How Did I Get Here?

I'm sort of in this contemplative space, so roll with me here. If you read my rant a couple days ago, you know that I'm frustrated with some of the nonsense going on with Steemit right now. And it seems to be pouring out in the rest of the world too. People abusing their power and being dicks is, of course, nothing new. Occasionally there's just a big wave of them I guess. People being dicks about who other people are, who they love, what they believe, how they raise their kids, and on and on. And let's not forget people being dicks to the earth.

Anyway, lest I get rolling on that train again, I'll change gears. These swells of assholery always leave me contemplative. How did we get like this? How did I get like this? How in the world can I hold my deepest belief that we are evolving perfectly and beautifully? Is there a way I can see the blessings here? Is it time to shift in a new direction? Is anything even "wrong"?

So I thought I'd share a little of my journey to here. It's something I always wonder about others. Utah Phillips, in one of his wonderful story songs, describes a conversation with his son where his son simply asks his dad, "how did you get like that?" Utah elaborates on his son's question, "How is it that you're so fundamentally alienated from the entire institutionalized structure of society?" It's an important question. And it relates to my above crisis because I often think the fact that I am also so "fundamentally alienated from the entire institutionalized structure of society" is part of the source of my grief. I just can't seem to follow orders and do what everyone else is doing. I can't ignore the shit I see.

I honestly can't say how or when it started. I guess it was gradual. I grew up in the baptist church, and my mom was pretty conservative in those days, essentially the opposite of a radical upbringing. We had upper middle class money for much of my childhood, most of it in suburbia in the south. At 13 we moved to Indianapolis, and while certainly no Mecca of open minded thinking, I did get real exposure to inner city life that I'd never known of before. I came into this world wired to be compassionate and loving, but I hadn't really seen much in the way of real suffering or dysfunction.

In Indianapolis I met 13 year old drug dealers, gang members, child prostitutes, serious drug addicts, lots of homeless people, and much more serious poverty than I'd seen before. I knew kids who weren't allowed in the house during the day. I knew people who had killed people. It was very eye opening. I saw their lives with compassion and committed pretty strongly to my liberal ideals.

Then I went to college at a small liberal arts college in rural Indiana. Very wealthy mostly. That was when I coined my catch phrase, "Nothing like being surrounded by fascists to turn you from a liberal to a radical." I was disturbed and disgusted by what I heard in most of my classes. It was an exceptionally heavy ordeal. I took a semester and went abroad mostly because I needed to get away and also because I had the travel bug. In Belize I met beautiful, kind, happy people. I also saw first hand the effects of he policies of the world bank and the International Monetary Fund. I was blown open by the contrast of love and kindness with imperialism and greed. I began to see how horribly broken the world really is.

The college years with the few other people at my school who weren't fascists.

Then I started having kids. Of course that's always a game changer. Now I just have that much more stake in what's happening in the world. I watch year after year as we continue to poison the planet. I watch greed and ignorance scale to new heights. Luckily I was blessed to find people willing to share native ceremony and spiritual teachings with me. That has given me some sense of respite, some way to find a hope for the future.

And so I find myself here having witnessed suffering, having experienced the total failure of capitalism to value anything of any kind of importance, having brought children into this mess, having witnessed the poisoning of water, people, planet, and at the same time having witnessed so much pure love and joy and grace and peace and beauty. I can't unsee what I've seen. I can't unknow what I know. And I know well that my life has been relatively smooth, easy, and blessed. I haven't experienced near the challenge that most of the rest of the world has. And so the abuse of power, even something so small as some asshole whale deciding he knows what is and isn't valuable information or some other asshole whale deciding that fiction stories don't deserve large chunks of the reward pool just pisses me the fuck off. Abuse of power makes me ill. And once again all I can do is stand by and watch and scream with my one tiny voice.