It's the Issues, Stupid!!

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

You are right, it does sum it up.

I've got no desire to see a world outraged.

To which I say:

tough banannas.
There's a lot to be outraged about. If this bothers you because you'd rather everyone put on a smile, think positive, and play nice, I say again:
tough banannas.

Or, to quote my generation's finest woman folk singer:

"If you're not angry
You're just stupid, you don't care
Cuz how else can you react
When you know something's so unfair
That the man of the hour can kill half the world in war
Make them slaves to a superpower and let them die poor?"


wil, you seem to be under the impression that outrage is morally wrong, or at the very least, non-productive. I disagree strongly. Once again I say, without outrage, there can be no change. Faced with the decision of a world of outrage or a world of complacency and complicity with injustice and immorality and unethical behavior and murder, I choose option 1) world of outrage.

Playing the smug moral high ground of Gandhian pop psychology and canned spirituality doesn't serve me as an oppressed person, so I've quit doing it. That same fa-la-la allegiance to passivity and and non-aggression certainly doesn't help the REALLY oppressed people in the world. It serves just a few people, really: those in corrupt places. I'm tired of selling them my actions and energy and thoughts. I'm tired of being a day laborer for corporations, tired or whoring myself out to the IRS on a daily basis.

Like I said before, I'm outraged.

You're not???
That's kinda sad.

[path_of_one]

I am quite outraged because I feel the world is incredibly unjust. More than anything, I simply can't watch children around the world living in poverty and refugee camps, working in factories to make our $15 t-shirts, sold into slavery and the sex trade, murdered in wars that stupid adults think are necessary, poisoned by the air and water we've polluted because we wanted more and cheaper stuff... and feel OK. I know all those kids that die go straight to God. I know one day humanity will get wiped off the face of the planet anyway and the Earth will pick up her shattered remains and repair herself, and no doubt be as lovely as ever, weaving trees and vines over her scars. But it doesn't make it any less painful for someone who is empathic to live in this world. Because since I was a toddler and could speak, I cried and grieved over the pain that all the ordinary people are subjected to for the greed and carelessness of those few who wish to claim power. I cried for the agony of the Earth.

I can't claim the moral high ground. It isn't hard for me to care, like it seems to be for a lot of people. I can't put on the rose-colored glasses. I can avoid the news, but I can't totally block out the dreams I've had since I was young of the kids dying... the Earth crying out... war... I'm 29. The dreams and empathy started as far back as I can remember. It took me most of my life so far to find a way to avoid being entirely overwhelmed with depression, breaking under the strain of grief.

It's hard enough for me to block out that pain and trudge on each day, paying my bills and wondering if my life and the sorrow and anger I've felt at the injustice will ever matter. I've spent as much time learning to tune out enough to function as I have doing any useful action. You can't do much when you're grieving all the time. So I tune out to the currents of it all that wash around me enough to function and I tune in to God enough to have joy and peace. But I can't totally shake the background noise of suffering that has been my existence for my entire life, and I don't want to.

All the nameless people who suffer deserve at least someone to grieve for and with them. They deserve someone to care. They may never make it on the news or into the consciousness of most people, but they deserve at least my acknowledgement. If I can give them nothing else, I can give them that. I work toward the goal of uniting joy with grief, honoring the lives of those who are harmed while living in the joy of God. Now I can be hopeful, and mostly calm... and it is from that place that I hope I can be useful.

I bide my time, and I'm in good company. We meet in each other's living rooms and strategize. We are figuring out ways to start innocuous non-profits and media that look harmless but plant the seeds of revolution. We will study the institutions and the cultures and systems until we figure out how to change them without any obvious fight. I'm a pacifist. I don't want to fight. I don't think the answer is in killing anyone, no matter how horrible their actions or policies are. I am all about Ghandi and MLK and pacifist revolts. They work, and they are ethically sound. So... the answer is in outsmarting them...

Logically, I think my life won't accomplish much. And besides, as a social scientist I think we're heading for a collapse anyway, because we're simply unsustainable. It can't be far off.

But emotionally and spiritually, every day that goes by the way it is means more pain and suffering. Every day that goes by means more children that die because of lack of basic health care and sanitation, because adults care more about our stupid superficial differences and buying crap than we do about protecting our most innocent ones. Maybe I was just born different, because I study this stuff until I'm blue in the face and I understand it logically and I look for the weaknesses, the points of entry for a gradual revolution... but I don't get it. It is so simple to me, and that is what hurts the most.

Stop spending so much resources on killing people and unnecessary stuff. Start spending resources on giving everyone food, shelter, clean water, health care, and decent education. Make sure kids who lost their parents get one. Don't take more than we need, because the Earth is a bunch of living beings and they deserve better than our greed.

I just don't get what's hard about it... To me, it is just basic humanity. But then, when you feel others' pain almost as strongly as your own, you want it to stop. You can't ignore it. You just don't have that luxury.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

But it doesn't make it any less painful for someone who is empathic to live in this world. Because since I was a toddler and could speak, I cried and grieved over the pain that all the ordinary people are subjected to for the greed and carelessness of those few who wish to claim power. I cried for the agony of the Earth.

