Cultivating Indifference

Indifference is a challenging concept for me. I am full of likes and dislikes, judgments and opinions. Over time I have learned to be indifferent to certain things - like interpersonal drama, which I can just turn away from like turning off the television. But sometimes it feels like the fight for justice has to be the opposite of indifference. 

Since the emergence of Trumpism – not just the person/family, but the whole phenomenon that has propelled him/them into power – I have been confounded by trying to understand his followers. Like many others, I read some books about the problems of the disaffected white working class – a term that is in itself loaded and political. I’ve argued that we can’t write them off and that we need to figure out how to understand their self-interest and worldview if we want to win them over.

In the abstract, I do want to win them over. I want to believe there is a unifying story about our world that will speak to them and encapsulate their pain and suffering and promise their liberation too.  

But the past few months – I don’t know anymore. The video footage and images of Trump followers at his rallies terrifies me. They express a dangerous level of anger and hatred. There’s an ugly kind of joy the emerges around wishing ill on others – women and people of color. There’s something almost gleeful about it that is chilling. This weekend Portland hosted yet another white supremacy rally. I read the twitter feeds of activists on the ground who ended up fighting not only the white supremacists but also the police. The police were supposed to keep everyone safe, but treated counter protestors like they were the criminals.

This is our America, where people standing up for the rights and humanity of all are attacked by the police state. That’s our tax dollars going to suppress the vision of what our democracy is supposed to be about.

Also this weekend, the New York Times had a short piece on the children who attend those rallies together with their families.

This is our America, where white children are being taught their superiority is so profound and self-evident that they are entitled to come to rallies and express hatred and contempt for other humans. Lock her up, build the wall, animals – these are the rallying cries of Trumpists. If you’re not like me, you’re not worthy.

Meanwhile my colleagues of color have been saying all along – racism underlies this movement and we can’t be squeamish about confronting it, being intolerant of it, and eradicating it.

I agree with that as a fundamental principle, and I’m starting to personalize that perspective against the people who wish DJT success. Maybe we can’t win them over. Maybe we just have to beat them.

Last week I mentioned the yoga sutra that helps define how we relate to each other in society. Through cultivation of friendliness, compassion, joy and indifference to pleasure and pain, virtue and vice respectively, the consciousness becomes favourably disposed, serene and benevolent (1.33).

I thought maybe it would help to read all the different commentaries on that sutra, since its essence is so beautiful, so hopeful and so action oriented.

It turns out that we are meant to be indifferent to those who continue to live in vice. Not indifferent to the vice, indifferent to the people. Meaning we don’t allow them to distract us from our own path, or infect our minds with hateful thoughts – even if we think their actions merit it.

So okay. We have to practice indifference to what these people are saying and doing. Not resigning ourselves to it and not giving in to it. But indifferent to their views and actions insomuch as paying attention to it becomes a distraction from our chosen and true path.

My chosen and true path is the fight for justice. It might go through DJT’s followers, but it might also go around them, or over or under them. It might take a path that goes in an entirely different direction and then outflanks them from the side. We can’t afford to lose our energy or despair over the amount of hatred in the world. Cultivate compassion and loving kindness inside yourself. Create a well of loving kindness so powerful that it spills out into the world. Make your actions the expression of that loving kindness. The haters will either learn from it. Or they will lose to it. Or they will melt away.

With love, gratitude and solidarity forever.