Together Towards the Light!
Joanna Szproch from Joanna’s Substack
I hope we can find some time to step away from politics without using it as another battleground and return to our shared humanity. I wish you the chance to rest, spend this time as you wish, and truly enjoy it.
We should not stop laughing, that keeps us alive in the doom days. It’s the way to stop treating ourselves too seriously, to heal the ego and restore hope.
~ Maya Angelou I’m thankful to the universe for the big lesson I’m ending this year with. I’m still reflecting on it. Still, this doesn't change for me: I believe that to find the best solutions to save as many people as possible from continuing to suffer and allow them to thrive, we need to be able to differ and to criticise whatever idea. The context matters, but we should also withdraw from a moralistic tone and try to see the reality as it is, the reality we all share, and we have the capacity to co-create. Fifty years after Hannah Arendt’s death, it is essential to remind ourselves of the key characteristics of the mob that she defined: alienation and loneliness, susceptibility to ideology, non-rationality and irrationality, and an emergence from the ruins of elites. The mob consists of isolated individuals who feel helpless and frustrated, leading to anger. This creates fertile ground for totalitarian ideology, because the mob is guided not by reason but by emotions, seeking simple answers and a strong leader who promises solutions. The mob is not oriented toward profit but toward destruction, and is highly susceptible to propaganda, easily giving in to hatred and rage. When elites lose authority and contact with the masses, a vacuum emerges that is filled by the mob, waiting for a demagogue.
The difference and the thinking for ourselves are what bring the potential for a significant idea that can bring change. We have a duty to always think for ourselves and avoid peer pressure, and overcome the fear of rejection for thinking otherwise. In the end, we will have to take responsibility for our own decisions - it may turn out that the belief of the group we identify with was wrong, even though it felt right at the time. I see this on both sides of the horseshoe: the fundamentalists find their scapegoats and throw the stones at them in the name of justice. At the same time, they become cruel, fulfilling the dynamics of the Drama Triangle, and the rescuers turn into perpetrators. Enforcing someone to change their mind with the threat of rejection, or condemning it without a reasonable analysis, is violence. This is cruelty masked as empathy or justice.
~ Inga Nüthen
No revenge will ever bring back what was destroyed; further destruction should be stopped. This is the approach to breaking the cycle of violence. We need political solidarity among the oppressed majority to create a bridge of understanding that will help us fight for a change in power, one that serves rather than oppresses the majority. It is not a conspiracy; it is a fact: if the small bottom-up systems enable division, leading to further fragmentation and isolation, they sabotage the goal of overcoming our shared struggle and serve the status quo. I wish for the next year to be a global awakening in us, an understanding of what sociability means and what solidarity is: that we don’t mean we are all in unison; we are different, and yet we share the same struggle. I want to thank all my allies and supporters, especially my daughter, as this year was not as easy for me as previous ones. I had to fight the retaliation of my abuser, and still, I had to take care of my family, which is her and me. Although she is an adult, we still share our household, and I’m not sure how we should call this system - a collective of two adults, the mother and daughter. Sometimes it feels like she has to parentify me, for instance, cooking for me when I was unable to make a shopping list. Or maybe it is actually a mutual aid. We are still working on healing together. Actively, and hopefully, I believe we are getting there! Thank you, daughter, for your presence, understanding, and help!
Imagine that the author of “Manufactured Consent,” Noam Chomsky, is found in the Epstein Files. While we were encouraged to overshare, black marks covered the names of those pulling the strings. Significant learning by being tricked by the rotten elite, - there is no need to expose all my suffering to justify my right to dignity and respect. It should be a default. I learned to discern what from the private I deliberately want to reveal and still preserve most of it for the people I trust. I refuse to become a martyr porn. I also oppose victim olympics, and I agree with the opinion of some that this is a reverse of competition, the latter of victimhood that was actually also practiced in the Holocaust. I’m, in many senses, a self-made immigrant artist who came to Germany with my 9-year-old daughter. Here are the outcomes of starting my life here from scratch. What I mean by that is that I came here with no connections and struggled with my personal situation. We did not have a proper housing situation for the first three years, and I did not speak German. There were many obstacles, including entering an abusive relationship and fighting for justice to reclaim our dignity. Most of the achievements - I’m not talking about traditional success - come from establishing new friendships and networks of support that also enabled us to survive and sometimes thrive. I love my friends who come from different backgrounds and have enriched my life immensely! That’s actually what makes my life meaningful. Big shout out to all of you!!!
