Back from an accidental hiatus to examine the intersection of accountability and belonging https://belonging.substack.com/p/issue-62-belonging-and-accountability?r=3rgdo&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web (1/x)

I've been thinking about accountability for a few months, largely in the need to move from accountability as a vehicle for blame, separation, judgment and suffering to a set of relational practices and beliefs about care, love, trust (2/x)

https://twitter.com/vanessamason/status/1542246763041390592?s=20&t=LTNHgJbv_psFH6pMKWmKKg

Activist @miamingus has crafted a brilliant 4-part framework for accountability: self-reflection, apology, repair and changed behavior (3/x)

Present-day accountability at a collective or societal level could be described as accountability-avoidant or punitive culture: outward judgment, consent-less suffering, moralized unworthiness, and maintaining the status quo. (4/x)


The components of punitive culture are embedded in our political systems such as criminal justice and policing, economies through enabling poverty, and cultures such as the violence of objectivity, hierarchies, and religious beliefs of hellfire and damnation (5/x)


Punitive culture masquerades as accountability through fear,  impeding relationships we need. Our relationships experience “illness/injury” that arise w/ conflict and accountability practices are medicines that we can use to treat these conditions. (6/x)


Outward judgment relies on accounting of errors and harms by individuals and institutions with power over others without consent or care, weakening the desire and capacity for self-reflection. (7/x)

Punitive culture sees apologies as weaknesses or unnecessary, preferring to impose suffering at or above perceived levels of harm. Within criminal justice at least, the suffering incarceration is an ineffective response to harm and protecting safety. (8/x) https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715100?ai=7st&mi=3elpax&af=R

Moralizing worthiness of individuals and other populations separates people into "good" or "bad" categories as determined by unquestionable higher authorities like God or science. You can't repair that which is destined to be broken. (9/x) 


Punitive culture resists accountability through co-option, dismissal, and betrayal to sustain the status quo of systems and institutions: eg. 2020's Overton window for racial reckoning has narrowed with the Biden admin's plan for 100K cops. (10/x)


Disrupting the inertia of punitive culture requires reclaiming/naming experiences and expressing the full range of emotions that arose from the harm. The contestation of what constitutes harm and who is harmed helps to move toward awareness that comes from self-reflection (11/x)


As we endure the Age of Omni-Crisis, we can expect more frequent, complex, larger-scale harms that will defy good vs. bad dichotomies, making them harder to identify, emotionally intense, with more complicated pathways to repair and changed behavior (12/x)


How might we re-imagine accountability practices and beliefs to satisfy our human needs for safety, connection and sense making and our environmental needs for stability and regeneration? (13/x)


October's events will explore accountability more in depth. Join the 30 minute signals scavenger hunt on October 12 to share disruptions and innovations of how accountability looks, feels and is experienced today to cultivate belonging:
https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1MYxNgbvqvwKw


Join the 90 minute monthly meetup on October 26 for an interactive workshop co-creating those new practices, policies, and beliefs of accountability-nurturing cultures: https://lu.ma/october2022meetup


You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/vanessamason/eDWVKHz

Summary of Issue #62: Belonging and Accountability

ICYMI: New issue of Future of Belonging explores all manners of debt: financial, cultural, social, and spiritual (1/x)

https://belonging.substack.com/p/issue-60-belonging-and-debt?s=w

To be American is to wear blinders to structural inequalities and systemic challenges, piling an intolerable burden on the shoulders of individuals. Debt is no exception. @PublicHealth released a policy brief last year outlining several adverse health impacts of debt (2/x)

Re-examining debt through the lens of belonging magnifies social costs. @astradisastra, @StrikeDebt co-founder states “In this country, most working people aren't living beyond their means, they are being denied the means to live. Exploding household debt is the result.” (3/x)

Racial capitalism shapes debt. @louise_seamster outlines how White debt "promotes agency and grants opportunities as an investment in an imagined better future" while Black debt "represents the past and ongoing theft of Black assets." (4/x)


Recasting deficits of belonging as structural debt points to new arenas for cultivating belonging that requiring addressing and paying off these social debts as recuperation. HT @iamwellandgood @EmLaurence @TexasTribune @eklib @BriannaWu @HillaryKelly @katierosman 


https://twitter.com/vanessamason/status/1529152773878452225?s=20&t=kLYeLLbx6Jq9mvb1TgojBg

If you're eager to rethink debt to cultivate more belonging in the future, join us tomorrow on May 25 for our Future of Belonging meetup: https://t.co/53zNAk70hz

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/vanessamason/TRVN8uy

Issue #60: Belonging and Debt

In spring 2020, I started using the phrase Age of Omnicrisis to describe our pandemic-fueled time. I was influenced by this cartoon published in March 11, 2020 in a Canadian newspaper (1/x)

Omnicrisis is the state of cataclysmic catastrophe, occurring simultaneously and often exacerbating systemic failures and catalyzing newly cascading risks much like the succession of tsunamis depicted in one of many memes propagated by the original cartoon (2/x)

Thinking about the future is hard even when things are "normal." We are living through the end of normalcy, including our experience of the three components of belonging. 

☝🏽 Safety and comfort
💕 Emotional connection
🎶 Meaning and sense making

https://belonging.substack.com/p/shifts-powering-the-future-of-belonging?s=w

(3/x)

3 forces impeding belonging:

😪 Global loneliness epidemic due to lack of meaningful relationships
↔️ Growing disaffiliation & alienation from institutions
🚚 Growing displacement due to gentrification, violent/political conflict, & climate change

https://belonging.substack.com/p/issue-59-belonging-and-the-dark-side?s=w

(4/x)

I'm hoping that the Future of Belonging community serves two objectives:

👾 Holding space for processing the impact and implications of omnicrisis to support collective healing
👩🏽‍🎤 Imagining and co-creating radically benevolent possibilities of flourishing and belonging

(5/x)

I don't have all of the answers. Omnicrisis is too massive for any one individual to hold any singular answer. But coming together at our monthly meetups can be a container for contributing multiple perspectives and designing shared visions (6/x)


The next session is May 25 at 4:30 pm PT/7:30 pm ET. Please come and invite others eager to cultivate more belonging in the world. Also please share this thread with others. We need all of us for the road ahead.

https://lu.ma/may2022meetup


You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/vanessamason/oXumuOR

Summary of Issue #62: Belonging and Accountability

Issue #60: Belonging and Debt

Invitation to Future of Belonging Community