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In this episode, Dani talks about her top 5 books that she read in 2020, with one honorable mention
For links & recommendations, see full episode notes.
Dani is honest and refreshing in her takes on the world and society. Listen as she explains how she’s come to understand the world through kindness, both towards ourselves and everything else.
[0:00] Hey there everyone! Welcome to Understanding Kindness, it’s me, Dani! I’m very excited to bring you this episode, mostly because it involves many recommendations, and we all know I’m a big fan of those. Today I’ll be giving you my top 5 books that I read in 2020. We’ll talk about the authors, what the books are about, what I learned from them, and I’ll pull a lot of quotes from some of them that inspired or helped me. They’re all pretty unique from each other so it will be a fun exploration of a few different topics. Without further ado, welcome to this episode of Understanding Kindness.
[0:40] {Singing} Bah-da-da-dum-da-dummmm..’m still working on iiiiiiiit -Bah!
[0:46] We’re talking about the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline for our Native segment today. I briefly mentioned the site dedicated to stopping the construction of Line 3 in last week’s episode & alluded to a company desiring to make more and more money. Well that website is stopline3.org and that company is Enbridge. In an extremely quick synopsis, Enbridge is a Canadian oil company and the largest oil company in the world. They have a history of faulty pipelines that spill oil all over the US and they do almost nothing to clean it up or pay for the damages. They are currently constructing a new pipeline (Line 3) which will carry tar sands oil (the dirtiest oil in the world) from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin, crossing the US side of the border mostly through Minnesota. And not just anywhere in Minnesota, but right through Ojibwe, or Anishnaabe, territory where they have treaty rights to the land. This battle between the Minnesota government, Enbridge, and the Anishnaabe people has been going on for over 7 years now and there have been many court hearings and lawsuits, there have also been many arrests of water defenders protecting the Mississippi River. Cuz oh yeah, this pipeline plans to cut through over 200 bodies of water on its route to Superior, which will become contaminated with oil over time and affect the entire world because if we remember, the Mississippi runs all the way from the northern border of the US to its southern border into the Gulf of Mexico. So, that will, in due time, affect all of us. And not just because the Mississippi runs into our global oceans, but because all pollution anywhere affects us all. So, if not for these water defenders resisting every day the construction of this pipeline (& there are actually multiple resistances like this happening right now), us and our descendants will face dire consequences and an unlivable world. We all have an obligation to join in the resistance of this pipeline. And we can all give our water more appreciation. Be grateful for the clean, refreshing water that you do have. We must show our appreciation and gratitude to the brave and bold water defenders who are there on-site every day, and if we cannot be there ourselves right now, we must make as much noise about it as we can. Give them your money too if you can. I’ll link the stopline3.org website in the episode notes where you’ll be able to find resources and articles on the pipeline and its resistance as well as ways to support, educate, divest, and organize.
[3:33] {Singing} Shoouut-Oooouuuuuts!
Well hello there, patron! It’s your shining moment! Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Meg B! You have my deepest appreciation for your continued support of me and this podcast!
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
[3:56] Alrighty, to begin I think I’ll start with the books I read first and make my way through to the most current. I think presenting them in this order that I read them will allow you all to maybe see how each book’s information added to the knowledge and understanding from the previous ones. Of course, keep in mind that there were many other books that I read in between each of these so, all of these book’s info is also being added to knowledge from many other books as well, not just the ones mentioned here. I don’t know if I’d say there’s a specific order that you should read them in, but if you end up reading them in a different order than this, let me know if you think that was beneficial to you in a specific way. And hey, if you read them in the same order, let me know how you think that benefitted or didn’t benefit you- I’d love to hear it! Really just send me any of your thoughts if/when you read them!
[4:46] Okay, let’s get on to our first book recommendation from 2020: Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, & Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD. I read this book very early in 2020, before the pandemic and quarantine were even in our minds, but it helped me understand events that took place later in May of 2020. I wish I had started pulling quotes from books at this point, but I hadn’t so unfortunately I can’t wow you with the words by the author themself, so here’s my best attempt to tell you this story as well as the author does. Dr. Eberhardt is a social psychologist at Standford University who does research studying the consequences of the psychological associations between race and crime (By the way, this info about the author, and about all the authors I’ll talk about today, came from Wikipedia- throw them some monies if ya can!). Dr. Eberhardt applies their research findings to society and culture, and to the criminal legal system, specifically policing. The book takes you through the research findings surrounding racial associations we make and how they relate to those we call “criminals”. Of course, we all know how the justice system works in the US to incriminate and cage Black and Indigenous people, as well as other POC. This book goes into detail on the training that cops receive and the history behind that training. And guess what folx, it’s racist! ({Gasp}, shocking, I know, right?)
