Disclaimer:

Now, I may have a messiah complex as big as Bono's.

but.

But I believe, somewhere between skin and soul, I believe that I have a calling, that God put me here to do something. I believe that I am supposed to be out there helping fix this world. I believe that I can change the world.

Someday, slavery will be gone from every continent. Someday, no one will die of mosquito bites, of a disease we cured over a century ago. Someday, people will not starve in a world of plenty, someday children will not be murdered for the color of their skin, someday enough people will care, someday this kind of shit won't happen anymore.

I believe that I was given this life for a reason, and if I don't work on that I will have wasted this gift. I believe, somewhere inside of me, that I was given the dreams and visions that come to me for a reason, and that through Christ I can do all things, and also that it is distinctly possible that Coyote was sent to help me, or decided to help me, and I have faith that this is not blasphemy, that my ancestors believed it for a reason, and that there is behind me a Trickster who will lend me his strength if I ask him.

As I thought this on the way home, my mind immediately spiraled off into the mythic dimension, and before more than a few seconds had passed I had to shut off the train of thought concerning Coyote, because it would lead me to... well, vision over visibility. An illusion, a trick. But mark my words.

This will not stand. There is a day coming when this world will be at peace, when love will triumph hate and bitterness, when despair will be washed away. This world will change.

Because this world is worth it.

This feels ego-centric even as I start to write it, but I think I'll do it anyway.

I pray I never have the sense to bow my head against the wind; I pray for the strength to be able to laugh at myself; I pray that I never lose touch with idealism, and that I always stay grounded in reality.

Yeah, self-centered as hell. But ya know what? I mean it. It's not that I don't want to change, it's that I don't want to be anyone else. I don't want to turn into a bitter, angry person. Or even a bitter happy person, actually, or even a cheerful cynic. I've done that before, and it's not worth it. There's so much out there! There's so much emotion, so much love, so much beauty and art and potential, and I don't want to go through life ignoring it, or worse, mocking it. I -did- the whole "This world sucks, why bother" thing, and then I heard a song, and things changed.

One love, one blood
One life, you got to do what you should.

I was lonely, and angry, and torn up inside, I was laughing at the world and screaming at myself, I was lying awake at night dreaming of an end to all the pain, I couldn't stop moving and I wasn't going anywhere, and then one day I heard a song, and I let the words and the chords sink in, and I almost cried there on the street, walking home in the rain, and I started thinking. And searching, and trying, and caring and now... now I'm awake walking, at night, kneeling in woods and taking streets in the vague hope they won't be dead ends. I'm writing, I'm singing, I'm praying, I'm loving and learning and it still doesn't feel like enough, I still haven't found what I'm looking for--

but it's better than nothing.

Cynicism is worse than nothing. Cynicism is apathy, despair, and... well, apathy and despair under a guise of laughter. I think it's less painful than apathy and despair, but certainly not less destructive. I... rely on it too much, still. It's hard not to, in a way, because it's easier to just laugh at things, to say "I'm above that shit" and stop caring. You care, you open yourself up to hurt.

Anyway.

I want to be restless and wild and passionate, I don't want to settle, I don't want to stop caring, I don't want to stop wanting to fix this world. No, one person can't fix the world, yes, people are constantly trying and there's still tons of shit out there. But you know what? I'd rather go down fighting. I'd rather spend the rest of my life striving and pushing and shouting and caring and hurting than shrug it off, laugh it off, and sit back to watch things fail. I believe this world can be a better place, people can change, and with that in mind I would rather die than sit here and smirk.

This world sucks. Let's do something about it.

It Doesn't Have To BE This Way

There’s a website which I often fool around on called TV Tropes, which analyzes common themes found in different media; some of you may be familiar with it. One of the tropes discussed at length there is the “Crapsack World,” which is… well, exactly what it sounds like. Here’s one of the descriptions in the summary: “An immutable Crapsack World has corruption and pain Inherent In The System, both physically and metaphysically. Trying to fight this corruption will always result in it winning.”

