AN INSIGHT

"The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us... I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are and the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt one minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it's like your life is yours to create. I've read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. He's talking about you and me talking, making decisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never write ourselves off or see eachother as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are."

"You can't fight city hall." "Death and taxes." "Don't talk about politics or religion." This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. "Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI!". We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That's what I want, and that's what YOU should want! It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century's gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control... it's gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I'm SICK of it, and I'M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we're gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE'RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE'RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE'RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE'RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER - CREATIVITY, AND THE *DYNAMIC* *HUMAN* *SPIRIT* THAT REFUSES TO *SUBMIT*! WELL THAT'S IT, that's all I've got to say. It's in your court now."