What Do We Actually Want?: The Check-In With Danielle Moodie and Jared Yates Sexton

Man alive, I love doing these livestreams with Danielle Moodie. In this episode of The Check-In, Danielle and I talk about listening to the Self and recognizing what things bring us joy and what things deserve our time, our attention, and our labor. The vast majority of Americans spend their time running from themselves and avoiding any kind of discomfort, thereby putting off the necessary self-reflection that can defeat authoritarianism and lead to a better world.

The conversation from there trends toward how one of the most pressing threats is the unwillingness to wrestle with our mythologies and stories, to recognize what is real and what is fake, and how authoritarianism, as a destructive cult, enables people to continue living in all of America’s fairytales and stave off that necessary discomfort in order to discover who they really are. And then, a discussion of how so many of our systems and features, including our careers and even career-centric therapy, are about reassuring us that we don’t actually need to change but become more willing and compliant cogs within the capitalistic machine, which leads to people who are “anti-fascist,” including white liberals and moderates, sometimes quickly turning the other way and unintentionally capitulating with fascism.

Thank you for everyone who keeps tuning in and for the kindness. I hope your conversations are going so well out there in the world. Keep up the fight.

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