February 2025 – Jana Bacevic

The day after the Conservative Party won the 2019 UK election, I came up with a trick. It was the culmination of several weeks (if not months) of prolonged exhaustion and creeping despair, as I watched parts of the UK’s supposed ‘left’ systematically tear away at the country’s only progressive political current in years, and its only shot at creating a vaguely decent society – you know, a society that would not systematically humiliate its members – dissolve in the toxic concoction of incurable conservatism (small c, this time), parochialism rendered even more obsolete by a self-aggrandizing belief in the centrality of the UK to the world (historical or contemporaneous, irrelevant), and genuflection at the tiniest display of power, authority, or hierarchy so absolute that you would be forgiven for thinking it genetic. In other words, this set of nasty gammonish tendencies – to my surprise, seemingly equitably distributed across the political spectrum – proved a fertile ground for a campaign whose ostensible target was to prove Jeremy Corbyn was unelectable, and the actual to make sure he would not be elected. Add to this that many of us were fighting on several fronts – in one of the rare moves I explicitly disagreed with, my union (UCU) decided to run another round (third or fourth? in two years) of strike action, thus making sure we would have to split time, energy, and resources between election campaigning and picket lines (for why it is impossible to unify the two causes – even in such an obvious case – see above). For me, it was the beginning of a very dark period of five years – of fear (of what was going to happen), of anger (for the fact so many people, including those I believed I shared basic ideological affinities with, allowed it to happen), and disappointment, not so much because Corbyn didn’t get elected but because I saw, possibly for the first time, in such stark terms: most people would rather suffer in a world they know than risk the chance of building a different one. In that moment – the day after, still sniffly from the downpour I got caught in during the last desperate attempt at canvassing the evening of the election – I Tweeted something along the lines of “whatever else you do today, go out and look at some trees. Stand by the river. There are things bigger than politics. There are things older than the Conservative Party.” (I’m paraphrasing, not only because I have no desire to log back into Twitter but also because the actual formulation is not particularly important.)

I remember being slightly surprised by the volume of positive reactions (kindness and self-care, to put it politely, not being exactly my default style of interaction on social media back in the day – the platform has its own dynamics and patriarchy failed spectacularly at instilling in me the tendency to please other people), but mostly because what seemed to me amalgamated commonsensical advice – decenter your own feelings; step away from social media; in times of great turmoil, seek solace in things you know are eternal – seemed to strike a chord with so many people. It was probably the first time I truly understood how many people were never taught basic self-soothing and regulation skills, but also how much of a difference prior experience of system breakdown/state collapse made in terms of knowing how to cope (together with a group of other ex-Yu scholars, we reflected on this here).

Five years later, I know better than to offer unsolicited advice :). I am also aware that people, especially people in the US, have long traditions (obviously, most of these reaching way before settler colonialism) of sacralization and reverence for nature. Hence, it is not my intention to share this particular trick, not least because I tend to think people who are receptive to this mode of relating to the world either already do it and practice in similar (even if superficially or nominally different) ways, or would otherwise need to change perception in order to avoid this becoming yet another ‘trick’ to allow them to stay, in fact, deeply plugged into the circuit of capitalist (over)production, including affective (a bit like fintechbros using mindfulness to continue building extractive infrastructures whereas being actually ‘mindful’ would inevitably lead to the realisation your mode of living is directly harmful to many beings). However, the memory of many positive reactions to that original Tweet in 2019 – at a time that was a time of anger, and disappointment, and despair for many in the UK – made me want to share a different technique, one that I hope can not only help people dealing with anger and despair but which I also believe will come in handy in knowing how to orient ourselves in the future, especially as the world burns.

Why this isn’t a practice of gratitude

The technique is a related one, but different in terms of its orientation. It is called ‘five good things’, and, true to its name, it asks you to think of five things. Do not be tempted, however, to think this is about your life, or what you have, or ‘things’ in the sense of material objects. In other words, you are not meant to name ‘things’ such as “well, I at least have a job” or “my child is healthy” or “I ate a really good burrito yesterday”. All of these examples – while important – are either cases that are meant to invoke gratitude (so, basically, either outsourcing responsibility to a different/higher power, or, in some forms, acknowledging the fundamentally underdetermined nature of the universe and the role of luck – in other words, all of these things could have turned out differently) or to affirm your own capabilities, usually expressed in and measured by money or equivalents/proxies – power, prestige, admiration (under present circumstances, chances are that the burrito you ate is a burrito you bought, in which case your sense of satisfaction comes from your purchasing power. This is somewhat different if the burrito was e.g. part of a community kitchen or food-sharing event, which would hopefully lead you to recognize your relation to and interdependence with others, but this is not clear-cut either – not least because of the often disproportionate amount of cooking/caring labour performed by women in some of these settings).