So basically, this describes a world that is inherently unfair, a world in which good is not only useless, but often counter-productive. This is a world where the evil overlord wins. This is a world where humanity really is reduced to numbers, where the Daleks succeed because the universe doesn’t care; this is a world where a sonic screwdriver and a brilliant smile will get you killed, regardless of how clever or powerful you are, how strongly you want to save the world. This is a universe where the more unfortunate people of the world are taken into slavery to serve the whims of the culture on the other side of the world who doesn’t know or care about their plight. This is a world where an entire population can be decimated on a whim, once more to benefit a class more useful to the people in power, and no one bats an eye. This is a world where those born into poverty and disease and starvation are, more or less, thought of as deserving of such a fate; this is a world where Scrooge was right.

This is our world.

And speaking against any of that makes you a bleeding heart, an emotion-driven basket-case, and it pits you straight up against the power-driven universe, in a world where greed and oppression are rewarded and selflessness is mercilessly stamped out.

I’m not exaggerating. This isn’t hyperbole.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, and I will keep on saying it until the day I die.

THIS IS NOT RIGHT. I don’t give a used fig as to what your personal beliefs concerning the semantics and wordplay of “ethics” versus “morality,” or which political party you support, or whether you’re an independent or a moderate or on the fringes or outside altogether.

If you are supporting slavery, genocide, if you have nothing to say to this world we’re living in, if you don’t believe that there is something very, very, wrong with what’s going on in this world, get the hell off of my friends list. I don’t care if you're a conservative who believes capitalism is the only thing that will save this world from itself, or you’re an anarchist who believes capitalism is what’s killing this world. You should be fighting for the same ends right now. There are people being driven into slavery, not only in Mali and Cote d’Ivoire, but on this continent, in the cities and the suburbs and all around us. There are people dying on the streets, of malaria. A disease that was cured over a century ago. Not a lot of people know that. Mosquito bites are killing more people in this world than any other animal. Mosquito bites. Death. By. Mosquito. Death by a disease we cured. A disease that’s become a joke in this country. That doesn’t even touch the disease we haven’t cured, AIDS, which people are also dying like flies from.

That’s the one that makes me sick – people believe, somehow people allow themselves to be convinced that it’s not that important. They deserve it, right? Just like the kids born into starvation deserve to die before they reach adulthood, and the people being laid off from their jobs in this very country deserved that, and they deserve to be homeless on the streets with their families, the filthy savages. But not on our streets, no, how about the darker part of town, tucked away somewhere we don’t have to see them? This country makes me sick sometimes. I’m an American, that much is true. I believe in freedom, and I mean that literally. I believe everyone should be free. I believe that freedom is a human right, not an American right. I believe in liberty, and I believe in justice. I believe that no one should die because of a damned bug bite. I believe women who are raped are never ‘asking for it,’ I believe that in a world where there is enough food to go around, no one should starve to death. I believe that it is twisted, sick, and downright evil to refuse homeless men the basement of a church to sleep in on winter nights -- to let them freeze to death in their sleep -- because it brings them too close to the business district.

To be fair, not many people know the reality of all of this. (That's why it's important to do this. Because people don't know.) It’s mentioned in passing, occasionally, but rarely expanded on. We’re very careful, this country is, of tucking things that make our viewers uncomfortable out of sight. We wouldn’t want to lose our viewers. We wouldn’t want to make them too uncomfortable, to make them turn aside to somewhere where the view is a little more pleasant.

Don’t forget this. There is nothing – nothing – that makes you somehow innately more worthy of life than someone else on this planet. I’m a Christian, infinitely more than I am an American. That’s what I believe. I believe in unconditional love, and unconditional forgiveness. You were born (for most of you, anyway) in a wealthy country, if not a wealthy home. Your parents were able to feed you, because they’d worked hard, but also because they’d been born to a land of opportunity. That is why you are here, and not starving to death, or dying of malaria or AIDS, or being beaten to death in the cacao fields on the Gold Coast. Because you were born here, and not there. It doesn’t make you a bad person – but it doesn’t make your life worth more than theirs, either. A life is a life is a life. Please, please remember that.

This world has become a horrible, horrible place -- we don't have to leave it that way. We don't have to submit silently to what this world has become. I mentioned earlier that in this universe, morality is punished and powerlust is rewarded. I don't believe that's Just The Way It Is, I believe it's the way the human race has made it. And we can change that. It's not idealistic to believe that conscience should overrule politics.

