Create social change by reading dangerously

Would you rather accept the status quo of whatever pisses you to your core, or, challenge your own thinking around the status quo by reading dangerously and taking informed action? I'll take the latter: I'll read to learn how to change the status quo and join with like minded people through book club, talk circles or social activism (like my beloved Craftivism).

Reading dangerously simply means engaging through the written word with the things that oppress, distress and disempower us as they masquerade as the status quo. Azar Nafisi says in The Power and Necessity of Reading Dangerously that reading dangerously:

teaches us how to deal with the enemy. We need to know not just how to deal with friends and allies, but with adversaries and enemies as well. Knowing your enemy involves discovering yourself. Democracy depends upon engagement with our adversaries and opponents. 

We are limited by what we know and accept: that which we are enculturated into. Issues like racism, sexism or discrimination are first caught in our early socialisation from significant others. They are then reinforced by hanging with like minded people in like minded groups or neighbourhoods...and few people read dangerously to see what the other side may be saying or thinking.

Some of us read only in areas that reinforce that which we know. Some of us read only a particular author, positionality or standpoint. While this is an excellent reference for reading as resistance it doesn't help to educate others unless they also buy into only reading what you are reading because they didn't know about your preference in the first place.

If disruption signifies a departure from the norm, it makes sense that those of us into peaceable forms of activism would read or craft against the normal practice of the status quo: we would do things differently and publicly so we create a courageous ground swell of others also discouraged by and wanting to disrupt the status quo.

It is also necessary to know the enemy of our own values and philosophies: to understand why they value what they do. For ever I have guarded against the algorithm picking up from me the names of public intellectuals that I just can not support. Yet, I can not create social change without knowing their work, understanding the derisory they charge against organic intellectuals and why people give them such elevated status.

My thesis is on whether reading an organic intellectual like Brene Brown is an act of resistance against a traditional intellectual like Jordon Peterson. But then into the mix comes the history of the public intellectual. There are subtleties between the three types of intellectuals but each involves being accepted into an upper or over class - the ruling class. It is what is done with the dissemination of the status quo cultures of the classes that becomes the difference.

How do I know this stuff?: because I read and because my education afforded me critical thinking skills. Mostly though, I believe in community and I believe there are many barriers to intelligent people getting an education. The inability to attend university certainly doesn't render people either non intelligent or dis-interested in action. Some of the greatest minds and entrepreneurs in history did not have a university education.

And so my white privilege is to give back - to digitally share my learnings and understanding of difficult concepts with people from whence I also socialise. One way I can do this immediately is to encourage you to either read dangerously or read as an act of resistance with me. For example, at online book clubs, discovering why you may read Brene Brown. Is it an act of resistance against the status quo or merely because you like her easy style of story telling? Who else do you read and what does it bring to your life?

Anybody care to answer?

👵🏼 Megan Bayliss

👩🏼‍🎓 PhD candidate: social and cultural resistance to the status quo.

Credit: How the "public intellectual" went from a buzzword to a relic, in one short decade.