Disciplines:
You open with a new question, "Can there be safety in a collective healing process?" This is followed with a question of how we define safety. The core imperative of white supremacy culture is to divide us, so it stands to reason that connection is safety. Your experiences with communal healing affirm that safety is in connection.
Within the dominating white supremacy culture, safety and freedom are often pitted against each other with the idea that we have to give up one in order to get the other. Dividing freedom and safety has given us the extremely bizarre ideas that safety can come from police / brutality, and that freedom is being able to buy things, or say / do anything without consequences, or involves getting permission from an authority figure. The idea that safety comes from policing and punishment has a pretty clear link to a culture of fear. This also enshrines toxic / arbitrary hierarchy, since punishment is not what happens to “bad” people, but rather what happens to people who can't prevent it. I'm thinking now about the links between consumerism-as-freedom and shame, as well as the other mis-defined versions of freedom. Mis-defined freedom and safety are part of maintaining systemic division.
The more I learn about Indigenous Worldsense, the more jarring or incoherent the freedom vs. safety dichotomy becomes. The things that make us safe are also the things that give us freedom, which is having our needs met. Equitable access to adequate housing, healthcare, education, nutritious foods, and cultural practices are the foundation of safety and freedom. Again, it's easy to identify a link between having our needs met and reducing our fear. Shame seems more complicated.
In the context of the climate crisis, do people feel shame about overconsumption habits? I can't tell from the way most people behave. Certainly there are people who become addicted to shopping, and like any addiction it eventually just emphasises the existing depression or trauma that caused the addiction.
It seems like those who go out of their way to make public, violent, unsubstantiated, statements to marginalise people, always under the guise of “free speech” either don't feel shame, or aren't motivated by it to know better and do better. However we both know that hate speech and participation in violent / hate groups is motivated by trauma.
Getting permission isn't inherently shameful, but in the context of white supremacy culture, it implies a lower status in the toxic / arbitrary hierarchy. I would love to live in a society where everything is consent-based as much as possible, but permission-as-freedom feels very different. It's less like affirmative consent and more like the (temporary?) removal of the threat of punishment. Part of surviving a colonial government means that any part of our identities can be criminalised or legalised at the whims of the majority or at the convenience of those in power. Today we have permission for same sex marriage for example, but what will happen next year?
This seems like a good place for a Malcolm X quote:
There's only one way to be free.
It's not something that someone gives to you.
It's something that you take.
Regardless of any government, a world without queer people has never existed and never will. Legalised violence against BIPGM (Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority), 2SLGBTQIA+, women, disabled, and systemically impoverished people will never change our inherent human right to live with dignity. Legalised violence is a key indicator of an illegitimate and anti-human system, and these systems perpetuate, shame, trauma, and silence.
Watching people suffer while doing nothing is a source of shame, and this inactivity is legislated and encouraged within the colonial state. How have we have given ourselves permission to do nothing for our neighbours? Knowing our neighbours and discussing that which causes us shame brings us right back into the collective healing you describe, so what do we need next? Or what tools / mindsets / experiences do we need to be in collective healing spaces? Can we activate collective healing in informal spaces?
