So you're about to tap out, move to Montana and live the rest of your life saying, "fuck it," to the rest of the world. I ask you not to take that move just yet. We have people in the United States living various definitions of an impoverished life. Maybe they don't make more than minimum wage, maybe they're on food stamps, maybe they go to a job they don't care about just to keep up with their neighbors, maybe they're just existentially, God-awfully tired of having to give a shit about anything around them. There is still something in this world worth your time, and that's you. You as not just "you," but as humanity.
Let me just put this out there. We need a fascist leader. And not in the Mussolini vein; a nice fascist. A fascist for peace and love. What Machiavelli was talking about, but the love and not the fear.We need devotion to the cause of giving a shit about what happens to each other. We need some good, old-fashioned fanatics whose goal it is to make the world more livable for everyone.We should all be fascistic about the survival of our own species as a whole, not about our own survival. When we look at what some countries, including our own, are doing to shore up resources, to research ersatz remedies to dying forms of sustenance and power, we are doing it at the direct detriment to other groups of people. The new world order shouldn't be to establish economic dominance in this world, it should be to maintain a level of basic survival for all. No one is asking anyone to give up their tv, their phone, their mansion, but maybe you should. Maybe you should think about how your purchase of an H3 Hummer is actually impacting more than just your image and driving comfort. Maybe there is some sort of middle ground between driving a tank and riding a bike to work.
So maybe that last paragraph goes overboard, and if you're still reading, it is most definitely satirical. When we do study history, we see that forcing others into doing what we want doesn't work. So what does work to get us to work together toward a positive? How do we get people to buy into the goal of survival as a species? How do we forget about the dividing lines we have drawn around race, religion, culture, language, sports, et al? Or do we? Can we use dividing lines to our advantage? Do we NEED to get tons of plastic out of our oceans? Do we NEED to worry about the treatment of cows on feedlots? Do we NEED to ensure people have equal access to healthcare and education? The answer to these questions is in all of our histories, on all levels, from the personal to the national to the global.
We 'd like to think that we can impose our own modern systems and understandings on the chain of historical events that brought us to this moment. We can, up to a degree, but we can't rationalize each event as though it was occurring in a vacuum of time and space. The past, in all of its interpretations and instances, led us to where we are now. And today is also tomorrow. The action and inaction in present-day will be there when we wake up ten years from now. We see this effect on our own bodies and in our own psyches. We can explain away how something is not our fault, how our blame is lessened by these intervening factors, but then again, we only seem to suspend our belief in free will when it would have meant we made the "wrong" choice in a situation. Sometimes we can't see where choices will leave us though, because we're not clairvoyant. But we can learn from past events. So we should.
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