I’m finding myself fighting against my tendencies towards abstraction. Abstraction consists, for me, mostly as a way out of involvement with people and away from action. Abstraction has a lot to do with the language we use. It is a moving away from people towards labeling with broad categories or from relationships with people towards discussing broad social issues. An example is moving from the poor as people with names to poverty as a faceless entity.

I concede that it is not always possible to be a-abstraction but I think it is dangerous if it is the only discourse we participate in.