Wake Up, Human

Ep.27: Politics of Reconnection: the US Election and the Power of You and Me

• Shannon M. Wills

Share episode

In this commentary on the recent US election, I explore the politics of disconnection and the importance of reconnection and rehumanization. Themes include the power of thinking for ourselves, the value of curiosity and collaboration, and the wisdom of centering resilience and joy in our politics, our movements, and our lives. 

Shannon Wills:

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast.

Shannon Wills:

I'm your host, Shannon Wills, and in this episode I'm going to be speaking about the recent US election. It's on the minds of many people today— what just happened? What does it mean for the next four years and beyond?—a nd I'll be delving into some of my thoughts about that. I'll be talking about the politics of disconnection, the importance of reconnection and rehumanization, the power of thinking for ourselves, and the importance of collaboration and resilience in our politics, our movements and our lives. So if this topic is of interest or importance to you, and I hope it is, then come on inside and join me. Because I don't believe in red versus blue, I believe in people like me and you. See you on the inside.

Shannon Wills:

of everyone, podcast, which is exploring the ways we humans have become disconnected from ourselves and from others and from the natural world, and exploring ways to come back into connection. And one of the ways that we can become disconnected from each other is when we don't see the humanity in each other. That's one way that we become disconnected and that's one thing. That's happened in this election is a lot of disconnection and a lot of not being able to see the humanity in the other side.

Shannon Wills:

A lot of name calling, a lot of othering, a lot of purposefully not wanting to understand, a lot of assuming that we know who the other person is and why they choose, what they choose and one way to come back together to heal that kind of disconnect that we have is that we can understand that every human being, when they make their choices, they're making their choices because they are trying to meet their needs in some way and we make the choices to meet our needs. They make choices to meet their needs and we often think we know what their needs are, what someone else's needs are that they're trying to meet, and we may know or we may not know. A lot of times we don't know unless we ask. So in cases like this, I think dialogue is really really important if we want to understand where the other person's coming from or why they choose the way they choose, or if we just want to be able to see them as a human being. Dialogue we can ask what they believe and why. You know, someone might look at another group. They might look at Trump voters and everyone in that group is a racist bigot who doesn't mind voting for a dictator. They're happy to see democracy overthrown and they hate immigrants and they want to see every immigrant dispelled from this country country. Well, is that true about every single person who voted for Trump? No, there will be things that the other side thinks as well of people like me who vote on the Democratic side. It'd be really easy to toss me into a bucket that contains all of their assumptions and beliefs and preconceived notions about who I am. So can we put ourselves into their shoes and at least ask why they choose what they choose?

Shannon Wills:

You know there was a ballot measure or an initiative on the ballot this year in Colorado and it would have banned trophy hunting of mountain lions and bobcats and it would have maintained some bans on trophy hunting for lynx here in the state that have been in place for a while and to me I look at that and I think that is a no-brainer Ban. Trophy hunting is a no-brainer. It's basically just a regulation, a law against cruelty, and there were protections in that law exemptions for someone who kills a mountain lion or a lynx or a bobcat in protection of life or property. There was an exemption there and I would have thought that would be the thing that people who would vote against such a measure would want to be sure that was in there. You know an exemption Like what if I need to kill an animal to protect my life? So that exemption was there and the ballot measure still did not pass. It lost For 55 to 45,. It lost and I was very sad. I was very sad.

Shannon Wills:

My first thought was why this is only a measure against cruelty. This is just a measure against treating animals' cruelty and hunting them for trophies. Who would not want to vote for that? But 55% of the voters didn't vote for it. So why 55% of the voters didn't vote for it? So why?

Shannon Wills:

I could just assume that they're unevolved human beings, or that they are cruel, don't mind being cruel, or that they don't see the value of animals as living conscious, sovereign beings, that they don't have a spiritual perspective on the inherent value of the lives of other beings, that they think it's just fine to kill a mountain lion for no other purpose than to hang their pelt on the wall and beat their chest and talk about how powerful they are because they killed a mountain lion. Those are a lot of assumptions that I have, so I could just carry those assumptions and walk around feeling angry about it, or I could dig in to actually find out where are my assumptions. And are there some people who didn't vote for that measure who have reasons for not voting for it that I haven't even considered? I won't know that unless I ask. So we just can't think that we know what the other quote unquote side, that we know where they're coming from. You know where the red side is coming from, where the blue side is coming from. And the terms red and blue for the Republicans and Democrats are actually quite helpful, I think, because they're abstract, they're almost arbitrary. Like they're abstract, they're almost arbitrary, like they could be any color Instead of red and blue. We could say you know, green and orange, the Green and Orange Party.

