10 Comments
Oct 13Liked by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

My husband likes to ask people who have strong feelings about something, "Would you rather be right or rather be effective?" He goes on to say that being right can make you feel momentarily better but won't change anything. Being effective is figuring out how to deal with the upsetting event strategically so you are effective. Ex: "I am so angry I quit!" vs. "Let's figure out if we can achieve that same goal collaboratively."

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author

Totally. I feel like this feels right to me 80% of the time… but there is part of me that thinks that 20% of the time being right is the choice I really want to make. It’s funny that, isn’t it?

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It's a matter of an emotional versus intellectual and more thoughtful response. We are taught to express ourselves immeditately if we come from a culture that says we must respond to personal offenses. We then become victims of our own emotionally driven knee-jerk response. The more thoughtful, intellectual response focuses on the long-term.

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In my work when we're talking about co-creating a culture within a group (in a week-long training, say) we talk about calling "out" versus calling "in", which I think speaks to the tension you're talking about! As a facilitator I will present these options just like how you were saying, as two different strategies for different situations where harm might be occurring, depending on a variety of factors... but what's most interesting is that in some groups people will lean towards one strategy more than the other and then collectively decide that we're only going to deploy that (i.e. a group of rowdy anarchists who are like "we are just gonna call out harm every time, doesn't matter if its disruptive"). I've never *ever* seen it work effectively. My sense is you always need to have both strategies working in tandem for harm to effectively be named and dealt with accordingly.

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founding

Like this a lot - you articulate the balance so well. Curious how as a facilitator you decide to guide people to one approach vs another

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As a GenXer I’ve always taken the view that being strategic is the best way forward. But as I watch GenZ being effective on campuses and in terms of climate change, I wonder whether that’s correct. Without all of the baggage that older generations have (albeit with a lot of their own generation challenges) I think they have realised that sometimes you need to call a shovel a shovel. I think if you can do this with the idea in your head that the person on the other end is still a human being with feelings, that can be helpful. And having just returned from a rare overseas trip, I’m in total admiration of your stamina! ❤️

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I love this so much, thank you for sharing this. I am with you. I often think of what will achieve the outcomes we are looking for rather than just sitting here and being right but not bringing anyone else on board. Sometimes it can feel wishy-washy in this world of rage and self-righteousness. But I truly don't think it is.

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This isn't exactly the same but its in the neighbourhood. I get weary when I hear "X is terrible, someone should do y". I hear this a lot in academia from people who seem to then dust their hands with a satisfied sense of "well, I've done my part"

But this is the absolute minimum

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I've dealt with toxic workplaces for nearly a decade and never have I mustered up the courage to say something about the harm done to me publicly. Part of that comes from childhood traumas and closing up shop when someone harmful happened to me, I admit, but as I grew and hopped employers 3 times now (I'm nearly 30 years old), I found that not speaking up about how I feel when it comes to my employer(s) is cancerous and in community with your colleagues, you can see the ripple effects of the employers' immoral behaviors. To respond to your question, I think it's a combination of moral and strategic decisionmaking to call someone out, but also done collectively with likeminded folks. In a way taking a chapter from the many books of community organizing! In a personal sense, this also extends to family - for e.g., my father abused my mother and my approach to exposing him considered my mother and my younger brothers who will be directly impacted by his ability to inflict violence. As an activist, one comes to realize calling someone out at work, at home and/or in your communities must be intentional and considerate of others involved in your naming-and-shaming campaign. Otherwise, you're purely doing it for to fulfil and well, nourish your own egoistic sense of moral superiority.

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Thanks for this. I think what your post gets to is the importance of complication. The world is complicated and sometimes one course of action is better than another, sometimes both would be effective, and unfortunately sometimes nothing you can do would effectively change anything (though at least that frees you up to act on emotion driven morality).

It’s strange how well it ties back into the most recent post from George Saunders (or maybe not, as you’re a writer): https://open.substack.com/pub/georgesaunders/p/on-political-writing about short stories and politics.

Also see your AI picture caption - on one hand we are all going to have to learn to deal and negotiate an AI ridden landscape (and some of the less generative, more organisational aspects of AI will be great) so we need to know the tools. On the other hand as generative AI gets better the commercial producers of AI art will potentially see art from the soul, complicated, non-algorithmic conglomerated art that comes from messy inspiration people reduced in its ability to spread and find other humans. Plus the water and energy consuming aspects of powering and cooling the creation of these pictures. It’s complicated.

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