I am not making excuses for myself. I am not sure there is anything to make excuses for, other than being an asshole, which I fully blame on neoliberalism and the assasination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan.
But here we go: when I write for serious, I do it here. Let's talk about how people die because of neoliberal policies. Let's talk about how that happens entirely too close to where I live, entirely too close to people I work with.
Do I have an excessive sense of social responsibility? Probably.
Anyway, here's what I'll say: I started this blog so that roughly ten people could be entertained by my Oaxaca misadventures, my ruthless judgments of others, and the weird things that I find. The titles are song lyrics! I videotape myself! Sometimes it has been a nice jump-off point for rewarding conversations about spirituality, food, relationships, haircuts, etc. with those 10 people that I emailed the URL to. Actually, less people than that. And for those of you who read these things and comment on them and make me feel less crazy or sometimes more crazy: I love you guys. Seriously. You are my support network.
Apparently, despite my precautions, this damn thing is searchable! So the world could, given the right Google keywords, find out that I am a big jerk! It's weird the things you will write when you think you are protected by the general anonymity of the internet, but I think it fits into what I was (unfortunately, kind of sarcastically) alluding to in my last post: living with a certain degree of privilege=anonymity. It allows you to deal with people who think just like you and look just like you and are too polite to tell you when you are wrong. This blog has been that space for me in a time when I have no other space like that in my life.
But maybe that's not right. Maybe I should've thought, "Well I am putting this on the damn internet so I should think twice about hating nixtamal and Mexican supermarkets and other things people love." But I didn't.
So my conclusion is this: I will continue to be angry and yeah, probably, I will continue to make unreasonable demands of social responsibility from the sundry groups that I run into, both on the ground here in Mexico, and via newspapers. But I also commit to being less flippant about it, because if there's one thing that pisses me off about yesterday's shitfestival, it's that no one could engage in a productive conversation because of defensiveness and ego.
And, as a good friend and I concluded this morning, social justice=check your ego at the door. I can commit to that.
3 comments:
It's really too bad that the internet is full of self-righteous boys who criticize your random personal thoughts to the point where you feel the need to censor yourself. Life is really hard, yo.
Also, it's really bothering me that I can't remember what song this title is from. I can hear the line in my head, but then I've got nothing.
Oh, wait! It's Counting Crows! Maybe life isn't so hard after all.
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