[6:22] Dr. Eberhardt doesn’t just bring us these depressing details of the US’s criminal legal system, they also bring their research into the field by providing new training for cops. They attempt to reconstruct the training that cops receive showing them both the psychological associations between race and crime that we have, and that police have worked from since their inception, and how to combat them with this evidence. Now, I may not completely agree with Dr. Eberhardt in that all we need is reform to the police department and its training, but I do commend their efforts. I am glad that this research has been done and is widely acceptable. I’m glad there is someone trying to do something from within that system. I think if there’s anything that we learned from George Floyd’s, Brionna Taylor’s, and all police murders though, it’s that policing and cops are not the answer. We need community-based investment into our communities and neighborhoods, not tough guys with guns claiming to protect us when really they’re only there to protect property and livelihoods, not our lives. Whether I agree or disagree with Dr. Eberhardt’s actions to try to change the system from within, we both agree that it is a systemic problem, one that the system was created on, not a problem based on individual “bad apples”.
[7:42] Next up, is a book that I’ve talked about a few times before on previous episodes, and that’s The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health- And How We Can Make It Better by Annie Leonard. This one, again, I started reading before I began pulling quotes from books, but I think I’ve discussed it enough already that you’ve all got a big enough picture. I’ll briefly go over the overall impact this book had on me and why I think it’s imperative that you read it.
[8:08] Annie Leonard is a long-time environmentalist and proponent of sustainability. They work for Greenpeace and have served on several environmental boards. They’ve been critiquing consumerism for many years and their debut in the mainstream arena began with The Story of Stuff. The original video by this name (which I’ll link in the episode notes) came about after years of research and discovery of the cycle of material goods. The Story of Stuff, both the book & the original video, takes you throughout the lifetime of some of the everyday stuff that we have in our lives (like T-shirts & plastics). Leonard walks us through the entire process from extraction of the raw materials from Earth, to production of the parts & assembly of the final product, to the advertising & marketing of that product, all the way to disposal & afterlife of said product. The book, & the video, aim to get us thinking about our actual impact on Earth. How do we think the board game that we see on the shelf in the store got there? Where do we think it goes once we’ve finished using it? Leonard answers these questions, and many more that I’ve not even thought to ask, in this book. If you’re wondering whether just watching the video will suffice, I think I’d say no. The book and the video are great accompaniments to each other. The video is a great way to get a little taste of our impact, but the book goes much more in-depth and really instills a desire in the reader to do better. Definitely check them both out.
[9:36] Third on my list is another book that I’ve mentioned before, and that’s Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel. Perel is a psychotherapist who studies the need for both security and freedom in human animal relationships. As I believe I’ve said before, this book really helped me understand the need to cultivate my sense of self and individuality. Perel discusses different scenarios and relationships they’ve seen throughout their experiences as a psychotherapist. The needs that Perel discovered from the data of all these relationships and scenarios were the needs for security and freedom. We need security in relationships so we can feel safe in them and feel like our partner won’t leave us all willy nilly. We want to know we can rely on them. The best way to do this is to first feel secure within ourselves. If we feel secure as the person we are, like we are capable and worthy, we’re able to go into relationships in a secure way. We see in others what we see in ourselves. If we believe that we won’t leave our partners all willy nilly, we can see that our partners probably won’t leave us all willy nilly. It’s easier to see this in a person that is secure, but nevertheless, people generally don’t just go leaving their partners for no reason. So, Perel suggests that in order for us to get to secure places within ourselves, we must cultivate our own individuality. Like they say, “…our ability to tolerate our separateness- and the fundamental insecurity it engenders- is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship. Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves.”
[11:23] As for the freedom part, we all want and seek freedom. We all have our own desires and we want the freedom to explore those. There’s also a freedom that Perel talks about within ourselves and that’s, “…the act of choosing, the freedom involved in choosing, that keeps a relationship alive.” This freedom, is the freedom of waking up every day and choosing to be with your partner. We (should) always have the choice to walk out of a relationship that isn’t serving us or making us happy. It’s in our choice to stay that we can see the freedom we have, and the freedom that our partner(s) have, in the relationship. It’s also in this choosing that we see how much the relationship means to the other person or people involved. Knowing that our partner(s) have the freedom to leave, but choose to stay with us, helps give us that security that we’re also looking for. Perel also mentions that, “The ground illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable.” When we’re able to see our partner(s) as people that are just as real as we are, just as capable and as individual as we are, we can see that their choice means something special. We can see all the wonderful things about them that make them who they are. Seeing our partner(s) like this can then show us how our partner(s) see us. We can then see how important it is for us to cultivate and continue to curate our sense of individuality. We want to strengthen those things about ourselves that our partner(s) love so much, because they love the person that we are.
