Facing the fallout from a polarizing election, the global spread of a deadly virus, and impending ecological collapse, the contemporary political moment has been defined by crisis after crisis. Even in this formidable context, where wealth inequality, gender-based violence, and racial discrimination have been brought to the foreground, social problems are still often seen as individual shortcomings rather than systemic problems.

I think of charity as a centuries-old practice in which rich people give really small amounts of relief to poor people whom they select as deserving.

Writer, teacher, and trans activist Dean Spades new book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next), defines mutual aid as survival work done in conjunction with social movements. Mutual aid is described as a way to meet peoples needs from an awareness that the current systems in place have failed to do so. Through mobilizing, expanding solidarity, and collective action (as opposed to saviorism), mutual aid aims to take back control from forced dependency on hostile systems and put it in the hands of community-led operations.

Deftly exploring the grassroots theory of mutual aid and its role in social justice movements, Spade critiques the existing systems and the need to fix people who are in need, as well offering actionable advice for activists in this recent interview for The Progressive.

Q: You write in the books introduction that successful social movements have included mutual aid. What specific challenges are we facing in todays society with the climate crisis and the pandemic, and how can mutual aid offer solutions?

Dean Spade: The crises were facing are arguably the most significant crises that humanity has ever faced. Were facing the climate crisis, a pandemic, a significant economic crisis, housing crises in many parts of the world, the crisis of militarized borders, and racist law enforcement.

So we are living under this huge set of crises, which are, in many ways, deeply tied to the severe concentration of wealth that has happened through the last half century. The only thing that we can fight this with is movements that have hundreds of millions of people. The opposition has all the money, all the guns, control over land, control over enormous militaries and police forces and border protection agencies. Its essential to build movements that have lots of people in them.

In the United States, social change is generally narrated as being about legislation, court cases, and charismatic figures. We talk about when that person gave that speech or when that law was passed. And thats not the bulk of what social movement work is. Mostly, its people who youve never heard of helping each other survive and building the people power capacity to fight the root causes [of injustices].

Mutual aid is vital for that. Its not a coincidence that that has been narrated out of how we talk about social change. That is why I really wanted to write about this tactic, this aspect of social change, and draw it to the surface.

Q: What do you think it is about the COVID-19 pandemic specifically, compared to other disasters, that has proliferated mutual aid groups?

Spade: Mutual aid always pops up where disasters are. If you look at the media coverage of a hurricane or a flood, youll see people discussing mutual aid. But because this disaster rolled out everywhere at once, that proliferation of mutual aid projects was more visible. Many people started doing mutual aid projects at the exact same time. Thats the main reason the idea of mutual aid went mainstream during this period.

Q: You refer to the long history of mutual aid, including Indigenous anticolonial projects and the Black Panther Partys free breakfast program. What was your personal introduction to the idea of mutual aid?

Doing mutual aid work for the long term means that we need to really care for ourselves and each other.

Spade: I was first involved in mutual aid projects related to people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City in the 1990s. The city was failing to house homeless people living with HIV/AIDS and putting them in really dangerous shelters and other dangerous situations. That was mutual aid work. It was going with people to the welfare office, and helping people find a place to stay when they needed it. I continue to do a lot of different work related to different groups of people who are not getting what theyre supposed to get from New York Citys welfare authority.

I dont think I called that work mutual aid when I was doing it in the 90s. At that time, I was also in communities that were doing harm reduction work and a lot of work related to resisting the war on drugs. We all knew that if you care about something, youre going to directly support the people facing it while youre trying to solve the root causes together. But the work of mutual aid is something that Ive been doing probably for around twenty years.

Q: Most people have grown up being taught that donating to charity is the best way to support vulnerable people in society. Can you explain why this charity model is flawed?

Spade: It is important to distinguish mutual aid from charity. I think of charity as a centuries-old practice in which rich people give really small amounts of relief to poor people whom they select as deserving. And so, charity is always moralizing. Most charities also have very racialized and gendered norms built into them. Those kinds of distinctions uphold existing systems that are producing poverty and crises for certain populations.

Charity is problematic in the way it usually involves lots of eligibility criteria that keep most people out. Its designed to not actually solve the problem. Charity is rich people seeing the problem as a few poor people who have something wrong with them. And maybe we should make them take a budgeting class or a parenting class. It suggests that theres nothing wrong with having the wealth concentrated in the hands of very few, and many people living severely under resourced lives.

Mutual aid says lets get everybody everything they need right now, without strings and without eligibility criteria, and charity says lets figure out who are the people who are deserving.

Q: You talk about the idea of having a cause as part of a persons brand and activism as a kind of lifestyle accessory. What do you think about the boom in online activism? Do you see it as helpful or self-serving?

Spade: Its essential for us to understand social media as an entry point for some people. Certainly, as were trying to recruit people into social movement organizations, including mutual aid organizations, social media can be a useful entry point. But social media has a very thin relationship to social movements and what we want to see is thick, participatory relationships to social movements, and to each other. Right now, social media can be very demobilizing. We are encouraged to post images related to certain political positions and then kind of be done. And that is very convenient for the existing systems to have us only self-branding about these ideas.

There is a lot of social pressure for people to just announce their political positions on social media and seek credit in that way. And thats not a very good practice for our movement. Social media is very individuating, and it can lead to shallow branding approaches to transformative ideas. Our job as activists and organizers is to use [social media] strategically to bring more people into active participation.

