Just to get by . . .

I've been a little off these last couple of days. I am wondering about the world and how I will exist in it. I want to be more purposeful, less self flagellating, more hopeful.

The serial optimist is fading. I miss her, that part of myself that thought I could change the world. Will I just be the nelly girl until people forget?

Here's something i wrote one time. i don't know how true it is any more . . .

I am teetering dangerously on a fulcrum of my own construction. We have “sell out” on the right and “all-out activist” on the left. I have a hard time believing in that thing called balance so I feel I must either forge boldly ahead on the road to revolutionary martyrdom or acquiesce into middle class mediocrity.

As I ponder life after Spelman, I wonder how my politics will work in the real world. Is it not hypocritical to call myself a socialist if I’m actively participating in a capitalist economy? If I’m a vegetarian but I can’t afford to buy my vegetables where I know people were paid fairly for their labor, does it really matter? Can I really be down for “the revolution” if I’ve got a 9-5?

But of course, being down in college is relatively easy. You stage a few protests, conduct activist meetings, talk about how “problematic” US culture is, and scheme up grandiose plans to attack the “hegemonic interlocking systems of oppression” of capitalism, heterosexism, patriarchy, racism, ageism, ableism, etc. In the real world such talk is not common place, like minded individuals fewer still and the realities of those systems oppress more directly. No wonder most movements start with the students for we aren’t really apart of the system yet. We don’t have a job to loose or a mortgage to pay and we still feel invincible to the slings of the world. Or at least it used to be that way.

When I look at my generation now that’s not really what I see. I think for the most part we’ve bought into what you’ve told us. That what’s most important is an upper middle class lifestyle, a six figure salary, a wife or husband (gender appropriate of course), a kid or two, and a dream house in the ‘burbs. The media has played a huge role in constructing this American dream for us and by making leftist activists appear idyllically naive and fanatically unrealistic.

I’ve also noted a disturbing trend in the media, the co-option of words associated with revolutions and movements for more innocuous commercial commodities. Chevy’s new Cobalt car is “an American Revolution.” Maybeline is also offering a “revolution in color” in their new matte-mouse foundation. In a recent blockbuster ad a protest of late fees is squashed to the jubilation of customers by the unveiling of a sign that suggests that the company had already moved in that direction. People continue to talk about a “hip-hop movement” but in light of the difficulty the “leaders” (P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, etc.) have in articulating what that agenda is, there has been little in the way of social change. The watering down of these words belies their former political usefulness and is making it more difficult for those who believe in such things to be taken seriously. Consequently, revolution does not carry the same force it used to and a protest is little more than a joke. So what other forms of action are left for the Left?

It leaves me pondering my role and the seeming inevitability of the machine further crushing the will of those who dare to stand up to it. At this point it almost seems easier to sell out, to let Time Warner have the other 51% of my soul and get in while the gettingÂ’s good.

But the truth is thatÂ’s not who I am. As much as I would like to think I could become a nihilist, out to get mine, itÂ’s just not in me. Change is slow and apparently not always progressing forward. These set backs are par for the course and itÂ’s easy to forget that there is good in the world as well. If history has taught us nothing it is that every empire falls, and the ever declining dollar suggests this oneÂ’s on the way out. So it seems that I may be able to hold onto my idealism a little longer, that the powers that be may soon become the powers no more and an equitable world may be just around the corner.