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The new futility...

  
  

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Goodness Gracious Meme
22:00 / 23.10.02
"On the other hand, though, I want to make the personal more political. I'm studying to be a teacher. I want to be a father someday (at least if the world doesn't go too much to hell before then). The thought of someday being able to make smaller but hopefully positive impacts on individuals and their approach to the world around them makes me feel a little less hopeless about my inability to change the world at large."

Just reread and noticed this. And want to say that I think by doing this kind of thing, a la Pepsi's point above, you *are* changing the world. This put me in mind of the kind of work i do , which is all about listening in ways that hopefully create empowering spaces. I see people empowering themselves all around me, and contribute actively to this process in my work. And the more empowered, unafraid people there are in the world, the more energy and push for change there'll be.

So I feel like I *am* contributing to this process directly. And that's fantastic personally, and, although I do fall prey to futility from time to time, undermines that feeling of hopelessness pretty effectively. Working in this way empowers me.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
07:59 / 24.10.02
Yeah. Make yourself the example (as I believe that Jesus fella used to say). Doesn't mean you can't do bigger stuff too, though.

And (which a lot of people forget) doing the bigger stuff does NOT let you off the hook for being "nice" at a personal level.
 
 
.
09:12 / 24.10.02
Is this sense of futility (which undeniably exists) necessarily a bad thing?

What I mean by that is the sense of futility seems to be grounded in the failure of old collective ideological systems to "change the world". So perhaps now is the perfect time for recognising the flaws of these old ideologies, and for each of us to decide what our own individual paths should be. OK, so I'm never going to be able to have any influence on a world-wide scale, but was I ever? It strikes me that the illusion that I was ever empowered to make such large scale changes was a product of the archaic socialist idea of "revolution".

What I'm getting at is that this sense of futility is based on a swing from collectivism to individualism. As we all become disillusioned and cynical with the failure of global and collective... um... "meaning" (ie. mass-ideologies) so we must all look to ourselves to find individual (or local) meaning. Individualism doesn't necessarily involve being some sort of self-centred Anne Rand-ist, it's just the realisation that on a basic level the leaders aren't going to do anything great for us, but that each of individually can do great things (even if most people don't).
 
 
.
09:16 / 24.10.02
Or in other words: Yes, I might be impotent when it comes to changing the world, but I'm the most powerful person when it comes to changing my life. And if everyone made an effort to change their individual lives, then the world would be a better place.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:47 / 24.10.02
Yeah. Make yourself the example (as I believe that Jesus fella used to say). Doesn't mean you can't do bigger stuff too, though.

Absolutely, don't think I said that it did. Was thinking more in terms of attacking/fighting this futility, whatever it is; rather than expecting myself to jump straight from isolation and apathy to major works, working instead on empowerment, in whatever fashion, on whatever scale, makes me much more able to contemplate and do 'bigger' things, from a new base of power with...

And (which a lot of people forget) doing the bigger stuff does NOT let you off the hook for being "nice" at a personal level.

V. good point.
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
18:05 / 24.10.02
How many people can you empower? There are over six billion people. Pretty much all of them have large parts of their lives controlled by other people, by governments and 'people on high' whether they have elected them or not. There can only be so many policy makers, idea generators and powermongers amongst us. So what can we do?

Just one man in power in Westminster, The Whitehouse or Brussels can have a thousand times as much power as half a million demonstrators marching through the cities.

There is no balance, no fair allocation and distribution of either power or knowledge, anywhere. There never has been. Does anyone here think they have more power and influence outside their social and professional sphere than they did ten, twenty years ago? Some have influence in journalism, politics or publishing maybe. But only a few.

In what some consider the most economically, socially and technologically developed countries in the world, there are a tiny number of people who have the power to make changes. All that the majority can do is to choose every five years which political party they hate the least, or under whose administration they have become richest under. And alot don't even do that. Last year was the lowest election turn out since World War One. This is happening across the developed world. no one cares anymore. Has the public finally given up?

You are welcome to accuse me of not being alive long enough to know otherwise, but I have never felt powerful, able to change the world or even start looking at it in a different way.

But what can I do about it? :-|

What if, tommorrow I became a better person. How many people do I meet in my lifetime? a few hundred? I don't know. The number of people I meet and could influence to be better people? Miniscule. But then, the number of people they meet... It could in theory grow logarithmically. But take even the most highly influential 'good' people of today. Hugely famous, like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama. Ignoring the conventional political and social changes they have been part of, how many individuals have they changed? Maybe into the high hundreds, even the low thousands between them? Again, unmesurable. But still small, still just a scratch on the surface of that six-billion soul boiling pot.

I apologise for the extreme pessimism of the post :-( Reading this thread just bought it all out. Boo hoo.
 
 
Baz Auckland
18:35 / 24.10.02
Start small, and think of how many events in history have hinged on the actions of everyone. Churchill didnt lead England to victory, the millions of soldiers, workers, scientists, and PEOPLE did it. Some individuals have shaped history, but they couldnt have done it without the support and actions of the other 99%.

Voter turnout is dropping and I'm starting to think that this is a good thing, as long as people channel this feeling of futility towards politics into ignoring the government and making the changes themselves. I have a picture of people just ignoring the government, and the government eventually just going away.

We don't need any policy makers or even people telling us what to do. We just need people taking responsibility and control away from elected leaders and realising that they have the power and no one else.

(sorry. I found this anarchist newspaper at school yesterday and...)
 
