hlatus

So tonight I made the nightly stop at Epoch and because I finished my last book I started on the new one. I was reading Al Franken's "The Truth (with jokes)" which I must say was a good book. Most political writings tend to be very dry which cause people to turn away from them, Al Franken is first a comedian, second a political commentator. You may be familiar with his work with Saturday Night Live in the mid 90's. This last book was a general assault on the Bush administration from a very Democratic point of view. Although I don't quite believe the democrats are too different from the Republicans, Al Franken holds on to a thought of hope that if the Democrats held the office that the country would dramatically improve. I, on the other hand, believe that in the end the faces of the Democrats and the Republicans are still the faces of Capitalism and Consumerism. I did enjoy the book very much and I love Al Franken's optimism and general message of hope while constantly criticizing the current administration and the right-wing media. We all know that sometimes people make lies (Al Franken's book before "The Truth" was "Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them") and Al Franken has a beautifully done 20 PAGES of sources, references, and bibliography in the back of his book as well as footnotes strewn all throughout. Thumbs up Al Franken.

Anyhow, the book I started on today has sat on my bookshelf for a good number of years without so much as a peep through it. It's entitled "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl. I read the first 50 pages of the book as is my nightly ritual at Epoch and then realized I had to pee and with much hesitation knew that it was time to put the book down and go home. Anyhow, the book is a first hand account of the German concentration camps, not from the stand point of attrocity, but from the stand point of the psychology of the prisoners. Frankl was one of these prisoners and his experiences in Auschwitz and other concentration camps led him to birth "Logotherapy" which is a form of Existential Analysis. The first 50 pages sucked me in and after I finally dog-eared the page I was on, I realized that I hadn't just been holding for the last 5 minutes but probably for the last half hour to an hour. Anyways, it got me thinking about existence and existentialism and I realized that people are all searching for primarily one thing and one thing only: A sole reason to live. Unfortunately I hear so many people in my age group as well as older and younger age groups say that they simply don't care about anything anymore. In fact, just the other day I met with a friend I hadn't seen in over a year and a half and she was telling me that she had quit smoking but yesterday realized that she just didn't care anymore. I questioned this and she said that she simply doesn't have a reason to care. It seems so many people are disillusioned with everyday life that they simply stop caring and instead of being fully human become an apathetic shell... Frankl called it a simple corpse although he had it worse than about 95% of the American population. What has caused people to stop caring?!?

Tonight I walked into a gas station to get gas and cigarettes on my way to Epoch. The customer in front of me was very irate and the clerk was nowhere to be seen. A little ways off a couple stood there apparently waiting on something but it didn't seem like they were in line. After seeing how irate the customer was, the girl in the couple went over towards the bathroom and said some things to the clerk who was apparently in the bathroom. It seemed that the clerk was digging for a first aid kid and bandaids for the girl as I guess she had been injured some how. The irate customer in front of me bitched and complained to the clerk as another customer came in saying the gas pump didn't work and that she had been in there three times already... she was obviously mad. The customer in front of me kept saying "I have somewhere to be." The clerk tried to be as kind as possible in the given situation which was admirable. The customer in front of me asked for fifteen dollars of gas and left for the pump. The clerk counted the money and realized that she had put in ten dollars instead of fifteen... she opened the drawer, counted out the money again and found she had been handed forteen. At this time I was at the register and I offered her a one dollar bill to go towards the dollar missing of the fifteen. She thanked me and smiled. This in itself is a treat... knowing that you can make someone smile in the most stressful of situations. I asked for Kamel Reds and she said she didn't have any and apologized and I told her it was no big worry as I browsed the cigarettes behind the counter. In the end I just got my gas and said I'd probably be back for the cigarettes. The customer who had been before me barged in and claimed that the pump didn't work and she demanded her fifteen dollars back. The clerk kindly told her that she had given her forteen dollars and that I had supplied the one to make the difference and the bitch of a customer left in a storm. I then went out to the car and filled the tank which cost five dollars less than I had paid as I've grown accustomed to over-paying to make sure the tank does indeed get full, partially why I told the clerk I'd be back. I walked back in and she was sorting out the mess from refunds, voids, and the irate customer. I browsed the cigarettes again as she handed me my five dollars back and selected a pack, Camel Turkish Royals (they have a hint of chocolate ) and made small talk with the clerk. She said she had just came in at 10 and had to be there until 7 am. I told her that I hoped she had a better night and left. She seemed happier when I left than when I first walked in. That just showed me that even the simplest kind gesture can make such a difference in somebody's mood and potentially their thoughts on life. She might have had thoughts to quit her job which might have been the only thing supporting her and her potential family, just my general kindness might have caused her to remember that she had a reason to be there and a reason to exist and carry on.

Often times when I meet somebody and they ask my political views and I try to explain anarchism to the best of my ability the first question out of their mouths is "What about the justice system? How will criminals be dealt with." I try to answer it the best I can but most the time I can't quite explain how I feel on the subject. What guides criminals? What causes somebody to act out "criminally"... steal, loot, rape, kill even? I'm willing to bet that the common reason is fear. Fear that bills won't get paid that month unless they steal something they can sell or loot some store, fear that no girl in their right mind would care enough to share a bed with them so they rape somebody, fear that somebody won't accept them or that they may not be "tough enough" so they go out and kill somebody. In an anarchist society I commonly believe that we will MAKE our reasons for living, not based on bills getting paid or lack of sex or acceptance, but simply on what we LIKE and are moved to do. The very things that drive us in life to do everything. I believe every person has the ability to have compassion for one another as though everybody was their brother or their sister as we are all one in the same species. With compassion comes more compassion, without compassion you have fear. We are all living and breathing, all of us have the same essential DNA marking us as human, and ALL of us have the same life energy flowing through our bodies... most people call this energy souls. In an anarchist society, compassion, not fear, will exist through this realization thus abolishing most crimes.

So why do we not care anymore? Have we abandoned our hopes and our dreams because we feel like they are impossible and we are scared of inacceptance? Let's come out of this apathy and re-realize our dreams and our purposes in life... re-realize the things that we are passionate about, re-realize that we all have dreams, and re-realize that WE can make ANYTHING happen. Let's stand together to fight apathy, greed, and corruption. Let's unite not as a country, a continent, or a world, but as HUMANS to win back our lives and our emotions! Let's unite to win back our PLANET! And let's unite to win back our very HUMANITY! What we do now in the present will determine our future as a species... let's do what we can so we can still be here in a hundred years.
Without each other we have nothing at all.