The Price...

2002-12-27 - 7:49 a.m.

So, that last entry was kinda "blah." Ah well. Maybe I'll write sparklingly well in this one. Honestly, I have no idea why you all are still here.

Anyway, a big issue for me right now is trying to reconcile the badness in the world.

I like to think I'm a fairly decent guy. I have my slip-ups, and I think that sometimes I'm a little too self-involved, or a little too frightened to do the right thing. I know for a fact that I am capable of doing malicious things for no other reason than to watch the fall-out, and that I've probably hurt my fair share of people in my life.

But, I do know that I care about others, that I have done good things and that I have a desire to do more good things. I think I love others truly and wholly, and that I, in my fashion, can appreciate beauty, both inside and out. Other people have told me I'm a good person, and since none of us are good judges of ourselves all the time, I have to assume that those people are right.

So, I have somewhat established myself as a good person, right? Good.

I have a suspicion that, deep down, good people like to believe that everyone else is good, too. I know that I do. I am amazed and thrown whenever someone does something that isn't "good." It goes beyond being hurt, I feel betrayed. Deeply betrayed. Even if it's not me who suffers, I take it as a personal assault. It isn't that I've been hurt, but it's that, when people show consistent, evil behaviour they are threatening my world view. Anyone who's ever argued with a creationist can understand how violently most of us reject changes to our world view.

And that rambling prologue brings me to where I am now, reading "Stupid White Men," because, whenever I read something like this, I find myself having to figure out whether people are willfully ignorant or are evil.

Some excerpts:

In Bush's government:

The Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, has received about $72,000 in campaign cash from Philip Morris, not to mention some trips to promote free trade.

The Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, has received tons of cash from the automotive industry, as well as having voted against fuel efficiency legislation for SUVs.

Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, has helped pave the way for large corporate farms to edge out smaller, family-owned farms in California, and has strong connections to the genetically engineered food lobbies.

In the first few months, among about 4 pages of other offences, Bush has managed to everything from cut millions to schools, libraries, and community health care programs, to stopping legislation that would make water safe to drink, lower pollution, or conserve energy.

Reading this book is like a series of gut-punches, a reminder that these people aren't just looking out for their own personal interests; some of their decisions are completely baffling from a "hey, sometimes helping people is nice" perspective. It starts to seem less like a series of backwoods, right-wing dogma and more like a conspiracy.

Which is what it probably is, which absolutely sucks because no one wants to live in a world run by a conspiracy. The X-Files was a neat show, but that doesn't mean I want all these wheels and cogs and gears churning out plots in real life.

And it makes life seem much more bleak than I want it to be: I work for low pay, at a job that's unsatisfying on many levels, and am bombarded by crappy television and incomplete or slanted news reports not because of someone's mistake, but because these are the best ways to keep a very small number of people very, very rich.

There's more: to keep people very, very rich we are destroying the environment, starving millions of people, depriving billions of people from a standard of living that seems very basic to us, supporting the slaughter of innocents, fomenting unrest and conflict...

And knowing all this leaves me with some options (very few): Pretend it isn't happening or that I have no choice, and stop thinking about it so that I can live in relative peace and eek out what existence I can, OR, stop fueling this machine and do what I can to stop it, which would, if I must be honest about it, effectively put me on the Outside: working in customer service helps the machine, buying things helps the machine, staying quiet helps the machine. I would be forced far outside what is considered normal. OR I must live in this frustrating in-between place, where I make compromises (I need shoes and can't afford them, so I must buy this pair made by someone in Guatamala who makes about $2 a week. I have no way of knowing where this food came from: a local farm or a large corp?), knowing what I'm doing, where I do what little I can knowing it's barely a drop in the ocean, and where I do lazy things and feel guilty for it.

I don't want to forsake my conscience, or live in willful ignorance, so the first option is out. I don't want to live outside society: there's a lot in it that works for me, so option 2 is out...

And option 3, with its self-doubt, its constant questioning, its uncertainties and frustrations is what I'm left with.

Darn.

Cheers,

The Magus

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