Voting isn't our only power

It's time to get serious about creating the world we want to live in, day-by-day and moment-by-moment

One of the central questions sociologists ask is what holds society together. We call it the problem of order, though it isn’t really so much a problem. Most of the time, order is a good thing. Most of the time, societies exist in a fairly orderly state. Yes, chaos happens, but as I wrote before, chaos is the exception. The attempted coup of January 6th was so horrifying to us because it is the exception not the rule. Most of the time, the transfer of power is orderly. Most of the time, governing is orderly. Boring, even.

Order is the default in most societies, even in this moment that is so terrifying for many of us. Why? Why order?

There are two types of answers to this question. The first comes from a collectivist perspective. Order happens because society is this thing that exists above and beyond us as individuals. Society is more than just a collection of random behaviors. Society is a thing. An entity that hovers above us and acts down on us. It is a coercive force.

Yes, society is something that is by necessity created by humans, but once it exists, it’s like Frankenstein or Pandora’s box. It escapes our control. It is its own thing, sometimes monstrous and ugly.

When I talk about this question in sociological theory, I demonstrate each perspective by asking the question, why is the classroom an orderly space? Students are sitting in their chairs, listening (or at least pretending to). They’re raising their hands. They’re taking notes. My classroom is a very orderly space almost all of the time. Why?

From a collectivist perspective, the class is orderly because students have been socialized into a set of social norms about how to be a student. Education as a social institution comes with a set of rules that they have learned and that they overwhelmingly follow. They are, to some extent, like wind-up toys, given a certain parameter of behaviors which they clunk along and follow. But not just my students. All of us are like wind-up toys, set in motion by the dictates of society. This is where order comes from in a collectivist perspective.

Photo by Etactics Inc on Unsplash

On the other hand, I’m not forcing my students to stay quietly sitting in their seats. I don’t have a gun. If they all decided to lay on the floor one day, the only power I have to stop them is the threat of a bad participation grade. Maybe the order that exists in the classroom is being created, day-by-day and moment-by-moment through my students’ individual decisions. Maybe they are making order, from the ground up. Maybe all of us are. This is an individualist perspective.

Maybe society is not so much a thing. Maybe it’s not so much a solid structure as it is a constantly evolving, dynamic collection of our many individual decisions and interactions. Maybe every single moment, we are making the society we want to live in.

That isn’t to say there aren’t constraints on those decisions. Of course there are. But any power structure can only exist with a whole lot of consent on the part of those who are being controlled. When people decide that all in all, they’d rather not be controlled in that way, they have the power to change the rules of the game. My classroom is always one creative and slightly rebellious student away from becoming something totally different…maybe even something better.

"Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed."

Thomas Jefferson

Voting, it seems to me, is a very collectivist type of act. On one day we do this relatively small thing and it has important repercussions for what the larger structure of society will look like. Especially for a presidential election, it is big picture type energy. How we vote and who we can vote for and whether or not our vote matters—all of that is deeply constrained. The only choices we have are to vote or not and then who to vote for. Everything else has already been decided for us.

None of that is to say that voting isn’t important. It is. But it’s not the only way in which we create the society we want to live in.

Obviously, in a collectivist perspective, our power to affect society is limited. We’re wind-up toys. We vote and then we suffer the consequences. We are powerless. Society stomps on our fragile and delicate necks and there’s not much we can do about it.

But society is more than the president. It’s more than the legislature or the courts. Society is more than its government. Society is stopping to talk to someone on the street…or not. Society is the books we read and the shows we watch and the stories we tell each other. Society is spending the next four years in constant outrage on social media or using this as a cue to begin the transition to living the actual reality of our lives. Society is deciding at last to get proximate—focus on what we can reach out and touch in our world…literally and physically. Society is community and networks, which already I see people beginning to double down on. Society is families and friendship and joy.

From that individualist perspective, we create society. We create society every day, through every action we take and every action we refuse. From this perspective, we have so much more power than just our ability to vote. We have the power to make the world at a moment-by-moment level.

Will people try to stop us from making a version of the world they don’t want to live in? Maybe? Probably? Also, so what? The stakes are high, yes, but personally, I’m done living in a world that I’m not actively creating. Voting isn’t our only power and it’s time to roll our sleeves up and begin the hard work of figuring out all the other kinds of power we have.

Thank you to all my wonderful new subscribers. So glad you’re here. Special thanks to new paid subscriber,

Jessica Butler

. Every paid subscriber is like a tiny voice in the darkness that’s sometimes inside my brain saying, “Keep writing!” Thank you so much for that.

I’ve been finding such solace these last few days and here are some of the places I’ve found it:

- Oliver Burkeman’s list for how not to freak out after the election. I’m on board with all of this, but especially, “I don’t need these people’s psychodramas in my head anymore.” This is a sentiment I talked about myself (create your own bubble) and I’m seeing it echoed various places. In

Elizabeth Marro

’s post talking on being so careful about which voices she listens to right now and in leaning into silence. In this Note from Christine Barbour. I think this refusal to let ourselves be led down the rabbit hole of crazy is so powerful. I think this saying no to allowing anyone to hijack our nervous systems is part of how we make that better world. I know my one wild and precious life is too short to spend taken up with their nonsense. Truly.

- In her post,

Elizabeth Marro

at

Spark

talks about how for the apparently unhoused man she passed on the street, the world is no different this week than it was last week. The election matters a lot and also not so much. I think it’s important to remember that. I think it’s important to marshal all the perspective we possibly can.

- Mary Oliver poems. I’d started a practice before the election of reading two Mary Oliver poems every morning, before I look at my phone. Is it strange to say that reading the poems makes me care less about looking at my phone? Poems are prayers. They are meditations. They are portals into another world. They are nourishment and we’ll need all of that we can get.

- Hugging. A couple days after the election, I saw my friend on the street and I practically ran toward him to wrap him up in a big hug and tell him I love him. I’ve been hugging everyone I can the last few days. I hug my husband a lot during an average day, but I’m hugging him even more now. I’ve been told I’m a good hugger. I go all in. I hope so. There’s no sense in hugging halfway. If you’re into is, there’s no sense in saying no to a hug.

- Laughing. Yesterday I went to a radio theater show in our little town. My husband was one of the actors. There was cowboy music and jokes and I sat up front and I laughed loud. And often. In this video from the show, you can hear me laughing (my husband is the handsome guy in the black coat and cowboy hat, second from right on the stage). Sometimes I was the only one laughing. I don’t care. I decided a while ago that I was going to become that old woman who laughs too loud. I’m more committed to that than ever. All the fucking laughter from here on out.

- This absolute gift of joy from

Amy Stewart

that is Bobby Banas dancing.

- Also know that there are moments when I am very much not okay. For lunch yesterday I had a bag of Cheetos and a tub of popcorn for dinner. Last night, someone drove by and honked the horn, just past our house, and in my middle-of-the-night anxiety, I was convinced it was “them” and they were coming for “us.” In other words, it’s also okay to be a mess.