Instead, think of five things that are beautiful, and good, and true.

It’s really important that they are all three. Many things are beautiful (at least by culturally dominant/conventional standards) without being either good or true. True in the sense of being true to form, rather than correspondent to the actual state of affairs; for instance, it is almost impossible for a rose as a flower to not be ‘true’ (unless it’s an artificial rose), but it is quite possible for a rose being given as a gesture to not be ‘true’ (as in not being motivated by genuine feeling). Similarly, it is possible for a plant to not be ‘good’ – for instance, if it is a plant introduced to eradicate other plants in the area, or to eliminate sources of food for diverse other organisms.

(There is, of course, a humongous philosophical background literature on defining each of these terms, and especially their interrelation/combination. If you are not familiar with it, I could probably suggest starting with Schopenhauer and Kant, or even Plato, but I do not think this is either necessary or helpful. Every human is capable of reflecting on what it means to say something is beautiful, good, and true; namedropping dead white men can sometimes distract from it, and in most cases under present circumstances turns into an exercise of academic prowess, rather than a way to think with others).

You can think about concrete instances as well as things, generically; sometimes, one will be more appropriate, sometimes the other. For instance, I tend to think that bunnies, in general, are good, and beautiful, and true; I may see a particular bunny for which I will think this, but given that bunnies in the form in which I encounter them are relatively hard to individuate, odds are I will continue thinking this for the bunny kind, rather than a particular bunny. Equally, I tend to think friendships are a good thing, but odds are that if I think of any friendship (or relationship) at any point as beautiful, good, and true, I will be thinking about a concrete relation.

(Again, masses of philosophical, theoretical, and empirical work – my own included – on how we categorise groups, genera, members, and how we form judgments based on inclusion/exclusion, derivation, and boundary categories. Much interesting if you are a social ontologist. Possibly less if you’re not).

Have you thought of five things that are beautiful, and good, and true?

Now fight like hell for those things.

Not to ‘have’ them or to keep them; but to enable them to exist in exactly that form, in their own goodness, and truth, and beauty.

If you ever find yourself in a period of despair, think of these five things. At the end of each week, see if you can come up with five. Sooner rather than later, you will begin to realize that the things worth fighting for are not those the majority of the people are taught to fight about.

I may publish my list from time to time.

Further inspiration:

Maria Popova shared at the start of this week Louise Erdrich’s poem “Resistance” – I love Erdrich but I have not read this one before. It is also related to another project I am developing, so seemed perfectly resonant.

Another element of resonance – as I was finishing this blog post I tuned into The Philosopher conversation between Isabelle Laurenzi and Lida Maxwell on Maxwell’s new book, “Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love“. It seems that the awe with the world that Maxwell traces in the relationship between Carson and Dorothy Freeman as well as much as their relationship to the natural world very much resonates with the feeling I hope these exercises will inspire – the combination of wonder, dedication, and a commitment to change the (human) world. I’m yet to read the book (as I found out recently, living in the UK while being temporarily in the US creates massive issues in terms of e-book licensing), but very much looking forward to it.

Speaking of books that are about the sense of wonder, this book – “A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship With Nature” by James William Gibson (2009) – is probably among the nicest, most beautiful (both in terms of style and in terms of content) books I’ve read recently. I also learned many things (not least, that Paul Watson, the founder of Sea Shepherd, volunteered as a medic for the American Indian Movement protesters at Wounded Knee, as well as about RFK’s environmentalist past, which makes his public health policies even more bizarre); the book is a remarkable feat of sociological analysis that manages to not be condescending. This book is definitely one of the things that are beautiful, and good, and true.

Incidentally, I also ended up watching again Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2022), which has a scene in which August is asked to make a list of good things. I think this is a good list! It is also one of the best films made about the process of turning anger and frustration into collective will/self-determination; while depicting a truly dark incident, it is a good example of things beautiful, good, and true.

Soundtrack:

Moby ft. Benjamin Zephaniah – Where is your pride?

Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) – New World Water

I’ve been in the US for about a week. The feeling of utter shock, panic, and disarray among people – qualitatively different from what could be discernible back when I was across the pond, qualitatively different from the previous Trump regime, qualitatively different from many previous instances of ‘unprecedentedness’ I had written on (the Covid-19 pandemic, the Brexit referendum, Trump’s 2016 election victory, the breakup of former Yugoslavia) – is tangible. Good centrist liberals and their projections are falling like planes out of the sky, the latter, by the way, not a metaphor at all.

