The Consequences of Silence

Silent Choices and Their Lasting Impact

First, they came for the Black and Indigenous peoples, and I didn’t speak out—because I was not Black.
Then they came for Mexicans and immigrants, and I did not speak out—because I was neither Mexican nor an immigrant.
Then they came for the LGBTQ+ community, and I didn’t speak out—because I was not one of them.
Then they came for the disabled, the poor, and women, and I didn’t speak out—because I was not disabled, poor, or a woman.

Then they came for the Gazans, and I didn’t speak out — because I was not one of them.
Then they came for my family, and I didn’t speak out—because I was estranged from them due to ideological differences.
Then they came for my Social Security, Medicare, and IRA—and there was no one left to speak for me. Fascist oligarchy had already reached my door.

It is still not too late to speak up.
To recognize our interconnected fate.
To acknowledge the consequences of defensiveness—of looking away, of ignoring concerns simply because they hadn’t yet reached our door.

But it was always just a matter of time before the fire of corrupted power and greed burned our house down too.

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The Cost of Defending “Goodness”

Look at the cost of defending your “goodness” while genocide unfolded before your eyes. You thought patriarchy and white supremacy were things of the past simply because we had a Black president and women in power.

From the margins, we repeatedly called you in—to check your complicity, to confront your role in perpetuating these systems. From the margins, you heard the chant:
Representation is not justice. Representation is just optics.

True reparations have not been paid.
Land has not been returned.
Women and children are still bound by the patriarchal gaze of objectification.
We are all commodities, mere labor forces for capitalism.

You dismissed those who spoke out—calling them “angry Black women,” “hysterical transgenders,” or “loud activists”—and went back to business as usual because, for you, life wasn’t directly affected.

Yet.

You ignored the genocide in Gaza, Congo, Sudan.
The deforestation of the Amazon.
The ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples—including my own, Tibetans.
All of it, because it hadn’t directly affected you.

Yet.

Our self-centeredness, corruption, apathy, and cowardice come at a price—especially when we are the beneficiaries of exploitation.

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Complicity and Self-Sabotage

I think about my own Tibetan people in the diaspora who refuse to engage beyond Tibetan politics. Many voted for Donald Trump, believing he would be tough on China, not realizing this con man only sought profit for himself.

Tibetans who once sought asylum in the U.S. now advocate for tougher immigration laws for Mexicans—blind to the hypocrisy of their stance. There is a bitter irony in this, a lesson for all of us.

And it’s not just Tibetans. There is something eerily similar in how Jews, who once suffered immense injustice, now collude with the Zionist state of Israel to perpetuate the genocide of Palestinians.

The pain we endured should make us more compassionate.
Yet often, it blinds us to the suffering of others.
In contraction and self-preservation, we close off.

Trump’s freeze on foreign aid directly affected the Tibetan diaspora, particularly those dependent on USAID for operational costs. Those who voted for Trump voted against their own interests—just like MAGA supporters. Unless they were billionaires pulling the strings, they, too, were collateral damage.

If our politics remain self-centered, even when our well-being depends on the well-being of the greater web of life, then our politics only serve to sabotage us in the long run.

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A Choice: Fear or Creativity

We are faced with a choice.
We can contract in the face of division—succumbing to fear and panic.
Or we can expand—embracing divergence and getting creative.

The rainbow lies outside the black-and-white box.

Those nostalgic for the past—on both sides of the aisle—invoke morality to enforce order, using the same patriarchal, punitive systems of dominance and binary thinking.

But I believe there is another way.
Perhaps there is more than just one alternative.
Maybe the possibilities are as limitless and diverse as we are willing to imagine.

The time of worshipping external patriarchs, authorities, or powers to show us our path is ending.
Those who continue giving away their power will suffer the most.

We are living in a liminal space—a time where both wild gods and ghouls roam free.

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Entering the Abyss: The Threshold of Maturity

We are at the threshold of maturity.
We are no longer innocent, nor can we claim ignorance.
We see the consequences of our ignorance, and we are afraid—as we should be.

But there is a way to see in the abyss.
We cannot rush through our troubles.
We must allow them to speak to us.

We must grow our inner ears to listen.
Our inner eyes to see.
Our inner hearts to feel.

Our circle of care must include every sentient being, especially the most vulnerable.

Neither whiteness nor patriarchy allows us to mature.
Both worship fragmentation and reductive logic.
Both fall short in imagining anything that emerges spontaneously.

