We really need to stop putting people on pedestals. It is harmful and dehumanizes all involved. Putting someone on a pedestal is not caring for them. It is not love. You can love, admire, adore, learn from, or follow the leadership of someone without putting them on a pedestal. Putting people on pedestals is part of the binary of how we categorize people into “good” and “bad”. They are two sides of the same coin and they contribute to our collective inability to understand, identify and respond to harm. We demonize people or we put them on pedestals. As we work to be free of a culture of punishment/revenge, we also have to confront the other side. We have to acknowledge celebrity culture and how it stretches well beyond formal celebrities and into our movements, organizations, groups, relationships -- just as punishment does. A punitive culture teaches us we have to be “good” or “bad”. It erases away our humanity: our human complexities and contradictions; our human capacity for growth, change and transformation, our human capacity for both harm and love.

If you love someone very much and they want to destroy you, that is enough to destroy you.

If you love someone very much and they want to destroy you, that is enough to destroy you.

If you have been going through your worst, just know:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.