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Sep. 23rd, 2016 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogSeeing a Facebook meme that was a picture of three African-American men, one a lawer, one a police officer, and one a criminal defendant (all presumably; no information about them in provided) with text about how, in America, your color doesn't determine your future, your choices do, I immediately thought of this:
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." -Karl Marx
I couldn't respond there as Facebook only showed it to me because a friend 'liked' it in a group I'm not in, but I wrote about it on my own 'wall'.
I talked to my therapist yesterday about how angry and sad and futile I feel when I read about current events, or see this kind of stuff on Facebook. Often, these days, I just withdraw from it. Maybe the fact that I just had a really nice 25 mile ride through early Fall woods has me in a good enough mood to want to try again, at least for a little while. I'm not sure if it was just the political and economic theory I learned when I was in Syracuse, or if it was that combined with a general inability to cope leading to unmanageable anxiety and depression that I was dealing with while learning that theory. I used to want to make the system better, in some small way. I still do, really, but it's hard for me to believe it's possible anymore.
That said, it also makes me think that, maybe, at least for now, what I need to do is get involved in making things better in concrete ways in my local area. Volunteering more. Organizing (whatever exactly that is; I'm not sure I really know.) When thinking about theory, I sometimes think of another quote by Marx in that context: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Maybe I need to read more David Harvey. Would he keep working if he didn't think it was possible to change things? Yet he and others been working for decades, and here we are. I don't know.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." -Karl Marx
I couldn't respond there as Facebook only showed it to me because a friend 'liked' it in a group I'm not in, but I wrote about it on my own 'wall'.
I talked to my therapist yesterday about how angry and sad and futile I feel when I read about current events, or see this kind of stuff on Facebook. Often, these days, I just withdraw from it. Maybe the fact that I just had a really nice 25 mile ride through early Fall woods has me in a good enough mood to want to try again, at least for a little while. I'm not sure if it was just the political and economic theory I learned when I was in Syracuse, or if it was that combined with a general inability to cope leading to unmanageable anxiety and depression that I was dealing with while learning that theory. I used to want to make the system better, in some small way. I still do, really, but it's hard for me to believe it's possible anymore.
That said, it also makes me think that, maybe, at least for now, what I need to do is get involved in making things better in concrete ways in my local area. Volunteering more. Organizing (whatever exactly that is; I'm not sure I really know.) When thinking about theory, I sometimes think of another quote by Marx in that context: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Maybe I need to read more David Harvey. Would he keep working if he didn't think it was possible to change things? Yet he and others been working for decades, and here we are. I don't know.