Politics are supposed to be a way to follow your conscience; they are not supposed to subvert it for the party values.

I'll say it once again.

We don't have to take this. If you have a conscience, if you want to see this world become something other than a prison, do it. Don't wait for a signal. You ARE the signal.

Talkin' to my Generation

Right now, I am wondering why Mr. Kanye West – why anyone, actually – has felt the need to go on record calling themselves “the voice of a generation.” Why does this generation need a voice to speak for us? We all have minds, hearts, and voices, do we not? Why, then, are we so silent? How is it that we have opinions on fashion, on pop culture, even on petty national politics at times, yet we remain oblivious to the world outside of our lifestyles? We should not be depending on Kanye West, Barack Obama, or Rush Limbaugh to voice opinions for us. We have minds. We have hearts, we have voices. Why are we allowing ourselves to be led by the nose, like so many idle sheep? Educate yourselves! Listen to your conscience and speak out! There is slavery in Africa, upheld by the mainstream chocolate industry. There is genocide in the Sudan, upheld by the Chinese government. Peaceful protesters are being brutally put down in Iran. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent the greater part of the last twenty years under house arrest in Burma for speaking out. Here in America, there are entire families homeless and without food or shelter. In countries all over the globe, there are young children working endless hours in deplorable conditions without even enough money to live on. What are we doing about it? We depend on politicians to get things done; we elect them for their elegant promises, and then consider our duties to the world done. I am not targeting any one politician; they have all betrayed us the same. We cannot simply cast a vote on election day, and then walk home to go back to our lives as though the world had been changed. We cannot ignore the condition of this world.

You have a mind. You have a voice. You have the right to be free, to live and breathe and eat and drink and laugh; do you not have the responsibility to fight, to give that freedom to every other living person on this planet? We are born into our circumstances; we do not inherently deserve what we are given at birth any more than any other human born to any other parents in any other place. There is no reason why being born in America should give you more of a right to be free, just as being born in a village in Darfur does not mean you deserve to be raped and killed. But we’ve inherited this world, our generation has. We’ve inherited this world full of smooth-tongued, power-hungry politicians, and we’ve inherited some kind of system that tells us that on one side there are good guys, and the other side is not to be trusted. I tell you now that this is a lie. There is good and bad on both sides; both sides are labels. Stop listening to the fanatics on both sides of the system! Read the facts, from as many trustworthy places as you can, and then follow your own conscience. Stop letting others speak for you! You have a mind! You have a voice! Your voice is important, what is behind it is important; your mind, your conscience, your freedom is your birthright, as it is with every other human on this planet. Do not let it be taken from you!

Please. We’ve lain silent long enough—too long. It’s time to stop letting people speak for us, decide for us; we’re adults, or we soon will be. It’s time to start thinking about the world we’ve been born into, it’s time to step up. We’ve been born to this Earth, for better or worse—how will we leave it?

Nothing to Say

I don't know if it's wise to post this here. But I figure like I should post it somewhere, somewhere public, somewhere where I will see it whenever I look through the archives, and remember, this is why you fucking listen to your conscience, this is why anarchy is bullshit, for all it's a pretty picture on paper. Everything looks nice if you have the right people talking about it. I'm not falling for this philosophy bullshit again.

I feel used, betrayed, lied to. Rational or no, that’s how I feel. Now, that would be bad enough, really. But I also feel guilty, horrible, like scum of the earth. So it’s… hmmm.

A friend stole from her workplace. In her mind, I believe, because the owner was a jerk, because the store was a part of the hierarchy she rebels against and hates (as do I, as do most people in one way or another), because she wasn’t treated well there, it was justified. This, I would not judge her for, though it goes against my personal code. Part of my code of life is not judging others by my own morals, ethics, what have you. It’s hard, but I believe it’s right. But, but, but, things are never that simple. She took food that would’ve been thrown away and distributed it, through us, to needy and homeless people in the city, along with the donations the group collected from supermarkets. I suppose if I had paid attention to any sort of detail at all, I would’ve known that she had no authority to do so. But she eventually left, and was subsequently banned from the store, for whatever reason, I didn’t pry. She told us we could continue to take expired food; we did. Start to present, this was about a year.