I can't claim the moral high ground. It isn't hard for me to care, like it seems to be for a lot of people. I can't put on the rose-colored glasses. I can avoid the news, but I can't totally block out the dreams I've had since I was young of the kids dying... the Earth crying out... war... I'm 29. The dreams and empathy started as far back as I can remember. It took me most of my life so far to find a way to avoid being entirely overwhelmed with depression, breaking under the strain of grief.

It's hard enough for me to block out that pain and trudge on each day, paying my bills and wondering if my life and the sorrow and anger I've felt at the injustice will ever matter. I've spent as much time learning to tune out enough to function as I have doing any useful action. You can't do much when you're grieving all the time. So I tune out to the currents of it all that wash around me enough to function and I tune in to God enough to have joy and peace. But I can't totally shake the background noise of suffering that has been my existence for my entire life, and I don't want to.

Powerful words, Path.

I'm in a similar situation. Every day I wake up and take 100 mg of Sertaline HCL. This is not something that I want to do. I take it because it is helps me function in a way that most people take for granted. Without it in my system--and I hate to admit this and hope that one day this can change--I would very likely spiral down into a depression that would keep me incapacitated with terror, despair, and anxiety.

I take it because it helps me function in a way that most people take for granted, yet I don't think this is because of some necessarily biological fault of mine, or because of a weakness of my personality. Although I know many people find it unbecoming to "blame society" for the ills suffered by the individual, I don't have a problem with doing that. Indeed, if society subjected itself to a rigorous moral scrutiny similar to the standard that I feel natural to hold myself to, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in--or if we were, we'd be dead. Never mind the fact that the continuing degradation and exploitation of everything makes it feel like we are dead or inhabiting some hell realm. I realize that not everyone shares that perception, and that it may just be a fault of my character or a defect in my biochemical regions, which is why I have heeded the ever-loving wisdom of the medical community and taken a pill to fix my feel-bads for such long periods of time.

Don't worry, though, I get it. We shouldn't, as Americans and civilized westerners, beat ourselves up or hold ourselves to any high ethical standards. Heck, that's what Jesus died for, if you ask a lot of our Christian brothers and sisters. So why bother? It's all paid for, and it is our job to cash in on consumerism, to enjoy the fruit of the labor of the Earth, and thank Jesus on Sundays, giving him a nice tip in the gold-plated offering tray.

Nevermind that our country is built on slavery and genocide. That's all in the past! Don't drag yourself through that mess. It'll only make you feel guilty. Don't worry about the fact that chickens are being strung up by their toes and decapitated by machines on a massive scale to bring you your dinner. Be thankful! Technology is a wonderful thing. Don't sit around brooding over sweatshops or the ongoing economic subjugation of the world's population. I mean, really, if you think of it that way, you're bound to be bummed out. Think of it as Free Trade.

And on and on. So I take the pill and I drink coffee and I consume the silly little products that help make my life bearable and even joyful from time to time. I listen to music, work a little bit for money. I have meaningful conversations with people, when I can get them, about the frustrating realities of the world. And then I'm back to feeling a little glum.

So. What next? Take more pills, drink more coffee, whistle-dee-doo on my kazzoo more loudly? That's fun!! Wheee! Or sharpen up on my techniques of resistance? Hmmm, got to be careful there, though. Wouldn't want to seem like a radical. Might become a "bad guy."

Oh, screw it. Curious, I look up the definition of radical and learn that it means "going to the root." I begin to think about roots, about cultivation, about organic systems, and--why not--about roots and rebel music. I put on some Bob Marley and meditate on the meaning of radical for a while. I read history--not textbook history, but people's history: Eric Foner and Howard Zinn. I watch Spike Lee's Malcolm X, read Black Boy. I read Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil and I am inspired, stoked. The text speaks to me in a way that nothing else ever has. It is urgent and outraged and joyful and full of meaning and the search for meaning. It is irreverant and beautiful, full of dirty words and critical imagination.

I plant trees and work crisis phone lines for people who are having hard times. I write and make art and sing and dance. I meditate and study all types of spiritual faiths. I play games, take pictures, go for long walks outside. I make a radical effort to live and, living, to connect to the living Earth. I want out of the canned commodity culture, but I'm in it. Always in it, even when I'm in the wild lands of National Parks. I'm free, but I can't get free. Inside, looking out and outside, looking in. I'm in a voting booth with two options, knowing neither of them is a choice for liberation. I'm poor and a wage slave in a land that boasts of its richness and freedom. I'm sick to death and breathing, whistle-clean in my soul but at the same time so dirtily guilty with all the crimes that are committed in my name, for my good, by the powers-that-be. I'm powerless and hungry, capable of being full and robust and strong beyond all lines and cages.

I'm moving forward, staying still, pushing against the grain. I'm resisting. My life begins to have some meaning.

