You probably don't want to read this.
My spiritual life provides a grounding cord so I can deal with life's turbulence (not a rocket ship to help me escape it). The ride has been a little choppy.
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My dad is a lawyer.
(No lawyer jokes, please: he’s my Superman. Until my parents moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona, I couldn’t go to the local diner without someone stopping by my table. You’re Eddie Rubin’s daughter? Your father is the most amazing man. Their eyes would glisten as they told me about someone in their life—usually someone with asbestosis—who my dad had helped.)
Of course, being Superman takes practice. So over dinner, Dad would rehearse closing arguments or engage us in a debate about the latest case in front of the Supreme Court. (I got to go once. We stayed at the Ritz in Washington, D.C. which seemed oh-so-glamorous to my twelve year old self.)
Most of these dinner dialogues have long since landed in my brain’s recycling bin. But two still remain. One was a melodramatic closing argument delivered complete with hand gestures. My sister and I parodied the “withering grass” and “dreams that vanished” for months. The other was a conversation about free speech. I can’t remember what scathing remark I’d made (probably to my mom. I was a teenage girl, after all). Nor can I remember how my Dad responded. But I do recall that things escalated in the usual way until I exclaimed, “It’s a free country! I can say whatever I want!”
Booyah!
Dad calmly chewed his London broil and set down his fork before responding. “You can’t say whatever you want. ‘Free speech’ doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
Huh???
Turns out the free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution has parameters. My dad gave what I now know is the classic example: you are not legally permitted to yell FIRE! in a crowded movie theatre when there’s no fire. In other words, you can no more use your freedom of speech to cause harm then you can use your right to bear arms to commit murder.
The question is (the question always is): at what point do words cause harm? We know that a direct threat can be a precursor to violence. But yelling FIRE! in a crowded movie theater is not a direct threat; it’s instead a declaration meant to cause a response which might—intentionally or unintentionally—lead to both emotional duress and bodily injury.
This brings me to the thing you might not want to read: Substack, the platform I currently use to host this newsletter, has been in the media because the company’s (adult) founders have taken the same sort of un-nuanced free speech stance I took as a teenager. They believe writers here should be completely uncensored unless they are issuing a direct threat. Direct threat, no. Everything else, yes. White nationalists and Nazi propagandists have found this stance, coupled with the networking platform offered by Substack, to be appealing.
As undergrads, Andrew and I were both philosophy majors so you could say renegotiating boundaries is an area of interest for both of us. We often debate back and forth, interrogating ideas together, trying to better understand all sides of an argument. It’s fine, during these discourses, to switch stance mid-argument because we’re not trying to see who is right but instead learning the lay of the land through conversation. Needless to say the Substack situation has led to some rollicking good debates during our dog walks.
So let’s walk!
Substack is making money off hate speech. It’s profiting from doing business with white nationalists. But how do we know we haven’t profited from doing business with white nationalists? I mean anyone can shop at Herbiary, we have no idea what their ideologies are.
The electric company does business with white nationsalists. The phone companies do business with them, too. A phone is a form of communication.
Yeah, but there’s a big difference between a phone and a megaphone. Substack is a megaphone: because it’s a social network, it amplifies your message beyond the person you are calling.
(For the record: Neither of Andrew nor I is okay with amplifying the messages of white nationalists and Nazis. This amplification through the algorithm is also the thing most concerning to the tech writers who have been chiming in about this issue.)
Or
You have to draw the lines carefully when you’re talking about free speech. Censorship can be used to keep down people who are oppressed or quash ideas that are counter-culture but useful parts of a larger dialogue.
But is not censoring tacit permission? We’re not talking about the public square; we’re talking about a private company where they are able to set guidelines for how their platform is used. They don’t allow pornography….
And on… and on.
I even had the idea that, for newsletters in the gray zone, i.e. those not going all the way to hate speech but walking a moral gray line, Substack could refuse to profit on hate by donating what they make to the Anti Defamation League. (This idea got zero traction with either Andrew or other people on Substack.)
Upon hearing about our extensive dog-walking debates, a friend commented, “I can only hope the founders of Substack have been doing the same sort of soul searching that its writers have been doing.”
And I do think that’s part of the point. Are we taking the time to soul search? In other words, are we bringing not just our rational selves but our spiritual selves to the table as we consider these, and other, issues?
