I have ebbed and flowed through these feelings you describe so many times in the last few years. The feeling bad as a way of not ignoring “the prison”, but also the paralyzing feeling of how terrible it all is on a grand scale—what are we (what am I, one measly person) even supposed to do?? And mutual aid is surely part of the answer. I find some joy sprouting dripped in grief when I help feed my community and actually talk to my neighbors. Hope in doing something anyway amidst the devastation. Collective tears and anger with my community rather than sobbing while doomscrolling alone. I find this unlearning of our conditioning, the attempt to “kill the cop in [my] own head” so to speak, and the reconditioning of revolution and collectivity means I never feel like I am quite doing enough. 12% of adults (19% of children!) in Durham are still food insecure and Palestinians still starve trying to make it through each day without their limbs being torn off by US-made Israeli bombs and my host family in Loma del Tigre still lives through constant oil and gas related contamination as the jungle they call home reaches crisis points and it goes on and on and on. Sometimes I think maybe its best to let the madness take hold. Doesn’t to try to allow ourselves to stay sane and function “normally” render us complicit? More questions rather than answers it always seems.
I love this so much, all of it resonates with me. Accepting the madness while functioning in society seems to be the hardest part, though. But if I could reference Karmel, in some aspects nothing is different now than before. The world's always been in crisis. We may be more informed of it now, but there is always genocide, land dispossession, and war (of varying scale, of course). In some ways, the fact that we know so much is the problem itself. Mutual aid is a great response, and yet we feel insignificant because it doesn't address the broader suffering. So are we responsible and culpable if we know about what's out there? Because that seems like too much of a burden to bear.
Good reminder that Foucault's ideas are comprehensible one day, impenetrable the next. For joy, just go to a Qawwali performance. Problem solved!
I have ebbed and flowed through these feelings you describe so many times in the last few years. The feeling bad as a way of not ignoring “the prison”, but also the paralyzing feeling of how terrible it all is on a grand scale—what are we (what am I, one measly person) even supposed to do?? And mutual aid is surely part of the answer. I find some joy sprouting dripped in grief when I help feed my community and actually talk to my neighbors. Hope in doing something anyway amidst the devastation. Collective tears and anger with my community rather than sobbing while doomscrolling alone. I find this unlearning of our conditioning, the attempt to “kill the cop in [my] own head” so to speak, and the reconditioning of revolution and collectivity means I never feel like I am quite doing enough. 12% of adults (19% of children!) in Durham are still food insecure and Palestinians still starve trying to make it through each day without their limbs being torn off by US-made Israeli bombs and my host family in Loma del Tigre still lives through constant oil and gas related contamination as the jungle they call home reaches crisis points and it goes on and on and on. Sometimes I think maybe its best to let the madness take hold. Doesn’t to try to allow ourselves to stay sane and function “normally” render us complicit? More questions rather than answers it always seems.
I love this so much, all of it resonates with me. Accepting the madness while functioning in society seems to be the hardest part, though. But if I could reference Karmel, in some aspects nothing is different now than before. The world's always been in crisis. We may be more informed of it now, but there is always genocide, land dispossession, and war (of varying scale, of course). In some ways, the fact that we know so much is the problem itself. Mutual aid is a great response, and yet we feel insignificant because it doesn't address the broader suffering. So are we responsible and culpable if we know about what's out there? Because that seems like too much of a burden to bear.