Hope & Action for Societal Change: 3 Visionaries Weigh In
Feeling hopeless about the possibility of big, societal change? Here, three visionaries weigh in.
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| The image above is from this Instagram post by Consent Wizardry, posted in October 2025 |
I'm not sure I can deftly weave together these three things that caught my eye, but maybe you can! Here is an excerpt from all about love by bell hooks, one from Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and an Instagram post by Consent Wizardry from October 2025.
In the purple image above by Consent Wizardry, the "L" and "R" refers to the political Left and Right as we broadly understand it in North America.
I am talking here about the many prophets of doom who tell us that racism will never end, sexism is here to stay, the rich will never share their resources.We would all be surprised if we could enter their lives for a day. Much of what they are telling us cannot be had, they have. But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go around, that the good life can be had only by a few.Talking to a university audience recently I expressed my faith in the power of white people to speak out against racism, challenging and changing prejudice-emphatically stating that I definitely believe we can all change our minds and our actions. I stressed that this faith was not rooted in a utopian longing but, rather, that I believed this because of our nation's history of the many individuals who have offered their lives in the service of justice and freedom.When challenged by folks who claimed that these individuals were exceptions, I agreed. But I then talked about the necessity of changing our thinking so that we see ourselves as being like the one who does change rather than among the among who refuse to change. What made these individuals exceptional was not that they were any smarter or kinder than their neighbours but that they were willing to live the truth of their values.p. 89-90 of all about love: new visions by bell hooks
And here are some excerpts from Untamed by Glennon Doyle, which was published in 2020.
My dad stood and said, "I'm not here to make packages. I'm here to talk. I was raised in a racist southern town. I was taught a lot of things about black people that I've been carrying in my mind and my heart for decades. I'm starting to understand that not only are these lies, but they're deadly lies. I don't want to pass this poison down to my grandkids generation. I want this stuff out of me, but I don't know how to get it out. I think I'm saying that I've got racism in me, and I want to unlearn it." My father is a man who spent his entire career in schools championing kids who didn't look like me. He is a man who taught us every single day that racism is evil. But now my father understood that a person can be good and still be sick. He understood that there is such a thing in America as a highly functioning racist. He'd become humble enough to learn that we can be good, kind, justice-loving people in our hearts and minds but if we live in America, we're poisoned by the racist air we breathe. He had dared to imagine that he played a role in our sick American family. He was ready to let burn his cherished identity of "good white person." He was ready to stay in the room and turn himself inside out.
p. 215 of Untamed by Glennon Doyle
No one is terrified to admit she has internalized misogyny, because there is no morality attached to the admission. No one decides that being affected by misogyny makes her a bad person. When a woman says she wants to work to detox herself of misogyny, she is not labeled a misogynist. It is understood that there is a difference between a misogynist and a person affected by misogyny who is actively working to detox. They both have misogyny in them, programmed by the system, but the former is using it to wield power to hurt people and the latter is working to untangle herself from its power so she can stop hurting people.
But then when I bring up racism, the same women say,"But I'm not racist. I am not prejudiced. I was raised better than that." […] We are not going to get the racism out of us until we start thinking about racism like we think about misogyny. Until we consider racism as not just a personal moral failing but as the air we've been breathing. […] These messages are in the air and we've just been breathing. We must decide that admitting to being poisoned by racism is not a moral failing but denying we have poison in us certainly is.
p. 217-218 of Untamed by Glennon Doyle
