Positive thinking v. realism

I stayed home from work today with a migraine. I've been a migraine sufferer for many years, and while they've improved considerably over the last six months, this most recent one was exceptionally painful and lasted almost four days--from Thursday night to this Sunday afternoon. Thankfully, I felt better by mid-evening, because that gave me an opportunity to work on this blog, among other things.

I am reminded tonight that there is value in working from vision rather than from criticism. My biggest fault as a thinker and activist may be my tendency to look with a jaundiced eye at what is, comparing it with my vision of what should be and finding that it falls far short. In some ways, I believe this criticism is very necessary and inherent to who I am: I am a questioner, a deconstructionist, as much as I am a visionary. But this tendency can also lead me to focus perhaps too much on the negative. That leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to the Dark Side of the Force...ahem. And possibly to migraines.

A friend of mine recently linked me to The Master Key System, which is all about visualizing success and using positive thinking to attract good things to oneself. I'm not convinced that this is the Secret to everything, and am very skeptical about some of what the author has to say. I think that the idea that everything in our reality is our creation ignores the fact that if each of us has the potential to manifest our thoughts, we all do, and so must be co-creaters of the world. Just because something bad happens to us does not mean we are wrong-thinking; likewise, luck does not come only to the worthy. The rain falls on both the just and the unjust. However, I think that the basic concept is valid: still the mind, release fear, and focus on what you want to make real in the world, rather then on lack. Negativity can kill creativity. Working from a clear vision is powerful.

This goes back to an idea I have been exploring about scarcity and abundance, that I wrote about at some length on Evolving Sentience. We live in an abundant world, but we live in fear and apprehension of scarcity: as if there isn't enough to go around, when there is. Living in this vision of scarcity, we feel the need to fight to keep what little we have, to turn away from our fellows with the attitude of "I've got mine." (The problem, of course, is not that there is not enough; it's that some people have all the marbles.)

On the other hand, sometimes it's important to be realistic--to look at the world as it really is, in its imperfections and shortfalls. If we convince ourselves that everything is really fine, if we deny that racism or sexism or homophobia exists, if we deny that our legal and educational systems are broken, do we have a better world? No, we don't--we have only the comfort of delusion. One of my favorite RSA Animate videos illustrates this beautifully:



In the tension between vision and criticism, between positivity and negativity, in the balance between--that is where change must occur, if the opposing forces can pull us to action, rather than inertia. In order to build, we must have plans and a foundation. And if the foundation is rotten, we have to pull it down before we can build.

I am thinking about this in part because I anticipate that at some point some fellow law graduates, now lawyers, will read this blog and see personal criticism in my criticism of the legal system and culture. So I want to say now: this is not about negating the work that you do, if you are an ethical lawyer, if you do pro bono work, if you work in social justice. I respect your work. I am glad you are able to do that work. But I challenge you, too, to take a step back and acknowledge with me, the way that the structure of the system handicaps justice. The way our prison system is full of young men--mostly black--who, if paroled, will be denied legitimate jobs due to their past felonies. The way our civil system gives the most justice to those who can pay the best lawyers, and limits punitive damages on companies who have done the math and concluded that paying off a little collateral damage to the little guy is worth the profits.

I feel that having spent so much on a legal education, having "bought in" as it were, invested in the system, it can be difficult to admit these things--or at least, difficult to admit it matters. In my last semester of law school I took a course in law and popular culture, and I heard this difficulty echoing in the words of my classmates. Confronted with an acidly critical indictment of the racism and abuse of trans people in our criminal justice system--Al Pacino's scathing ...And Justice For All--some of them denied that the very real problems raised by the film "were all that bad." Some of them were silent and uncomfortable. Some merely shrugged. "That's just the way things are," they said. "So the system's not perfect. What are you gonna do?" No one wanted to talk about what they had watched on the screen.

This easy acceptance of injustice and brutality made me seethe. I felt alone in that classroom. Although there were one or two students who seemed grateful to me for speaking out about these issues, for the most part I sensed hostile stares and disbelief. Who did I think I was, siding with the filmmakers against the courts? What did I mean by it? Perhaps they felt accused, by the film and so by me as well. Many were already employed in law jobs; they had "got theirs." Perhaps they wanted to simply enjoy that privilege, untroubled by the dark side of the world to which they had paid so much to gain access.

I do not want to make accusations; I want to spur the inert and the unaware to action. And so I ask--not just to my peers in the legal world, but to all comers--what are you gonna do? Will you accept injustice? Will you sit silent? Or will you think critically, speak out, and help to build a new foundation?

Introducing the Rogue J.D.

This blog is a manifesto of sorts.

I've been wanting to start a "real blog" for some time now. Like many bright young things of my generation, I've been a casual blogger for years--mostly on the now-dying Livejournal, which I left following its sale to a Russian marketing company and ensuing questionable changes to its user and privacy policies. I haven't blogged much since then. For awhile, I was too busy, with school, with BarBri, and then with the disappointments of an unforgiving job market for new J.D.s.

But now it's time to get serious.

What I want to talk about here is threefold. First, I want to talk about justice, and about the American legal system, and why they do not exist in the same sphere. Inherent in this discussion is the problematic nature of American legal education as well as the broken values and ingrained classism of our legal culture.

Second, I want to talk about my personal journey inside and outside the legal world. Part of this story will be the story of why I went to law school in the first place and why my experiences there brought me to the realization that law was not a great fit. The main story, however, is the one that I am living--the struggle between my own dreams and societal expectations, between the pressure of debt and material necessity and the need to discover work that I truly believe in and enjoy.

I think this is a conflict that faces many Americans today. Our economy and our culture's skewed ideas about work and material worth are killing our souls and lives. And this is the third topic I want to explore with this blog--what I think of as a spiritual as well as political crisis within our society. So I will discuss politics as well, not only economic politics but queer politics, racial politics, disability politics, and sexual politics, because I believe they are all connected. The political is personal is political.

I have a job now. It's not a legal job. But it's not one that I enjoy, either. I work as a fundraiser for a major progressive organization, and my experience with their policies has made me question the entire progressive political movement, of which I once counted myself a member.

When you come to question all the institutions with which you once identified, what do you have left?

I have myself. That's all. Myself and my own passions and convictions, the ones that have survived my alienation. The ones that really mean something.

And hopefully, at some point, I'll have you, the readers, to make this journey with me.