Cracks and thresholds threaten the status quo.
The polycrisis we find ourselves in has left us with gaping cracks.

In these cracks, we get to reorient through our practice of presencing and allowing the past and the future meet and hear the prayers of our ancestors and the descendants. We get to be remember our place in the greater web.

Those who have lived in exile, on the margins, have been cultivating relational technologies to survive.
It is time we listen.
To those who live in the cracks.
Who stay with the trouble.
Who offer us new ways of being with each other.

Whiteness and Its Afflictions

There is a great misunderstanding that whiteness is about white people and patriarchy is about men. We mistake appearance for the real thing. Some of the worst racists are people of color, and some of the strongest proponents of patriarchal dominance are women. When we don’t examine these with truthfulness, we get caught in identity politics and self-righteousness—both of which have immense collective consequences. What we don’t address in ourselves gets played out in the collective shadow. Identity politics births polarization, and polarization births extremism and fascism.

With the impulse to defend against these “labels,” so many refuse to reflect on how systems of supremacy harm them as well. Just as men are the first casualties of patriarchy, white people are the first casualties of the whiteness project. The affliction of whiteness is loneliness, nihilism, a constant sense of not-enoughness and anxiety—a kind of soul-loss.

Whiteness itself—distinct from white identity—is the colonial-capitalist project of extraction, conversion, and occupation. It began with Europeans exploring and “discovering” lands for resources. It became the dominant global order…

…in a sense, whiteness was the ruse that coaxed people away from their relationships with soil and dirt, away from their affinities to the motions of the material world, away from their rituals of partnering with the planet.

Whiteness, the sermon of disembodiment, is the condition of intergenerational displacement that conspires against white, Black, Indian, and spotted bodies.

Decommissioning whiteness is the world’s work. It is not just about removing structures or racists. It is not about defeating the “other side.”
If the French Revolution teaches us anything, it is that solutions often make problems grow more intelligent. The impulse to stop whiteness in its tracks is itself occasioned by whiteness.”
— Bayo Akomolafe

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When we prioritize our feelings over reality, there are consequences. When we require that truths be spoken politely and nicely or else we won’t extend our compassion to that population - there are consequences. How we react and respond or not have consequences.

The more we delay reckoning the truths, faster the fire of lies and corruption spread. We are facing a resultant stage of all our denial, apathy, reactivity, self-righteousness and fear; and our response or lack of response to what’s presented currently will impact all our future.

We are invited to initiate into maturity, to invoke courage and compassion and envision the world of our deepest prayers.

Questions for Reflection

Who are you if you decolonize from whiteness, supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and individualism?

Who are you if you are courageous and don’t run from your troubles?
Who are you if you are willing to ask the difficult questions?

Who would you be if you responded to your sorrow, shame, guilt, blame, complaints, doubts, despair, and fear—without defensiveness?

Is ecstasy the union of all sensations, feelings, emotions, and thoughts without rejection—embracing all of them fully?
Or is ecstasy hiding behind the rejection of your darkness?

Do you know how to be in community?
Or will you repeat the same habits of extraction, transaction, and exhaustion—until you collapse into isolation?

Do you know how to offer and receive without guilt and blame?

Do you know how to be with yourselves first, so you can truly be with others?

What does community mean to you? Does it only include like-minded people and are differences a threat to your community? Who benefits from our practice of exclusion and othering?

What are some communal practices that feeds and nourishes you? What gifts are you holding tightly to your chest because of your fear of rejection and doubts? When you look out, do you see the need in the collective for your gifts? Do you tend to these gifts with honor, gratitude and devotion?

I offer one-on-one intimate session that create transformative space where you can:

• Reclaim Your Heart: Heal wounds, release addictive patterns, and reconnect with your innate capacity to love fully and fearlessly.

• Cultivate Healthy Boundaries: Learn to honor your needs and limits, breaking free from over giving and cycles of resentment, bitterness, and emotional withdrawal.

• Transform Your Relationships: Break free from cycles of power-over dynamics and cultivate relationships rooted in mutuality, respect, and care.

• Navigate Shadows with Compassion: Learn to see the medicine in your pain, understanding how your wounds can guide you to deeper authenticity and love.

• Reconnect with Sacred Responsibility: Embody your love in action, contributing to personal healing, relational transformation, and collective liberation.

• Practice Love as Liberation: Develop an embodied practice of loving yourself, others, and the world in ways that honor your deepest values and purpose.

In Solidarity and Love,

Penpa Dolma