Do I say the same things over and over again? Sometimes I feel like I can’t let go of these questions and so I keep analytically pounding on them from different angles searching for some new insight. After I wrote that last post, I realized that I wrote an essay about very similar things last year and forgot about it. I wrote it after reading the book Outlaws of America by my new friend Dan Berger. Have you read it? I really recommend it – it’s a history of the Weather Underground that incorporates a lot of analysis and assessment about how their politics are relevant today. Here’s a cut-down version of my essay, basically just a slightly less humble take on the stuff I wrote about in my last post: Notes on Militancy, Privilege, and Guilt.
Also I re-read that old dialogue on cruciferous that I linked to before – have you read those posts? They’re pure gold. I want us all to keep engaging in these questions, especially in this new political climate where everyone’s talking about how Obama’s going to solve the financial crisis by creating more wealth and resources through free market capitalism. Don’t believe the hype! Our current financial system is always going to mean that some people have wealth because other people (most people) are poor. I’m still drawn to making strong statements about this all the time because I worry about how easy it is for all of us to be seduced into complacency when we’re constantly told that the only tactic to avoid isolated dire poverty is to constantly accumulate and hoard wealth, and compelled by media and pop culture to compare our personal financial situations to people who are rich (even if we’re told that rich is middle class) rather than the vast majority of the world’s population who have next to nothing.
tyrone, i totally agree. i feel like the same questions and ideas circulate in my head over and over. sometimes i’ve forgotten conclusions i had come to already, but more often it’s because i haven’t landed on any conclusive thoughts, at all. this weekend i also was re-reading the conversation from last summer on cruciferous, and wish there was a way to re-engage everyone who was plugged into it to keep talking! people were really opening up and saying some hard and true stuff- stuff that maybe we collectively need to keep circulating, even without conclusions, so we don’t fall into that dangerous complacency you’re writing about. i know i dont comment on here much at all, but inspired by the comment on your last post i’m going to try and engage more. know that you have a readership out here that very much wants you to keep thinking and keep writing, even if it does feel redundant!
Thanks Jessie! I really hope you contribute more!
Jessie,
What is circulating in your head? What questions and answers are you forgetting and figuring out again? I just read tyrone’s essay-Notes on Militancy, Privilege, and Guilt, and I was ruffled. I am asking myself, “jesus, are you going to take this seriously?” – I mean, I’m sure jesus took it all seriously, what I don’t know is if I do. The weather under ground sounds scary and crazy. It is scary and crazy to hear about examples of people that really just did not hesitate. Complacency is circulating in my head. How to recognize complacency. For me, complacency is hazy, and often even sneaky. Tell me what you think. – f.
add on- when I said “take this seriously” I did not mean to say I think what tyrone was saying was a joke, rather, I see how serious and real what the weather underground was doing, and I wonder if I could ever measure up and meet that reality.