~ Joanna Szproch
Being an immigrant from Poland is not the same as coming from the USA or GB. However, Poland mercifully gained EU membership, which helped my daughter and me a lot, and I'm taking it as a given opportunity, hopefully not wasting it. I also received an excellent education in Poland, and Poland is still more egalitarian than Germany or France - this is something I’m only learning now! But I moved to Berlin almost 14 years ago and built my life from scratch here, and this is where I feel at home now. It’s my duty not to waste what I’ve got. I’m aware of the privileges, and it feels like a duty to use them to contribute back through my vocation. Some things were difficult and made me stronger. I’m not justifying the unjust suffering and violence I was exposed to. If someone hurt me and is not willing to repair, withdrawing from that relationship is not retaliation; it is self-care, the duty of protecting myself. The time to let it go has come. If I hurt someone, I am ready to admit it and make amends. Peace-making seeks reconciliation and mutual understanding. Constructive dialogue is crucial as it helps resolve conflicts by reaching agreements between conflicting parties on issues that previously caused discord.
There are things I still feel very ambivalent about, and that’s ok. There is gratitude and confusion because they were not entirely done to me with respect for my sovereignty (consent). I’m still processing it, but I do not close myself off to the possibility of forgiveness - that still, though, needs to come from the depth of my soul, not the fear of being accused of retaliation. In psychoanalysis, this is a narcissistic response—someone who cannot accept not getting the outcome they desire, disrespects the will of those who refuse to fulfill their demands, and may attempt to make them feel guilty. These individuals have not successfully individuated. As a result, they find it difficult or impossible to accept that their will can differ from someone else's. I accept my fate and work to deal with it with dignity. My duty is to feel self-compassion first, which is reparenting myself. Only then am I not instrumentalizing help to gain recognition, sympathy, or control, but it is an unconditioned ability to see the other. I work to see other people on the same eye level, no matter whether I can get something from it or not. Not performatively. Words = actions. This needs a lot of unlearning. We live in a culture in which to be recognized, we need to pay (literally or metaphorically) for it. So, for example, we are more valuable based on how much we contribute; our worth should not be earned. It is the default. And I believe most of us inherently search for meaning and want to be useful, but that should come from our own agency, not the fear of being disregarded.
I also learned there are different types of guilt; the one that comes from the ego works as a moral policeman, like a cruel sadist. And many of us inherited the subconscious conviction that we deserve to suffer, which is also why we perpetuated sado-masochistic system dynamics. And there is another type of guilt that brings reconciliation and reparation, which comes from the heart (id). So I wish we were on the path towards this one, the guilt that motivates us to abandon the callous judge in us and open our hearts. We should all aim to seek the solutions that enable humanity to thrive. With this wishful thinking, I wish you to find more glimmers - the term I learned from my friend Nicole Wozniak - to turn our souls and hearts towards the light and fight nihilism, contempt, and hate towards differences, and not enmesh but unify in solidarity! I wanted to avoid identity talks here. I believe that appearances, such as someone’s nationality, ethnicity, gender, or class, do not define our humanity. We are all made out of stardust! So, in the end, I would like to laugh a bit as a real human and end up with a lived story told by our friend. What a macabre… Imagine this, here in the land of order, Germany, the purpose of your life is to fight the graveyard administration. Since the widow buried her husband years ago, she has to defend the deceased’s wish and fight the graveyard administrators. They protect the perfect graveyard rule, conceived by another Kafkaian’s mind who never touched the ground. One would have said first-world problem, but I find it truly inhuman! This detachment from reality may be the root of other cruelties… May we all touch the ground and face the light again in 2026!!!
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© 2025 Joanna Szproch
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