A Manifesto for Sanity

We entered the year with a warning, suggesting these were times of monsters. Our times are indeed monstrous. We did not suggest that our quest should be to fight the monsters, rather to understand that our times were monstrous and so were we.

As the year draws to a close and there is no respite for those facing the most brutal of circumstances, it feels inappropriate to celebrate, rest or hide. Instead, we offer some sort of manifesto for sanity. A collection of wisdom and advice from those who continue to illuminate our times, those who help us to see clearly and give us the courage to never ever give up in our striving for a more just, creative and peaceful world. And because while we may be heartbroken, we are not defeated.

‍Defend truth. Always. In Truth and Politics, Hannah Arendt wrote: “Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.” But that does not mean we stoop down as low as them, it means we go higher. If there is no more truth, there is no right or wrong, this leads to barbarism.

‍Side with dignity and justice. In our entangled world, everything is political. Being neutral or apolitical is a privilege, not a choice. This does not mean that you have to pick a side, the world is much more complex than binaries of good and bad. But you can always side with peace, with justice, accountability, and dignity for all people. 

‍Reject established notions of victory and power. Old power is hoarding, winning, controlling, but we must “seek power in other places and in other ways,” Bayo Akomolafe tells us. We must resist the spell of the status quo, seek power in the collective, in the open.

‍Reject hate, always. Don’t oppose the demagogues with the same hatred, this only increases division. Don’t share hateful content. Lao Tzu said: “Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.”

‍Be intellectually curious. We must seek to understand others, our world and the context of what we face, to read history, to see the connections between the oppression, the destruction, the struggles – and to honour those whose shoulders we stand on. As James Baldwin said: “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

‍Cultivate critical thinking. Don’t hand over thinking to the algorithms. Teach your children critical thinking, this might be the most important skill they will need to navigate the world that is unfolding. As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Banality of Evil, evil comes from our failure to think, from an absence of thought, or thoughtlessness. 

‍Make yourself available to history. Bantu Stephen Biko, the founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement said: “History works through people, and we have availed ourselves to history to work through us.” As Obenewa Amponsah says, we have to make ourselves available to history, and to each other. 

‍Practise courage, not hope. While it might sometimes be difficult to find, courage is innate in all of us, environmentalist Paul Hawken says; “hope is the pretty mask of fear. It masks the fear and what we want to touch into, is the fear itself, and not mask it or cover it up with a kind of hopefulness.” 

‍Bear witness. As images of unspeakable horror pours through our screens, it is tempting to turn away, lest it leads us to despair. But, Joanna Macy says, we should not be afraid of our pain for the world because that despair “is the uncovering of our love for our world and we crack it open by speaking it so that the love can act. … And if you’re not afraid, then nothing can stop you.” 

‍Do not obey in advance. Anticipatory obedience leads to political tragedy, Timothy Snyder says, and yet most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. As Harendt explained, “the extermination of Jews was preceded by a very gradual sequence of anti-Jewish measures, each of which was accepted with the argument that refusal to cooperate would make things worse.”

‍Learn to say ‘no.’ For Albert Camus, the only way to stand up to an unjust society was to keep resisting; the rebel was someone who said ‘no.’ But we must only say no to authorities, to borders, to incarceration, to oppression. To others, to ideas, to the world, we must say ‘yes, come in, you are welcome here.’

‍Embrace being radical. While the word has been hijacked to refer to illegal or violent forms of activism, being radical means going to the roots and seeking fundamental change. Remember, those seeking abolition of slavery were radical. Those asking for the vote were radical. Mandela was radical. To a growing number of leaders, human rights are radical. Embrace it, stand by your principles, you won’t be alone.

‍Break unjust laws. In On Civil Disobedience, H.D. Thoreau said that if unjust laws required us to be an agent of injustice, then we had to break the law. “If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations,” he wrote, “I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders.” Greta Thunberg said “we can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.”

‍Protest, resist. Learn, repeat. Demonstrations are rehearsal for the revolution, John Berger said. Angela Davis said the most important work in resistance movements was the work done behind the scenes and that resistance doesn’t have to be spectacular. What matters, she said, was to develop the kind of consciousness that encourages us even in the smallest ways, to resist and speak back to power.

‍Boycott. Divest. It works. But be strategic. The events of the past year have shown us we may actually have more power as consumers than we do as voters. It’s a sad realisation, but we might as well use it. Find out who funds, invests in and benefits from atrocities, and boycott them. Change your coffee shop, your phone, your bank, your job. 

‍Reclaim our words. The weaponization of language is a tool of tyrants, its aim is to scare us into silence. We must resist policing our own language, and that of others for that matter. But respect language and words, use the correct words that describe the horrors inflicted on people. Each time we self censor, we give away a little bit of our power.

‍Challenge demonisation of others. Pay attention to this, it’s all around us. And show solidarity with those being targeted. In Orientalism, Edward Said wrote: “In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.” 

‍Practise guerrilla compassion. Perform random acts of kindness. Kindness is not some sort of currency, it is not transactional, it is what makes us human. Get to know your neighbours, make eye contact, smile at strangers, make small talk, give compliments.