[13:09] I want to end on a quote from Marcel Proust that Esther Perel used in the book that definitely applies to individuality and relationships, but also to everything in life (in my opinion at least), and that’s, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
[13:30] And now, on to our next book: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist monk and an activist for peace. They’ve written over 130 books on the subjects and teach about the interconnectedness of nature. I’ve talked about this book specifically many times on the podcast before as well. This book helped me to realize the every day practice of mindfulness. Nhat Hanh takes you through some Buddhist teachings in mindfulness and how we can incorporate them into our daily lives. They use many examples of how we can make each moment of time our time. While washing dishes, simply be there washing the dishes. While helping a child with homework, just be there helping the child with their homework. Here are a few quotes (since I couldn’t pick just one) on living in this moment: “Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life. Don’t be attached to the future. Don’t worry about things you have to do. Don’t think about getting up or taking off to do anything. Don’t think about ‘departing’.” Another: “If you cannot find joy and peace in these very moments of sitting, then the future itself will only flow by as a river flows by, you will not be able to hold it back, you will be incapable of living the future when it has become the present. Joy and peace are the joy and peace possible in this very hour of sitting. If you cannot find it here, you won’t find it anywhere. Don’t chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object. Don’t run after your thoughts. Find joy and peace in this very moment.” And finally one about where and when we can practice mindfulness: “This is your own time. This spot where you sit is your own spot. It is on this very spot and in this very moment that you can become enlightened.”
[15:37] This book also helped me to look within myself and see what was there and just be with that. It taught me that it is okay to have thoughts and feelings, but also to see how they affect myself and everything around me. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “…when we are angry, we ourselves are anger. When we are happy, we ourselves are happiness. When we have certain thoughts, we are those thoughts. We are both the guard and the visitor at the same time. We are both the mind and the observer of the mind. Therefore, chasing away, or dwelling on any thought isn’t the important thing. The important thing is to be aware of the thought.” While this quote helped me to see how I am what I think and feel, the next quote helped me to understand what this introspection can give me: “When your mind is liberated you heart floods with compassion: compassion for yourself, for having undergone countless sufferings because you were not yet able to relieve yourself of false views, hatred, ignorance, and anger; and compassion for others because they do not yet see and so are still imprisoned by false views, hatred, and ignorance and continue to create sufferings for themselves and for others. Now you look at yourself and at others with the eyes of compassion, like a saint who hears the cry of every creature in the universe and whose voice is the voice of every person who has seen reality in perfect wholeness.”
[17:14] The final thing I learned from this book that I’ll talk about here (to keep it short) is that you cannot control others’ actions or thoughts. The only thing we have control over in this life is ourselves. These last few quotes helped me to see the importance of focusing on myself and continuing to develop my own mindfulness practice. These quotes also help me when I feel down or defeated by lack of action in others and in the world. Nhat Hanh tells us, “In a family, if there is one person who practices mindfulness, the entire family will be more mindful. Because of the presence of one member who lives in mindfulness, the entire family is reminded to live in mindfulness.” They say, “Don’t worry if those around you aren’t doing their best. Just worry about how to make yourself worthy. Doing your best is the surest way to remind those around you to do their best. But to be worthy requires the continuing practice of mindfulness. That is a certainty. Only by practicing mindfulness will we not lose ourselves but acquire a great joy and peace. Only by practicing mindfulness will we be able to look at everyone else with the open mind and eyes of love.” And lastly, “In the case of a society…see that it is not only one or a few persons who are to blame for the situation. See that the situation is possible because of the clinging to ideologies and to an unjust world economic system which is upheld by every person through ignorance or through lack of resolve to change it. See that two sides in a conflict are not really opposing, but two aspects of the same reality. See that the most essential thing is life and that killing or oppressing one another will not solve anything.” If these quotes that I’ve pulled from The Miracle of Mindfulness aren’t enough to get you to read it, or other books by Thich Nhat Hanh, then I don’t know what else to tell ya. Just know that this book brings with it a sense of peace and joy that you will take with you forever after reading it.
