Concentric Ripples
resisting urgency and maximization to slow down and build community
Amanda Sorell says that her theory of change involves resisting the ways she was socialized—and therefore, it’s an ongoing practice:
Something that drives me is the belief that everything we do matters. I think that the community we’re building around change work is just as important as the work itself. I try not to place actions in a hierarchy. Some of the slower, more spiritual, and more relational work is going to have an impact that we won’t see right away. Maybe we won’t ever see it.
Practicing slowness changes expectations. If I’m slower in moving through the world, that increases my attention to how small I am, the power I [do and don’t] have, and what place I have in the world. The idea of slowness is pretty antithetical to almost everything I’ve done up to this point.
Amanda’s portfolio includes work as a social media manager; editing Mother Earth News, a magazine that reaches millions of people; and organizing coalitions advocating for major pieces of legislation that will impact residents throughout the City of Seattle. And yet:
While that’s all valuable, it’s not all that’s valuable. And I do find myself working on these smaller, localized projects.
Amanda has been exploring change on a micro scale. Through a journaling process to name her values and find a sense of alignment, Amanda decided that she wanted to start a Story Circle group, and she wanted to co-lead it with me. The group’s first Circle met in April 2021, and we’re doing slow and communal work. Both of us believe that it has deep impact, and we each feel that we’re on the right path. But it is challenging to hold that belief in the face of an urgent, global crisis such as climate change. Amanda shares:
We don’t know what’s going to happen. It feels very make-or-break. I have to fight this fear that it’s not ok [to slow down], that what we’re facing is so big in scope that if I’m not barreling toward it with 100 percent of my energy at all times and trying to reach the maximum amount of people and do the maximum amount of work, then… I don’t know, when I say it out loud. There’s almost a sense of needing to prove something. But I’m wondering: to whom and what, exactly?
So I think that [fear] is in my head when, for example, I pull together a Story Circle with you and there are five people there. And I’m truly feeling that the interaction with those five people, with no deliverables, is meaningful and impactful and important.
I can feel in myself the way I’ve been socialized rising up to fight that all the time. And that’s why it feels important—it’s almost edgy to know that I don’t have the capacity, the knowledge, the ability to do it all; nor does the world expect me or want me to do that.
I guess it’s just that I feel right-sized and understand that the actions I take will ripple outward on their own through meaningful and genuine relationships with people.
Another socialization Amanda resists is what we expect for “the good life.” She explores the word “deserve” from two angles:
One [angle] is that if we’re operating from a sense that clean air, clean water, food, and housing are human rights, not commodities that we have to earn by proving our merit, then an ideological shift feels necessary to win housing for all and to stop sweeps and to resist pollution. We’re working for this culture of care, mutual aid, where we make sure the people around us have what they need and we also believe that [care] will be [provided] for us in return. This is a big shift because we have a culture where we believe we have to work to acquire the things we need; and [those things] are only for ourselves and our own families to be cared for and comfortable.
But then, the word “deserve” is really interesting. The concept of what we deserve has been twisted to include all kinds of comforts that require intense extraction and oppression, mostly in poor countries, for the people who live in wealthy ones. I think a major shift has to happen in our expectations of what we need. The truth is we are going to have to make some sacrifices and adjustments to be in right relationship with the earth.
I also don’t think those adjustments have to be depressing. I’ve lived without a car for six years, and my expectations of where I can go and how fast I can get there have really changed. But I consume less (both for the car and by virtue of not having one) and I feel happier. I have fewer bills; I have fewer responsibilities.
When I say the word “sacrifice” or that we need to adjust what we think we deserve, I think a lot of people find that very off-putting and scary, but I don’t think it has to be. I imagine a world in which we’re able to just care for each other and walk wherever we need to go, and that’s beautiful.
A world where we can walk everywhere does sound beautiful. I want to live there. Amanda continued:
The constant pursuit of growth, domination, and technological prowess dominates our culture. And I think it’s pretty clear that those things have led to the climate crisis. But something I still encounter all the time is this belief that those are the things that are going to get us out. I do think technology is going to have a role to play, but I fear that the technological solutions we put forth are going to replicate current patterns of extraction and demand. If we’re demanding just as much energy, growth, and “progress," then we’re still going to hit that wall. I would like to see more talk about reducing our demand, reducing our expectations, and reducing our energy usage—reducing instead of replacing.
It’s a complicated arena, Amanda says. And I agree. I strongly resonate with a desire to simplify and reduce. Where I’ve succeeded in doing that, I’ve also found more happiness.
And then I wonder: is capitalism all bad? Is “hating capitalism” a bandwagon everyone is jumping on without acknowledging some of the helpful aspects? Limitless growth without consideration of earth’s limits is certainly ill-fated and nonsensical. One of the harmful aspects of capitalism is extraction, and I asked Amanda for her definition of the word. She says:
In a literal sense, [extraction] is the taking of anything from the earth for our use. But that’s not it; I forage and harvest plants for use. [It’s] extracting in a way that does not consider the local community, the future, or the ecosystem. Obviously, I want humans to be fed. What we’re extracting from the earth is far more than what we should be for the earth to continue replenishing and giving us the gifts that we’re receiving. Right now, it’s sort of a heyday of resources that is quickly coming to an end, and we’re finding new ways (like fracking) [to keep getting the resources]. It feels like the earth is a rag that we are wringing out for every last drop of how it can benefit us right now in this moment. We’re not thinking about future generations or even the ecosystem as a holistic organism. Extraction is putting pressure on the organism. And almost all of the time, it’s being done either in communities or countries made up of mostly poor people of color and those communities are bearing the brunt of our resource extraction to prop up the lives that we currently consider to be “the good life.”