Shannon Wills:

And when we look at that, when we look at these people being separated into different camps, symbolized by different colors, then it kind of harkens back to George Orwell in 1984. That's what it brings to my mind the sort of nameless, faceless reality of the party and the ways that the populace, that the electorate, are split into two different camps and the party followers are basically told whose side to be on. You're on this side because this is the good side. They're on that side because they're the bad side. We must support this side. This is the good side.

Shannon Wills:

And what's interesting about that in 1984, and I think also in real life is that those sides don't stay the same, they shift, like one day we're on the side of these people and another day we're on the side of these people. Those people are our enemies. Tomorrow, those people are our friends. And if we're not thinking for ourselves, if we're just marching along, going I am part of the red team, I am part of the blue team then our team can change direction and start doing something or being in ways that we absolutely do not align with, and we'll just be like well, I'm just walking along, this is my team, and the danger in that is that there's a fine line between just walking with my team and being brainwashed and following along in lockstep with what we're told. It's dangerous for our own minds, because we cannot even realize what we believe or who we are or who we really align with. And it's also dangerous when applied to on the larger scale, right, because when we're so deeply steeped in that us versus them mentality, it's so much easier to dehumanize the other side and then to be willing to hate the other side or hurt the other side or kill the other side.

Shannon Wills:

The people who hold the power in this country have used a divide and conquer strategy to keep the common people separated from one another since the founding of the country, since before the founding of the country, from one another since the founding of the country, since before the founding of the country. So we need to think for ourselves. Think for yourself. Don't fall in lockstep. If Trump says something and you love him, don't believe what he said just because he said it. In fact, with Trump, you probably shouldn't believe in him at all. You probably shouldn't believe anything that he says. Go and look and see if he lied. Go and look and see if it's the truth and then, even if it's true, factually true see if it's really what you align with. See if it's what you believe. Is it truly what you value? And I say that for the other side as well Don't just believe what they say. It's not just Trump. They all have agendas they want to promote.

Shannon Wills:

I personally am hopeful for and have some things I support in both parties, and I have things I abhor about both parties that I want nothing to do with. That's personally me, even if I generally side with one side, based on my own values and my own heart. I'm not going to fall into lockstep because that does not honor my own sovereignty as a human being, my own intelligence right, and we don't have to choose us versus them. We don't have to choose this as my one side, so I can't have anything to do with the other side. It's not our fault, it's not our doing, that we live in a country that offers us two different options to choose from, two options that could actually have the opportunity to win, and neither one of those feels like one we want to vote for. We did not create that system. We didn't choose it, but it is our choice. If we choose to fall in lockstep with one of them or the other. If we choose to just fall along with what they say, that is our choice. If we choose to fall in lockstep with one of them or the other, if we choose to just fall along with what they say, that is our choice. Now, I'm not saying that we don't align ourselves to other people when we want to make a change right.

Shannon Wills:

There's a time when that marching together is really effective and is actually what's needed, and so I get that hitching our agenda to others, there's power. I get that walking in lockstep there's power in numbers. There's power in the collective. Look at Trump he built an amazing coalition. By hitching his agenda to others. He hitched his agenda to the Republican Party. It wasn't exactly his agenda, but he hitched himself to the Republicans. He hitched himself to people like Elon Musk who have their own particular interests and self-serving agendas for their lives. He hitched himself to RFK Jr and the whole vaccine conversation. So he's hitching himself, hitching himself, and he built quite a coalition of power doing that and we can hitch our agenda to others as well. We build power in the collective by hitching, like my movement to your movement, to your movement, to his movement and her movement and their movement. And that's actually the way that huge movements for change have been built. It's through coalition building. In the labor movement for workers' rights or in the civil rights movement was built on coalitions. So we can hitch our agenda to others and build that power in the collective, but we don't need to let that make us think that that's our agenda, that that's what we believe, that we need to believe all of it or support everything that's happening within that. We need to be clear about what we believe. So I say like participate, see yourself as the collective and participate in the collective, but be clear about what you believe, about what's important to you, be clear what your values are and then ask other people about theirs.

