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Lone activist Ieshia Evans stands her ground while offering her hands for arrest, 9 July 2016. THE SPECTACLE OF VIOLENCE, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND OUR RADICAL POWERLESSNESS I had been in a trance for forty five minutes straight: Doomscrolling. Barely conscious. I slid downward, ever downward, through videos of improv comedy, corgi butts, nutritionist hot takes on ice cream, and then it hit me: actual footage of a warcrime. Something so atrocious, I don't even have words for it. And

For many years, after abandoning the religion of my upbringing, I was not only exasperated with organized religion, I wanted nothing to do with hierarchy, patriarchy, or any "archy" at all. Even more than that, other people being involved in my spiritual life felt ucky. It was too sacred, too private. I wanted solitude. Talking about spiritual things in front of other people felt like being naked in front of strangers--that's weird enough at a hot spring, let alone with peop

An Apache girl's coming of age ceremony (courtesy of https://borderlore.org/ ) DO WE REALLY HAVE NO RITUALS? It's a common assertion that modern (read: white) people have no rituals, we lost our rituals, or we are living in a dearth of ritual. This is mostly true. On the other hand, the most basic definition of ritual is any act that happens exactly the same every time. Ordering in a restaurant, signing loan paperwork, opening Christmas presents one at a time on Christmas mo

In Jean Paul Sarte's play No Exit , the character Garcin says "Hell is other people." For years, I thought this infamous out-of-context philosophy quote meant that humanity is hell. I'm not alone; this quote is widely misunderstood as a statement of unironic misanthropy, that other people suck. In fact, it's not really about misanthropy. Sarte is expressing an existentialist idea that we lose ourselves, or our freedom, because of other people's perceptions of us. Being seen,