Q: The term self-care has been a bit of a buzzword over the last few years. Would you say self-care and mutual aid are at odds?

Spade: Doing mutual aid work for the long term means that we need to really care for ourselves and each other. And thats hard, because capitalism gives us a really strong message that products will make us feel better, or buying services will make us feel better. And thats not totally untrue, there are things that we want people to have that will support their wellbeing.

The bottom line is that mutual aid asks us to grow a lot of self-awareness. What does it look like when Im under too much stress? How do I ask for support? When do I need time alone, when do I need time with others? Those kinds of questions are like a deeper self-care inventory.

Q: In your book, you ask a very interesting question: What would winning look like? What would you say to people who are overwhelmed and pessimistic about the challenges we face today?

Spade: When people are involved in a mutual aid project where they are focusing on something specific, like grocery deliveries for elders in their neighborhood, or supporting childcare for low-income people, or whatever it is, that can be really grounding. And we learn through our work about more and more ways that people are experiencing harm, which is an organic way to build our solidarities. Then you move from feeling overwhelmed to doing grounded action you care about.

Q: Where is your work heading now? Do you think the work will shift under a Biden presidency?

Spade: I dont think were going to see a lessening of any crises coming soon, despite the shift from Trump to Biden. Our movements are just as necessary as ever. Ill probably just continue doing the same work Ive been doing for decades in prisons, and with people facing deportation and things like that.

My next book project Ive been working on for maybe six years will go more into how we do this kind of self-awareness and self-development work. A lot of my early writing was about the grand scale of how we misunderstand power. Its hard to find tools that are about this level of the self that arent actually just reifying individualism. Thats where my writing is going next.

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Dean Spade: 'Mutual Aid Always Pops Up Where Disasters Are' - Progressive.org

Image Source: Getty / Gabriel Olsen

I never thought that I would agree with Offset about his feminist views, but that's 2020 in a nutshell. On Dec. 12, the rapper was approached by TMZ reporters about comments made by Snoop Dogg about Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's megahit single "WAP." In an interview posted earlier that same day, the older rapper told Central Ave's Julissa Bermudez that he felt the song was too vulgar and recommended the rappers tone it down and use "some imagination."

"Let's have some privacy, some intimacy, where he wants to find out as opposed to you telling him," the 49-year-old rapper says in the video. "That's like your pride and possession and that's your jewel of the Nile, that's what you should hold on to. That should be a possession that no one gets to know about until they know about it."

Rather than having the self-awareness to realize he had no right to tell two grown women how to talk about their bodies, Snoop went on to rationalize that while he may have been into that type of music when he was younger he may have even been on a "WAP" remix! as he's approaching 50, he's now worried about how the theme may influence the younger generation. "I love that they're expressing [themselves] and they're doing their thing, but I don't want it [to become] fashionable to where young girls feel like they can express themselves like that, without knowing that is a jewel they [should] hold on to until the right person comes around," he explained.

Aren't we so lucky that after almost 20 years of rapping, Snoop is finally concerned about what the younger generation is listening to? I'm sure he's worried about people's daughters that's why he recommended that they "just send her to the Dogg so I can woop-de-wop" in the 2017 track "3's Company." He plans to teach them how to respect themselves and keep their jewels safe for the right person!

When TMZ brought the comments up with Cardi's husband, Offset, he noted that although he's a fan of Snoop Dogg, he hates when men "get in a female's business." He pointed out that his wife is grown, and Snoop's comments show the clear double standard women face in the music industry. "As rappers, we talk about the same sh*t," he said. "Men can't speak on women they're too powerful, first off. There's a lot of women empowerment, don't shoot it down. We never had this many female artists running this sh*t and they catching up to us, [even] passing us and setting records."

He went on to note that "WAP" is a record-breaking single, so regardless of the bullsh*t that people want to say about it, they can't take that away from Cardi or Megan.

"We should uplift our women and not say what they can or can't do. You know how long women have been told they can't do something or they shouldn't do this, or they have been blackballed out of entertainment? So, I stay out of female stuff," the Migos rapper said. "It's entertainment. You can go on YouTube to see people shoot videos with guns and talk about killing. We can't really be judgmental on certain things, but certain things we aren't."

I did not have Offset showing off his feminist learnings on my 2020 Bingo board, but I'm here for the nuance! And he's absolutely right; not only is Snoop talking out his ass considering the way he's spoken about women's bodies for the past two decades, but he also has no right to tell any woman how she should express herself or treat her "jewel." Young people are indeed listening to "WAP," but children don't represent who this song is supposed to appeal to. If your kid is listening to the track, you need better parental control on their devices!

And if your kid is older and listening to "WAP," I can assure you that a sex-positive song with two women talking about how they enjoy sex is far from the worst thing they'll ever hear.

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I Never Thought I'd Say This, but Offset's Defense of Cardi B Was Absolutely Right - POPSUGAR

getty

With all the talk these days on social media about going for it, it can feel like a lot of unnecessary pressure.

Never give up! Never stop! Never quit! Overcome all obstacles! Succeed! Win! And then succeed and win again!

While these messages and memes are meant to be motivational, theyre not specific to the individual; thus, they shouldnt be considered as universal truths for all people in all scenarios. Its of course admirable to persevere in the face of hardship - its the heros journey after all - but the message of persevering can be dumbed down to a point where it becomes an obstacle in itself.

