Former home of the compassionate telepath
6.22.2005,09:52
dizzy
They've been hammering boards together (in some weird attempt to form a house I guess) across the alley since what seems like the beginning of time. It's like sleeping to dragon boat drums. Punctuated by garbage trucks. And I have so much to do in the next week or so that my brain is going to explode. As long as I get caught up on the homework that my brain seems to be avoiding understanding thus far, and have the whole family shebang for Chen's grad tomorrow, and get this next tape done, my midterm written, and Vanessa saftely moved, then intwernet, I'll breathe again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have circles to run.
6.19.2005,10:36
news break
I think I'm going to try to spend a week without watching the news. It's not that I don't want to know what goes on, but I think maybe my news consumption is getting to be a bit much, and it gets so depressing that I feel like I'm in danger of turning into Theodore Sturgeon's protagonist in "And Now the News..." (he reads the news saying "evry man's death diminishes me" until he goes insane and goews on a shooting spree to "diminish mankind right back"). And I don't just watch the normal new usually, either. No, I watch mansbridge one-on-one with Romeo Dallaire, I watch the field reporter's hour long special of the life of Sudanese refugees. It goes on. Why? Because I really do want to try and understand the madness that is this world. But I think I need a break. So for the next week, I'll try to live without:
Oh, and okay, I won't be completely newsless, since these I shall not give up (hey, they're mostly entertainment):
- channel 26, CBC Newsworld
- and all it entails: the hour, anything with Mansbridge, passionate eye, and so forth
- c-pac (yes, someone is watching)
- other crappier TV news
- a daily paper
- the guardian, the tyee, al jazeera, cnn, the bbc
Oh, and okay, I won't be completely newsless, since these I shall not give up (hey, they're mostly entertainment):
- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
- TCW
- The Straight
6.18.2005,20:27
watching re-runs
That's what it's like watching federal political news right now. I can't honestly believe that we really still require another rights movement. After the civil rights and women's rights movements, it is insane that we still have to have a whole new battle over the same issues, and that somehow there are people who are able to pretend AND convince themselves that discriminating against people on the basis of who they sleep with or want to marry is still justifiable. We've kicked the state so far out of the bedrooms of the nation that in some cases we've not done enough to protect people from domestic violence, but somehow if those two people share certain physiological characterists, it's a matter for legislation? Anyone who believes in truly equal rights for women and men, it seems to me, would have to support gay rights since they come down to the same thing: laws that specify restrictions based on gender. Seriously, how do these Neocons really think it affects them at all?? Don't we have more important issues to spend our lawmakers' time on than issues that were decided decades ago? (I heard there was some stuff going on in the Middle East...)
6.16.2005,09:50
I'm IN! The condition is only surviving my current English linguistics class without failing, which given my 99 on the first midterm, doesn't seem to onerours. Yay!
,08:50
early
ugh. It's early and I'm awake. I'm trying to make myself get up earlier so I won't be as miserable when my 8:30 am exam rolls around on Saturday, but it's tough because I haven't been sleeping all that well either. Too much stuff on the brain, I think trouble's a brewing. This just seems less and less like a world that the people I love should have to struggle through. I just can't imagine what so many millions of people must be thinking sometimes, but even if as a society we've killed off our sense of decency and responsibility, our sense of entitlement is stronger than ever. You can put almost any one on the defensive by suggesting that our consumption patterns are destroying well, pretty much the world, because we spend our lives working to acquire things without thinking about the consequences. You'll get responses like "I just want what I could never have growing up" or "I want my kids to have what I didn't." I understand the sentiment behind both quite well, but the problem is that both associate well being with acquiring increasingly large stockpiles of crap.
Wouldn't it be enough if your children were happy and well-adjusted, even if they have less actually material bullshit than you did? And regarding getting what you didn't have growing up, I have to argue that every child SHOULD grow up wanting things they don't get, especially so long as our society indoctrinates children with so many messages about what they should want, because we all know that kids whose parents never say no to them turn out to be spoiled brats (okay, at least usually). So in other words, that response is something like "I want to be the spoiled brat I never got to be as a child." I think children who grew up feeling like they had too little usually lacked parenting more than anything else.
