I woke up today exhausted from the last several days of work…
Last night I was so sore I could barely move… I couldn’t even sleep
I was so sore…
I had today off and I finally feel good enough to write…
and I ask myself, how did I get here?
I have a job I completely hate and with no way to escape it, outside
of homelessness and starvation…I cannot retire and I cannot go back…
I was born… and in that birth presented certain possibilities…
I am now 60 and those possibilities have all been exhausted…
looking back, I see choices, paths taken and not taken…
but in looking at my choices, I see something else…
I see those choices not really being my choice, but being the
possibilities allowed by society… I could have gone to collage,
but that is another choice given by society… as I have followed my life,
I followed the choices offered by society… I became a good citizen,
I worked a job, paid my taxes, got married, we own a couple of condo’s
and a house…we, my wife and I are solidly middle class home owners…
and at every step, I followed the course laid out by society… I didn’t question it,
I didn’t fight it, I simply followed the path allowed by society…
the only exception was my anarchist years, that several years where I didn’t do
what society told me that which was my role, my expectations, my obligations, my
responsibility…….
otherwise, I went to school, I got a job, I married… the well worn path
of adulthood… the path traversed by men since the beginning of time…
but today, today after I have no longer any chance to change my possibilities,
I question that path taken since the beginning of time… I question my path…
I question and I doubt and that is the beginning of wisdom……
I am trying to think of a suitable analogy for what is only a feeling in
my soul……….
society is like a play…… the fixtures and furniture are the same for
everyone… but as the play goes on, the actors change… we have a continuous
play going on but every generation a new cast takes over the play…
but the play itself, the plot remains the same and the actors have
to navigate a plot that has been going on for thousands of years…….
Goethe entered the play in in 1749 and left it in 1832…
He was a writer, a scientist, a poet but his roles in life,
varied as few people’s life ever varied, but he still existed within
the allowed possibilities of the play he was in……
His actions and writings never outgrew his societal
possibilities… the closes he came was with Faust…
Goethe stayed well within the boundaries of what is possible
for his society… as we are now well within the greater possibilities
of our “modern” society… but is playing roles, really exhaust our
possibilities… as long as I engage in what society wants, I am left
alone, as long as I fulfill the myths and prejudices and biases of
my society, be a good citizen, work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone,
create profits, increase our “Gross domestic product” and thereby
make America great… again… but really is that all that is possible?
to follow roles preestablished for us by society and
and approved by and for society……… we must find our
possibilities within the confines of social approved roles…
we cannot disrupt or disagree or challenge…
(recall the greatest crime of humans since the bible…insubordination…
we were tossed out of paradise for insubordination and in my union job,
I can only be fired for stealing and… yep, insubordination)
it is demanded of us that we comply… as children, listen to your mother or else,
listen to your teachers or else, listen to your boss or else……. listen to society or else…
we are trained since birth to comply to the demands of others
that is in fact the point of a good deal of our “education” as children…
we are forced to submit to the demands of others and we
are forced to play certain, given roles of society………
we can become doctors and lawyers and policemen and
actors and mechanics and society says, it is good, because
we can, society needs those roles played by people…
but don’t think outside of any roles we, society, doesn’t approve of…
I see people walking around with t-shirts and sweats saying,
one word, Obey……. and that is certainly the watchword of society,
Obey, follow traditions, never go outside of the possibilities we have
laid out for you………
and if you Obey, we might reward you with titles and a few bucks
and the gratitude of society… and I proclaim them to be lies, falsehoods,
traps…….to spend 40 years working for the sole benefit of those who own
the means of production is wasting our lives to benefit those own these things…
I engaged in the possibility of work and have spent 43 years working for corporations,
and I got nothing out of it… those were wasted years spent improving the wealth of
those who owned the corporations……. but I was a good citizen, I was a capital American
who believed in the lies of the possibilities they offered…those possibilities
are a shame meant to entrap one into spending a life working and benefiting those
who own the means of production………in all those years of working, did I improve
my possibilities? no, did I have any hope to become something besides a worker?
No, the lies I was told as a child was meant to entrap me into the role of worker
and producer and consumer… it had nothing to offer me but lies… the possibilities
of childhood is a lie…comply to the demands of a society in which you are nothing
more then cannon fodder… that was my possibility to fulfill…… and engaging in
any other role given by society still leads me back to becoming cannon fodder…
be it a baseball player or a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber… each role leads one
to having no possibilities outside of what is allowed by the society…… we cannot become
anything more then what the society wants to keep itself in business and then the
question arises……… have we reached the stage where we no longer need society
to entrap us into roles designed to keep us into slavery…………
the great possibilities of my youth are simply lies designed to keep me
in line and engage only as a worker, consumer, producer… we really only
see a few possibilities when understood by the lies of society and its need
to fool people into thinking that society/tradition is the only possible path
to us to engage with in regards to how we live our lives…… to find our possibilities
let us begin with the lies of the ism’s and ideologies we are taught as children
which are meant to enforce the lies of a society only interested in maintaining
itself and does not have any care about you… live or die… that is irrelevant
in our modern society because you individually don’t matter… you are
just another cog in the machine and as long as the machine continues
to work, you don’t matter…as long as the machine makes its owners
money, you don’t matter……. you are irrelevant and disposable…
I just don’t recall that possibility of being when I was growing up…
but that is the only being we have as “moderns” until we discover
our real possibilities, our real purpose for being…and the beginning is
to learn to exists without ism’s and ideologies that are meant to
place you within society needs… not yours…
what will make you special?
understanding what your real possibilities are…
outside of the lies of an society that couldn’t care less about you……
Kropotkin