I biffed it this week and missed my self-imposed deadline for this newsletter. The main reason Thought Deli exists is to hold myself accountable to a due date and force myself to produce writing outside of a workshop or structured class (I can’t stand another minute on Zoom after my day job, so haven’t explored any remote workshops this year). Anyway, I’m acknowledging that this newsletter is supposed to go out once a week and last week, it didn’t!
Part of the reason for that was because I was thinking through a very meaty idea (this is your warning up top that this is going to be a long-winded installment).
Though it feels like it has been an eternity, the world learned that Donald Trump was diagnosed with coronavirus just over two weeks ago, in the early hours of Friday, October 2nd. What followed on my bubbles of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook was a collective public yearning for his health to take a turn for the worse. This popular sentiment was expressed in the form of memes and one-liners, some facetious, but mostly earnest. Almost immediately, a throng of high-road liberals “clapped back” about civility, the moral implications of fervently wishing for the death of another human being, and how it would ultimately be bad if Donald Trump went out as some kind of martyr.
For those making the martyrdom argument, which I’ve heard a lot in the last eighteen days, I posit that it is impossible for Donald Trump to die a martyr, because martyrdom hinges on dying for something and standing for a principle, or an idea. Would George Bush have been a martyr if he had choked to death on that pretzel back in 2002? I think not, and I don’t see how this situation is any different. Refusing to wear a mask amidst a raging pandemic and ignoring public health protocols is a choice, not a stance. You can lead a horse to water, as they say, but you cannot make it drink.
This left me thinking mostly about the morality judgement thrust upon those of us who were hoping he’d die from the virus, which seemed a fitting punishment for his significant role in this Greek tragedy of a year.
Being a child of boomers, I am no stranger to civility politics. I grew up in a fairly secular house (my mom was raised Catholic, and my dad is Jewish), but in an effort to imbue my sister and I with some kind of moral compass, my mom did bring us to church as children, until I was around twelve and made confirmation. I give her a lot of credit for couching the stories we were told in church as “probably not real, but still a good lesson”, and that was the attitude I brought to the passages we learned in CCD and the sermons I half-listened to in those uncomfortable, stiff pews, playing with the loose nylon threads in my deteriorating pantyhose. When my mom had delivered on her promise to her own mother that her grandchildren wouldn’t die heathens and would be confirmed, she sighed in relief that we could all finally stop going to church.
One of the biggest takeaways I had from Christianity was this idea of turning the other cheek. A good Christian, no matter what kind of transgressions are committed against them, no matter how egregious the violation, is expected to swallow the injustice and not retaliate. Retaliation means more than just an action, it also applies to thoughts, something I found dangerous and silencing even as a twelve year old. Having nasty thoughts about someone, or momentarily wishing something unfortunate would happen to them was frowned upon almost as much as physically hitting back a classmate who had slapped you. The natural solution to this rule (if one wants to remain sane) is simply to let those thoughts come through your brain, but to take great pains not to verbalize them. This notion has spread so seamlessly into secular, pop-culture areas of American life, that its origins really aren’t considered much anymore. Maybe that is why self-proclaimed agnostic people are so comfortable tweeting their wishes for a speedy recovery towards a man who can best be described as a rapist, mass manslaughter-er (of 250,000+ since March, last time I checked) and professional con artist.
What is the point, truly, of this civility, if not to earn karmic points somewhere? Are millennials lacking religion really as divested from the idea of a final judgement as we claim to be? Or are we so obsessed with being the bigger person that we’ll be trampled under the feet of anyone who has completely eschewed the ideological pillars of right and wrong?
The only other explanation for this phenomenon that I could come up with is the idea that collective will actually can have a material effect. That the sheer energy of millions of people on the edge of their seats over an individual’s demise is a dangerous weapon. Think about the collective energy you might feel watching televised courtroom coverage of a huge sentencing. When someone so objectively awful is being punished, those watching can practically feel a visceral craving for justice. It’s palpable and ancient, and the more I am chided over my indifference to Trump’s health, the more I wonder if maybe there is something to wishing.
As my friends and I joked that we were ‘manifesting’ Trump’s demise (I had a strong, intuitive feeling that he wouldn’t make it past Thursday, October 8th - unfortunately I was wrong), I got to seriously thinking about manifestation for the first time.
The two thought-leaders that spring to my mind when I hear the word ‘manifestation’ are Rhonda Byrne (author of ‘The Secret’) and of course, Marianne Williamson. Realizing that I didn’t know enough about Marianne outside of her ill-fated Presidential run, I did some research and watched a fair amount of her speeches and content on YouTube. Her extremely messy public opinions aside, a couple of things about her became obvious to me. One, this woman is a fantastic orator. Two, the basic philosophy of her beliefs has a lot in common with some women I’ve discussed here before: namely, Glennon Doyle and Dr. Brene Brown.
My distaste for Glennon aside, it is telling to me that both of these women are supremely respected among liberals, whereas Williamson is shrugged off as ‘crazy’ and ‘psycho’, terms I probably don’t have to point out are quite useful for upholding the patriarchy and devaluing the contributions of women. All three espouse much of the same core approach to life, which is merely an echo from the Bible: Be Still and Know.
It begs the question: why has Williamson’s reputation preceded her? Is it because of her decision to run for President, or is it her objectively bad takes on vaccinations and living with AIDS? Is it simply because she isn't accredited with a PhD like Dr. Brown, despite having authored 14 books? Or, is it her somewhat pagan and universally oriented definition of God, which is the one place she really varies from both Dr. Brown and Doyle? It’s probably all of the above, but that is a topic for another installment.
What I really wanted to figure out from watching her videos was, from an expert, how does manifestation work in practice?
Per Williamson, the catch here is that you cannot choose an outcome to manifest and make real. The manifestation practice only “works” by opening yourself up to paths the universe has chosen for you, not by choosing a goal and visualizing it on a board created from magazine cut-outs and glitter glue. If this is true, there’s nothing tangible to fear about our collective will power and consciousness as long as it is directed at a singular goal. For it to have power under Williamson’s ideology, we’d have to let go of the idea that we are tied to a specific desired result and simply let things happen with openness. So even the experts on manifestation say it’s harmless for us to vocalize desires, however craven this might seem to the civility police.
I’m not convinced, but it is certainly something I’ll find myself thinking about for a while. I’ll leave you with a MW quote from the video I linked that I felt illustrated her manifesto best, in case you’re also curious:
“When you have an idea about what you want to make happen, that’s magic, but it isn’t a miracle. The course in miracles says not to strategize your purpose, but to be open to being used. Your mission every single day is simply to be present with others to the best of your ability.”
Much to think about.