No one's still reading this anyways, so I'll keep on to a thought I had yesterday. I think I'm starting to understand the whole "living outside" thing where once people live on the street for a certain period, it's hard for them to come back inside to live. Throughout what I know of human history, human settlement has always been associated with land. Humans live by occupying land, by having some sense of entitlement to the land needed for their survival. Whether owned collectively or individually, humans have always had a relationship to their land. You see the problem. Even leaving aside how alienated us city dwellers are from land, there remains the problem that many of us have no land. Right around the same time that the Brits removed access to land for the poor, they also were involved in a huge colonial experiment that focused on taking the land of entire nations. And I think that's basically the problem. So many people live in intense instability and feel disenfranchised, and these are the people with no land. Homeowners, as a segment of the population, have an amazingly high voter turn out rate, while among those who don't own any property, voting is even lower than the average for my age group.
Did that make no sense? The living outside connection comes back in here: so these are very poor and disenfranchised people, but they come to join a community that does, collectively, feel entitlement to land, specifically, the streets. While that may not be exactly choice real estate, I can well understand that sometimes that might be better than renting someone crappy hotel room or whatever, because then you have no entitlement to the space you occupy. I have no entitlement to the space I occupy right now. I have an agreement that says if I can keep paying for it, someone will keep letting me live here, but if I can't pay, well, I have no underlying right. I think this has something to do with what I was on about earlier, which is basically the way everyone who's not strives to be middle class. People really just want land, a place they are entitled to, because that's where stability and security come from.
One more thing? What if I just give you the numbers? According to census data (I think these numbers are 2001, so I'm behind the times, I know), in this province less than 5% of young people whose families live below the poverty line (I think it's still around $25,000 household annually) go to university. Someone should tell them that UBC promises no one will be unable to attend for financial reasons. Right.
Wouldn't it be enough if your children were happy and well-adjusted, even if they have less actually material bullshit than you did? And regarding getting what you didn't have growing up, I have to argue that every child SHOULD grow up wanting things they don't get, especially so long as our society indoctrinates children with so many messages about what they should want, because we all know that kids whose parents never say no to them turn out to be spoiled brats (okay, at least usually). So in other words, that response is something like "I want to be the spoiled brat I never got to be as a child." I think children who grew up feeling like they had too little usually lacked parenting more than anything else.
No one's still reading this anyways, so I'll keep on to a thought I had yesterday. I think I'm starting to understand the whole "living outside" thing where once people live on the street for a certain period, it's hard for them to come back inside to live. Throughout what I know of human history, human settlement has always been associated with land. Humans live by occupying land, by having some sense of entitlement to the land needed for their survival. Whether owned collectively or individually, humans have always had a relationship to their land. You see the problem. Even leaving aside how alienated us city dwellers are from land, there remains the problem that many of us have no land. Right around the same time that the Brits removed access to land for the poor, they also were involved in a huge colonial experiment that focused on taking the land of entire nations. And I think that's basically the problem. So many people live in intense instability and feel disenfranchised, and these are the people with no land. Homeowners, as a segment of the population, have an amazingly high voter turn out rate, while among those who don't own any property, voting is even lower than the average for my age group.
Did that make no sense? The living outside connection comes back in here: so these are very poor and disenfranchised people, but they come to join a community that does, collectively, feel entitlement to land, specifically, the streets. While that may not be exactly choice real estate, I can well understand that sometimes that might be better than renting someone crappy hotel room or whatever, because then you have no entitlement to the space you occupy. I have no entitlement to the space I occupy right now. I have an agreement that says if I can keep paying for it, someone will keep letting me live here, but if I can't pay, well, I have no underlying right. I think this has something to do with what I was on about earlier, which is basically the way everyone who's not strives to be middle class. People really just want land, a place they are entitled to, because that's where stability and security come from.
