts that feel worthless or inadequate or not good enough, like most of us do), and I know that I make valuable contributions to my immediate surroundings and sometimes not so immediate ones. I enjoy living a liberation oriented life and everything that comes with that. I do want to live long and keep serving this planet, so I implore the universe to prolong my bodily existence. But I am not afraid to die because my time on this planet has already been valuable. When I become an ancestor, my soul will watch the new generations continue our fight for liberation with pain and content. And perhaps a little jealousy that I can’t join them with my body. But I’ll join them in all my spirit. My soul will sparkle into their hearts and minds, hold their pain with them, and send them so much strength and resilience.

Until then, I’ll be here with you, alive, fighting and existing alongside.