Yesterday, a new woman stopped us, called the manager, who told us that the man in charge of deli food had said no “in the past” to expired food being taken. Knowing the man, knowing that he’s been taken advantage of in the past, and knowing that he and our friend had never gotten along, I rather understood. Also, I’d always been fairly certain that the owner of the store didn’t know about the whole situation. I figured the chef had a newborn baby to take care of, his job was on the line, I wouldn’t press the issue. The woman told me to take it up with him on Monday. We left without food, except what I’d brought from my garden, some green beans and some basil, as well as a melon from my friend's brother. It was fine, there was plenty of supermarket produce, and we helped cook up a meal and handed everything out at the park (except the green beans, which didn’t find a place). I type up an e-mail explaining the situation to the entire group, and then spend the entire night worrying about the chef, whether or not he will hate me, if he will understand, if he will think I’ve lied to him or used him or tried to deceive him. This is irrational, but I like the guy, a lot, and don’t want to hurt him, or for him to be angry at me, only partially because he is sometimes moody and the very idea of him angry scares the shit out of me, partly emotion-wise, partly just because.

Monday morning, I wake up significantly pre-dawn, continue worrying for a few more hours in bed, and eventually get up and get coffee and see my dad off. With my little brother in tow (the library was in the works for after I got everything sorted out), I headed off to the plaza in which he and I work and the friend formerly worked, worrying the entire way, of course. I head into the store, and run into (not literally) the grocery manager, a man who I don’t know very well, but has a reputation from plenty of friends for being a mellow, very nice, very generous guy. He tells me that the owner and manager are angry, the weekend was bad, they never condoned the food donations at all, and are contacting the group over it, and so on. I wince, tell him I am sorry but understand; he is not happy either. My little brother pipes up “But it’s expired food—” I tell him to shut up. The grocery manager tells me that the deli food was not, in fact, all expired, which shuts me the hell up, too. I am stunned, shell-shocked, apologize, and leave the store a very, very confused person indeed.

After talking to my very good friend who I work with, my brother takes off to the library, I am stricken with conscience and guilt (far too late, I fear), and return to the grocery store to apologize to the chef. He is behind the deli lunch counter, asks me what’s wrong, had no idea I was involved in any way with the goings-on. Tells me he does not blame me, that it is really the friend’s fault, she has an attitude problem, she should’ve told us, I swallow. I am still her friend. I will not judge her. He says not to worry, they will take care of the judging for me. She was banned, you know. …She was what? Oh. Oh, um. I’m really really really really sorry. He tells me not to worry. I tell him I promise I never would’ve taken food that wasn’t expired; he knows that, don’t worry. He doesn’t think the manager or owner know about my involvement, he definitely didn’t, I am still welcome, don’t worry, just don't mention it to either of them. I feel like shit.

Fuck anarchy, fuck anarchism, fuck the higher good and high ethics and the greater cause and all the bullshit that’s kept me all high and mighty all last year. Fuck it all. I let ideology blind me to my own conscience, and that’s a mistake I won’t make again. I can’t believe I was so stupid to ignore everyone in my life who warned me about idealism, and living outside of reality. The worst part is, I knew they were right. But I figured, maybe someday I’ll look back on this stage of my life and laugh at the foolish kid I was, or maybe I’ll figure out a way to live by my conscience and make it work. I didn’t think I’d wind up stealing from someone I care about, or, for that matter, stealing full stop.

I walked to the library, feeling hurt, angry, stupid, guilty. I found my little brother, laughing under his breath at Stephen Colbert’s book, and dug up a Terry Pratchett book for myself, and proceeded to get lost in the life of Samuel Vimes, Night Watch. Good book. It was five-thirty before I put it down, having seen my brother off some time ago. I called my best friend and told her as much of the story as I could, in as much detail as I could muster, having called my sister on the way to the library, seen my other best friend at the store where I work during the whole ordeal, and having decided (after all this) to e-mail my other best friend the story later on. Then I walked back to the plaza, buying a bottle of glue and applying for a job on the way there, and also stopping for a bite and writing this: Fuck anarchism, fuck the greater good, fuck higher ideals and all the bullshit that comes along. Whenever I get suicidal, I take two options. One, look around, decide the world, life, is too beautiful, amazing; two, it’s the easy way out and I’d let people down. But right now I’m finding it hard to care about either. I concluded that if life was about conscience, appreciating beauty, working hard and loving with all you’ve got and so on, I could take it. I could take heartbreak, pain, physical and emotional, but I can’t take all the moral-gray-area bullshit that comes along. I can’t take fucking philosophy.

