past thoughts: on the state of the world

i wrote this over a year ago, i don't know if i posted it, but if i did, no one seemed to want to initiate any discourse about it... considering the state of the world, maybe it will matter just a little more.. maybe not
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So I drove around, getting lost in the fives and nines..... blinded by the lights of the greens and grays.

I revisited the bad parts of my past. Not to hurt, but to remind myself of how bad it could be. Of where I am now. In the process of this minor venture I found a secluded area in Venice/Culver City that was hidden from the rest of the sprawl. A stretch of projects and broken homes. The destitute, the walking dead, undocumented workers, fatherless children, many with no homes to hide from the refuge of the world.

I wonder how many people have seen it? I wonder how much people would actually care if they did?

So close to an affluent part of this sub-culture.

Unseen by most, only those who seek shelter from the ravages of life elsewhere.

I find it so fascinating that you can walk less than a mile and see such massive wealth and extreme poverty. Everyone has been inundated by the dualities of class, yet don’t seem care…. Unless it relates to them.

And if you say that’s not true, prove me wrong. What have you, I, or we as a culture done to change the perpetuation of poverty?

When are we not coveting the material?

We even covet people to point where we have discarded the value of life and made it a commodity.

How much of your life is consumed by empty things?

It’s too late to ignore the fact that we are falling into a recession….. Maybe even a depression… We ignore the fact that this country spends more of it’s resources fighting wars and containing convicted felons than educating it’s youth. Why are millions of Americans are uninsured? Why are social programs becoming non-existent?

We act as if we are a classless culture, and yet we struggle. Struggle to have a future of stability, for ourselves and our children. It’s a continual struggle that we don’t discuss. We don’t even discuss the currency we incur, or the costs at which we sacrifice to incur them.

I wonder why we see it all and do nothing? Why we are consumed with other peoples problems when yet we can’t even fix ourselves? Or better yet, why are so many individuals apathetic to any other needs but their own?

I understand that you have bills to pay, work to manage, a life to live. But honestly, what are you really working towards? What are you really working for?

Why place yourself and your children in institutions that don’t truly care about your development, autonomy, or well-being? To work for something that does nothing to contribute to anything but the perpetuation of hegemonic ideologies at the expense of critical thought?

And if you see that you must acknowledge or at least pose the question, “what do we as a society value? What do you as an individual strive for, and how do you demonstrate those strivings?”

We all contribute to apart of history, no matter how insignificant.

So what legacy do we leave with ourselves? With our future?

Do we do what‘s easy, or do we do something different?

And if we so, where do we begin?

September 8, 2007