Friends Everywhere
Presence is the secret weapon
tl;dr: When authoritarianism is based on surveillance and simulated connection, presence becomes the rebellion. Trust is our protocol. Friendship is how we find each other. We learn to find friends everywhere.
This may not be a Star Wars newsletter, but once again I find myself returning to Andor. There’s something about its vision of rebellion, its intimacy, its risk, its trust, that speaks directly to what Future Ancestors is here to explore.
I want to talk about the “economy of presence” that must become the heart of our rebellion.
About how the cultivation of “relational presence” becomes essential to the resistance that we must now be a part of.
The show Andor depicts the all pervasive power of fascist tyranny. Spies, surveillance, and the absence of rights. The alluring promise of order. And a threat of arbitrary violence that permeates life throughout the empire.
To rebel is to risk everything.
And every leap of trust implies the very real risk of being discovered. Caught and punished. So the rebels need a way to figure out who is trustworthy. They need a covert protocol. A recognition system. In Andor there is a code phrase used among underground rebels trying to overthrow the galactic empire.
Here is how it works:
In a secret rendezvous, or if you find yourself in trouble, you ask a simple question. Nothing obvious. Something innocuous enough to keep things safe. And if the other person responds:
“I have friends everywhere”
Then you know you have an ally. A fellow rebel. A possible friend.
What a beautiful code phrase.
Those of you that have known my work for a while also know that I am wont to declare that:
“My Religion is Friendship”
And that my “Church” is the "Congregation of Co-Evolution Through Friendship”
And when I speak friendship I speak of friendship with:
Fellow Human Beings
The sacred medicine that is human to human friendship. The Holy Sacrament of our Turning to One Another. You and I in ever more courageous moves of commitment, forgiveness and vulnerability.
The More than Human World
The myriad relationships that our animist ancestors knew to have. The original way of life that is still written within our cells. The befriending of the spirit of the mountain, and the spirit of the river. The friendship with the tree that will certainly speak to you if you slow down enough to listen. The voice of the fire that knows how to lure our spirit and our gaze. The relationship with the animal, mycelial and plant kingdoms.
Friendship with the conference of all ethereal guides and forces who are always with us and raise up to meet us when our intention is high and our prayer is strong. These friendships and relationships that our ancestors knew to have and to tend to.
The Friend
The Relationship with THE Friend that the Sufi Masters speak. The Beloved. The One. The Singular and Divine.
An Economy of Presence
The way to tune in to these friends who are everywhere is by turning our awareness towards an economy of presence.
The challenge in front of us is overwhelming. We are facing the globalization of authoritarianism. Things like the Cointelpro or the Stasi of the Cold War are quaint vestiges before what we are facing.
We are tracked and surveilled by satellites connected to the super computers that we gladly carry in our own pockets. Our patterns of movement and relationships are algorithmically known to the point of predictability. Even our naughtier and darker habits are known by corporations that promise us we can trust them while they keep breaking our trust.
On top of that we have AI, ever better at simulating relational tones of caring conversation. Ever better at replicating voices and images of people we trust.
I myself am embarrassed to say that I recently shared a deep fake of Neil Degrasse Tyson spewing some mind blowing shit that I later learned could not possibly be true.
We, the subjects of technofeudalism, don’t have many moves left at our disposal. But there is one move that can’t be taken away. The most important move we can make is to cultivate our presence. And our attunement to presence.
We can learn intentional ways to co-regulate our nervous systems every time we come together. We can learn to remember that we are mammals, that we have animal bodies. And that these bodies already know what it is like to be made of earth.
It is essential to remember that we are among the most social of social species. And that relearning and reclaiming what is already true about embodied presence is literally the one thing that can possibly keep us free.
I think about the Latin American revolutionary efforts of the 60s. About what people were willing to risk. About people leaving comforts behind and going to train in the heat of jungles. About people in the richer countries of the north smuggling resources, documenting violence, organizing their fellow citizens to become part of a global movement.
Those ideologies don’t persuade me anymore.
But the idea that we have to train, to prepare and to commit feels as true today as it must have felt to them then.
And so what if our training is a training in embodied presence? A training in mammalian relationality. A way in which we learn to really and truly feel each other. A way to develop our senses so that we know who is trustworthy. And, more importantly, so that we ourselves become trustworthy.
You have met those individuals. The ones that pierce through your initial skepticism. Not with their words or their charm or charisma, but with the clear, compassionate presence of their being. Those folks who are so very grounded that your body knows you are safe in their presence.
It is my belief that we must become them.
That this is the most important power that we have at our disposal. Cultivating this capacity will allow us an unspoken way of knowing those who have friends everywhere. Of becoming those who have friends everywhere.
There is always a trap
Look. This is TRICKY. And if funds come down from the sky I’d love to write a whole manifesto about it. It’s tricky because the relational has a shadow. Even presence, when untended or coerced, becomes another tool for exclusion. Especially in times of fear and danger.
We have this tendency to form our in-groups in ways that demand conformity. We fall into semi-cultish ways by which to determine who is in and who is out. We demand people speak in certain ways. We are tender, we have powerful attachment wounds. We are often too fragile and too easily triggered. We have not been trained in the ways of fortitude.
And so afraid and not trusting, we fall into the temptation over and over again. We hold brittle communities together by wielding the threat of exile.
This happens.
Over and over again it happens.
Some might even say this simply is what happens.
And I don’t even know if anyone has found a way around it. But I know it is a hell trap in our yearnings for belonging, for safety and for one other.
So this too must be part of the training. Knowing that no friend will be perfect. Knowing that shadow and harm and confusion and betrayal seem to be part of the mix. Knowing that each of us is healing from something. And therefore dangerous about that something.
Knowing that we are flawed. We stumble. And somehow still find the way.
Learning the ways of presence. Practicing the somatic co-regulation of authentic presence. Bringing it, not just asking for it. Tuning in, learning discernment, taking risks, practicing, and practicing and practicing until we become genuinely skilled in the ways we find each other.
Our senses and our presence become the heart of the code.
And we find friends everywhere.