Anyway, I got to the store where I currently work as my friend was closing up, accidentally scaring the shit out of him in the process, and went with him to both stores he needed to go to, me radiating apathy and depression, and him trying to cheer me up in various ways, in varying degrees of success. As we left the second grocery store, I got a call from my sister telling me that my brother, a drug dealer who my dad had kicked out at the start of the summer, had broken into the house, and she’d found lights on all over, and the black plastic hat that had held about four months’ worth of my pocket change (at least ten bucks, probably closer to twenty) empty on my dad’s bed. I thanked her for the news, hung up. Walked home laughing, about as painfully close to tears as I ever want to be, laughing and unable to stop. I stopped in the park for a while, saw a bat flying around, apologized to my God and for what I did to both the owner and the chef and God only knows who else, lied in a tree and wished for death, jumped out and walked home, where I found that my brother had also taken with him about two meals’ worth of food, and kicked in the basement door. My dad surmises that it is me he truly hates, and I do know this to be the case.

But all I could do was laugh, figuring how can I hate him? What I’ve done is so much worse.

And that is why I feel like shit right now.

Counter-Pledge

It's always bothered me that we are damn near required to stand up and pledge allegiance to a government which is widely known and mocked for its corruption. Also, that most kids start pledging allegiance before they even know what either of those words mean. So, I'll start this post off with those definitions, as they most relate here.
Pledging, to pledge:
a token, sign, or earnest of something else; the state of being held as a security or guaranty; a binding promise or agreement to do or forbear
Allegiance:
the obligation of a feudal vassal to his liege lord; the fidelity owed by a subject or citizen to a sovereign or government; devotion or loyalty to a person, group, or cause

So basically, you swear loyalty to this flag; to the American Republic, our government; to the idea of one nation, under God, indivisible, which claims "liberty and justice for all." I call bullshit on plenty of that. First off, our government is about as corrupt as they come, right about now. Second of all, liberty and justice-- for all? Tell me how many people pay taxes in this country. Yeah, a lot of them. But think about how many politicians have been caught without paying taxes that the rest of us constantly struggle under, and tell me that's fair. Tell me it's fair that the people who have the most to give away are the ones who get away with the most. Tell me it's fair, with a straight face, that if Congress signs a conscription act, seventeen-year-old kids who can't vote, drink, or call themselves adults, can get sent off to kill or be killed. Liberty? Justice?

Plus, I don't even know how solid I am with this nation at all anymore. So today, I wrote this.

I do not pledge allegiance to this nation which stands by and does nothing in the face of genocide. I do not pledge allegiance to this republic which would see men imprisoned for feeding the hungry. I do not pledge allegiance to this flag which so many believe entitles its bearers to the life which we deny others, based on their language or where they were born. I pledge my life to the starving, the dying, the poor, and the downtrodden across the world; and to a world without poverty, hunger, genocide, I pledge allegiance.

A philosophy, shaken

If anarchy doesn't work, and all systems of government are inevitably, irretrievably correupt, what options are left? It's always the idealists who wind up with their hands covered in innocent blood, in the end. Why is it that the only alternative to simply accepting a system so corrupt that we can do nothing to stop genocide, poverty, oppression... is rebellion-- and subsequently, violence, chaos, bloodshed...

Why must corruption and chaos be the only options? It defies logic, reason, human nature.

...maybe not. As it is, I don't think I can believe in pure anarchy. But what does that leave me with? Power corrupts. All governments must distribute power. The absence of government breeds chaos. And someone rises to the void, and the cycle begins again. So...

So we are forced to accept the rule of a clearly corrupt government? We swallow their lies, because the truth is open chaos -- riots, murder, rape, "shoot anyone you don't recognize after dark."

