The activists' anxiety... a big mistake
Many years ago I was very enthusiastic about the social and ecological struggles on some issues that seemed very important to me. I was an impetuous activist and my everyday life was filled with meetings, voluntary work and ceaseless explorations about our worst global problems.
Being a cultural creator, my contribution was on the way of culture... It was an intense constant production of “meanings”: articles, films, art and propaganda. And it was very fast: everyday my hands drawing, painting, writing, filming. There was no time to stop, there was a world to save.
I rapidly designed this flyer to the worldwide campaign against biotech corporations and genetically modified crops
I thought that maybe the intellectual nature of my work could save me from the worst consequences of the power conflicts. I was greatly deluded.
Evidently, to be an activist is something risky everywhere, because you are attacking the subjective and/or objective spaces of powerful people. But to carry that endeavor in Latin America is a very dangerous thing from which you could easily not survive.
Fortunately I survived (many friends couldn't), and had the opportunity to grow and understand more wisely the nature of the world, now far from the war mentality that normally blinds every person who welcomes that lifestyle of struggle, dismissing the importance of a life of understanding.
My attitude now is quieter and slower, and that's a beautiful instrument to understand deeply the social problems. But my freedom from the anxiety of the “activism” is not a blinding feeling. I still realize how bad is the human situation and am still concerned with our worst social diseases... but now I don't intoxicate myself with the fanatic stupid belief that those things will or must change.
“Must” is a word with an awesome capacity to delude people. Most often that belief is a wall that makes impossible to understand clearly our reality, and hence many "fighters” stay defending the wrong side of the field... completely unaware of their big mistakes.
Life is what it is, what every constituent makes of it. Life is not what we want it to be.
That's why I give much more importance to the profound reflections on our issues than to the action on them.
Don't you care about the real danger to be defending the wrong values?
Don't you care about the possibility to be strengthening injustices in this world?
Of course, I've seen that the ideological blindness and fanaticism have deeper causes, rooted in the psychic wounds of the individuals. But the beginning of healing is exactly this will to accept our own fallibility, to open the door to our psychic humbleness. Only then you will understand why this slow rhythm of thinking and deciding is so important to our lives.
PS. However, please don't think that I've posted this flyer against biotechnological corporations to show that I've changed my mind about that matter... When you calm your pretensions, it's still perfectly possible that some opinions of your past prove themselves even more accurate, under the light of a good careful reflection.
In some future post I will show the process of that artwork.
You can share my writings on your social networks and websites; but be so kind as to inform my authorship, as well as the source of the text with a link to my blog.
~Spirajn Senpretend~
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Hi @spirajn
Wow, friend I feel very identified with you, I know what you say until recently, my wife and I were constantly fighting against a criminal regime, which you and I know very well. but to the point of putting our lives at risk just to defend the idea of "freedom" I still participate but in a very, very passive way, from the university I talk to my students and explain the difference between "being" and "it must be"
I agree. I think it's very important to understand that martyrdom is the worst way to change our reality. From my philosophical standpoint, life is the most greatest value and we should protect it as long as we can.
Of course, there are situations where our lives are so oppressed that the line dividing death from survival gets very thin, and then we could shift in values: dignity, rage and opposition could become in those moments more important than life itself (because anyway it is threatened, no matter what we do).
But most of the time, our lives are not like that. We can be prudent, wise and careful, and we should.
Our very haste blinds us, and can make us to perform (or support) real injustices at our part of the field. It's terrible when people against any injustice start committing injustices of their own; but sadly it's very common too.
Fanaticism brings unfounded confrontations, wars and struggles.
We must become aware of the problems of humanity. Change our perspective of how to face it. Consciousness is always going to be the most important weapon we can count on.
The sum of all individual consciousnesses will set us free in the future.
I loved this. I agree: it's a matter of consciousness. However I don't expect that the masses will become conscious about all these things in the future. As some humans give great value to consciousness and existential responsibility, others keep all their ideals and dogmas as the most important values in their lives.
Maybe we should rely a little more on group consciousness. I invite you to read about the "effect of the hundredth monkey". It is very interesting.
@spirajn, Yes, life of Activist surrounds with many problems because they fight those aspects which are problem for the society and inturn it exposes them directly to these problems.