If you have been dealing with a project or person that has presented obstacle after obstacle for you, the answer might not be in persevering, but rather pivoting or, dare I say it, letting it go.

There are a few reasons why we might resist letting go...

Holding On Is A Form Of Control

We may not want to let go of an idea, a business, a person, a project - whatever it might be - because we cant face the fact that we werent able to control a matter in our favor. We werent able to bend it to our will. We reason that if we had a little more time we could get there.

When the prospect of letting go rears its head we have to face the loss of control, which means accepting an unknown future; we are forced to accept that we cant control the external world. The upside, however, to the future being unknown is we have free will. We have the freedom to change course and try a new way.

Letting Go Doesnt Make You A Failure

Winning is so ingrained in our society that if you dont succeed, the only conclusion must be that you have failed. And when you have failed, that makes you a failure. This isnt the natural conclusion, however.

To call yourself a failure is to cement your fate and presume you wont succeed ever again. Having not brought a project to a desired completion simply means you might need to try a different method. It might mean you need to pivot. Disassociate the concept of letting go with being a failure. They are not synonymous. On the contrary, letting go is an act of bravery and maturity.

When Your Identity Is Tied Into What Youre Holding Onto

Lets face it, what we put our heart and soul into is often an extension of our identity, how we see ourselves. If we are faced with the prospect of saying goodbye to something we see as an extension of ourselves then it can feel as though were losing a part of ourselves, i.e., If this project / business/person goes away then who am I without it? This is another facet to letting go, as you have to let go of the notion that something youve created will take a piece of you with it if it goes away.

Rest assured, you will remain you despite anything external going away. Youre the source, the creations you manifest are at your mercy, not the other way around. If its a business that you must let go of, it doesnt mean youre not an entrepreneur, it means this iteration didnt work. If its a project you were working on for work, it doesnt mean youre bad at your job, it means it needs retooling. Rinse and repeat.

The Sunk / Cost Bias

Our natural biological state seeks to maintain the status quo. Our brains like equilibrium; it doesnt like change or rocking the boat. That isnt to say we shouldnt do it, but rather the brain has our best interest at heart and is trying to protect us from danger; it thinks scaring you into keeping things as they are is the healthiest way to go. Its a carry-over from primitive days and it doesnt always serve us.

Thus, we all fall prey to the sunk/cost bias from time to time, which is when we sink more time / money / effort into a losing proposition because weve already spent so much time / money / effort on the project at hand and we cant bear to cut our losses. We keep investing more time / money / effort in the hopes that things will turn around for the better, not realizing it doesnt matter how much more energy we invest, this is a sinking ship.

In these times, we need a dose of self-awareness in order to ask ourselves, Why are we persevering with a losing proposition? Is this the thing thats going to bring us closer to our professional goals? Or is it getting in the way? Its not easy to take a hard look in the mirror, but when youre not getting the return on your investment its imperative that you do.

So Whats To Be Done?

To be clear, letting go doesnt mean quitting. It means accepting what is and allowing yourself to move on despite not achieving the initial desired result. Its a more evolved approach than beating a dead horse simply because the internet - as one example - has reinforced the notion of never quitting, never stopping, never giving up, always going for it, etc etc.

Before you let everything go, however, I dont mean to suggest that when the first sign of difficulty rears its head you say goodbye to the whole endeavor. If you would like to see something come to fruition you do have to persevere in the face of challenges. You have to see it through to a certain point, put in the work, try and try again. If, down the road, youre still not succeeding then its probably time to either let your method go, or possibly the endeavor itself; at least, in its current incarnation.

But remember, youre not a failure. Youre facing the fact that your attempt didnt pan out as hoped, which takes courage.

Read more:
The Thing You Need To Know About Letting Go - Forbes

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic Published 12:17 a.m. ET Dec. 11, 2020 | Updated 12:40 a.m. ET Dec. 11, 2020

Meryl Streep in Let Them All Talk.(Photo: Peter Andrews)

"Let Them All Talk is a loose, chatty movie, basically a slow-moving cruise with some terrific actors sorting things out (and the director aint bad, either).

Steven Soderberghs film retirement still isnt working out for him, happily brings together Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen on a real-life trans-Atlantic voyage of the Queen Mary 2. The script, by Deborah Eisenberg, reportedly served as more of an outline for the cast. However they worked it out, its a good, not great, movie and another chapter in Soderberghs continually evolving process of filmmaking.

Streep plays Alice, a writer famous and respected in literary circles with a Pulitzer Prize-winning book under her belt and a few less-regarded works that she naturally prefers. The film opens with her talking to her new agent, Karen (Gemma Chan), about her new book, which shes customarily secretive about.

Shes receiving a British literary prize, Karen notes. Maybe shed like to accept in person? But Alice doesnt fly. Karen works out the cruise, which Alice will accept if she can invite two old college friends she hasnt seen in years, along with her nephew.

Susan (Wiest) and Barbara (Bergen) are surprised at the invitation. Theyve fallen out of touch. Susan is a social worker. Barbara is an unapologetic gold digger, who jumps at the chance to sail with a potential rich husband. But she also wants to confront Alice about the Pulitzer-winning book, which she believes is based on the secrets of her own marriage she confided to Alice. The book, she contends, ruined her marriage and her life.