Shannon Wills:

There was a great I thought it was a great Facebook post. I'm hardly ever on Facebook reading someone's post, but this one somehow popped into my awareness and it was a friend of mine on Facebook and he asked a question something like and this was the day after the election and Trump had won and he said what would you like to see from the incoming administration? That's all he asked. And it was such an interesting post because there were clearly people coming in from both sides of the aisle right, so to speak, people saying I don't see anything of benefit from this administration up to come. And there were other people like giving these long lists of all the things they'd like to see the administration do, based on Trump's platform.

Shannon Wills:

And, first of all, I thought that it was really a great thread because people on both sides were participating in the conversation and they were giving their why, they were giving their what and their why and what they want to see. And people were dialoguing back and forth even though they disagreed. And there was one person I saw who commented and said hey, why did you make this post? Why did you ask that question? Are you coming in with an agenda where you want to find out who your friends still are or who's on your side? And the original, my friend who originally posted. He came back and he said actually no, I'm just really curious to know what people are hoping for from this administration. This is the administration we're going to have now. And I'm just really curious about know what people are hoping for from this administration. This is the administration we're going to have now. And I'm just really curious about people's perspectives. And I just went wow, just saying he's curious about other human beings' perspectives.

Shannon Wills:

And in that space of curiosity, that nonjudgmental, opening, people were coming in and sharing their perspectives and I learned more about different people's hopes and expectations and reasons for supporting one side or the other. I learned more from that thread of a couple hundred people than I have learned from any of the media coverage that I've listened to over the past year. And those are the kind of voices we need. I think of curiosity, openness, questioning. We don't need more screaming voices.

Shannon Wills:

Yes, we can be loud, we can be angry, we can scream out in righteous anger, and that is actually needed. Righteous anger is needed out in righteous anger, and that is actually needed. Righteous anger is needed and appropriate in times when so many terrible things are happening and being supported by our government. But we can't be unhinged voices, we can't just go off in uncentered anger, especially toward others, because that just continues the cycle of dehumanization. Because that just continues the cycle of dehumanization. We need to have a center, we need to move from our center, we need to be resilient in that center, because that's the only way that we can make actions that are coming from kindness and compassion and thought, which is where I want to come from. I don't want to come from a reactive I want to come from, I don't want to come from a reactive, uncentered, triggered space.

Shannon Wills:

And so this is actually my second point that I wanted to make, which is that we need to take care of ourselves, take care of yourself, take care of yourself, because in order to be centered, resilient and compassionate and kind in the midst of this ridiculous time, this ridiculously divisive time, you have to be resilient. You have to be well-slept, you have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to do what's needed to take care of yourself, you have to do what's needed to take care of your life, keep your house clean, keep your mind clean, and we need also for that resilience. We need rest and joy in our lives. You know, I was at the grocery store yesterday and I was talking to the checker as she checked me out and she mentioned she was going to be off in 20 minutes or so and I said, oh, that's great. I'm so glad you're going to be out of here soon. You can enjoy your evening. And she said, yeah, I'm going to go home and I'm going to sit in the hot tub. And I said you have a hot tub. Oh man, that sounds amazing. And she said oh, yeah, honey, we got to take care of ourselves. This world is tough out there. We got to take care of ourselves. This world is tough out there. We got to take care of ourselves. So that really touched me.

Shannon Wills:

You know, there's so much that we could be sad about and so much that we could get frantic about, you know, thinking that we want to be different or needs to be different, and all the things that we need to do and how do we fit it all into our lives. And you know, taking care of ourselves first is so important. Finding rest and finding joy is so important for that resilience, for that center, so that then you know, we know who we are, we know what we think. We're rested enough to be clear in our minds who we are. We know what we think. We're rested enough to be clear in our minds. We're well enough to be able to hold to our values in the face of, maybe, something that's calling us to participate in a way that is really against our values. Now, the more resilient we are, the more centered we are, the more we have the ability to say no, I will take this part of what you're offering and I will refuse to accept the other part. I will refuse to be a part of that, and I know this is a complicated conversation in this country at this moment, but always taking care of ourselves is going to be the first step. So you know.

