It’s not enough to be a witness, you must get out there and create connection.
So muses a radioactive shrimp in the Josh Johnson stand-up show I saw a few weeks ago in Portland. After being regrettably over-cooked in a microwave, the shrimp rises up, achieves consciousness, and resolves to travel to Washington DC to participate in national politics. Once there, it enters a conference room at the White House, gets eaten by RFK Jr., and, in collaboration with a pool of raw milk, gives our Secretary of HHS an upset stomach.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the wisdom and courage of that radioactive shrimp.
For example, I recently took a 28-mile walk along Portland’s Wildwood Trail. I did it without any distractions, imagining that I’d have all kinds of emotional, mental, and maybe even spiritual breakthroughs. Unfortunately, it turns out that walking for 12 hours straight is really freaking boring, not to mention painful, and most of the insights I recorded as voice notes read like the scribblings of a college student on acid (“Why does every slug I see have a single pine needle stuck to its butt?”).
There was one slightly less insane question from my voice notes, one related to the radioactive shrimp’s message. A big part of the “unprofessoring” I’ve been doing since quitting my faculty position in 2023 has been the search for a sense of purpose now that I am not busy and productive and part of a big machine. It’s been a challenge, to be honest; waking up in the morning just to cross things off a list is a deeply engrained part of my personality. But I’ve made some progress and am more comfortable with unscheduled time than I’ve been since high school. However, as I was on that long walk, I did begin to wonder. Even if I ever could “be without the doing”, would it be enough? Would it feel like I lived my days and weeks and years well, as long as I was present and was grateful for what I have been given?
To witness or not to witness
Of course, whether it’s “enough” to be a witness of your own life is only a question for people like me—rich, white, safe. Globally, most people don’t get to choose amongst falling into distraction, actively paying attention, and taking real action outside themselves. Many people in the US have no choice but to be actively engaged in what is going on with our government—they are losing their livelihood, being detained or deported, deprived of control over their own bodies.
For those of us with a choice, it’s tempting to ignore the headlines. Some of us just want to focus on our work, get that grant and paper out, protect our funding and our students and everyone’s career advancement. Some of us have to protect our equanimity and emotional energy for important work or just to feel well. Some of us feel too helpless about things to pay attention to the loss of academic freedom and the politicization of science. I understand all of these responses, I really do.
But I don’t have trainees to protect or a Dean to lobby. I barely even have a business anymore, as several of my biggest clients no longer have the funding to hire me. So I am free to, and in fact, I feel a drive to, witness what is happening to the US scientific ecosystem. As I mentioned in my last post (which was *checks notes* four months ago), acknowledging that terrible things are happening, tracking them, and processing them in a deliberate way, helps me cope. However, it also requires a lot of energy and organization. Thankfully, I’ve got the Unbreaking project.
Unbreaking
Unbreaking is a nonprofit project aimed at documenting, narrating, and contextualizing the actions of the current administration. Right now, there are webpages dedicated to eight different topic areas, including Medical Research Funding, Postal Service, Transgender Healthcare, Medicaid, Food Safety, Data Security, Immigration, and Equality at Work. Each page has an Explainer (what do I need to know? who will be affected by this?) and a Timeline. In addition, we have put together a “tracker-tracker”, a Google Sheet where you can find links to more than 70 external sites that are monitoring everything from global aid to litigation. I have been contributing to the Funding for Medical Research page, and hope to contribute to future pages on non-medical science funding and academic freedom/universities (many, many additional topics are being tracked for future release).
—>We are always looking for more writers and editors, so please join us!
Creating connection
I consider this important work. But, as Josh Johnson’s wise, woke radioactiveshrimp reminds us,
It’s not enough to be a witness, you must get out there and create connection.
That shrimp did what it could, connecting with the digestive system of our Secretary of HHS, in an act of civil disobedience that only it could commit. Inspired to move beyond witnessing to a specific type of action, I made a few attempts at connection over the summer. I joined a knitting group that meets at a local pub and joined my neighborhood association. I attended a truly wild debate hosted by Braver Angels on the topic “Trust the Science” (another story for another time).
And, continuing in the spirit of the radioactive shrimp, I plan to post here more regularly, and try to connect more closely to the other scientists and academics on Substack. I’ll do my best to collect ways to get involved, recommend readings, and link to resources. I’m not totally sure about Substack as a platform in the long term, and I have a lot of respect for those who’ve stepped away, but I’m here for now, where there is the opportunity for conversation and two-way connection. Please join me!
May we rise up, gain consciousness, and create some good indigestion.