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Yes, my friend, and the power is a very dangerous thing. People fighting against people of power start to gather power themselves, and soon we could see how they are performing the same terrible things they confronted at first.
The world of power conflicts is a very dirty world, and it's very difficult to remain clean. Even if you succeed at that, maybe you will become the target of everyone's hate... like Eddard Stark in Game of Thrones.
That's true and in my opinion that's why this world is called as World Of Duality.
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weku huh, that thing still around ? i havent seen it listed anywhere but i guess its a platform too although not very much identity as when i checked it just looked like an exact clone of steemit, but without the power of condenser to it ..
anyways ... instead of my usual page-long retorts i could summarize this fast :
the universe is built on friction, if we all revert to goodspeak it will topple over to one side and we'll all roll off into the void ...
much preferred over regurgitated prefab opinion just to make sure you don't collide
sorry for the shorty but i really need to recharge some or i'll never get to the replies of both people who think i insulted them and the others i outright did ...
Hello friend. Well, I'll try to answer the things I understood.
Yes, WeKu still exists, and it thrives. It's similar to Steemit because, as long as I know, it is a fork of this project. But their aims are very interesting. I like that there are many proposals, with different perspectives about the best features for a platform of cryptoblogging. All this is very new, and it is important to test, to improve, criticize and invent several ways.
And about the friction, yes, I agree that it's important for our societies to welcome the debate, to be open to new opinions and perspectives. I hate so much the actual hysteria of political correctness.
But I also think that people must be responsible about the accuracy of their ideas and the consequences they produce. That's why I wrote about the need to slow our thinking, to be careful and reject every kind of ideological anxiety.
You were selected for curation support in a HoboDAO contest!
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I wanted to say thank you for this gesture, @hobo.media, despite the terrible lateness. Sorry for that. I wish that my conditions could give to my participation here more stability.
I am taking a walk through your blog and I find so many interesting things. I'll try to remain attentive.
My best wishes.
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The terrible question of "must be" and "real being" is that the former corresponds to ideals and desires, while the latter results from the harsh reality.
This phrase summarizes for me everything I have had to learn to accept, sometimes in a not very pleasant way. Of course, the ideal should never be renounced, but we must take it as a "Horizon", an imaginary line that we can never reach in the "Reality", but which serves to guide our actions on the world and allows us to locate ourselves .
Sorry for the late reply. I like very much that you could understand at depth my reflections.
I see that our lives have given to us the same answers about these issues... and we have opened our minds to the shifting of perspectives.
You got the point: the difference between desires and facts. Only when we are willing to see the world beyond our prejudices, we can understand the big importance of that distinction.
Hoping the best for you, my friend. !tip
I must confess that this learning took me a few years and several moments of pain, but (as some old people in my land say) men have to be like the steel that is forged with fire and blows before being tempered.
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Is the corn eating itself?
Lol, you gave me the only laugh of my day. I'm very sorry for my lateness, I couldn't answer at the proper moment, and later I forgot these comments.
Well, its mouth is hidden by the leafs, but it has no arms. Maybe the leafs around its head give the appearance of arms doing something, eating, but that wasn't on purpose. I just wanted to express some kind of frenetic madness in this monster that destroys everything that surrounds it.
Yeah. I wanted to know if it was on purpose :)
Ditto on sry for being late. Maybe one day we will be rewarded enough to stay current.
Great reflection friend @spirajn, a reflection that can only be made by a "survivor" of this type of struggle, when I say "survivor" I do not mean just the fact of being here physically, I mean the fact of transcending another type of struggle, there are those who remain lifelong bound defending views, ideologies etc. That although they are reasonable, what it brings is wear and frustration.
As you said, there are things that may not change and we must find a way to live with them, helping as much as possible to other people to cope with such situations.
I wish the best for you friend.
@fucho80
Thank you, my friend, and sorry for my late response.
Oh yes, I was thinking recently that, the terrible destiny of dogmatism and blindness of the people who never allow themselves a bit of doubt, a healthy rational examination on their own beliefs. It's not a good way to live our only life, our only opportunity.
Fortunately I could grow beyond that, and now I'm helping other people to do the same.