20140904.0743

I have been thinking back a bit on places I have lived, and it occurs to me that I have not lived in a great many of them. I have not had to move as much as many other people have, and many if not all of those moves have been largely supported by others, so that I have not had quite the trauma of relocation that others experience. I have been insulated from it, and I am grateful. How could I not be? I have been fortunate enough to enjoy stability and continuity because of it, and I value both of those things.

That I do may well be held against me. "The way things are" is a result of past and continuing oppression, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, and for me to benefit from it is for me to be complicit in that oppression. Many of my acquaintances would exhort me to throw off such structures--and they are not wrong, although they themselves remain enmeshed in them. (Several work for governmental agencies, federal and state, making themselves props for the legitimating structures of oppressive practices. As do I.) I have said before that I am in good company among hypocrites, and it remains true.

Still, I see no end to it and no meaningful means to bring about that end. Trying to extricate myself from the system requires more resources from the system than I currently command--or am likely to now or in the future. Even were I to be able to put every bit of money I earn to that end, it would not be enough--and I cannot, for I must eat and those who depend upon me must also eat, and the sacrifice of myself and those people would not do a damned thing to change matters, so that it is not even a question of service to the greater good.

If it sounds like resignation, it is wrong. It is not like resignation; it is resignation. It is the recognition that nothing available to me to do, and certainly nothing the consequences of which I am willing to suffer, will make a difference on anything more than the most minute of scales--and that what is efficacious on the micro level is deleterious to the macro. And I doubt that any of us can do any better. What would avail? Force? It will be met with greater force, and with glee. Boycotting? Who willingly forces their own children to go hungry for the sake of proving a point? (Stocking up beforehand solves nothing.) Going "off the grid?" How to get the land, seed, and supplies necessary to do so? How to maintain them? Unless to get the land and try to live off of it--but hope then not to have a cut get infected or a compound fracture happen. And even then, there are property taxes to consider...

Some will say I ought to spend my time thinking of solutions. Why they think I and others who make such remarks as I have have not, I do not know. That there may be no victory never occurs to them, and I have to wonder if it is true optimism or simply blindness...