waging nonviolence
Is it me, or was a perfectly decent anti-weapons protest undermined by PETA-style objectivisation of women? (The protest dates from 2007, but I was blissfully unaware of it then.)
I don't think you can be a pacifist without fighting oppression on all fronts. I certainly don't think you can use one kind of oppression to oppose another kind. It just doesn't work.
And yet, although that's nothing but logical, when I start to demand this kind of integrity, I begin to doubt myself. Ever since I've been a heretic, I've been free floating, relying on intuition and habit, because - and my family, of course, still believe this - 'you can't be moral without god'. And that's been okay, because I've been in a kind of suspended animation: sixth-form, university. Although, with different morals, I would have spent my free time differently, the foundation was sort of beyond morals, more kinda predestined.
(Although this is not strictly true. I have spent a lot of time at uni without any discernible work ethic. Not through laziness, but through an inability to prioritise academic work above the people I love, and the community. Through general frustration at the sense of being in an ivory tower.)
But now the last year of all that's about to dawn, and afterwards, I've got to set the framework for myself. And I need to do that with honesty and integrity, but I'm the queen of the tall tale. I don't think "soul-searching" quite pins it -- imagine me, in the dusty recesses of my brain or my skeleton, looking for my soul, I know I left it here somewhere, but I haven't seen it for years. But a considerable degree of self-examination and realism is still required. And I'm a little scared to look the beast in the eye, if I'm honest.
Somewhere in the Bible it says, What greater love is there than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends?
I always thought, what a load of tripe. Death - the heroic sacrifice - is easy to make, only needs to be made once. But it dosen't say "death", it says "lay down your life". A life of service. But how? How - to return to that first question - especially here, especially now - to fight any kind of oppression without oppressing someone else along the way?
There, smack bang back at the existential crisis that was breaking me throughout Edinburgh; that made me walk into shops, have a minor panic attack and run back out. Except somehow, since then, there's been a small moment of grace. Or a huge one, I'm not sure. Enough of one to make me say, I'm going to stay here, I'm going to find the solution here. I'm not going to walk right off this planet at the enormity of the task; the task which is, after all, myself. I'm going to keep working at transformation in the hope, perhaps even the belief, that it is possible.
I won't say "it can't hurt to try", because the problem was - is - that it can. But I am going to try. And to hope.
I don't think you can be a pacifist without fighting oppression on all fronts. I certainly don't think you can use one kind of oppression to oppose another kind. It just doesn't work.
And yet, although that's nothing but logical, when I start to demand this kind of integrity, I begin to doubt myself. Ever since I've been a heretic, I've been free floating, relying on intuition and habit, because - and my family, of course, still believe this - 'you can't be moral without god'. And that's been okay, because I've been in a kind of suspended animation: sixth-form, university. Although, with different morals, I would have spent my free time differently, the foundation was sort of beyond morals, more kinda predestined.
(Although this is not strictly true. I have spent a lot of time at uni without any discernible work ethic. Not through laziness, but through an inability to prioritise academic work above the people I love, and the community. Through general frustration at the sense of being in an ivory tower.)
But now the last year of all that's about to dawn, and afterwards, I've got to set the framework for myself. And I need to do that with honesty and integrity, but I'm the queen of the tall tale. I don't think "soul-searching" quite pins it -- imagine me, in the dusty recesses of my brain or my skeleton, looking for my soul, I know I left it here somewhere, but I haven't seen it for years. But a considerable degree of self-examination and realism is still required. And I'm a little scared to look the beast in the eye, if I'm honest.
Somewhere in the Bible it says, What greater love is there than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends?
I always thought, what a load of tripe. Death - the heroic sacrifice - is easy to make, only needs to be made once. But it dosen't say "death", it says "lay down your life". A life of service. But how? How - to return to that first question - especially here, especially now - to fight any kind of oppression without oppressing someone else along the way?
There, smack bang back at the existential crisis that was breaking me throughout Edinburgh; that made me walk into shops, have a minor panic attack and run back out. Except somehow, since then, there's been a small moment of grace. Or a huge one, I'm not sure. Enough of one to make me say, I'm going to stay here, I'm going to find the solution here. I'm not going to walk right off this planet at the enormity of the task; the task which is, after all, myself. I'm going to keep working at transformation in the hope, perhaps even the belief, that it is possible.
I won't say "it can't hurt to try", because the problem was - is - that it can. But I am going to try. And to hope.