Meanwhile Karen is also on board, in secret, trying to figure out what the new book is about. (Everyone hopes its a sequel to the Pulitzer novel.) She and Tyler (Lucas Hedges), Alices nephew, begin flirting; she enlists Tyler to help her suss out the subject matter.

Its really just heightened personal drama played out over a couple hours. But the acting is so comfortably genuine that its a really enjoyable ride. Streep is good you may have heard that a time or two at bringing some empathy to a self-centered writer who no longer connects with the world outside her own interests. (Did she always talk that way, her friends wonder? The consensus is no, she did not.) Streep lets some self-awareness creep in to the character, which helps.

Bergen nails a tricky role. Its the brash way she approaches Barbaras mercenary ways that makes the character work. She has no self-pity (well, maybe a little) and no shame (definitely not). Wiest may be the best of the bunch. Her delivery of surprising lines is delightful. Her delivery of less surprising lines is, too.

But what makes the film hang together are small moments, like those provided by Dan Algrant as Kelvin Kranz, a stratospherically popular mystery writer of the Dean Koontz variety who is also on board the ship. Naturally, Alice looks down her nose at Kranz. Naturally, Susan and Barbara have read piles of his books. Theres a great scene in which Alice browses through the ships bookstore and finds some of her books and a ton of Kranzs.

Theres an even better couple of scenes when we learn more about Kranzs approach to his work and just his unassuming attitude in general. Alice could learn something from him. Maybe she does.

Theres a low-energy mystery about another character on the ship who proves to be both crucial and extraneous at the same time, a neat trick.

But the film is ultimately an excuse to watch and enjoy Streep, Wiest and Bergen. Sometimes roles for outstanding actors who arent in their 20s and 30s anymore wind up being embarrassing misfires. (See the cloying And So It Goes or Book Club for examples or, better yet, dont see them.) Thats not the case here.

Let Them All Talk is a low-key success.

Three stars

out of four stars

Rated R; language

1 hour, 53 minutes

Now streaming on HBO Max

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Cast headed by Meryl Streep makes Let Them All Talk a winner - Detroit Free Press

Hundredsof books, articles, and podcasts are published each year offeringthe answer to the question: How do I lead well?

To really grasp theprinciples of effective leadership that will lead to results, one primary lesson that many of those books and podcasts won't teach comes down to one short sentence:

Leadership is aheartmatter. Ifthe heart is not right, your leadership isn't going to be right.

The heart of a leader has to be focused on serving others first. This will reveal the leader's true intent. It is not a heartmotivated by self-interest, status, position, or power. It's a heart that is driven by service and the overarching life philosophy of "How many lives can I impact for the better?"

To that end, there are things to being a good leader that just cannot be ignored. If youare too busy to put these practices into daily motion, it may be time for a leadership tune-up. Here's what I would recommend to get you running on all cylinders.

Many autocratic managers viewfeedback as a threat to their power, self-worth, and position, which explains why they are opposed to it and often reactfearfully and defensively to feedback. Great leaders, on the other hand, viewfeedback as a gift to improvetheir leadership so they can serve others and their mission better. Theyvalue truth and honesty and diverse perspectives for betteringthemselvesandtheir businesses. Even when feedback is negative, it prompts an exercise in curious exploration to find out where things went wrongso that it doesn't happen again. This is setting your heart right.

So many high-level managers get caught up in situational dramas in whichthey're typically the main character. Sincetoxic fear or insecurity and false pride operate in tandem to protect their self-interest, ithijacks their thinking and potential for healthy relationships. Great leaders don't react to people or situations, theyrespondto themby being quick to listen and understand. They apply self-awareness and curiosity to get varied perspectives and won't get riled up or let their emotions sabotage their thought process. They takea step back, assesswhat happened, and get clarity before their next move. Whatever that next move is, their integrity steps in to end a conflict, help others, and make things better.

When fear,uncertainty, and lack of direction permeates the workplace, you begin to see fewer risks being taken and fewer problems being solved.Team members need to feel psychologically safe tobe at their best. To create a safeenvironment for your employees, managers need to do what great leaders do consistently well: pump the fear out of thework environment. First, honor your team'svoice by allowing them the space to present ideas and express objections. Second, invest in theirsuccess and regularly communicate that their development is a top priority. Finally, sethigh expectations forteam members by giving feedback that ensures they know how valued and valuable they are.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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If You're Too Busy for These 3 Things, Your Leadership Skills May Need a Tune-Up - Inc.

Dan Harmon was behind both Community and Rick and Morty. Here are ways the shows are similar, and what they do differently.

From a failed pilot on Fox to getting removed from The Sarah Silverman Program, it seemed like television didn't love Dan Harmon the same way that he loved it. However, that all changed when he got to create Community, a cult-hit comedy series about the trials and tribulations of college life. Sadly, Harmon would see the same rejection that plagued him for years and was removed even from his brainchild (though he'd return soon enough).

RELATED:Community: 10 Small Details You May Have Missed

His other seminal series has been the Adult Swim giant, Rick and Morty, which has penetrated the zeitgeist as a sci-fi epic and gotten a lot of kids in trouble for staying up late. Given that they're from the same mind, it's a given that there are some similarities between the two Harmon works, but Rick and Morty has still done a lot to maintain its own identity.

