Lucid Living
April 2012
205 posts
March 2012
203 posts
“Sometimes, the hand that feeds you is also holding you captive.”
—Ben Irvine on Internet Dead End (via nevver)
“Nonviolence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but because it excludes mere transient self-interest, even political, from its consideration. In a very really sense, he [or she] who practices nonviolent resistance must commit himself [or herself] not to the defense of his [or her] own interests or even those of a particular group: he [or she] must commit himself [or herself] to the defense of objective truth and right and above all of [humanity]. His [or her] aims then not simply to “prevail” or to prove that he [or she] is right and the adversary wrong, or to make the adversary give in and yield what is demanded.”
—Thomas Merton (via azspot)
“This is one of the complicated paradoxes of demanding justice from the very state that is so often the object of our critique—in order to demand justice we end up conferring legitimacy on the state whose ability to use violence we try to delegitimize. We may want to see George Zimmerman’s arrest, prosecution, and, probably, imprisonment, not only because some of us, in our more sadistic moments, would like to see him suffer (and thereby collapse suffering into our imagination of what justice should look like), but also because some of us likely believe it will be a way to register our collective rejection of the white supremacist imperatives that make a person like Trayvon Martin killable. Yet, in appealing to the power of the police to arrest, and to the power of the courts to sentence Zimmerman, we also make heard a message that we might otherwise hesitate to send: namely, that we believe that these institutions—the police, the courts, the law—are institutions capable of delivering the justice we want. The irony here is especially high in light of the track record of the Sanford Police Department that would, ostensibly be doing the arresting we demand. To what extent are we willing to appeal to a white supremacist police force as if it were capable of delivering justice for Trayvon? And also, why is this just about justice for Trayvon?”
—Justice for Trayvon… but how? (via azspot)
“The logical part of my brain, if that’s the right name for the part, wonders how much paranoia exists in our society when a GATED COMMUNITY still feels compelled to have a NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH group. How does one give “sensitivity training” to someone who is overly sensitive? Do we have to have an absurd thick-skin training on top of the sensitivity training? There’s always been, in my opinion, an unhealthy element of Puritan paranoid hatred running through certain geographic areas of the country, and unfortunately this mind-set is only expanding and self-justifying with the War On Drugs, The War on Terror, Gun-Control, Zero-Tolerance policies permeating the culture. It seems like the culture is getting more paranoid and less tolerant as the rural proportion of the population continues to fall. I’m not suggesting that rural areas are less paranoid, I’m suggesting that people are becoming more knee-jerk and less prone to “counting to ten” as our lifestyles have become faster-paced. The desire for instant gratification is becoming a demand which is a horrible way to live.”
—Russ 2000 (via azspot)
