i usually eat lunch with my coworkers. last week i ate with two of them and we discussed some things that are both interesting and not. they spoke of gas shortages in the '70s, mortgages, the current economic plight of the middle-class, and how in their estimation, most people of my generation would not be able to own their own home. then a lawyer brother-in-law came up whose more than half a million dollar salary just isn't enough anymore. i found myself becoming more and more upset, not angry, just sad. it was an incredibly depressing lunch.
it took a couple days to pinpoint why that was exactly. it was not so much what we were discussing but how it was being talked about. clearly, all of us were in agreement that this state of affairs is not good. yet there was this resignation in the air that "this is the way things are;" that this arrangement of power, rights, and impressed obligations is not really good for anybody but, "oh well, lets go back to work." i am ashamed that i did not give name to this feeling at the time, the feeling that there really is more (or perhaps more accurately, less) to everything than we are led to believe. we need to see that there are other ways, other stories, that different possibilities exist or can exist, but we can not see this when we walk lock-step with a system that tells us not to think and that defines things in its own hollow terms. the institutions of our society are not interested in enriching our communities but in monetary power. until we see this and have a genuine human reaction to it, we'll continue to just "go back to work."
all of this is stuck someplace i can't reach, like plaque on the inside curve of a molar. no amount of brushing can scrub it smooth.
