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Well packaged, Purity of mind, body, planet does not exist. In her 2016 paper, Canadian philosopher Alexis Shotwell wrote: “Without the primordial state we hope to return to, without the Garden of Eden we have desecrated, without which we can pass enough the toxic substances found in chia seeds and kombucha.” against purityPurism of any kind “is a decollectivization, demobilization, paradoxical politics of desperation” – running counter to the left’s promise to make the world a better place.
It can be difficult to accept the fact that we have compromised and have always been, but Shotwell believes it liberates us as we organize for the future. Keeping your heart pure and refusing to mix with others is a kind of “Own—Politics of justice,” Shotwell wrote. Not being able to move forward in one’s life due to fear of cancellation is bad enough. It would be worse to let it get in the way of self-improvement or collective action.
Or, to put it another way: “Self-appointed guardians of political purity” who believe “they have higher integrity or more sophisticated analysis” will only make hard work harder, Black feminist Loretta Ross writes. Although you can Only care about one thing at a time, everyone’s Bandwidth is limited.endlessly perfect message—especially correcting the rhetoric of most cis-whites with big platforms — could come at the expense of activism and direct action that makes everyone’s life better.
In this regard, the Internet will continue to play a worrisome role. It’s a great tool for publicizing issues and raising money, but so far social platforms have contributed to the politicization of everyday life so thoroughly that, paradoxically, Virtually no political event took place. Interrogating our worldviews to give ourselves a fuller picture of how we got to this point in human history and realigning our values accordingly is important work, but also has limitations (as many of our ideas out of our control), and it’s only valuable if it makes a difference in the real world.
In psychiatry, many people with OCD are considered “ego dysregulated,” or believe their intrusive thoughts — and the time they spend with them — go against their values. The same thing seems to be happening collectively: Humans clearly value the planet and each other, even as we see the ongoing damage we are causing individually and collectively. While we desperately want to fix it, we don’t necessarily think we’re capable; the problem is huge, and the current standards of purity are too high. We don’t live by our principles, and no matter what happens, we cancel ourselves – clean up the timeline of our past wrongdoings, and wrap ourselves in antibacterial fabrics so that we can’t make new ones.
But, as someone in OCD treatment will tell you, “what you’re resisting is still there.” The chaos of modern life isn’t going away. The values we cultivate are important even if we fail to deliver. Doing something is almost always more meaningful than saying it, and the pure culture online keeps people from doing anything. Although we will never reach a state of purity, we may find a “beginning of action” in accepting what Shotwell calls “complicity and compromise” and accepting uncertainty.
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