Shannon Wills:

Lastly, I just want to say and it's related to this resilience piece do what you can and I'm telling this to myself as well Do what you can. Don't try to do everything. Don't try to do what you can't. Don't try to do what's not yours to do either, but do what you can, what is yours to do, do that right. So the world really needs us to show up and fight to protect the things that we love. The world needs us to collaborate and to march together with others to raise our voices, to make our voices louder, to support the things that we love and to change, to bend that long arc of history in the direction of the world we want to see. That's very, very important. So we take care of ourselves, so that we're clear, so that we know what our piece is, and then we do what our piece is. We're honoring our limits in this process as human beings we can't do it all and we're also honoring our gifts, because we're showing up with the piece that's ours to do.

Shannon Wills:

And I'll sign off by sharing this story. I think that many of you may have already heard this story in some form or another, but it's the story of the hummingbird, a tale from the indigenous Quechua people from South America, from Ecuador to be specific, but that it has been also retold and adapted and shared by various peoples and cultures over time. I hope I'm naming the source of the story correctly. I've heard it adjusted and shared in different forms over the years, but basically it's the story of the hummingbird who finds himself in a raging forest fire and most of the animals of the forest have run away to escape the fire and two animals remain. There's the hummingbird and a jaguar.

Shannon Wills:

And the hummingbird is flying with pure focus back and forth between the forest fire and a lake that's nearby and the hummingbird is picking up as much water as he can in his little hummingbird beak and he's flying back over to the forest fire and he's dropping that water on the fire. And he's then flying back with his direct focus and he's dipping back into the water, filling up his beak with as much water as he can, flying back with his direct focus and he's dipping back into the water, filling up his beak with as much water as he can, flying back to the forest fire, dropping that little bit of drops of water on the forest fire. And the jaguar sees the hummingbird doing this and kind of laughs at the hummingbird and says to the hummingbird really, so you think that you're going to be able to put out a fire with all the couple of drops that you have in your beak? So you think that you're going to be able to put out a fire with all the little, the couple of drops that you have in your beak? Do you think that that makes any difference to this wild, raging, massive fire. And the hummingbird stops for just a moment between trips back to the lake and says two things One, I'm doing what I can, I'm doing what's in my power to do. And two, what if we were all doing what we can and what is in our power to do? Maybe there'd be a lot more water being dropped on the fire right now. And then he doesn't take any more time with the jaguar and he goes back to his work.

Shannon Wills:

And you could look at that story and I look that story and I go man, that little bird, he's working so hard and it's true that fire is so big. But what's the alternative? The alternative is to let the fire burn without giving it any of our love and attention and compassion and doing what we can, or doing the opposite, which is something that we see happening right now, which is actually dropping gasoline on the fire. I'm going to drop gasoline on the fire. There's so much raging, I'm going to add my rage to the raging fire, I'm going to drop more gasoline on it, and then you have something much bigger and much harder to put out down the line. And it's also sad to me, because you can imagine the little hummingbird dropping his beak of water, and maybe there's another little bird dropping a little beak of gasoline. Are they canceling each other out?

Shannon Wills:

I think it's really important to be water droppers. So that's my little version of the hummingbird story and that's my take for the moment on the election. Again, there's so much more I could say, but I feel this is really where I want to land. I want to land in rehumanizing one another, in being able to empathize with the needs of the other and their choices, thinking for ourselves and not just falling in lockstep with one side or the other. Taking care of ourselves and really nurturing and nourishing ourselves for our lives and our relationships and for the long haul and, of course, cultivating a calm center of resilience and peace and joy, because the world needs resilience and peace and joy, because the world needs resilience and peace and joy. And, really importantly, not to let our consciousness, our spirit be held or swayed or manipulated or captured by the gasoline salesmen out there. Instead, let's stay curious, let's think for ourselves, let's know what our part is and then let's do it.

Shannon Wills:

So much love to you all in this time of a lot of uncertainty. It's a time of uncertainty. It's also a time of love. Take care, be well and be human. That's it for this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast. Thanks so much for joining me and I wish you the best the next four years and beyond. If you'd like to learn more about me and Wake Up Human, you can visit my website, shannonwillscom. If you like the podcast, if you love the podcast, please take a minute to give me a review. It would mean so much to me and help the podcast reach more people and, speaking of that, if you know anyone who would appreciate or benefit from this podcast, please share it with them. This podcast is a labor of love for me and I'm thrilled if it can be a benefit to someone else. That's all for now and I'll see you on the next episode.