‍Build community. The demagogues want us to be scared, to hide away, alone, isolated. Politics of fear is politics of separation. Yet, we’re going to need each other more and more in the coming months and years. As Audre Lorde said, “without community, there is no liberation.” 

‍Focus on belonging. We all belong to this world. John A Powell writes: “when we exclude others, we are ultimately excluding ourselves from the richness and diversity of the human experience.”

‍Change your mind. Changing our minds is not weakness, it means we are able to engage with the world and adapt to it, it’s a path to wisdom. George Bernard Shaw said that progress was impossible without change; and “those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” 

‍Embrace the unexpected. Our specificity as humans, Achille Mbembe writes, is “to be in a constant state of wakefulness, disposed to welcoming the unknown and to embracing the unexpected, since surprise lies at the origin of the procedures of enchantment without which the world is not a world.”

‍Develop a practice. Whatever lies ahead, it is how we show up for each other that will matter the most. And that is one of the few things that is actually within our power. Whether it’s meditation or other, find your practice and develop and nurture a strong mind. 

‍Read books. Reading, along with thinking and walking, are liberatory practices. And they remind us of our shared humanity. Jorge Luis Borges said that reading a book was “no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said that books gave her “that glorious shock of mutuality, a sense of wonder that a stranger’s words could make me feel less alone in the world.” 

‍Read poetry. Don’t underestimate the power of poetry, for it clarifies the world to us. In The Republic, Plato wanted poets to be banned from society, not because it was trivial to serious affairs of running the country, but because poets were deemed dangerous because of the effects they have on people. He was in awe at poetry’s capacity to reconfigure our minds. 

‍Listen to music. Any kind, any time, for any reason. Fela Kuti said “Music is a weapon of the future. Music is the weapon of the progressives. Music is the weapon of the givers of life.” Neurologist Oliver Sacks said in forty years of medical practice, he found only two types of non-pharmaceutical therapy to be vitally important for his patients: music and gardens.

‍Go for a walk. If you’re able to. Find ways of moving your body. “Walking,” Linda Hogan writes, “I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”

‍Make art. Not because it’s good or because you have a talent, but because it’s food for your soul, it’s developing your imagination muscles, it’s practising freedom.

‍Support independent media and journalists. The past year has shown that we cannot trust mainstream media who will ignore truth in order to pander to power, to maintain the status quo, and too often, contribute to the dehumanization of groups of people. But thanks to the internet, we can find courageous journalists willing to risk their lives every day to clarify the world for us, to seek the truth, with compassion and integrity. Follow them. Support them.

‍Support artists. Artists are often the first to be censored, defunded and exiled. And they’re often expected to work for free. Yet it is the artists who warn us of the dangers of our times, who help us feel what we cannot put into words, and who help us imagine and create better worlds. We won’t make it without them.

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Words, Veronica Yates and illustration, Miriam Sugranyes.

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Some reading for you‍

My Seditious Heart, Arundhati Roy.
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Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt.

The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt.

‘Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,’ Hannah Arendt.

Truth and Politics, Hannah Arendt.

On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder.

‘On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,’ Henry David Thoreau. Read it online here.

‍Orientalism, Edward W. Said.

The Earthly Community, Achille Mbembe.

The Rebel, Albert Camus.

Who Do We Choose to Be, Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity, Margaret Wheatley.

"We can’t get There from Here: Carbon, Climate and the Call to Wonder." Conversation with Paul Hawken and Báyò Akómoláfé, Schumacher Center for a New Economics, 4 December 2024. Listen here. 
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Some listening for you

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Practice the Art of Listening: In order to help us in our practice we compiled a list of soulful soundscapes we collected from around the world - from India, to Nigeria, to First Nations territories via the Persian Gulf. ‍Read more here. You can listen to the playlist on either SoundCloud or Spotify. Please be aware that there are variations due to availability of tracks.

‍The poetry of Nour Elassy: listen here to Nour Elassy reading her poem ‘If you were mine.’ Nour is a Gaza based poet, writer and humanitarian. She writes in English, French and Arabic. Discover her work here.

‍Soundtrack to the Struggle: listen here to our playlist. Unfortunately we were only able to compile this playlist on Spotify (many of the tracks were not available on other platforms). You can still listen without an account, you just may have to bear some boring adverts. Or you can look up the tracks on other platforms of your choice. More here.

‍Sudan Sounds: Discover the poetry of k.eltinaé, a diaspora poet of Sudanese-Nubian and Mediterranean descent, whose work is centred around otherness, cultural/geographic displacement, generational trauma, and exile. And listen to Basma Osman’s playlist, the host of Khartoum Arrivals. She plays music inspired by the long road, drawing from the wedding anthems and eclectic folk of Sudan, the Sahel, the Horn and beyond.

‍Words from the Congo: Discover the poetry of Sarah Lubala, a Congolese-born poet, currently based in South Africa. Her family fled the Democratic Republic of Congo two decades ago amidst political unrest. And listen to our playlist Sounds of the Congo (also, on Spotify).

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