One more thing? What if I just give you the numbers? According to census data (I think these numbers are 2001, so I'm behind the times, I know), in this province less than 5% of young people whose families live below the poverty line (I think it's still around $25,000 household annually) go to university. Someone should tell them that UBC promises no one will be unable to attend for financial reasons. Right.
6.12.2005,11:12
mad, happy days
What a weekend. In addition to having my best friend over from the island, I went to a reunion at Windsor House, an alternative school I used to attend. The reunion was held as the retirement celebration for the school's founder, and amazing woman named Helen Hughes, and I got to see all kinds of old, old, friends, some who I hadn't seen in ten years. The funniest thing was that none of us had really changed that much. WH was an enviromenty where we all really got to be ourselves. That's the kind of person Helen is, she always believed we could do and be whatever we wanted and was always willing to work to give us the opportunity to prove it to ourselves. It's a community I'll always belong to. The North Van school board is constantly trying to shut WH down, which at this point is just sad, since it's had such a major impact on so many of our lives.
time to get to work. one class ending this week, which means terms paper and final, and Kat's grad is also this week. Also, sorry to anyone who thinks I'm ignoring their e-mail, I haven't been able to get into my hotmail for 3 of the past 4 days (today included, so far). Maybe it is time to switch to g-mail...
time to get to work. one class ending this week, which means terms paper and final, and Kat's grad is also this week. Also, sorry to anyone who thinks I'm ignoring their e-mail, I haven't been able to get into my hotmail for 3 of the past 4 days (today included, so far). Maybe it is time to switch to g-mail...
6.07.2005,11:16
I only spend too long on the computer in the morning when I stop to post here
even if I don't have much to say. The city has been getting me down lately. It's just too much sometimes, as I bus across town, to see images in such stark relief. Suffering pinned under opulence in the ongoing battle between human need and human greed. I can't even think of it as politics or ideology, even though I know it is. It just seems like humanity is to help people when they need it if you can. And our city is not lacking in can, we even prove it periodically with things like the Children's Hospital telethon that raised $10 million. Nor is there any lack of need out there.
The problem, I think, is that we've let it become ideology, and the dominant one is a sort of myth of the self made man, that anyone can make it if they try, so thus those who don't, those who need extra support, are just too lazy or fucked up to try. Which is bullshit. If you've never tried to survive on any sort of social assistance then come see me when you've made it through an entire month on about $450 and tell me just how laughable you now know the phrase "welfare bum" to be. People with options don't do it.
A new major study came out recently on class war and the wealth gap in the US which suggested that class war might just be the new war because it is becoming increasingly obvious the amount of class-determinism that is built into our society. The study showed that North America right now is the place with the least class-mobility since 19th century England. This means that if you're born middle-class, it's pretty much a given that you'll die middle-class, and for those of us who haven't quite hit even that line yet, well, we're likely to die never having gotten there. I'm not saying we should all just up and quit, but I sure am glad I'm in it for something other than money. CBC was talking about the study during "The Hour" last night if you want to go look it up.
I guess this is now two substantial rants in a pretty minimal amount of time, eh? Sometimes I just can't help myself. I was waiting for the 20 the other day at the stop across the street from where I live and a woman with two young sons (maybe 4 and 6?) walked up to the bus stop. I first noticed that her children were whiny, but before I moved to put my headphones on to block them out, I listen and realized that they were whining about being hungry and how their mom had promised them lunch. I got talking to their mom after distracting the kids with the job of splitting a fruit-to-go I'd had in my bag, and she told me a story that I would never have wanted to think of, to believe really happened, of bussing around all day with two hungry kids trying to find a food bank with something left to give. They'd already been to three and been sent away because there was nothing left.
