A friend sent me a link to the No Labels organization and asked if I had any thoughts. I replied:

Personally, I’m a leftist so I’ll never be particularly interested in such a centrist organization. I can appreciate what they’re trying to do—ignoring partisan divides by taking mediating positions on issues—but my feeling that ours is a time of great change. No Labels is trying maintain the old order, to play it safe. I’m interested in what’s on the other side of the crisis.

To elaborate on this (and to make a point larger than reacting to No Labels), I do feel like we are in a time of crisis. We are already living in a post-apocalyptic world and none of the usual rules seem to apply. And for that reason, there’s something of the inevitable about all of this.

As Bayo Akomolafe says, “what if the way we respond to a crisis is part of the crisis?” We are told, for example, that we must take part in street protests and direct action; yet those very actions often entrench the opposition and become tools used against the protestors themselves. The levers which we have used in the past appear to be broken.

What if the crisis that is upon us is one in which humanity is being told to sit down and listen to teacher? That it is precisely our usual reaction—reaching for levers with which to work our will on the world—which is the source of our problems and what we must unlearn?