[19:28] And now for my last book in my Top 5 Books of 2020: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist, a professor, and Bode’wadmi, or Potawatomi Indian. They were born and grew up in upstate New York, but are a descendent of the Anishnaabe people, specifically the Bode’wadmi who settled near the Great Lakes area during the migration of the Ojibwe. The Bode’wadmi people were again relocated by European encroachment to Oklahoma later in the 19th century (I believe), where a large population of them now reside. Now of course y’all know I’m a big fan of this book already, and I have gone into a lot of detail about it, but I want to bring in some quotes directly from it that exemplify the beauty of the book itself. One of the biggest things that I learned from this book was that my thinking is limited by what I’ve been taught and how I’ve been taught. These quotes here helped me to realize this: “The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be human.” And in a little more detail: “When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation.” English, my first language, is limited. Thus our thinking is limited, because if we can only think in English and how the English language works, we are limited. Because of how English centers human animals we’re limited as well. As Wall Kimmerer explains it, “We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn- we must look [at] our teachers among other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live.” To think that we can only learn from other human animals is limiting as well. How many times have you looked at a companion animal and thought “man I wish I had that life, just laying there all peaceful all day”? What if we thought of that as an example of what our lives could be like? Not having to work to live, not having appointments to keep track of, not having to think about time. Would it shock you to know that human animals have lived this way for most of the time we’ve been on Earth?
[22:15] We’re also limited in thinking of Earth as something to sell and own. Wall Kimmerer says, “If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.” They explain this further using gratitude: “Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land and people alike.” To me, this showed just how little I “need”. Most of the things I thought I needed were actually just wants. When I started practicing gratitude for everything I already have in my life, I found that I didn’t want any more, and I certainly didn’t need anything more. Beginning to think in ways outside of those that we’ve all been indoctrinated into and taught our whole lives, allows us to see different solutions and different ways of living. It also allows us to see ourselves in different ways, and see different ways that we can have purpose here on Earth: “The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others.” The author reminds us of something we all have that can aid us in this journey: “Imagination is one of our most powerful tools. What we imagine, we can become.”
[23:58] If that’s not inspirational enough, I don’t know what is. We do have powerful tools at our disposal, we have the powers of understanding, gratitude, and imagination. We can learn from all that is around us, we do have to keep in mind though, “… that the earth is a gift that we must pass on, just as it came to us.” We need to sustain the circle of knowledge so that those that come after us can also learn from those that came before us.
[24:29] Alright, now before I wrap up, I do have one honorable mention and that’s 1984 by George Orwell. This one didn’t quite cut the list against all these aforementioned gems, but it does deserve a mention because it’s a very good book. I’ll just let the book speak for itself with this quote: “In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
[25:26] If there’s anything we can see from these recommendations it’s that we need community, gratitude, individuality, and understanding. That’s what these books gave me. Biased showed me the real need to abolish the police and divest funds to our communities and specialists who can actually resolve issues, rather than punishing “offenders”. The Story of Stuff helped me to understand my actual impact on Earth; it showed me the unseen harm that I was causing and showed me ways that I can reduce my impact. Mating in Captivity taught me how important it is to cultivate my sense of self so that I can better support others in my community. It showed me to be grateful for those in my life and taught me how to do that. The Miracle of Mindfulness gave me a perspective on life that I never would’ve thought was real. It gave me the understanding of what life actually is and how we can help others in our community find that as well. And finally, Braiding Sweetgrass opened my eyes to the need for gratitude in our lives. It showed me what’s really important and how to understand and think of things in new ways. Each of these books touched me in ways that I was not prepared for, but made me all the more grateful for learning them. I can’t thank these authors enough for their wonderful works. Give em a read, and let me know what ya think!
[26:46] I’m not gonna go through all the books I JUST mentioned for our recommendations, but I will be linking them in the episode notes. So, click those links and buy these incredible books from BIPOC owned bookstores!
If you’d like to check out The Story of Stuff video, that will be linked in the episode notes as well.
I’ll also be linking the stopline3.org website in the episode notes so you can learn up about this disastrous pipeline, how to help in the resistance of it, and how to support our Ojibwe relatives in their endeavors. And remember, be grateful and show your appreciation for the water that you do have.
[27:23] If you enjoyed this episode, help support the podcast! All this content is free and I’d love to make it my job one day, so if you’re financially able join our patreon or send a one-time or recurring donation through paypal! You can also share an episode with family or friends, and give UK a kind rating and review!
Check out UnderstandingKindness.com for all episodes, transcripts, and blog posts. And why not take a listen to my other podcast, Better When Awkward, co-hosted by my childhood best friend Jasmine!
Get in touch with me by emailing UnderstandingKindness@protonmail.com, or through social media. You can find all links in the episode notes.
For now, be kind, be compassionate, be understanding, and question everything. I’ll be here. Thank you for listening to this episode of Understanding Kindness. [End transcript]