So I opened up my wallet, pulled out the $20 sitting there, and told her to get her kids something to eat. She didn't want to take it at first, and I understand because as she said, she wasn't a beggar. But I insisted. I don't have a lot of money, but there was no way I needed that twenty bucks like she did. The worst part came after we got on the bus though. There had been another woman sitting at the bus stop the whole time, and as we stood near each other on the bus, she told me that I shouldn't have done that because that woman's problems were "her own fault" and "didn't she think before having children?" and really I should know better because charity like that will just "help her stay too lazy to work." Can she please have been a different species from me?
Maybe that woman had never been poor, let alone understood it, but to be willing to write the other woman off, and her sons, because of ideology, is more than I can handle. If she did understand poverty at all, that woman would have know that the other would have loved the dignity and stability that comes from working and having a reliable income. She did not choose to rely on the foodbank because it was easier. Being poor and living in poverty suck, badly. People do not choose them. People can get stuck on them because they lack other options or the resources to realize them, but trust me, the closer to middle class you get, the more comfortable life gets, and that's what everyone wants. We'd all be middle class if we could, but some of us just can't. (and I don't mean me, or anyone specifically, but just as a generalized principle, because having a middle class requires having people below them. We've gone over this).
Watching CBC last night, I did get the point. This does seem like fertile breeding grounds for class war, as I'm sure anyone who's ever panhandled outside a starbucks can tell you. We even have a dangerously high percentage of un or under employed young men, which is one of the most important primers for civil conflict. How so? Youth, that being anyone under 30, employment statistics are not included in the general employment stats. The figure for men in that group for combined un and under (not making enough to live off) employed is well over 50%. If they can make a better living, the argument goes, fighting an "unjust system," well, what would you do?
(end rant)
The problem, I think, is that we've let it become ideology, and the dominant one is a sort of myth of the self made man, that anyone can make it if they try, so thus those who don't, those who need extra support, are just too lazy or fucked up to try. Which is bullshit. If you've never tried to survive on any sort of social assistance then come see me when you've made it through an entire month on about $450 and tell me just how laughable you now know the phrase "welfare bum" to be. People with options don't do it.
A new major study came out recently on class war and the wealth gap in the US which suggested that class war might just be the new war because it is becoming increasingly obvious the amount of class-determinism that is built into our society. The study showed that North America right now is the place with the least class-mobility since 19th century England. This means that if you're born middle-class, it's pretty much a given that you'll die middle-class, and for those of us who haven't quite hit even that line yet, well, we're likely to die never having gotten there. I'm not saying we should all just up and quit, but I sure am glad I'm in it for something other than money. CBC was talking about the study during "The Hour" last night if you want to go look it up.
I guess this is now two substantial rants in a pretty minimal amount of time, eh? Sometimes I just can't help myself. I was waiting for the 20 the other day at the stop across the street from where I live and a woman with two young sons (maybe 4 and 6?) walked up to the bus stop. I first noticed that her children were whiny, but before I moved to put my headphones on to block them out, I listen and realized that they were whining about being hungry and how their mom had promised them lunch. I got talking to their mom after distracting the kids with the job of splitting a fruit-to-go I'd had in my bag, and she told me a story that I would never have wanted to think of, to believe really happened, of bussing around all day with two hungry kids trying to find a food bank with something left to give. They'd already been to three and been sent away because there was nothing left.
So I opened up my wallet, pulled out the $20 sitting there, and told her to get her kids something to eat. She didn't want to take it at first, and I understand because as she said, she wasn't a beggar. But I insisted. I don't have a lot of money, but there was no way I needed that twenty bucks like she did. The worst part came after we got on the bus though. There had been another woman sitting at the bus stop the whole time, and as we stood near each other on the bus, she told me that I shouldn't have done that because that woman's problems were "her own fault" and "didn't she think before having children?" and really I should know better because charity like that will just "help her stay too lazy to work." Can she please have been a different species from me?
