I am going to do a Recovery In the Bin rodeo and take on one of our sacred cows, and deal with a straw man.
Can we recover? What does the word recover mean? Get back what is lost? In that sense I am going to say that as such, I don’t think we can! We cannot recover (what has been lost)! Our lives have passed over too much time, unless we are talking and even then only possibly, first episode crises.
We can get better, whatever that means, I will leave that there for now, the word ‘better’ IS open for interpretation BUT not this comment.
We do other things, we resolve stuff, we tease out memories, we re-write our own narratives, we recode them, we untie knots, we tie other ones, we unbind, we give ourselves agency and self-determination towards greater autonomy, but it is a left wing and/ or liberal at the most right wing BECAUSE there is no autonomy without others having theirs too. At least a Isaiah Berlin negative freedom, with an honest positive freedom, just not an enforced negative freedom on others behind the hidden positive freedom lie. We become, and are always becoming ourselves, shedding old selves as we go, reforming and reconfigurating our relationships with ourselves and others, navigating both the physical terrain, but also the mediated social environment and the economy.
- Alastair Kemp (Co-Founder of RITB)
Recovery in the Bin 