Something that's just embedded in Harmon's DNA is the capacity to call out television tropes on-screen while also calling out the fact that a character is calling out things. This confusing eye on an eye is the meta-humor and dialogue that has made Community and Rick and Mortyseemingly smarter than their television colleagues.

While Rick and Morty's writing prides itself in being mostly improvised, it still facilitates the same genre self-awareness that made Community so inventive. If anything, this type of writing is even more necessary for a series about the "Smartest Man in the Universe."

While Community has always dipped its toes into action/adventure tropes and science fiction, it always had to revert things back to reality. Set in a community college, Dan Harmon ran the risk of doing what Charles Schulz did to Snoopy if he were to let the school get too fantastical to still maintain its human charm.

RELATED:10 Non-Sci-Fi Movies To Watch While Awaiting Rick And Morty's Return

Fortunately enough, none of those concerns exist in a series about exploring, saving, and destroying the world with the half-baked experimentsof a mad scientist. Using animation to its fullest extent, Dan Harmon got to revel in the type of high-concept, surreal adventures that he could only ever dream of implementing in Community.

Television can take Dan Harmon away from Jeff Winger, but it can't get the cold lawyer's voice out of his head. With plenty of disillusionment and hardship going on within his own life, Harmon is famous for bringing his pain onto the screen and allowing it to entertain and empathize with the same lonely outcasts that his shows attract.

In Community, the main cynic of the series was the cold, calculating, and street smart Jeff Winger whose always had to fend for himself, though his same capacity for being realistic has bled into the study group every now and then. In Rick and Morty, every character besides Jerry Smith seems to have been infected by Rick's logic and skepticism and now battles the cold truth of reality more often than they actually fight aliens.

One of the most subtle differences between Community and Rick and Morty is the change in character dynamics. Community focused on a close, friend group comprised of people from starkly different backgrounds. This always kept the faces fresh in the series while also bringing a constantly different voice on the topic at hand.

RELATED:10 Best Television Families Of The 70s and 80s

Rick and Morty, however, has a much closer dynamic, bringing the family close to a family with their own, interwoven stories but a much more familiar understanding of one another. They don't have the same intermingled romances or buddy themes from Community. If something goes wrong between the Smiths, it's not just a group of friends growing apart from one another but an entire family falling apart.

Meta-humor just wouldn't be the same without a wide, lexicon of movies and television to draw from. One of the most famous elements of Community was its long line of genre parodies that helped paint college life as this one, big movie waiting to happen.

RELATED:Rick And Morty: The 10 Best Pop Culture References In Season 2

While most Rick and Morty stories aren't as obviously derivative, they do have parodies of Mad Max, The Nightmare on Elm Street, The Purge, and the entire heist genre under their belt, and their dialogue is rife with actors constantly trying to one-up one another with what celebrities and films that they know.

Community may have had its fair share of adult situations; but at the end of the day, it was a family sitcom that always held back from being even cruder and more immature than it already was. That same restraint is gladly not seen in the Adult Swim landscape which eats adult situations for breakfast.

With the freedom of a network literally dedicated to being as mature as possible, Rick and Morty's dialogue reaches new levels of color as it allows its cast to use the full expanse of the urban dictionary to their advantage. While plenty of this dialogue is still heavily bleeped, the series isn't making the job of the censors easy.

While Community and Rick and Morty may be advertised as comedy series, they've managed to maintain the imaginations of their audience by taking some of their more adventurous and physical elements seriously. This is more apparent in Rick and Morty where the titular duo's adventures are constantly putting them at odds with galactic federations and killer aliens.

Community, however, was directed by the Russo Brothers, the same, acclaimed duo responsible for the recent films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They allowed the action and camera work in the series to be much more dynamic, with episodes like the paintball series and "Pillows and Blankets" having their clear influence.

As action-packed as Community may have gotten, the series never treaded even close towards PG-13 territory. Not wanting the show to get much more colorful than paintballs would allow, Community kept its violence and gore to a minimum. Rick and Morty has no restraints and uses the color red more often than the silver in Rick's hair.

Taking full advantage of the dangers of the universe and Rick's own disillusionment, the series has gotten bloody and killed multiple characters with ease, almost to the point where it seems like Rick and Morty are the real villains in the series.

It's weird thinking that a show about community college and a show about a drunken scientist share the same proclivity for alternate dimensions. But that's the type of world(s) that Dan Harmon lives in. Rick and Morty obviously loves to utilize Rick's portal gun to go on a variety of mind-bending adventures, and the duo have even utilized the infinite expanse of possibility to skirt grander consequences.

Community gets to share that same, high-concept thread with one of their most famous and critically-acclaimed episodes to date, "Remedial Chaos Theory." Here, a dice roll creates Community's iconic, alternate timeline gag as well as the "Darkest Timeline" that haunts the study group for a couple of seasons.

One of the greatest advantages that Rick and Morty has over Community is how its story and settings don't have to be limited by resources and budget restraints. While the audience has grown familiar and even adoring of Community's study room, it is only a symptom of a series that never tried to stray too far from Greendale.

In Rick and Morty, one would be hard pressed to accurately describe the Smith household given that most of the show's adventures are exploring some strange and visually exciting world. Straying further and further from a small, community college in Colorado, Rick and Morty always has a fresh, new background to delight fans.