Maybe that woman had never been poor, let alone understood it, but to be willing to write the other woman off, and her sons, because of ideology, is more than I can handle. If she did understand poverty at all, that woman would have know that the other would have loved the dignity and stability that comes from working and having a reliable income. She did not choose to rely on the foodbank because it was easier. Being poor and living in poverty suck, badly. People do not choose them. People can get stuck on them because they lack other options or the resources to realize them, but trust me, the closer to middle class you get, the more comfortable life gets, and that's what everyone wants. We'd all be middle class if we could, but some of us just can't. (and I don't mean me, or anyone specifically, but just as a generalized principle, because having a middle class requires having people below them. We've gone over this).
Watching CBC last night, I did get the point. This does seem like fertile breeding grounds for class war, as I'm sure anyone who's ever panhandled outside a starbucks can tell you. We even have a dangerously high percentage of un or under employed young men, which is one of the most important primers for civil conflict. How so? Youth, that being anyone under 30, employment statistics are not included in the general employment stats. The figure for men in that group for combined un and under (not making enough to live off) employed is well over 50%. If they can make a better living, the argument goes, fighting an "unjust system," well, what would you do?
(end rant)
6.06.2005,10:38
calendar
It's Monday again, so another string of evening nclasses are rolling across my week, but one of my classes ends in two weeks.
This weekend Agent K is coming into town and together we're going to the retirement party of a very special teacher we used to have. She created the alternative school that we, as well as my big sister, went to for years and was a really major influence on, well, my life at least, but I'll bet all of us.
Next Wednesday Kat is graduating! It's a bit hard to believe, but I'm excited for her. I got to edit an essay for her last night and she really is ready for University. She was writing about the shift from neoclassicism to naturalism and realism in drama (specifically in relation to Ibsen) and my 2nd year lit courses came back in a flash.
The day after Kat's grad, my anthro paper is due. I have to invent and subsequently change a culture and still haven't decided how much of an optimist or cynic I want to be about it.
That Saturday (at 8:30am, my very favorite exam time) is my anthro final, and then the course is done. Yay!
The following Thursday is Chen's Grade 7 grad. I keep telling mself that it really has been long wenough since she was little for her to be old enough to go into highschool, but the part of me that remembers when she used to let me put her hair in pigtails is having a hard time believeing it.
After that, the only other major thing this month is my second "Structure of Modern English" midterm. Overlayed across this all, of course, is a liberal splatter of school work and as many hours as possible doing interview transcriptions.
Wasn't this about the dullest post ever? It helps me keep everything straight in my brain though, and you didn't have to read it, did you.
This weekend Agent K is coming into town and together we're going to the retirement party of a very special teacher we used to have. She created the alternative school that we, as well as my big sister, went to for years and was a really major influence on, well, my life at least, but I'll bet all of us.
Next Wednesday Kat is graduating! It's a bit hard to believe, but I'm excited for her. I got to edit an essay for her last night and she really is ready for University. She was writing about the shift from neoclassicism to naturalism and realism in drama (specifically in relation to Ibsen) and my 2nd year lit courses came back in a flash.
The day after Kat's grad, my anthro paper is due. I have to invent and subsequently change a culture and still haven't decided how much of an optimist or cynic I want to be about it.
That Saturday (at 8:30am, my very favorite exam time) is my anthro final, and then the course is done. Yay!
The following Thursday is Chen's Grade 7 grad. I keep telling mself that it really has been long wenough since she was little for her to be old enough to go into highschool, but the part of me that remembers when she used to let me put her hair in pigtails is having a hard time believeing it.
After that, the only other major thing this month is my second "Structure of Modern English" midterm. Overlayed across this all, of course, is a liberal splatter of school work and as many hours as possible doing interview transcriptions.
Wasn't this about the dullest post ever? It helps me keep everything straight in my brain though, and you didn't have to read it, did you.