This complexity and Amanda’s answer reminded me of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. Raworth debunks endless-growth economics and asserts that there is an environmentally safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive. Her approach is gaining interest around the world:
Raworth explains, “The goal of the donut is to meet the needs of all people within the needs of the planet. When I present the idea, people say, ‘Is this capitalism, or is this communism, or is it socialism?’ And you think, Really? Are these the only choices we have? The ‘isms’ of the last century?”
When I first started volunteering in the climate movement, I had a pressing feeling that I was taking up too much space on earth, and I needed to shrink myself to have the minimum impact possible. I was afraid to turn up my heat in the winter, for example. I still struggle with feeling guilty about my successes, and it stems from the same fear: that I’m taking up too much space. And really, that is a scarcity mindset—that if I have a house, I’m taking a house away from someone else. What I strive to embrace is an abundance mindset—a belief that there are enough resources for everyone to thrive. Reading Raworth’s book helped me shift my thinking. I now believe that we could build and practice a system that balances both people and planet.
One thing I’m curious to ask people is if they have a “map” of how we bring about change. I want to know how people visualize it. Amanda said:
I really do believe in people power to affect one another within their relationships and communities and then for those communities to reach out and make demands of the people who are in positions of power. I imagine people at the center. I don’t know where the map goes from there, but I suppose it branches out to people with power and money.
As I tried to draw this map, it started to look like ripples moving through water in concentric circles after a droplet strikes the surface.
Cycles and ripples kept coming up throughout our conversation, including a touch on adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy. That book has impacted Amanda’s approach to change work:
Emergent strategy means a lot to me. The impacts that we’re [making] are going to be rippling outward in ways that we may never witness. But just believing that that’s happening has allowed me to scale down and experience some of that slowness. It’s lifted this huge weight off my shoulders. They show these spiraling patterns in nature and the impact a single unit can have upon the whole. I really wanted to believe that and had lost track of it because of the way that things are messaged in terms of what is important and meaningful.
We also touched on cycles of deep time. I’d heard Amanda use the term but didn’t have a definition.
[Deep time] means thinking about humans in the world on the scale of the universe. It’s taking a very long view. It really does decenter humans. It also, in some ways, decenters the climate crisis—which I know is urgent, and I will spend my life acting to address it. But on some level, how many times in the world has something like this [happened]? What is threatened right now is not necessarily the planet, not the universe, not the galaxy. For the dinosaurs, things have already ended. The world has ended for many different types of people through colonization.
We’re in these cycles that repeat. This one feels really new, scary, and unique. But I think there are qualities it shares with other times when the world “ended.” Deep time decenters earth in a way that brings me awe and gratitude. We’re all connected, and we’re made up of energy that continues and cycles throughout earth’s systems.
I think it just makes everything so sacred and precious. I’m going to fight as hard as I can to lessen the suffering for the creatures that exist right here, right now alongside us. And yes, the world is going to change in some horrifying ways from human perception. And yet it’s going to keep on spinning in this larger universe.
We fight as hard as we can right now, without attachment to the outcome. That struck a deep emotional chord for me. Earlier in the conversation, we had talked about why people put their bodies on the line during strikes and direct actions. Amanda’s answer felt akin to her thoughts on deep time:
It feels like a cycle that we’re just going to have to commit to for the rest of our lives, which is why I like finding community and joy and beauty within that cycle with no expectation of saving the world or winning. It feels like a more beautiful conception.
I do believe that you cannot try to change a piece of the web of life without it then affecting you. When you’re fighting for a tree, you’re fighting for your own self. No, I don’t want it to sound selfish. If my body and my soul are being attacked, why wouldn’t I give every single thing I have to fend off that attack—not just for me, but for all of us?
If your concept of love extends beyond yourself to all the nonhuman organisms in the world and the planet that gives so much to us, what else could you possibly do? That’s what people do to protect who they love, and I think we can expand that sense of protection and love almost endlessly to the people who maybe aren’t immediately in our communities or to animals we’ll never see.
Act out of love as though everything matters and you’re connected to everything. Act in alignment and then believe that that’s important. And that action may look different for literally every person.
Finally, of course, I had to ask Amanda what role she feels stories have to play in all this.
Everything that we believe is a story that we’ve told ourselves. Stories are central to the way we understand the world and what we’re willing to do.
If we’re just thinking about personal stories we believe—I need a car, for example—then we can’t simultaneously believe that we would be happy without it or any type of degrowth scenario.
You might be pushing one story out by accepting another. We’re really made up of a collection of stories about ourselves, society, what we’re able to do, and where we fit and who fits in there with us. Anything we do is based on a story, and some of those stories just need to be challenged.
Unearthing these stories by saying them aloud to one another is part of how we find some of this alignment in what we want to fight for and how. My friends are on board with doing some of the climate things I’ve asked them to do, and I think that’s a function of the story I told them and then the story that we’re building together as friends and as a community. We care and want to keep each other accountable.
So much of our story blossoms in the presence of other people’s story. Stories are everything.
I was so inspired by that (I’m an easy audience on this topic). Amanda encourages us to live our story to the fullest. To be moved by love and to act from that place. To voice our stories to our community. And most of all, that this matters.
You are but one drop—let your story be right-sized to your abilities. And let the weight of the rest of the story be lifted off your shoulders.