This week, I had a chance to create a new relationship with someone who I didn’t really know.
I did that because I saw someone who did something different—they spoke out, and they did that where it was not expected and was not comfortable. It was something that created a quiet stir, in my opinion.
After that happened I quickly contacted that person and, I hope, created the start of a mutually respectful connection, one built on trust and shared values.
This was necessary because I needed this person to know that they had done something that matters: they stood out and broke the spell of silence. This matters, according to experts on authoritarianism.
One of the most important voices to help people understand how authoritarianism works and how to confront it is University of Toronto historian of authoritarianism, Timothy Snyder. He is best known as the author of Bloodlands, a detailed and magisterial history of genocides, campaigns of starvation and mass murder, and conflicts in eastern and central Europe in the first half of the 20th century, bookmarked between the two horrific wars. I read about a third of it four years ago, and I did not have the stamina to complete it, but I was impressed by the scholarship.
Two of Snyder’s suggestions resonate with me now. They come from his latter and much more pragmatic and slimmer work focused on current affairs.
Snyder developed a short list of 20 lessons on tyranny, from his 2017 booklet On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller and was read and found around the world.
Stand out and find good people:
Snyder suggested this action for showing simple courage when this courage is absent in circles where you find yourself:
Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
It’s hard to do this, when we are relentlessly conditioned to model conformity and to reward social media messaging with meaningless interactions that stimulate the reward mechanisms of our brain.
Most social media platforms are built on models of mimicry that elevate weakness and subservience to hierarchical and corporate-driven models of control of large groups of people. People feel compelled to reward a higher-level manager to curry favor and appear loyal to their immediate form of authority over their lives.
But all of us can model decency, compassion, and courage, despite our fears.
That brings me to another of Snyder’s recommendations.
Snyder wrote this in February 2025 on his Substack platform: “Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.”
Though I am a reclusive person by nature, and I have never been cool or the life of the party, I am working on being more engaged with good people daily.
On April 11, at a weekly event in my neighborhood in Portland, I joined a growing group of people who assemble every Friday to protest the loss of democracy and to share our collective voices advocating to protect our freedoms now at risk of assault.
I spent that time getting to know one of my neighbors better. She is older than me, but we have slowly gotten to know each other through my leg injury last fall and my recovery from crutches to walking and running again. She had a similar injury too. It was our bonding conversation.
We talked about what we loved about our country and what we needed to do to save it. We also talked about our lives and caring for family who have problems. It was refreshing, it was compassionate, and it was an affirmation of building relations we can trust in these troubling times. These bonds will be critical as things get darker, and they will.
I will do more of this. I hope you do too!