,11:44
vices
Finally saw the new starwars with my sisters last night and it was in fact all I'd hoped for. Especially the R2 battle. He was always my favorite character. It's just too bad they couldn't actually give Ms. Portman a character to play. She suffers from what I used to refer to as Princess Leia syndrom -- the benevolent princess dilema. Characters with no real motivations who don't really get to do anything but whatever they do do is in the name of benevolence and princessness. They get to do such exciting and unpredicatble scenes as "Oh! It pains me to see others get hurt" and "Gee I sure hope everyone I love is okay" followed by "I'm confused and pouty. Better turn on my benevolent princess radar so it will tell me the right thing to do." Riviting, really.
Cam recently came into his brother's PS2 along with a number of games. He's been playing Grand Theft Auto which Kat says all guys like. I have to admit I didn't expect it to apeal to me at all, and it doesn't really. Except the shopping and driving. I've taken Cam's character shopping three or four times now, and although I dont' run around wreakign violence and havock as you're supposed to, stealing various vehicles (boats, motorcycles, planes, etc.) to drive around what is actually a remarkably well-designed landscape has it's charms. So there you go, shopping and stealing cars. You never knew, did you?
And while on vices, I'm going shopping this afternoon with Sho and Chen. To metrotown. Which makes it at least 3 or 4 vices. Because I'll indulge my secret love for Arby's curly fries. Yuck (mmm). Bet you didn't know that either.
Cam recently came into his brother's PS2 along with a number of games. He's been playing Grand Theft Auto which Kat says all guys like. I have to admit I didn't expect it to apeal to me at all, and it doesn't really. Except the shopping and driving. I've taken Cam's character shopping three or four times now, and although I dont' run around wreakign violence and havock as you're supposed to, stealing various vehicles (boats, motorcycles, planes, etc.) to drive around what is actually a remarkably well-designed landscape has it's charms. So there you go, shopping and stealing cars. You never knew, did you?
And while on vices, I'm going shopping this afternoon with Sho and Chen. To metrotown. Which makes it at least 3 or 4 vices. Because I'll indulge my secret love for Arby's curly fries. Yuck (mmm). Bet you didn't know that either.
6.03.2005,10:26
own it
So democracy is built on mass participation, which forces its supporters to have complete faith in total strangers that they too will keep the interests of the greater society in mind when they vote, and that they have paid close enough attention and sorted through the punditry enough to have a sense of what is going on, and lately I'm having a hard time believing in strangers. I've come to the conclusion that a great many people don't even really care who they vote for. Less than 35% of Canadians (okay, that number's form back in '97 when dinosaurs roamed, but bear with me) are partisan, that is, consistently identify themselves as a supporter of party X (or Y, or purple. whatever). There is still another 25-30% of the population who vote regularly, but according to Canadian Electoral Studies (they put out a book every election), more than half of that category hasn't decided who to vote for when they walk into the polling station. Meaning, I suppose, that they subsequently play einie-meenie-miynie-mo or pick the candidate with the funniest name or something.
Now, and let me make this clear, I'm not suggesting in any way that being non-partisan is necessarily bad. In fact, I think it's far preferable to being blindly partisan. What I am suggesting is that we should practice safe voting. Like safe sex, safe schooling, safe driving, safe traveling, safe anything, this requires at least some preparation and thought about where you'd like to go or what you'd like to do (or society to go, in this case) and a comparison of the alternate paths available for getting there. It requires that you do something in advance. But I think that those partisan folks are just as guilty as the einie-meenie-miynie-moers of practicing unsafe voting. How likely is it that a Chretien Liberal's view of an ideal society will necessarily be served by electing Martin, who's quite a different shade of red. NDPers on the East Coast who were big McDonough fans probably got quite a kick-in-the-pants surprise when Layton took over, what with his whole techno-urban focus. That is, if they were paying any attention. Which, I'd argue, most of them probably weren't (not even in Newfoundland, where, what with their new-found oil wealth, they finally have something better to do than bitch about Federal politics. Unlike me, I know, sadder than a Newfie).
