Transcript of a trialogue with Colin Bossen, Molly Malone and Neil MacLean, discussion during planning meeting for Chicago UUYA Prophets Seminar.

Love does not punish:
Molly: In the work that I have done, that is anti-calvinist in its essence, that is incredibly powerful in America, where our justice is based, from the way that we raise our children to the way that we respond to violence to the structure of the prison industrial complex, to the pastoral degrading way in which people who are trying to overcome their oppressions tend to be patronizing, the very fabric of American culture is suffering in terms of if I worked harder than I would have everything that I need. The complete lack of community support is both reassuring and brutal. For me it also has to do with why I like Catholics more than protestants, in their mode of conquest. They are both massacring assholes, but both in Egypt and in S America, they could conceive of the people that they encountered as having souls instead of just something to be massacred. That is a fundamental difference. Not that everyone will have it, but that it is possible. As opposed to here where people who are shit on in other countries come here and treat others that way.

I have to say that I don’t know enough about alternative forms of justice accept a couple of tribes where if someone commits a heinous crime they will stand in the circle and be reminded of all of the powerful positive things the person has done, in order to remind them that their irresponsible behavior is the smaller part of them.
It is hard to imagine how you could have a social contract to accomplish this kind of civility, but perhaps no more difficult than any social contract of significance.

I also think part of it is having, in the present context, having a great deal of compassion for people who “transgress” because in so many ways it is our social contract that breaks people through hunger or abuse or social conditioning to act out in the way that we do. That becomes our community responsibility to make sure that that person is safe and helped towards their real goals. I think about in a working justice system exile really is the worst punishment you could ever receive because death would be a release.

Colin: no disagreement…. It is very radical within the context of our society. Who decides and how is it decided that there has been some sort of transgression of the social contract, the agreement people have formulated in order to live together. So often it is a bid for power, accusing someone is a way to discredit someone for other reasons. So how do you actually do that? What is the legitimate, responsible way to do that so that it is not open to abuse?

Being able to speak for your own experience and only that experience is rare. It is difficult considering how disempowered people are. But I think all we can do is offer lots of open space and not threaten to take away essentials when people come forward. I am also fascinated by justice systems that have really strict codes but whose penalties are weighted in a progressive way. In ottoman Islamic code, if you were fined for a transgression it was a portion of your income, not a one price fits all punishment. That is far more compassionate.

Is it possible to have a contract based in love?

That has to follow from a community based in mutual support. Because we live in a competitive society having a compassionate legal code gives room for the assholes to be even bigger assholes. If you have a society based on cooperation and mutual aid, obligation, there are both implicit and explicit rules in any community, and it is better to have explicit rules of obligation.

Shame is milder, perhaps more effective than the alternative: capital punishment for example.
If you are going to have a society based on love, you have to acknowledge a basis of mutual obligation. If your system is based on fucking people over than everything else is collateral damage.

Part of it is being able to hold yourself as an integral part of the world. When you see yourself, like the love being more compassion, you can imagine suffering and that effects you, and that makes it possible to live in a different community situation.

/but I also don’t think that it places the restrictions that some people would like to say that it places, for example, some people say that it is cruel to kill animals for food. If I am at the zoo and a tiger eats me, I can be sad that that happened to me not to suffer …
(n. but I should not be martyred or demand to be saved?)

n. So should we have grizzlies in SF?

m. It is cruel to bring a bear to SF. It is cruel because their constitution does not include concrete.

You have to be okay with death. Being okay with loss. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
You don’t deserve messiah status because you are hurt.

c. May and Lovejoy, the first abolitionist martyr, a newspaper editor in Ohio, was attacked by a lynch mob and killed. The Liberator, ran a spread about “the first martyr for the movement.” May opposed this. He said no martyrs.

Why reward someone who is working to deconstruct their privilege more than someone who is working to escape their oppression.

The Buddhist story about looking for a family that hasn’t experienced loss but none can be found… the message is that you are feeling pain but not alone. This is an anti-messiah story.

Margins of Empire
I’ll modify the derogatory statement I made earlier and consider UUs a membrane instead of a gatekeeper. That is a more neutral name, and also describes the many avenues for particulate matter to flow through. I don’t have a problem with direct confrontation. I wish that rich people weren’t sheltered from the reality of the suffering that is inflicted on people simply by their birth position, that this is acceptable because of their willful ignorance. Projects that bring people into contact in ways that are not patronizing. Not assuming you have something to give. I mean not withholding if you can be useful, but not assuming that you have more.
In some ways, our willingness to participate in the empire is also what gives us the freedom to speak against the empire. Our position of wealth, etc means that we can pay for dissidents. Do we use our currency that we could dissent? My answer is we don’t. Are their people who do, absolutely! But if you look at other religious movements, for instance the Quakers, I like it very much more, what stands they are willing to take. The uusc is a joke. We hand out cash to people. We are also, because so many people are anti-credal, we are afraid to take a hard and fast line. I think that is something that is dangerous, but that hasn’t been negotiated.

c. Under Sinkford we did come out against the Iraq war and for gay marriage.

