General Malaise

[morgan_dhu]

It's getting so hard to read the papers. Not that there's ever been all that much to cheer about in the news, but it's getting so damned ire-raising and depressing all at once.

If it's not war, torture, pestilence, famine, disaster and ruin, or the callous disregard of human rights around the globe, it's lying, cheating and general asshattery everywhere you look. What the fuck are we doing to ourselves, our neighbours, our fellow lifeforms, our one and only distressed and wheezing planet? Are there enough people out there who have a clue about at least some of this to make a difference? Or are we doomed to follow the bloody standards and beating drums of the people who want power and the accumulation of things more than peace, more than justice, more than compassion, more than clean air and water and soil? Is there any point in trying any more?

And yet, and yet... how do I live with the fact that I'm one of the relatively few who has some measure of choice in all this? I have the privilege - at least for now - to say "I don't want to think about all this stuff, I'll just sit back and enjoy the comforts of a middle-class western life," unlike those who wake up every day to the bombs and the guns and all the other threats to life and liberty and health and safety.

I think I'll go and howl.

Comments

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

It may be a case of burn-out. Though I don't really see a way to get "away from it" for a while without totally ignoring all news/blogs/sources of information for this. Unless you were to go into hermitage... Or join the Peace Corps and focus on the specific problems for which you were signed up for. (My plan.)

Another point, that you may have to consider it all a work in progress. That the changes you work for are so momentous that they will not be fully completed in your lifetime. Change cannot be forced, nor expected to happen instantaneously - the latter being something that (Western) society is beginning to expect from all things in life. That you have to take a very long term look on society, like natural evolution versus genetically modified crops... The first is something you can track back, can slowly manipulate toward specific traits that you want - the second isn't something (really) that you can play with and expect what you want because there may be unforeseen consequences.