Resistance is Futile

We have a serious language problem.

I believe words matter, and the language we use has a massive impact on what we can actually accomplish. So, forgive me as I get weirdly nit picky about the words we choose when we talk about what to do about the state of the world, and more specifically the current administration in the United States.

I have been hearing so much lately about all the ways we can resist this administration and the terrible things they are doing to undermine American democracy. On its face, I’m all for it. This is bullshit. I won’t stand for bullshit.

But…resist? I don’t know about that.

Maybe it’s the nerd in me that hears the Borg declaring “Resistance is futile,” in Star Trek. Maybe it’s the depth psychology nerd in me mulling over Jung’s, “What you resist persists.” I can’t get behind that word. And now that the shit has really hit the fan, I hear it everywhere.

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

When I hear the word “resist” I see a damsel caught in the arms of the sleazy villian who is going in for a kiss. She resists by leaning back, but he’s already got her trapped. This feeling of resistance makes me feel gross. I don’t want to be tied up in the futile flailings that only prolong the inevitable. I want something more.

Carl Jung’s take on resistance is different, but equally valuable in this situation. He was talking about the things we discover about ourselves and our inner worlds, many of which we don’t particularly enjoy. But by trying to resist these parts of ourselves, we are only ensuring that they will stick around and often grow. Jung offers embrace as an alternative, seeing and accepting these less than savory parts of ourselves so that we can learn to work with them and around them, instead of entrenching them deeper and deeper into our psyches.

This piece to me feels like the first step to truly addressing what’s going on in our country. It’s far too easy for this shit show to be turned into an “us vs. them” sort of situation, but the reality is we’re all “us” and there is no “them.” This may be hard for some of my readers to digest (I know I don’t particularly like this fact), so let’s dig in.

Everyone in the US has been steeped in the same dirty water of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy (what I not-so-lovingly refer to as The Big Three). No matter where you find yourself on the political spectrum, you have these tendencies and frameworks as your starting point, they are baked into the very way you see the world. Now, of course, you can work to change this with much time and intention. But this work can only be done if you can truly see and accept that this is what you’re starting from.

To deny that you have these biases deep in the core of your operating system is to allow them to direct your thoughts, actions, and beliefs without you even knowing. What you resist, persists. If, however, you were to address the deeply unsettling parts of yourself, look them in the face, and learn to work with them, you can heal these broken parts of yourself, and in turn learn how to help others heal. So, this is where I see acceptance as a vital piece of our response to the shit show we find ourselves in. Internally, we must shift resistance to embrace.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

But that’s not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning. As we see these deeper parts of ourselves and move through the healing process, and help others to as well, we can’t help but look around and think, “What the fuck is this?!” We can’t simply stand for the dehumanization of millions of people, the degradation of our planet, and the re-emergence of fascism! But resistance? Let’s do something more.

May I offer: DEFIANCE.

While the Oxford and Webster’s dictionaries define Defiance as some form of resistance, we have an implicit understanding of their felt difference. Resistance feels weak, and could almost be done passively, a part of resistance is almost the resignation towards what is already happening. Defiance on the other hand, laughs in the face of what is established, it acknowledges it, yes, but strips it of its authority and power.

What if Elphaba’s big moment at the end of the first act of Wicked was “Resisting Gravity”? The musical would have been such a flop the movie would have most certainly never happened!

You can feel the difference here. Elphaba didn’t resist gravity, she full on DEFIED IT! To resist gravity is to jump as high as you can, straining towards the sky, while gravity bides it’s time until you fall back into its clutches. But to defy it? You break free from it’s authority all together. Through defiance we find a completely different way of being in and relating to the world around us.

It may seem like a small shift or change, but it can have a huge impact. The secret, undefined baggage that words carry with them (despite what Oxford and Webster have to say about it) literally shapes how we think, feel, and act. Words have deep and transformative power, let’s not waste it.

Let’s stop resisting and start DEFYING.