Was at my sister's and brother's-in-law for the New Year's Eve, watching some news before dinner. We had several emotional discussions about weighty subjects: the health care bill, economic systems, Constitutional rights (cops were being given licence to demand blood samples without consent for drunk drivers), the class divide, etc.
How depressing the world is. Everywhere I look, things are moving in the wrong direction. Chasing more fossil fuel fantasies, more war and imperialist foreign policy, more trampling of the Constitution in the name of security (read: fear), more favoring of business and wealth over the good of the people or the nation as a whole, more pollution and environmental wreckage, ever more hypnosis by iPhones and technology. They're pushing this new phone really hard, on every other commercial. The trance of distraction our society is in totally precludes any meaningful resistance, or God help us, revolution against the wrongness.
I don't know how to keep positive anymore. I don't watch or read the news but I know it's happening, it hangs in the very air. I don't see any positive outcomes. We're speeding towards a nightmare, a cliff with the various names of neo-Fascism, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Cultural Collapse, Die Off. I just want to run off to the mountains while everything falls to pieces. Let the idiotic masses have their shiny techno-dreams and neon hallucinations. Even the people who care don't do anything against it-- and most don't care. There's no help for us anymore. There's no hope.
At least I'm going to take a bit of a break from the internets. In honor of the new year, so to speak. I need to reset my mind, return myself to some thinking about choices I need to make in my life. I have to break this techno-trance which I hate so much but have been slipping into. I need to reassess what's important, what's meaningful, and how I'm going to get by in this madness we call American Civilization.
I know what you write of!! I've been in a bit of a funk lately too. Everywhere I look in the world seems to find corruption and disharmony. It is disheartening, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteLike you said you probably just need to take a break, from blogging, the internet, and perhaps computers entirely - maybe just a few days, or however long you need.
ReplyDeleteBut you should ask yourself: why do you blog? Why do you do this? Is there a goal?
You could always write about the things that bother you, about what you specifically think is wrong with the world. But then again, complaining about things in itself doesn't change anything. So it's important to not only identify the problems but also to propose some potential solutions, while keeping in mind that not everyone is going to agree with you.
I think the best weapon to fight these wrongs of the world is education (and not necessarily in a formal academic schooling sense, although that works to) - to continually educate yourself, read extensively, improve your critical thinking skills and powers of debate - because the more you know and the smarter you become, the more accurately you'll be able to see the whole big picture, to identify these problems (and their historical context) and come up with some practical solutions.
"I don't watch or read the news but I know it's happening"
ReplyDeleteThe best thing I have done in the past couple years is ignore "the news". I'm not uninformed; I subscribe to a lot of magazines, the headlines are out there, like Maoist speakers in every neighborhood, but I resist. "Not listening!" Still....it was a valuable exercise when I had no car radio for over two years. I learned that my own thoughts were much more interesting.
I try to be aware, but not obsessed. I have a community of friends (including this virtual one) which keeps me alert and more or less active.