NEXT:Rick And Morty: 5 Things That Changed After The Pilot (& 5 That Stayed The Same)

Next Supernatural: 10 Best Episodes Post-Kripke Era, Ranked (According to IMDb)

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Rick And Morty: 5 Ways It's Similar To Community (& 5 Things It Does Differently) - Screen Rant

The holiday season can be a paradox. We celebrate miracles that could only have existed because people were guided by their listening, witnessing, sensing, believing, and willingness to come together and be aware.

Yet, in our personal here and now, with holidays imminent, we are apt to turn away from community and away from ourselves as we drown in mind chatter of could-haves, should-haves, comparison, criticism, and unrealistic expectations of self and others. Often this chatter leaves us with spiraling feelings of disappointment, disconnection, and isolation.

The antidote to a mind that wanders through darkness and distraction? Be mindful.

While that might seem daunting, Chicago mental health professionals help break down what it means to be mindful and how to incorporate some of these practices in our daily life.

Mindfulness keeps us in the present moment. It encourages us to feel sensations, rather than judge them.

Mindfulness is a practice of embodiment, a moment-to-moment awareness that doesnt just include our thoughts but also our emotions, which are events in the body, and physical sensation, explains Rebecca Bunn, manager of mindfulness at Rush University Medical Centers Road Home Program. The program provides mental health programs for veterans and their families.

Sensation whether as awareness of breath, movement, or thought happens in real time in our body. But when we think about breath, movement, and thought we often apply judgment that removes us from the present. By attending to ourselves through the purity of sensation, rather than story, we are able to live embodied in our physical experiences.

We are all mindful already, to a certain degree, says Marita McLaughlin, a licensed clinical professional counselor, meditation teacher for more than 40 years, and Buddhist chaplain for more than 20 years. Getting dressed, choosing what we will eat, and decorating our space are all mindful activities, McLaughlin says.

Rebecca Davis, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker who is formally trained in internal family systems (IFS), describes an IFS therapy session as a meditation led by the therapist.

Westerners typically think that meditation is about clearing or quieting the mind, she says. When we listen to the mind with criticalness, we are not really listening, Davis says. Mindful meditation can help people tune in to what their mind is saying with compassion and tenderness.

Meditation helps clients attend to the mind, Bunn says. I think one of the most valuable aspects of meditation is that it can change our relationship with our thoughts, she says. We can become aware of the presence of a thought without necessarily becoming engaged with it. Not all thoughts are useful, she adds.

It makes a lot of sense that we dont feel calm, we dont feel peaceful all the time, Bunn says, citing the prolonged period of uncertainty, unknowns, and heightened stress that we collectively have been experiencing during this pandemic.

At the Road Home Program, mindfulness offers veterans compassionate connection with themselves, first and foremost. Veterans are encouraged to find a kind, nonjudging awareness of their emotions, thoughts, and sensations that can then support their connection to others.

Sometimes it seems easier to support other people than to support oneself. With the veterans, Bunn says, It is truly remarkable the really natural, deep, and lovely instinct to care for and support one another, while at the same time feeling like, Oh, its so hard for me to do the same for myself.

When we are gentle with our self and build up tolerance for our own foibles as well as strengths, then we are able to extend it outward to others, McLaughlin explains. If we start with compassion for ourselves, then there will be compassion for others that will naturally arise out of that self-awareness.

So, how can we be more aware, more present, more self-kind? Here are some tips to begin a mindfulness practice:

Set doable expectations. Choose a realistic number of times that you can commit to practicing meditation during the week, McLaughlin advises. Perhaps once a week is possible, perhaps three times. McLaughlin suggests starting with five to 10 minutes. Set an alarm so that you are not watching a clock.

Choose good timing. Time of day is important, too. Some prefer the morning, others the evening. McLaughlin advises against meditating before bed. Meditation is not about shutting oneself down or shutting away. Its about really waking up to our life, waking up to the present, she explains. McLaughlin suggests having some space around you as you meditate, open to the environmental experience, with minimal visual distractions.

Build the capacity to be stable in the present moment. McLaughlin suggests meditating seated and attending to the following:

Pay attention to your breath. After feeling the body in this upright, noble posture not too tight, not too loose McLaughlin suggests paying attention to the movement and rhythm of your breath, however it is occurring in the moment. Then, begin to notice thoughts. Dont expect that you are going to stop thinking or that you are going to stop having feelings or emotions, McLaughlin says.

Notice where your attention goes. While we are using the breath as an anchor for our attention, we are acknowledging that other things are going to come and go. As they do, notice, McLaughlin says. Use the moment of noticing as a reminder to bring our attention back to feeling the breath, with gentleness, without judgment, without criticism. Every time we notice and come back, we are strengthening the mind, we are taking responsibility for our experience.

Be honest in your present. In any calendar year, the holidays can include feelings of disconnection, isolation, or loneliness. During this Covid-19 time, we are being asked to separate ourselves further from one another. One of the most mindful things we can do, rather than expect ourselves to feel peaceful and calm in the midst of real challenge, is to admit to ourselves how tough it is right now, Bunn encourages. In this acknowledgment, Bunn suggests we offer ourselves some comfort.