It is easy to be both dismayed and cynical, but both are, ultimately, defense mechanisms. To give into collective panic/despair is (I guess) to at least temporarily redistribute anxiety by letting it dissolve into a collective feeling. To knowingly smirk with a “we have, in fact, told you so” may be easy for someone like me, who works on the politics of non-prediction, and is relatively protected from dismissal, deportation, or incarceration, but it is a way of insulating yourself from the collapse that is very real, and very present, for a lot of people. Given that I am, for better or worse, in a plethora of social networks that are dominated by academics, and give that academics are more

likely to be like this

than like this

let alone like this

the least I can do, then, is to offer some resources for resistance, from the perspective I have (east-central European/transnational, UK-domiciled migrant; woman*; educated, middle-class; some experience of movement, organising, etc.) and with the resources (and constraints) I currently have. None of this is meant to be exhaustive (maybe just exhausted :)) and hopefully only adds to the bountiful and excellent resources, networks and initiatives comrades in the US have been building for years.

The Emperor is truly naked – but still an Emperor

I think what most people are experiencing now is best described as cognitive dissonance about the state. On the one hand, they are becoming rapidly aware that what they believed are the stalwarts of liberal democracy (the rule of law, checks & balances, accountability and the like) are barely scarecrows that can be blown away overnight, and the crows are no longer scared. On the other hand, they are beginning to realise — if they had not before — what truly unchecked power looks like. (Every leader, potentially, is a dictator; the fact the US has a presidential system, with high weighting on executive power, just makes it more likely there will eventually be one not bound by convention to hide it). This means that, for a lot of people, the state is simultaneously all of a sudden very absent (FAA being just the most obvious, and immediately high-risk, case) *and* very present (both in terms of intrusion into domains most Americans are taught to associate with ‘privacy’ – finances – and in terms of threats of further deportation, incarceration, and retaliatory dismissal).

For those lucky enough to be able to think about (rather than just react to) these developments, this poses a problem because it places them in the uncomfortable zone most people have been politely educated out of: thinking about what to do when the state fails in a way that does not entail asking for more state. Surprise! There is a whole group of political theories that engages with exactly this problem. It starts with an A, ends with an M, and is not animism. Even better, many of the classical (and more recent) works in this line of thinking just end up being magically available, online, for free. Two particularly good websites for this are here and here. I know, wild. Worth thinking about, if nothing else, because it also turns out many of these will probably give you good ideas for how to face the next couple of years.

In addition to or beyond this, or if you just want to get the hang of self-organising without having to confront your own ideological limits (but if you do: try here, here, or here), these are some of the handy reading tools I’ve selected a few from the list of my favourite books in 2024, and added a few I believe to be most useful for the present situation.

For brief inspiration: To change everything (CrimethInc)
To see the work done by collectives across the world, including during the previous Trump administration: Constellations of care: anarchafeminism in practice (ed. by Cindy Barukh Milstein)
To remember that anti-neoliberalism does not equal nationalist protectionism: Fields, factories and workshops (Petr Kropotkin)
To learn from organisers who have been doing it for a long time: Shut it down: stories from a fierce, loving resistance (Lisa Fithian)
To learn how to organise and not burn out (and also not be terrible to other people if you do!): Let this radicalize you: organizing and the revolution of reciprocal care (Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba)
To not forget that there is no way to address a political crisis without addressing the climate crisis (and, of course, capitalism as the root cause) – but that there are so many ways (already tried and tested) to do it: The solutions are already here: strategies for ecological revolution from below (Peter Gelderloos)
To recall that some people have, in fact, foreseen this: The Parable of the Sower & The Parable of the Talents (Octavia Butler)
To acknowledge that when you say “someone should do something” that someone is, in fact, you: Mass Action (Rosa Luxemburg)
To remember that there are many other places where this, and worse, had been true for a long time: We are not pawns, we are people who rose against the regime (Jwana Aziz)
Again, CrimethInc: tools and tactics

This should be more than enough to start from. Get reading.

*I realized, upon reflection, that this term is a bit inaccurate – I am comfortable with ‘woman’ or ‘she’ in languages where gender is primarily grammatical (so where chairs, stones, and concepts have a ‘gender’), both for convenience and because it is more difficult (but not impossible) to associate grammatical gender with hierarchical difference; but I have never felt any degree of affinity with the cluster of ideas around supposed feminine ‘essence’, even if they do not veer into biological determinism, reductionism, or transphobia. It is thus that in these languages – and contexts, UK being one of them – that I tend to use ‘they’ or ‘she/they’.