I’ve been quoting a great deal from Sonia Johnson’s Going Out Of Our Minds lately, both on here and irl (my apologies to my very bored friends).
I’ve very nearly finished it, and thought it might be valuable to note the below for anyone thinking of reading it, particularly on the basis of something I’ve quoted from it:
I do not like or agree with this book.
Towards the beginning, there is a very strong chapter (Chapter 3, Women Against Women) on ego clashes between two or more women, the methods women use to tear each other down, why, and how to counter it. Chapter 4 is insightful into the experience of fasting/hunger strikes, and the middle chapters about Johnson’s run for president are interesting too.
But as the book goes on, and works it’s way towards the revelation she references from the first chapter, it becomes increasingly irritating. Johnson wholeheartedly espouses an approach I consider to be fundamentally postmodern - what might now be called manifesting, or the idea that you can ‘think reality different’. The idea that if you think and feel differently about the world and reality, it will change to reflect your thoughts. I disagree with this conception.
I’ve been chewing over why Johnson seems to believe this idea so wholeheartedly, why it makes so much sense to her, and why it leaves me so cold, and I keep coming back to her personal history, of which I know very little save this: that she was Mormon for 40 years.
I think this makes a great deal of sense. I think that the postmodern approach of ‘thinking reality different’, despite its real-world ineffectiveness - or perhaps because of it - is incredibly attractive to the formerly religious. I think this is part of why it’s caught on so entirely in the United States, but is weaker in less faith-based societies. I see very little difference between the idea that changing your attitude to something will change it in reality, and the idea that prayer will fix your problems. The magical thinking necessary for Johnson’s argument does not vibe with this non-believer, any more than other faith-based approaches. I don’t experience the thought process known as ‘belief’ - if you are the same, due warning, this book may not please you any more than it did me.
