History can be a little too illuminating.
Perhaps the
utility of “remaining in the present” allows you the fresh naivety to remain
energetic and motivated to pursue the future. Once you learn how your context
has been created, you’re faced with a decision. Either you can readdress who
you are, what your goals were, and to what degree this information will inform
your decisions, or you can ignore it can carry on with your day. This is one of
my constant well-worn “battles.”
You can’t blame the
idea. For any school of thought, playing on a kind of feigned humility can
allow you to introduce a new idea with a trivial amount of scrutiny. Maybe you’re
in a field that no one around you knows about. Maybe you’ve been proven right about
something in the past and have already greased accepting wheels. But often in
the abstract and ever-more-room for ambiguity of ideas, for the longest time
you may never conceive of it as good or bad.
This is how you easily and quickly control ignorance. Take
any hard line ideological thinking, impose it in an area that has no idea what
you’re talking about, and analogize what you’re selling to all forms of
righteousness and prosperity. Inevitably, you’ll sow seeds of doubt against any
system currently in place. You can polish your authority with Institutions who
not only garner donations, but develop a lore and reputation. You can make deep
pocketed friends who would pay you to keep saying what you’re saying even if
you didn’t believe it fundamentally.
When I learn what my country has done around the world, I
just feel stuck. The same ignorance that we played, and continue to play on, we’re
somehow blind to the irony as a population. It’s not just a short memory, it’s
a non-existing one. The things that I learn at 26 should have been cannon in
any history class I took. They should have been drilled into me, perhaps even
as they were happening, so I could really know the implications of laissez-faire
beyond the point it would earn me on a definitions list. I should know about
leaders who created socialist dreamscapes where economies grew and people were
provided for. It’s beyond words to think a sounding chamber on Fox could
pollute a word like “socialism” and an exceedingly large portion of the
population would follow.
Do I want to end up on a kill list? Do I want to be detained
and stripped of my rights because of on-the-spot made up rules? I already
recognize what we have in place as servitude to multi-national corporations. I
already call my leaders terrorists and war criminals. I consider the bars of my
cage made from the softest velvet. Why does it often feel like forgetting what
I know through some blow to the head feel more realistic and rewarding than
fighting?
My spirit is broken. I have all the time in the world.
Resources people couldn’t even dream of a few years ago. Even with the world as
shitty as I could describe it I’m fed, typing this on an extraneous computer,
and plan to sleep through most of the day tomorrow. I lose my will when I think
about what’s happened to other people; when they’ve been tortured, when they’ve
been slaughtered en masse, when they’re written off as collateral damage in our
pursuit of profit and terror. These are horrible things in and of themselves.
Now grasp that it’s national policy! Now watch how it’s evolved for 30 years.
The “good guys” aren’t winning. Every successful model I see
seems to be rooted in something terrible first or is on such a small scale that
the rest of world isn’t going to bother to listen. It’s little leaps in
technology here and there, a win for food or human rights there, a spattering of
conflict resolution that at least stifled bombs for another year or so. It
feels like there’s an underlying failure that is perpetually winning. A human
characteristic or habit that refuses to let sense and accountability in. It’s
certainly some amalgam of greed, fear, and ignorance I’m sure.
But those aren’t deep enough. It’s deliberately advocating
for the free-market for 70 years after you’ve watched it implode entire countries,
like Milton Friedman. It’s speaking proudly of overthrowing democratically
elected governments like ex CIA from the 60’s and 70’s. It’s pompously asking
me for proof of climate change while you chant “build it” and “drill baby
drill.” It’s not just ignorance. It’s pride.
It’s just an idea, after all, to be proud of yourself. How
do you manage to do anything if you don’t take pride in your work? Am I not
proud of my vitriol for the dumb and destructive? Is my high horse well groomed
and polished so I can attract my own acolytes and we can start our own NEW SCHOOL
and show these backwater killers who’s boss?
But I don’t feel it. I’m not proud to be human. I’m not
happy to discuss most things with most people. I’m disgusted and sad. And not
in a needing Tony Robbins to tell me to believe in myself kind of way. It’s
like I don’t deserve the kingdom I already have. Why do I get to be healthy
when my country pretends it’s okay “for the market to decide” who lives and
dies? Why do I get to lament my “I’m cutting out sugar” diet when slaves are
eating bread crumbs and gruel-adjacent foods? Why do I get to feel hopeless
when I’ve never wanted to jump off of an Iphone factory roof?
I’m mostly disgusted that people don’t express ideas like
this every day. I’ve said for years, when you can’t do anything, you can talk.
And we don’t. We don’t hold ourselves accountable. It’s an uncomfortable
silence if someone says something “too real.” If I have 9 hours to power
through a book every day that you can’t find in a month’s worth of a 9-5, you
can still talk on your lunch breaks. You can still pause and reflect. You can
share the news article that made you sad because it’s a sadness that needs to
be felt. It’s a guilt that needs to be imposed.
I think one of the stupidest things I’ve ever been told is
that we’re not supposed to look out for each other. It came from reddit. This person was emphatic that as long as they carried on well-enough that it
wasn’t their responsibility nor concern all the terrible shit that goes on
around them. As if consequences don’t carry. As if they’re not likely a living
embodiment of a kind of victim. Because to me, to be that kind of person is to
have felt the kind of abuse that has crushed my spirit. Only now talking has
become a fate worse than writing off the death of your fellow man.