Peel the sticker. When we are stressed and upset, it is often difficult to move forward because we cant separate from the very thoughts and emotions causing us distress. For example, Davis says, when clients say they are experiencing anger, they often also say they feel frustration toward that anger. To reduce the added stress and distraction of frustration and to better tune in to the original feeling of anger, Davis asks her clients to imagine peeling the frustration off like a sticker and holding it in their hand. Im not asking to banish the frustration or throw it away. Youre just trying to get a little bit of separation. Its almost like youre imagining holding it, rocking it, and taking care of it, like a little baby. In the moment that youre peeling it off and holding it, youre beginning to get separation. And, once the separation starts to happen, you can look back at the anger and say, Oh, Im not surprised that the anger came up. Im not totally crazy, and maybe I have a little bit more understanding and compassion now.

Attend with curiosity, compassion, and no agenda. As you meditate or increase your mindfulness in other ways, Davis suggests bringing curiosity and compassion to your noticing. For instance, if you are noticing sadness, Davis suggests asking questions such as, I wonder how long Ive been holding this? I wonder how old this feeling is? This type of curiosity will help you connect without agenda. Conversely, when we try to force things to go away, they often get bigger and more persistent. When we can access curiousness and compassion, then the wounded inner aspects of self get to relax, Davis explains.

Listen to how your body is responding. During the pandemic, Davis has found that people who have been practicing self-connection have felt less isolated because they have themselves. They are not missing things. They are recognizing the silver linings, such as the chance to relax or reboot, even with the emotional and financial difficulties, she says.

Use technology and virtual classes. Apps such as Headspace and Insight Timer offer easy access to meditations for every occasion and every level. Check out virtual meditation classes, such as those through the Chicago Shambhala Meditation Center, Marita McLaughlin, and Rush University Medical Center. If you are a veteran, find out more about services at the Road Home Program. Find internal family systems therapists through the IFS Institute.

Kathleen is a lover of embodied, joyous living and deep engagement inour nature. She is an award-winning author and life/movement coach.

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"In the Heights" at Chicago's Porchlight Theatre in 2016. (Photo by Gretchen Kelly)

Too often, comfort with culturally inappropriate casting starts in educational settingsprecisely the places these practices should be interrogated.

A few months ago I was added to a seemingly innocuous Facebook group for alums of my high school theatre program, but a brief scroll through the feed showed ample brownface and whitewashed casting. Greatest hits included questionably cast productions ofHairspray, Aida, and Once on This Island. Though my time there spanned 2010 to 2014, and the conversations around culturally conscious casting have since turned mainstream, these practices continue, not just in my previous high school, but also in colleges and on the professional stage.

What serves as an evergreen case study is Lin-Manuel Mirandas In the Heights, which both my high school and college alma maters produced within a couple months of each other, both repeating the same mistake. This musical explores the strife (and joy) of immigrant roots, particularly of the Latinx experience. As a precursor to Mirandas Hamilton, it set a precedent for expanding roles on Broadway to intentionally include people of color.In producing the musical In the Heights, educational and professional institutions alike should be saying yes to this intentionality. They should be affrming artists of color who havent had a plethora of opportunities designed with their full selves in mind, as nearly every white performer has had since time immemorial.

And yet the leading protagonist, Usnavi, is often cast with a non-Latino performer. In confidence, peers have shared with me their embarrassment about participating in this kind of whitewashing, to the extent that they no longer list these roles on their rsums. Others, however, go on to repeat the offense on professional stages, collecting a paycheck for roles that arent inherently written for themin essence, eliminating already scarce opportunities for actors of color.

How do we stop such casting malpractice? One place to start is in the classroom.

Acting at the collegiate level is largely viewed as a collection of learning experiences. Its the time to explore beyond types and expand ones range. Theres an understanding that the skills one is learning in school are a work in progress, and versatility is the goal. But pedagogy becomes suspect when students are publicly cast in roles they have no business embodying. When students are cast outside of a race-conscious framework, they may learn that whitewashing is acceptable and may go on to perpetuate it. If we agree this practice should not continue on professional stages, why are institutions and their educators enabling it as a part of actor training?

One argument: Many such programs do not have the actors needed to cast authentically. If this is the case, then In the Heights needs to be set aside for another time. In this moment of deep reckoning with the white supremacy embedded in our country and our field, many institutions are working toward diversifying their seasons as a nod toward equity. But what needs to happen in parallel to these season overhauls is the intentional recruitment of BIPOC students and faculty. This process is slow and requires resources, but it will ultimately create casting pools equipped to support a wider range of narratives without perpetuating harm.

It would be disingenuous for me to put forth a definitive list of dos and donts of casting. The We See You, White American Theaterdemands around education, which call for culturally appropriate casting of all student productions, is an excellent place to start.

Whats tricky is how much nuance exists in the differences among race, ethnicity, culture, and identity more broadly. Even in writing this article, Ive struggled to name this casting issue with precision, mulling over word choices like color-conscious vs. race-evasive. (On a language justice note, I refrain from using the word blind, as in colorblind casting, to evoke a deficit because its ableist, even apart from all the I dont see color implications of that phrase.)

Regardless, educators must be ready to facilitate an explicit conversation on these issues, especially around perpetuating culturally inappropriate casting. It only contributes to a cycle of harm when educators are unwilling or unable to talk frankly and sensitively about what it means for students to be cast outside of their identity. If a student leaves an educational institution without a critical analysis of how to evaluate which roles are appropriate for them, that is the failure of the institution.