I have a point, I swear, and this is it: most people care far more that they vote than who they vote for because that way they can feel like good little democratic citizens and not have to think abut anything to do with governance, the shape of our society, civil society, infrastructure, poverty, world affairs, peace, war, terror, famine, human rights, anything for another 4 years. That is, many citizens in democratic nations vote purely for the lovely feeling it induces that you no longer bear any responsibility for the ills of our society or world. Why? Because that's all up to the GOVERNMENT, and you did your part by putting an X on a piece of paper to help make that government. Ditto paying taxes. And combined, these ridiculously small gestures excise our guilt and responsibility so we can consume as much as we can possibly wear, carry, or fit in our mouths, buy shoes made in sweatshops, support deforestation in the world's last remaining rainforests with every McLunch we buy, throw out endless electronics containing toxic heavy metals that will end up poisoning the water somewhere you're very glad you weren't born (because dumping them is illegal here, silly), and spending a fortune on shit you don't need while still looking scornfully at the guy who asks you for change because if the government hasn't done something about him yet, he must deserve poverty.
OTSS right? We just don't mention that the S that stands for survive should read S over 9/10E because it's survival on the back of nine-tenths (at least) of the world's population, the working class, the poor, the hungry, the entire southern hemisphere (except Australia, another place the Brits did a remarkable job extinguishing non-White people) and BECAUSE YOUR WAY OF LIFE DEPENDS ON THEM NEVER GETTING WHAT YOU HAVE, YOU OWE THEM.
If they had what you have, they'd never make sneakers, and you'd be the barefoot one. If that sixteen year old whose single-parent family was struggling to survive didn't flip your McWich for her $6 buck an hour to help her mom keep food on the table, you'd be the hungry one. For their to be someone available to do the shit you don't want to, there has to be someone with less options than you, fewer choices and less distance between themselves and survival. By choosing a government and paying a pittance in taxes, you do not excise your responsibility to all those on whom your lifestyle depends. For every action there is a consequence, and you must take responsibility for every action you choose. If you buy sneakers that were made in a sweatshop, you choose to indebt yourself to those tiny fingers that worked for almost nothing to make them for you.
Yes, voting is important, we've learned that lesson, but government does not exist to keep us all from taking responsibility for our own actions and the choices we make. Honestly, right now, the world is so driven by consumerism and corporatism that all governments can really do anymore is follow in their wake and try to pick up what pieces they can to mould some sort of society out of the broken bits of lives our destructive habits leave behind. The people "beneath" you are essentially your employees. They are poorer than you because they can't make a lot of money trying to produce things cheap enough for you to consume en masse. They work for you because it's their work that allows your way of life to continue. The myth of the liberal individual is just that. We don't "make it on our own." We require the labour of thousands.
If there really is a god, and a jesus, and all that shit, then there really will be a rapture, and if so, please let them take every sweatshop labourer, every janitor, every minimum wage earner, every over-seas manufacturer who works for pennies so we can finally understand what it would be like to have to make it on our own, so we would stop believing that that's what we actually do, because nothing could be farther from the truth. Take them all off to heaven or shangra-la and leave us here in our piles of mass-produced filth to figure out how to live together for once, now that we've had to admit we need each other.
A girl said to me the other day, "I always vote Conservative because I think we do, like, really need to pay more attention to the environment, and like, the trees and stuff. You know, like environmental conservatation." I almost wept.
Now, don't even get me started on colonialism.
Now, and let me make this clear, I'm not suggesting in any way that being non-partisan is necessarily bad. In fact, I think it's far preferable to being blindly partisan. What I am suggesting is that we should practice safe voting. Like safe sex, safe schooling, safe driving, safe traveling, safe anything, this requires at least some preparation and thought about where you'd like to go or what you'd like to do (or society to go, in this case) and a comparison of the alternate paths available for getting there. It requires that you do something in advance. But I think that those partisan folks are just as guilty as the einie-meenie-miynie-moers of practicing unsafe voting. How likely is it that a Chretien Liberal's view of an ideal society will necessarily be served by electing Martin, who's quite a different shade of red. NDPers on the East Coast who were big McDonough fans probably got quite a kick-in-the-pants surprise when Layton took over, what with his whole techno-urban focus. That is, if they were paying any attention. Which, I'd argue, most of them probably weren't (not even in Newfoundland, where, what with their new-found oil wealth, they finally have something better to do than bitch about Federal politics. Unlike me, I know, sadder than a Newfie).
