Better things aren’t possible

“The prison is one of the most important features of our image environment. This has caused us to take the existence of prisons for granted. The prison has become a key ingredient of our common sense. It is there, all around us. We do not question whether it should exist. It has become so much a part of our lives that it requires a great feat of the imagination to envision life beyond the prison.” - Angela Davis (Are Prisons Obsolete?)

“Do the impossible, see the invisible / Raw! Raw! Fight the power!” - Libera me from Hell (Gurren Lagann OST)

There’s a thought that’s been biting away at my brain ever since I read Are Prisons Obsolete (well, there are a lot of them, but I’m just talking about one this time), and it got dislodged today after a work meeting. It’s that we do not question things nearly as often as we should. We take the current state of things for the state of things as they always were, and as always will be.

There are multiple things my team does at work that are seen as unusual by colleagues. Most of them are agile methodology related, because we are essentially fully self-organized. This self-organization arose partly as a response to our material reality: our manager is busy and can’t take care of the backlog, so we will. Others happened gradually as the team grew in size and familiarity with each other. Ultimately they’re all things that are not particularly complex, such as the aforementioned backlog management or everyone sharing responsibility for scrum events.

How did we do it? We didn’t know it was (supposed to be) impossible. We just did it and it worked.

Often when discussing a political topic, I feel stuck when trying to get my (not even particularly radical) views through to the other person - it’s the end of history after all, what are you talking about? Of course we can’t leave NATO, or prosecute corrupt millionaires, or improve public transit. It’s Just The Way Things Are.

Fuck that. Every time someone tells you it’s just not feasible tell them to imagine a better world. When did we give up on that?