Acting educators can also work to foster this critical self-awareness in their own classroom spaces. There is obvious value in studying and exercising work that examines BIPOC experiences, but pedagogically, what do white students gain from reciting monologues of characters not intended for them? What dropped contexts are we co-signing when we may shed dialects, say, to make the work more appropriate for white students? Even if we approach scripts as learning tools, it is still necessary to adhere to the intentionality of the playwright and mandates outlining expectations on character-specific casting. It is a question of dramaturgy and pedagogy, a centering of script analysis and interrogation of learning goals.

Expanding the canon of plays we are teaching should also translate to season planning. Typically, when acting students invest in their education, this manifests as production opportunities. Many students go through an audition process similar to that of a professional one, and accordingly rarely have a say in how they are cast. Since there are a limited number of production slots, pushing back or even questioning casting decisions is a gamble for students anxious about the consequences. The stakes here are immense for students trying to learn their craft at the same time they are learning to navigate the world beyond the stage. Season planning must take into consideration the identities of the actors they have and work with, not against, scripts that serve these students. Otherwise, students maintain a troubling lack of power, lack of consent, and lack of alternatives.

It doesnt have to be this way. A commitment to expanding the stories we tell and also casting them with dramaturgical rigor should be the bare minimum. In the Heights premiered in 2005, so why do we remain stuck in a loop of controversy over a production with the potential to do so much good? As institutions interrogate how they perpetuate these toxic systems and work to dismantle them, there can also be collective power in educators committing to both teach and use these scripts in the contexts for which they were written. That would constitute principled learning and baseline progress.

Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel (she/they) is a Chicago/Austin-based dramaturg, journalist, and oral historian. @YasminZacaria

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One Way to Stop Whitewashing: It's Got to Be Taught - American Theatre

Just because Mike Krzyzewski says it, the entire college basketball world is required by statute to come to a screeching halt so Very Serious People can parse What It All Means. This is true even when Krzyzewski openly pondering the moral dilemma of playing college basketball during an uncontrolled pandemic Tuesday night wasnt actually anything that hasnt already been said.

It was the same thing hundreds of his peers and thousands of his colleagues in college athletics have been saying, or feeling, since July. But such is the stature of the Duke coachs bully pulpit that his former assistant Jeff Capel can say essentially the same thing and more in Pittsburgh on Monday I dont know why you cancel it in March, but you say its OK to do it right now only to have his comments disappear like a stone dropped in a pond, while Krzyzewski admitting I dont think it feels right to anybody becomes a matter of intense national debate.

College basketball in particular is at an inflection point, trying desperately to scrape its way through to March and the financial imperative of the NCAA tournament while Rick Pitino and others have called for the season to be pushed back.

Krzyzewski will face the same slings (Is he just doing it to distract from his disappointing team?) and arrows (coach k your a coronabro lol) from social-media experts and coronavirus-denier media grifters as anyone else who has dared question the rumbling steamroller of college athletics as it proceeds forward, but he was merely giving voice to a sentiment shared by a great silent many.

There has been a shared general queasiness about this whole operation, a sense of uncomfortability around the blatant exploitation of college students to grease the wheels of the giant economic engine that is college sports. That feeling of being a part of something vaguely unseemly, the one Krzyzewski expressed Tuesday night, has never quite gone away.

And yes, a great many people would lose their jobs if these games arent played. And yes, the players desperately want to play them. And yes, even Krzyzewski has said the NCAA tournament must be played for financial reasons. Everyone understands that. Its OK to be conflicted. Many people who draw their paycheck from college athletics certainly are, and not just vocal media personalities like Jay Bilas, who has shown no hesitation to make a meal of the hand that feeds him, and did so again on ESPN during Dukes loss to Illinois on Tuesday.

It is a complicated quandary that taps into emotions as much as finances. There is no right or wrong here, no black or white. There are only shades of gray, and Krzyzewski dabbled in a nice charcoal heather Tuesday night.

There wasnt much of this during the fall, since college football coaches and fans alike arent exactly cursed with self-awareness, but college basketball has always had a more thoughtful ethos, a sport where idealists like Dean Smith and John Thompson are admired, not treated as outliers or worse.

Basketball is also proving much more difficult to actually, you know, play than football was. Hours after Krzyzewski spoke, a full quarter of the ACC was on pause. N.C. State shut down its program Wednesday, joining Louisville and Virginia and Wake Forest and dozens of programs across the country in coronavirus limbo.

Meanwhile, there are players who wont get to see their families for the holidays and international players who havent been home in more than a year while game after game falls off the schedule. And thats before you even consider the basic unanswered questions about safety and health and fairness all of which inevitably end up circling back to the complete untethering, now and forever, of athletics from academics.

I dont think anyone can say anymore that these young men are amateurs, Capel told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Thats out the window. Theyre not. They absolutely arent.

The Ivy League took one look at all of this and walked away, shaking its collective head. Everyone else is hurtling ahead in a car on a snowy road with an iced-over windshield, hoping for the best.

That doesnt sit right with a lot of people, and Krzyzewski is the latest to join a chorus that was hushed when it gave voice to these concerns over the summer. But where Krzyzewski goes and Pitino and Capel and others go others are sure now to follow.

2020 The News & Observer. Visit at newsobserver.com. Distributed at Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Coach K not the first with concerns about basketball in a pandemic, but he's the loudest - Union Democrat