 
Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes
19:20 / 25.10.02
To feel futile about the current power structure is understandable, both democracy and capitalism are in their final phase. We are going through the death throws of these ideologies. This means that the worst aspects of both are coming to the fore. In a society obsessed by the new, it is ironical that the past is our greatest guide. Look at the oppression of the predominant religious structure to differing views throughout the middle ages. If we are moving to a state of statelessness then it is the feudalistic ideogram that may re-emerge.

The overclass/underclass (why is only one of these names a spelling mistake?) is the only constant in history. The Twentieth century may have seen some redistribution in the power of both groups, but there is a return to a more noticeable division. A widening of the underclass and the concentration of the overclass is becoming more apparent.
Just because a large majority of the underclass is more affluent, does not alter the fact that both classes are becoming more defined. The power structures may be changing, but division in terms of numbers are not.
 
 
Van Plague?
00:31 / 26.10.02
Social responsibility, really paying attention to what's going on in the world might be likened to having a chronic liar for a friend. You know that everything they say is possibly a blatant lie, most likely a twisting of the truth and it often feels pointless to bother trying to weed out the truth from the lies all the time. Sometimes your friend's lies are funny, sometimes his lies are more telling than The Truth, sometimes you are up to the challenge of deciphering his wacky codes - the labyrinth of facts and fictions, and sometimes you find this friend very exhausting to be around. As a matter of fact, the fun and the challenge wears off, there is no way of truly breaking his codes and you grow weary of listening to him. He begins to suck the energy out of you. You still care for this friend, you want to be there for him, but the very thought of ringing him up, hell- even thinking of him- wears you out.

So this is where I’m at. I want to care about society; I really DO care about society. I worry about society and wish to save it, protect it, watch it grow into something more beautiful, but I really REALLY can't watch the news anymore. I am tired of the lies. I know they are constantly there. I know that sometimes they need to be there, and that mostly they serve a very small minority's interests. It grows irrelevant to me. Why should I participate in this ridiculous puppet show where THEY tell us what's what and we nod and nod and drool and go along with our micro-lives believing what we are told to believe? It's silly and it takes energy away from relationships that I CAN effectively play with, that I have something to offer back.

So, TV is bad, Governments are bad, independent media - also bad, just maybe to a lesser degree. I am tired of all your agendas.

Give me a good author to play with and I will give that author my energy, my careful consideration. I will learn something valuable, and
I will make the author's work live. I am only interested in organisms I can trust or can battle face to face. Everyone else.. just shut up.

I've had enough. I hope I can go lick my wounds, heal my jaded worldview, then come back and face the disgusting fucking mess that is modern society. And maybe, just maybe, I will be better armed, better prepared to face it and figure out what the hell I can do to change it.

I know this: staring at it, letting it seep into my everyday, is wearing me down, keeping me from healing myself from the last depression, constantly reminding me of my impotence and making me feel smaller than I need feel, smaller than I really am.

I'm not saying this is the right thing to do. It is probably completely morally challenged. But right now I need ideas carefully wrapped in personalities, in fiction, in symbolism. I need to move back to the intuitive, abandon the critical/ rational, and move back to a safe place.. for now.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
07:56 / 26.10.02
Wow, great thread. Lots of interesting points. I definitely can relate to the "feeling of futility;" it is depressing when you look back on 1999 as a "gentler, more innocent time."

I, too was filled with optimism when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid ended - don't laugh, (ok, laugh if you want, I guess) but that stupid Jesus Jones song, "Right Here, Right Now" still gives me chills when I hear the bit, "I've seen the decade end when it seemed the world could change in the blink of an eye..." because cheesily enough that nicely summed up some of the euphoria I felt at the time.

Similarly, I remember the joy I felt the day Clinton was elected and how wonderful the prospect of the Reagan/Bush years FINALLY ending was. (Little did I know!)

Little did I know.

But looking back, I think a lot of that euphoria was actually false. Everything that is happening now, the seeds for all of this were sown a long time ago. Back then, Bin Laden was our friend, remember. Back then the U.S. began its sanctions in Iraq. Yeah, everything felt good at the time, but I think that feel-good feeling was mainly in the Western parts of the world. Shit was still going down everyplace else, it was just nicely tucked outside our line of vision.

I find everything that's happening right now - "the war against terrorism," the impending and inevitable war against Iraq, the Bali bombing, the hostages in Moscow, etc. terribly depressing and frightening, but I actually think what's happening is some sort of huge shift in world ideology/power structure something. There are big changes going down, I think, and I don't know if those changes are going to be good or bad.

Shortly after September 11, I had a feeling in my heart that said, "get the hell out of the U.S., because things are only going to get worse." Now a year later, and having lived outside of the U.S. for most of the year, I have to say that so far, it seems that gut feeling of mine was right. Sometimes I feel I took the easy way out, but it just made me so mad - that patriot act, "people need to watch what they do and watch what they say," propaganda EVERYWHERE that I basically thought, fuck this and screw you, I'm not sticking around for this shit. Have I copped out? Maybe, but I still actually think I have more freedom to express myself here in London than I do in the U.S. at the moment.

But, anyway. I think we ALL have a responsibility to do SOMETHING. I took part in the "stop the war" march. We all know it's fucking futile. We all know the war's gonna happen anyway. But at least I've gone out and said, "I disagree, this isn't my war, don't fight it in my name." You have to make your voice heard. You have to say something. You can't just lie back and say nothing.

But how do we make protesting and changing the world effective? Hmm... dunno. But I'm convinced it IS possible.
 
  

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