The fact is, you have to consider the past, and in the end, as much as it pains me to admit it, anarchy... doesn't work. All you really have to do is look at the French Revolution(s). When nobody's in charge, people jump for leads and leaderships, and it turns into "follow whoever is least likely to get you killed." And then you wind up even worse off then you were before, with more corrupt leaders, no equality save the equality of weapon availability, and so on.

What, then, do you do? Accept the rule of oil-tongued liars? Because they all are, every last one of those men behind the podiums, with their smooth words caressing the microphone and their eyes promising a better world, and their hearts lusting for power. (Anyone, I think, who wants power over an entire nation, is not to be trusted.)

That, or revolution, with the idea that it's possible to have a system that is not corrupt, and then bloodshed, and chaos, and war; it is the idealists who wind up with the most blood on their hands, in the end.

What is the answer to the problems we create by being human? When it's all said and done, what can you do but live your life, do what you can to fix what is in your reach... and leave the rest to the terribly naive, intoxicating, unshakeable belief that more people than not, in this world, are decent human beings-- and the conclusion that follows, that everyone in power, therefore, cannot be a powerhungry monster. Someone has to be out there trying to fix this.

And then there's the inescapable truth, that I am one eighteen-year-old punk in a world full to the brim of shouting voices, and therefore, in the end, none of this really matters because there is absolutely nothing I can do in the slightest about any of it.

Another day of untried freedom

So this morning I woke up and, as though my body had somehow sensed the urgency in the air, fell back asleep. Oh, how I love days off from school. The air is clean, the sky is pure, even in the clouds and patched fog, the ground is covered with enough snow deep and sparkling to get lost in; I have boots, I have a skin thick enough to hide me from the wind, I have a day with nothing in it yet. It is a feeling like no other, not quite endowed with the straight freedom feeling that comes of actually skipping school, but with many of the possibilities. Maybe it’s the lack of risk that changes it, I don’t know. I mean, yes, I could be called into work—that’s one of the things you don’t get with skipping—but also, I could take the dog down to the park and romp! I could spend two hours playing horn! I could watch Into the Wild! I could… could do pretty much anything. I probably won’t, besides playing horn, and/or guitar for as long a time as my chops and fingertips, respectively, can take. This will be after the music now wears off (it’s Radio Nowhere right now, New Year’s Day before that) and my fingers start itching worse than they are now. In the meantime, I write.

Yesterday, we got a new president. There are quite a few people freaking out, doomsayers, and the occasional orgasm of rhetoric. Personally, I couldn’t—well, I could probably care less if I tried. But I spent the year leading up to the election trying to figure out what the big deal was, and alternately trying to figure out which of the two evils was worse, because they’re both pretty damn bad. And at some point, it became not McCain vs. Obama, but the party who believed in Saint Wizard McSuperpants versus the party who believed in His Evilness the Doom-bringer. And that made me sick. It was absolutely insane, and at some point I was wondering exactly where the hell everybody’s sanity went? I mean, you guys aren’t all crazy! I wanted to take several people by the shoulders and shake them until they resembled my friends and family again. My dad was one of the worst, telling me over and over on the way to school how Obama was pretty bad, pretty bad, pretty awful, he did this and he believes that and he’ll do this and that and this, and one friend from US History was the other, going on and on and on about how wonderful this guy was, never with any reasons or back-up, only constant speeches about how damn awesome he was. Fortunately, two people I knew seemed to retain some sanity, and my friends on complete opposite sides helped me out—my friend the vegan, who wanted to vote for Ralph Nader, and my friend the vegetarian-hater, who wants to take over the country and remake it in the model of ancient Rome.

If I had to do the thing over again, well, I’d probably just say fuck it all and leave. Or I’d cast a blank ballot. But anyway, Obama’s in office, the country is torn between wildly celebrating and committing suicide, and I’m inclined to tell them the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. He’s just another politician. When has a Harvard or Yale graduate in office done our country any good? What we really need is a revolution, but then I’m just a schizophrenic on a laptop on my day off from school spouting nonsense. Anyway, enough with the political gibberish. Long story much shorter, I have a day to do stuff, and do stuff I will!

On to the waiting horn.