Showing posts with label empathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label empathy. Show all posts

Thursday, May 17, 2012

If Helpers Fell From The Sky

We are living in strange times. This is an empirical fact. For confirmation go to Google images and turn safe search off. Type in anything. Note the results. One of the things that makes it all strange is the underlying value system of our current milieu. Late capitalism dictates that anyone can succeed. The missing second part to that dictum is that anyone can succeed, but not everyone. One person’s success is another’s failure, financially. Late capitalism’s sine qua non is that it necessarily produces inequality: poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental health crises. We know this. The people who have the power to change things clearly aren’t interested in changing it, and the people who might desire change are by and large too busy to be able to do much about it.

Once in a while though, in a synchronous tingle through the matrix, a movement happens; the miraculous. A group of people crystallize who are able to navigate each other and make an effort to help, to make up for where our system fails. They volunteer their time and energy and are willing to do what many are not, to navigate the world with less fear, to be open to anyone, to live with less, to make a difference. To make a fucking effort.

I am not one of those people. I walked away, I didn’t have it in me. I got rattled after the Zuccotti Park eviction. Ken Canning on the other hand has been living at Harbourside Park for seven fucking months. I complain about the drafts in my apartment.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

this is a movement of compassion.


- thenextstep709
Older Posts Home