Should I stay or should I go? I wish I could tell you that the conversations Andrew and I have had, and their evolution as I read the thoughts of more and more writers on Substack (links below), had led to a clear conclusion. Will Substack continue to be the Superman it has been for independent writers or will this issue be the kryptonite that kills it? If you have thoughts after you interrogate your own ideas about this, please let me know.
As my nineteen year old niece recently pointed out, some people seem to find comfort in scrolling. I chose to self-soothe with my spiritual habits. When the world feels shaky, I put down my phone and return to the things that are eternal, the things that exist outside of our human realm. If we make a huge mess of it (if?), the rest of nature will (happily) carry on without us.
Once I am grounded, I can listen with open ears and an open heart. I can let the news of the world flow around me without losing my center. I have spiritual practices so I can handle the rest of my life with a modicum of grace. It’s all interconnected. I lean on the lessons from my spiritual life—that nature doesn’t move in straight lines, that most things happen on a continuum, that all things are connected, that life happens in cycles—to help me interpret and respond to culture and times in which I live.
When considering how to respond to the Substack situation from my spiritual center, I think about the ecosystem of the forest around my home. There are trees that are invasive and others that are rotten to the core and soon to fall. But, predominantly, the trees are strong and true.
We had a forester come through and mark the invasives with hot pink tape. We’re keeping an eye on them, plucking out saplings, and removing the larger trees a few at a time. It’s too much to handle all at once. We could do a prescribed burn, but if we did, we’d lose many solid, lovely trees in the process of removing the invasives.
Many of you read my posts in your inbox so might not be aware of how many “solid trees”— truly inspiring writers— are here on Substack:
and to name a few you’ve probably heard of. But there are so many more: , an American writer living in Paris, , who shares gorgeously written micro moments, which continually gives me a window into the lives of fascinating humans, and the writer of one of my favorite Substacks who has been a lovely and generous mentor.And, of course, a forest is not just trees.
A buck keeps appearing by the pond at the edge of the woods.
For two solstices now, he’s allowed himself to be seen: coiled and calm, alert and watching. He’s rather large; his antlers intimidating. He’ll flee if need be, but he’s not in a rush to do so. When he looks at me, the word discernment swims up through my layers of awe.
And so I wonder: is there space to be still and observe? Can I be, like him, fearlessly curious, paused and questioning?
I think I can. I think there’s time to wait and see how Substack tends this woodland. And so, I’ll stand still. Rooted, grounded, ready for action. I won’t look away. I won’t stop observing. I’ll occasionally stick out my tongue, if only because its easy to become too serious.
As
said in her Culture Study newsletter “I will try to make this particular home better and safer, because we are all weary of building new home only to have Nazis show up and drive *us* to the fringes—which is where they belong.”Let’s make the comments a safe place for people to interrogate their thoughts and think this through.
xx Maia
I wasn't aware of the situation with substack until reading your post. First of all I want to commend you for thinking this thru, for expressing your thoughts and concerns and for having the patients to wait. With that said, to me one of the most concerning things is the fact that Substack holds space for the White nationalists and Nazis. These is an increasing problem all over the world and many of use are trying to figure out how to handle it. I don't belive in silencing people cause we need to hear, listen and debate. Isolation makes extremism easier. But at the same time making money of this is to me ethically wrong. So the question is, will these groups take over Substack or will they just be there as well. And can we be fine with that, can we even engage in debate and maybe, just maybe change someones opinion. On the other hand why shouldn't Substack have a policy against rasicm and that kind of propaganda, many social media does? Like you wrote, we can't say whatever we want.
To me this whole situation raises another concern of mine, there are a lot of writing about mental health and healing on many of these platforms. I have seen at least a few writers on here as well. But many of them aren't informed and can create harm. Even lethal harm at worst. What about the ethics behind that? I know it might be a bit of topic but to me social media is great at it's best but there's still a wide grey zone and many pitfalls that we as a community or society haven't figured out yet. Especially not with one generation hardly on social media, on that's brought up with social media and one that is inbetween. Not sure if you got any wiser reading my thoughts but that's just my two cents.
Thank you Maia for this post - in some ways as I reflect on the challenges here, it makes me wonder what might happen if the majority of the writers here - who are amazing, talented and doing good in the world - stood together, continued their good work and just ignored those that continue to inflict their one-sided views on the rest of us. While I'm not advocating for putting my head in the sand, sometimes it seems that we do give way too much air time to those who abuse the privilege. I'm only ingesting and reading what I desire and what feeds my soul. I'll stand with you in the quiet of the forest for now too.