How do we characterize the UUs role. Not as moderation, there has always been something so far to the left, that there have been concessions in order to bring the left back into the mainstream. The hole other side is where you have the overlap of culture, you all that beautiful ferment of stuff that comes up because people have to get creative in their interactions with others, because cultural, or religious, misunderstandings that would lead either to killing each other or to forms of Creole, usually regarded as bastardizations when in fact they yield some of the most important contributions for example Transylvania, or Spain, and how dangerous it can be for the empire when those things get to influence the center of empire. I don’t know how this relates but for people who have been consistently colonized and run over, for example, Thailand and Poland, which have not been physically conquered, never by the Americans, Japanese or Chinese, never communist, the price of those concessions to maintain your identity is so intense, that trying to maintain that minority is really stifling, whereas maintain identity on the margin has considerably greater potential. The Polish hated the Germans, Austrians, Americans, Finish, Swedish, Russians, everyone who had taken a chunk out of them. Every country in Europe except Britain, who would have… this minority under constant oppression has such a different characteristic than a minority on the boundary. The self righteousness is different. When your experience, the co-existence of people who have different expectations, as opposed to the possibility of a people maintaining their community,

c. The zaps are five autonomous groups without hierarchy, each gets seats at the council of elders.

Experiments like that implode because of external pressure.
Spain, Russia,

When people are used to pay for something they are leery of getting it for free. I didn’t hang out around the sex trade industry in Thailand. …. ___________________

c. Martin Bubar paints a picture of what it is like to be a European tribalist.

m. That is what makes me so sad about being white. Everything has been so heavily influenced by non-descript European Christianity. I think that people get really scared around here when you mention tribes, because they see them very concretely6 as biological entities. We need to be really conscious about how people form other covenants.

(bubar)

the other people in the tribe have a concern for your welfare and that is reciprocal. A common concern is that if you have loyalty to your tribe how do you mitigate the Us vs Other, how to be compassionate towards all people and things. Instead of having a slight antagonism to the rest of the world you understand ways to include them in a larger esoteric legacy….

I think especially with nationalism the “other” gets conceived as if not slightly then holey antagonistic, as opposed to simply a different way of being human.

n. What do you think relevant action is in terms of unfolding our honest, tribal legacy?

I am totally in favor of N. American reparations. Here this is the land that we took from you. I don’t know about all of the land we could give back, but at least the fertile land, or at least some acknowledgement. Go ELF!

How do we legitimately connect with people? We all eat, we all need a water source, raising children cooperatively, whether it is a direct lineage or not. I want to be able to live in my own neighborhood and only visit others when I want to. No reason why communities shouldn’t have trades where everyone works three months of the year on a farm.
I don’t necessarily think that a scourge would be a bad thing, although I don’t advocate or endorse it. Its just that for example when there is not enough food for the dear the old ones are sacrificed. But consciousness makes us unable to participant in that part of evolution.

The whole question of population control interests me because I think there is a lot of people on the planet, but the people who shouldn’t be having children are us, not those in Latin America or Africa. It takes eighty Zaps to equal the impact on one Gringo.

I am all in favor of squat toilets and other more primitive technology like bicycles, which change our pace and relationship to the land.

n. What action is it appropriate for us to take?

We have to stop conceiving of ourselves as white. Just the same way as the women’s liberation movement is not only about women empowering themselves, but also men reducing their stature. Its hard to give up male privilege, you can alter yourself biologically but its not the only way. (chocolate has vanilla in it.)

If there is support work that needs to be done, I can only enter community when I know where I come from.
The tv, the car, Americanism for my parents meant only four children…
What community support can I have to get the things I want?
Can I be a Quebec-qua and have the advantages of a safe place to live, meaningful work, good education. Why am I giving up my heritage for my kids to have an imperialist education?

The point is that we are all victims of colonialism.
OR that we all suffer from, there was a time we were all victims. We are descendents of people who were victimized and became victimizers. I suffer because white privilege exists although not from white privilege.

n. I am hearing you articulate around specific movements like ELF and primitivism but I am not hearing much in relation to UU.

You can make a designation around any affinity, for example the pot club includes frat boys, anarchists, everybody, a point of unity. It is better if those points of unity are not specifically results of privilege, for example parts of culture that are salvageable from the lost tribe, (I think that is incredibly mythical,) food.
I think our tribe is not successful, whereas lots of black churches are, because we can’t come together around worship and be fulfilled.

All these churches invested all this money in pipe organs. Which are overbearing.

A tribe can be as coercive as anything else. Jesus gave us victory at Galgery. Jesus, Jesus Jesus, yes, yes, yes.