Well I Wish I Was An Angry Fuck Response

I Posted a Comment On my friend Gemma King's blog:
Gempires: http://gempires.blogspot.com

She was having "feelosophical" moment. Pondering the passion of art, activism and life: "all the people with something to say, are those who are bitterly angry at the world, those who have things to hate... what makes me angry? I'm not an activist. I'd like to say I'm politically motivated, that I have the good of society and the world at heart, but I could never pretend... I am human-centred, or rather, me-centred, and I sometimes wish I was different, but I have discovered that I am not. And what makes me tick, what I think about, what I'm interested in, are other humans... "I decided long ago to start with me, and as far as I can see 'me' is a lifelong project, one that will never be perfect, one that will always need work, and world change just sort of happens as a result of that. My own happiness is at the forefront of my life. Excuse me if I'm a self-centred twat, but this is how I see things, and this is how I will remain..."

I said:

Exactly Gem. For me too - thats where its at. A compassion for others drives it. Yet the compassion for others is perhaps derived from the thank fuck "its-not-happening-to-me" thing - and I wanna stop it from ever happening to me. Refugees in Detention centres for example. I will never meet these guys [well I have met some - and interviewed others] - but I can fully feel their humanity - they are like me. The fact that they are people, REAL people; and not some distant other thing I cannot touch...

I have kids and think what it would be like - if it were me inside there after fleeing some fleeable crap - with my kids, my family etc. I feeeeeel for those guys in detention. And I feel for me - because in a way, I AM them...

But I am free [free from what i dunno]. Free from the mental insanity of those places, and the treatment. Free from the threat of indefinite detention, of constant surveillance; shitty food; ridicule from the guards and dimia etc...

We may want to think we're different, and hide in a credit-driven apathy - but we are all intrinsically connected - by sheer atoms and matter and chemicals etc at the very base level.

So MY happiness is his happiness etc. And His unhappiness is mine.

Thats what motivates me. If I don't act in a moment of compassion. We are all a little bit deader...

[Hmmm - i guess i write better poems than micro-philosophical essays]

al
WHO AM I TO DISAGREE - POEM

4:04 PM
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antipoet said...

Hmmm - I might just add to that:

On "activism". Your blog entry is an act of dissidence. You don't need to break people out of detention or wave a placard or get hit by police or sing we shall overfuckingcome to be active... Your mere presence on the net here is a form of activism.

artists - writers, poets, musicians, visualists etc [are bloggers artists?] are perhaps the best activists around. They consciously or unconsiously tell us stuff about the world - good, bad or indifferent. They point out the foibles of culture, make notes towards change. Little active pieces of dreaming a different world...

DING! the activist is in you contribting to an anti-apathy.

I rckon its in us all. That desire for the end of suffering.

YOU, my good friend, are an activist - and yeah you can't possibly change the worlds systems of oppression and free ALL the repressive expression - but you can make notes on it.

You are angry by default. And active by definition.