Someday
I won't have to take
those f0cking pills

Originally Posted by Path of One

All the nameless people who suffer deserve at least someone to grieve for and with them. They deserve someone to care. They may never make it on the news or into the consciousness of most people, but they deserve at least my acknowledgement. If I can give them nothing else, I can give them that. I work toward the goal of uniting joy with grief, honoring the lives of those who are harmed while living in the joy of God. Now I can be hopeful, and mostly calm... and it is from that place that I hope I can be useful.

I bide my time, and I'm in good company. We meet in each other's living rooms and strategize. We are figuring out ways to start innocuous non-profits and media that look harmless but plant the seeds of revolution. We will study the institutions and the cultures and systems until we figure out how to change them without any obvious fight. I'm a pacifist. I don't want to fight. I don't think the answer is in killing anyone, no matter how horrible their actions or policies are. I am all about Ghandi and MLK and pacifist revolts. They work, and they are ethically sound. So... the answer is in outsmarting them...

Logically, I think my life won't accomplish much. And besides, as a social scientist I think we're heading for a collapse anyway, because we're simply unsustainable. It can't be far off.

But emotionally and spiritually, every day that goes by the way it is means more pain and suffering. Every day that goes by means more children that die because of lack of basic health care and sanitation, because adults care more about our stupid superficial differences and buying crap than we do about protecting our most innocent ones. Maybe I was just born different, because I study this stuff until I'm blue in the face and I understand it logically and I look for the weaknesses, the points of entry for a gradual revolution... but I don't get it. It is so simple to me, and that is what hurts the most.

Stop spending so much resources on killing people and unnecessary stuff. Start spending resources on giving everyone food, shelter, clean water, health care, and decent education. Make sure kids who lost their parents get one. Don't take more than we need, because the Earth is a bunch of living beings and they deserve better than our greed.

I just don't get what's hard about it... To me, it is just basic humanity. But then, when you feel others' pain almost as strongly as your own, you want it to stop. You can't ignore it. You just don't have that luxury.

[Jack Halyard]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

Stop spending so much resources on killing people and unnecessary stuff. Start spending resources on giving everyone food, shelter, clean water, health care, and decent education. Make sure kids who lost their parents get one. Don't take more than we need, because the Earth is a bunch of living beings and they deserve better than our greed.

I just don't get what's hard about it... To me, it is just basic humanity. But then, when you feel others' pain almost as strongly as your own, you want it to stop. You can't ignore it. You just don't have that luxury.

Amen Amen

[Pathless]

Democracy Now! | Noam Chomsky: Why is Iraq Missing from 2008 Presidential Race?

Why aren't the candidates talking more about the Iraq War and the over-arching "War On Terror"--more accurately described as the "War Of Terror"?

Originally Posted by Noam Chomsky

Not very long ago, as you all recall, it was taken for granted that the Iraq war would be the central issue in the 2008 election, as it was in the midterm election two years ago. However, it’s virtually disappeared off the radar screen, which has solicited some puzzlement among the punditry.

Actually, the reason is not very obscure. It was cogently explained forty years ago, when the US invasion of South Vietnam was in its fourth year and the surge of that day was about to add another 100,000 troops to the 175,000 already there, while South Vietnam was being bombed to shreds at triple the level of the bombing of the north and the war was expanding to the rest of Indochina. However, the war was not going very well, so the former hawks were shifting towards doubts, among them the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, maybe the most distinguished historian of his generation, a Kennedy adviser, who—when he and Kennedy, other Kennedy liberals were beginning to—reluctantly beginning to shift from a dedication to victory to a more dovish position.


And Schlesinger explained the reasons. He explained that—I’ll quote him now—“Of course, we all pray that the hawks are right in thinking that the surge of that day will work. And if it does, we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government in winning a victory in a land that we have turned,” he said, “to wreck and ruin. But the surge probably won’t work, at an acceptable cost to us, so perhaps strategy should be rethought.”


Well, the reasoning and the underlying attitudes carry over with almost no change to the critical commentary on the US invasion of Iraq today. And it is a land of wreck and ruin. You’ve already heard a few words; I don’t have to review the facts. The highly regarded British polling agency, Oxford Research Bureau, has just updated its estimate of deaths. Their new estimate a couple of days ago is 1.3 million. That’s excluding two of the most violent provinces, Karbala and Anbar. On the side, it’s kind of intriguing to observe the ferocity of the debate over the actual number of deaths. There’s an assumption on the part of the hawks that if we only killed a couple hundred thousand people, it would be OK, so we shouldn’t accept the higher estimates. You can go along with that if you like.


Uncontroversially, there are over two million displaced within Iraq. Thanks to the generosity of Jordan and Syria, the millions of refugees who have fled the wreckage of Iraq aren’t totally wiped out. That includes most of the professional classes. But that welcome is fading, because Jordan and Syria receive no support from the perpetrators of the crimes in Washington and London, and therefore they cannot accept that huge burden for very long. It’s going to leave those two-and-a-half million refugees who fled in even more desperate straits.