I have a point, I swear, and this is it: most people care far more that they vote than who they vote for because that way they can feel like good little democratic citizens and not have to think abut anything to do with governance, the shape of our society, civil society, infrastructure, poverty, world affairs, peace, war, terror, famine, human rights, anything for another 4 years. That is, many citizens in democratic nations vote purely for the lovely feeling it induces that you no longer bear any responsibility for the ills of our society or world. Why? Because that's all up to the GOVERNMENT, and you did your part by putting an X on a piece of paper to help make that government. Ditto paying taxes. And combined, these ridiculously small gestures excise our guilt and responsibility so we can consume as much as we can possibly wear, carry, or fit in our mouths, buy shoes made in sweatshops, support deforestation in the world's last remaining rainforests with every McLunch we buy, throw out endless electronics containing toxic heavy metals that will end up poisoning the water somewhere you're very glad you weren't born (because dumping them is illegal here, silly), and spending a fortune on shit you don't need while still looking scornfully at the guy who asks you for change because if the government hasn't done something about him yet, he must deserve poverty.
OTSS right? We just don't mention that the S that stands for survive should read S over 9/10E because it's survival on the back of nine-tenths (at least) of the world's population, the working class, the poor, the hungry, the entire southern hemisphere (except Australia, another place the Brits did a remarkable job extinguishing non-White people) and BECAUSE YOUR WAY OF LIFE DEPENDS ON THEM NEVER GETTING WHAT YOU HAVE, YOU OWE THEM.
If they had what you have, they'd never make sneakers, and you'd be the barefoot one. If that sixteen year old whose single-parent family was struggling to survive didn't flip your McWich for her $6 buck an hour to help her mom keep food on the table, you'd be the hungry one. For their to be someone available to do the shit you don't want to, there has to be someone with less options than you, fewer choices and less distance between themselves and survival. By choosing a government and paying a pittance in taxes, you do not excise your responsibility to all those on whom your lifestyle depends. For every action there is a consequence, and you must take responsibility for every action you choose. If you buy sneakers that were made in a sweatshop, you choose to indebt yourself to those tiny fingers that worked for almost nothing to make them for you.
Yes, voting is important, we've learned that lesson, but government does not exist to keep us all from taking responsibility for our own actions and the choices we make. Honestly, right now, the world is so driven by consumerism and corporatism that all governments can really do anymore is follow in their wake and try to pick up what pieces they can to mould some sort of society out of the broken bits of lives our destructive habits leave behind. The people "beneath" you are essentially your employees. They are poorer than you because they can't make a lot of money trying to produce things cheap enough for you to consume en masse. They work for you because it's their work that allows your way of life to continue. The myth of the liberal individual is just that. We don't "make it on our own." We require the labour of thousands.
If there really is a god, and a jesus, and all that shit, then there really will be a rapture, and if so, please let them take every sweatshop labourer, every janitor, every minimum wage earner, every over-seas manufacturer who works for pennies so we can finally understand what it would be like to have to make it on our own, so we would stop believing that that's what we actually do, because nothing could be farther from the truth. Take them all off to heaven or shangra-la and leave us here in our piles of mass-produced filth to figure out how to live together for once, now that we've had to admit we need each other.
A girl said to me the other day, "I always vote Conservative because I think we do, like, really need to pay more attention to the environment, and like, the trees and stuff. You know, like environmental conservatation." I almost wept.
Now, don't even get me started on colonialism.