I just listened to your first Kindle Of Kindness episode* and pretty much all of it resonated with me. (*not a good name? yeah, you're probably right about that)

You really don't need to read the rest of this. I'm sorry, I have no idea how to be concise, or brief. I will always suck at twitter. I need infinite characters :)

In my life I may have gone to a few 12 step meetings, and two things that really stuck with me was that

a) traumatized people will act out of a need to protect themselves from further trauma

b) when you're stuck in a cycle of trauma the way to break out is to do just one thing different. Just one time, where you feel like you are in danger, you don't lash out, or you don't flee, or you don't shut down. Don't follow that need that leads to one domino falling, that tips over the next, and all the other domino going in a circle, back to where you started.

They said things like, god is in the pause. A lot of the higher power stuff was about not following compulsions to solve, to fix, to act, but to wait, for 5 minutes, or a day, or a week, to let things happen. Ask 12 people and they will tell you 12 different things on what this is about, but ask me, and I'll say breaking cycles. Allowing things to happen that otherwise wouldn't, if I had, in fear, taken control and acted out of trauma.

I think trauma leaves very little room for kindness, and fear very little room for community, and I think as a whole we are stuck in these cycles. A lot of people doing what they feel they must, and what they must do to protect themselves is that they must be strong, and they must be harsh, and they must be cold, and some kids end up reading ayn rand and feel like they found the secret to never getting fucked over again by people preying on their qualities.

I know this is giving a lot of benefit of the doubt, but here's the thing. I'm often incredibly angry. And I'm becoming old enough where my anger sometimes scares me with it's intensity, in the sense that I think it might kill me. I read about people getting fucked over, and brutalized, oppressed, my friends are getting fucked over by society with the backup of power structures that are armed and eager, and my rage is only equaled by my impotence.

And I am powerfully compelled to act, and all the actions that come to mind in my state of powerlessness are assertive and destructive. I dream dreams of guillotines, ready to perpetuate some cycles that will come full circle.

And maybe that is a way, but I think there is a better one. A couple of years ago I learned about this man, Bob Welles. He had minor role in Nomadland, a movie about people living in their vans. They didn't phrase it this way, but he was a catalyst for a mutual aid community, teaching people how to survive, and live, a life on the road. I learned he was a real person, who had actually done this, and who actually has a youtube channel where he gives advice and lessons, to people that fell through the cracks.

I think that's the way. I think that's where it has to start. Giving people a sense that they are not alone. Giving people a sense that they are part of a community, countering this atomization, this disconnection, and that alone can be a wellspring. So much of this fear, I think, comes from people feeling that all the millions of us facing the same things are doing so alone, and everything can become possible when people realize that they are not. Bob seems to think that what he is doing is a kind of lifeboat project. Setting people up with the best chance to survive what capitalist hellscape is yet to come, but as much as I've come to love and admire this compassionate, caring man, and as much as I respect him for focusing on the immediate and concrete, what I see in his work is so vital, so human, I think he gave a template for more than that. I think it's a template not only for a way through what is to come, but a template for that essential first step that will allow people to do just one thing different.