How frustrated are you with the state of the world presently?

More seriously, when one's learned-then-developed axiomatic expectations grind up against everything else -- but those axiomatic expectations remain (and are perhaps strengthened) -- then that might be part of the answer right there.

It is easy to be frustrated, because it is difficult for our individual desires, wishes or actions to be reflected back to us from what we are encouraged to view as "the world" - which is to say, the world that is on display in newspapers, movies and on television.

A child will be frustrated when its desires are thwarted in the context of the immediate world around it - the ice cream cone it doesn't get to eat. That's real frustration.

A little thought will tell you that no one person is likely to change "the world" that Ned is referring to. Even when we join massive combinations and associations, such as political parties and million-member organizations, it is hard for one's desires to be fullfilled.

The only POV that seems to work for me is to keep in sight the dilution of my individual force as it moves successively more remote from my immediate presence. Providing an example to others is still the most powerful thing we can do. I can affect myself and the people around me very profoundly by my actions.

I am certain "the world" responds to my actions, too, but never in any way I will be able to sense directly. Still, it's the best I can do.

Most of the volunteering I do is within the community instead of globally oriented. I am pretty bad at activism, mostly because I only do anything when I think the *rest* of my life is going pretty well, and because I've really only started to develop a social conscience since coming to college and being smacked in the face with the vision of how privileged I am. There's so much to get a handle on globally that I do not think I will be able to change anything really, and I'm not sure if my evaluations of what would be good to change are well-informed enough that I SHOULD work that hard for it. I might just screw it up. Sometimes I get fatalistic when I don't have to, and I think that's a flaw - better to be too idealistic than too apathetic. So I mostly just try to educate myself & other people and to write letters to representatives or think more about my consumption habits and stuff like that.

And sometimes frustration makes me religious. It's inspiring to have a hope of a more perfect world that we can move towards, personally and socially; even if we don't get there, it's the vision that's important, and the obligation it gives me to try to help achieve it. I think that obligation has to do with changing the world AND changing myself, so sometimes it comforts me to think that maybe the only way or the best way I can change the world is by changing myself. And the Christian story is beautiful on many symbolic levels to me, so I use it at different times and in different ways to make the world seem more beautiful.

What's the quote about how the mind is not in the world, the world is in the mind or somesuch?

I think everyone's the king of their kingdom and they will run into problems for themselves, or more usually create problems for others, if they step outside that. "Make sure that in your own area of effect you're doing your best, leading by example". The problem with this lofty idea is that a lot of people frequently throw their weight around outside of their areas of effect and it's difficult to watch it from the sidelines whilst you yourself are playing by 'the rules'. It depends on how much you think evil exists in your world - is it evil or just good intentions with you on the wrong end of the moral relavitist's demented swing-o-meter? Every single time the question comes up it's fresh and new and needs you to decide that case on it's merits (and for what it's worth if you think there is little evil you're being too intellectual and cold and if you think there is a large amount of evil then you're being too animalistic and reactionary). It's nature's way of laughing at you. It's tiring, it's heartbreaking and leads to the kind of fatigue thats evident in what you wrote. Sometimes I look out of the window and think "For fuck's sake, just Stop Spinning! Give us a break, give us a chance to just get hold of things for a few minutes at least!". Then ding ding the bell rings, the gloves are on and it's round infinity on Boxing Ring Earth.

These days there are that many injustices that you can read about that it's impossible to keep up. Life is insultingly short and as individuals we're getting smaller and less important which is incredibly cruel seeing as we're becoming more self-aware at the same time. It's hard to be self-aware and not get tired - it's an extra effort on your part just being self-aware, like you're constantly bench-pressing each issue that comes your way.

I've absolutely no idea what the answer is. Take 200 mushrooms, do some actual bench-pressing, paint a picture, get into S&M clubs, get into Slayer. . . I'm a meditation man myself as you can probably tell from this rambling hippy crap.

This is all wrapped up, of course, with our capacity to express qualified unease at the ease with which we face these things. Reluctantly, I've come to the conclusion that It's all a balance between balancing and falling off the highwire, particularly when the anchor is, in reality, flying at half mast. The history of slavery, the failure of the reparations negotiations, and the disappointing last series of Buffy have made me take the provocative stand that I am now taking. For I am convinced that, apart of course from action, only inaction remains a constant in human affairs. And I'm really quite concerned that nobody has raised this, although it's perfectly understandable too, in a number of ways too complex and inter-related to narrate right at this moment, which is, as I've said, one of a kind, pretty much like any other.

1) there is no victory, no "progress", no final reckoning. frustration comes from expecting a favorable resolution and not finding one - but there IS NEVER ANY RESOLUTION.
2) that being the case, the world is still clearly animated by moral struggles, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc. the best one can do is to choose a side and lead by example, thus giving yourself a role to play and a part to fulfill. so while I don't expect suffering to ever be alleviated ("existence is suffering" so sayeth the Buddha), I still feel obliged to alleviate the suffering that I can - that is the role that will give me the most satisfaction, that will make my life liveable. This is how I try to approach all moral dilemmas - rather than throw my hands up and say "our side will never win", I find solace in knowing that I am participating in a tradition (a "side") that I am proud to be a part of.

so know, I don't feel very frustrated with the state of the world. It is what it is, and I do my best to position myself in relation to it.

a) The World's political and economic systems actively kill tens of millions of people every year, and leave hundreds of millions more living lives defined by misery, pain or emptiness. And every action that doesn't confront that situation, that doesn't try to make it change, is an act of collaboration with the status quo.

b) In a few years I'll disappear into an eternity of nothing. There is no final judgement, there is no objective morality. People who make sacrifices expecting later rewards are robbing themselves unwittingly.

It'd be boringly predictable to say the truth lies somewhere between, but today I feel like both of those positions are untenable (tomorrow I might not). They both represent extremes of anxiety, anyway.

There are obvious truths: the World can be changed by people, it happens all the time. Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, not through forces of nature but by the actions of people working together. In the West what makes action harder is the absence of a Wall, the absence of Apartheid: we sense an all-pervading wrongness with the way people have to live but there are no tangible targets to gather against. Actions like the protests at G8 summits seem to me to be searches for that tangible enemy, but they're compromised by the fact that the enemy is your neighbour, your family, yourself, unless you focus yourself with the kind of single-mindedness that leads to Savonarolas or Pol Pots more often than benefactors of humanity. We've all seen too many of the historical roads to Hell and the good intentions that paved them.

And even as I say that I'm critiquing myself, wondering how much of this doubt is the result of conditioning, wondering how much religion or conformity has wormed its way into my unconscious against my will. How much slave morality. This post is fast turning into the conclusionless ramble that my life feels like.

A central dilemma then. Without organisation, we can achieve very little. But I've been involved with organisations, and there's something about them that isn't very open to doubt or uncertainty. Effective organisations, maybe effective people, don't much question themselves. By effective meaning effecting change. Sometimes I think human history is the story of the active, effective few inflicting discomfort or misery on the many in pursuit of goals that turn out to be misguided. Which is maybe a necessary condition of humanity.

If you care, maybe misanthropy is never far away. If you don't care, maybe you're hardly really alive. Maybe we're really eloquent excuse makers when it'd be better to be dumb trouble-makers. Maybe we'll get hit by a comet tomorrow.

Investigation continues.

x-post

". . . free college tuition, as the neoCONSERVATIVES are to making money from killing, keeping the top one percent happy, and misinterpreting the Bible."

do you ever get this thwarted