01/11/2020
“A big online trend right now is the obsession with oneself, past traumas & that we should focus on what we can control (ourselves) without having expectations of others. These teachings, mainly taught by white holistic psychologists, wellness coaches, healers, mediums & other new age gurus played a major role in the COVID19 denier/Qanon movements call of ‘sovereignty.’ Many...push back on others having expectations of them by saying ‘we don’t owe an explanation to anyone’ & ‘the reason people are critiquing us is because they aren’t self reflecting & are projecting their fears.’ What many of these folks are actually teaching is rugged individualism, libertarianism ... the hallmarks of white supremacy and fascism.
And many run businesses/brands to profit from this thinking. Critiquing a brand & holding them accountable, it’s not personal. That’s how social justice movements work. There isn’t a single workers/civil rights issue that was just handed to us. Many organized, struggled, & [made sacrifices] to move society forward & it always involves holding those w/ influence/power accountable.
Human beings would never have survived w/out depending on each other. Our expectations to take care of ourselves & each other is interwoven into the fabric of human evolution. Eventually our expectations & demands of each other created our social contracts.
theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, says that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. That we surrender some freedoms in exchange for protection of remaining rights & social order. We can give up the social contract by leaving society & facing the world by ourselves in the wilderness. But that a society needs a social contract. That morality is the set of rules governing behavior that rational people accept, on the condition that others accept them too.
We are not just sovereign beings, we don’t just belong to ourselves, we belong to each other too. And there is nothing wrong with having expectations of one another. How we manage those expectations & avoid codependency is key.
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