I think I've spent the last 11 months detached. It was probably less than that, but a best it's been since March. I've put my heart into very little and ended up with results. Some good, some bad, but I basically left those up to whatever happened. I haven't cared about much. At all. For a long time.
There are exceptions...the majority of my relationship that has turned into an engagement probably being the best example of that. Others are more shameful and include Harry Potter and soccer. But I've been spending a lot of time floating through things. I've always thought I'd get by on raw muscle-memory-like talent, like, for my whole life. I don't want to brag or anything (believe me, I think of this as far from it) but since graduation, that's basically what I've done, with my level of mental engagement dwindling ever more and more, each and every day, I think. It's why I've blogged less. It's why I'm not at full funding. It's why I completely lost steam by the end of ONS and why I probably won't finish my reading goals for the year.
I wish I could say that's over. I can say I hope it's over. I feel like it's over. Already today, it has been over.
I don't know that I can actually describe what happened, not here at least...but some things just finally broke through, last night and tonight, and I actually feel like I'm becoming, again, or for the first time, the person I was supposed to be all along.
This comes though, I admit, at a time when ministry is at its best at Hillsdale as it has ever been with me there. People actually want to participate in evangelism and that's not been the case for pretty much the history of the chapter with few (but extant) exceptions. That might be a part of it. But mostly, I just want to be real to more people than myself. I want to be who God created me to be.
Today is World Aids Day and it reminds me of one of my favorite lines on Kanye's new album...in the second verse of the second track, Gorgeous, he says "I'm going to treat this money like the government treats aids; I won't stop til all my [people] get it" I don't exactly know what that means because he's not naive enough to believe the government actually gives black people aids, but I think his sentiment might be eerily accurate...as Lil Wayne elucidates in the last track on Tha Carter III, 1 in every 9 black men are in jail, often for selling crack, which is prevalent in poor areas....globally, the darker your skin, the more likely you'll have aids, statistically speaking, but it's not because of race....it's because of poverty and a lack of education. Why is there so much poverty? I'm going to be blunt: selfish white republicans and a few assimilated non-whites and successful asian americans. Right now, in Congress, they're trying to renew the Bush tax cuts. For someone making minimum wage, that's trying to "save" them about 200 bucks a year, maybe, which they'd get back anyway in such a low tax bracket. On the other end, those making millions save tens of thousands. All the while, they're fighting to cut unemployment benefits, basically telling struggling people they aren't allowed to feed their families. All the while, they're supposed to be the party of "Christians" at least according to them. I'm sure Jesus wants them self-identifying with his title after all, when they're saying they'd let him starve and get aids...."what you do to the least of these, you do unto me." What does this have to do with aids? Aids is prevalent amongst the poor because treatments and protection aren't as readily available. Beyond that though, I'm going to jump back to Congress. In the past decade, we've spent billions of dollars on wars that shouldn't have happened (In my opinion, that's all war), given billionaires tax cuts, and descried everything that might help humankind as "socialist."
But who is to blame? We all are. Why are people selfish? They aren't actually serving Christ. They aren't actually putting others above themselves. I understand that people work for the money they have, it's "earned," but seeing human suffering you could do something about and choosing not to is its own kind of evil, regardless of how one received or earned money he or she has. This is to say nothing about the advantages the successful have that have nothing to do with their own hard work, especially considering the cultural currency simply being white affords us people who are white. In "Hell Yeah" by Dead Prez, the rapper claims "to me this isn't welfare, I call it reparations." Honestly, we couldn't do reparations because no amount of money can pay for the destruction of hundreds of years of culture, thousands of years of honor, and lifetimes worth of pain. If the U.S. took the cost of both Iraq wars and the Afghanistan conflict and wrote a check for that amount to all of the people oppressed during the past 236 years, it wouldn't scratch the surface of what's due.
But we're capitalists. We make our own way. I'm not even white by technical definition but I benefit and act like I am because that's how I was raised. I can't begrudge it, it is what it is. But if nothing else, I can start with myself and help others get decentered too, as I constantly decenter myself.
Post-modernism is not a culture. It is not a release of truth. It's almost nothing you've ever heard it to be. It's a decentering and acknowledgement that the truth isn't something we can boil down to. It's something so much bigger.
-Zack
"See I'm a poet to some, a modern day shakespeare...but that ain't the case"
-Eminem
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