I've been thinking a lot lately. (This is where you say, "No shit, Ev, when are you not thinking?") No, really, this time these are somewhat coherent thoughts. Ones which I might be able to convey with some semblance of intelligence. So here goes:
Derrick Jensen writes in A Language Older Than Words about "cultural eyeglasses." As the name suggests, cultural eyeglasses are a set of filters, the set of values placed upon us by the culture in which we grew up, that color how we see the world. But these are a set of glasses you don't even know you are wearing. If you've seen the movie The Matrix (or the spoof The Meatrix), well, it's sort of like the matrix. Or similar to maya in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, in a way. You have a narrow, perhaps distorted view of reality... but since you don't know you're wearing the glasses, you have no idea it's an illusion. As far as you're concerned, what you are seeing is reality.
What if something should happen to crack, dent, or even shatter your cultural eyeglasses? Maybe not enough for you to see the whole picture, but just enough for you to realize that you're wearing the darn glasses in the first place, and that something is "off" with the way you've been seeing the world. To realize that perhaps there is more to see than through these filtered lenses. What you see through the cracks is so different from the world you knew (or at any rate, thought you knew). And furthermore, it scares the proverbial shit out of you. This is where you say to yourself, "@#$%, I liked it better when I was completely oblivious."
You might want to run to the nearest repair shop and get your lenses fixed, and if they can get you a stronger prescription, so much the better. You want Mother Culture to take you in her arms and speak soothing words to you, assure you that was just a nightmare, those factory farms, those holes in the ozone, children dying in the streets, those hundreds of species of animals and plants dying even as we speak, genocides taking place half a world away, none of that really matters, darling, you just go about your life like you never saw any of that, "get a job, work till you're sixty, move to Florida and die." Take the blue pill and return to the fantasy.
Trouble is, sometimes, once your cultural eyeglasses have been shattered, no matter how good a job the repair shop did, there are still some cracks. Even with the better prescription, something is a little bit off. It's always been "off," of course, you just didn't notice it before, or Mother Culture was able to explain it away before. But now it's too late. You know where to look, and the gaps in the facade are staring right at you, impossible to ignore. You've been disillusioned in a very literal way, and it's very, very hard to put it out of your mind once you've seen beyond that illusion. Maybe you don't fully understand it yet, but you know it's there, on the other side of your clouded lenses, the truth staring you in the face and howling at you to actually see it for once.
Some people are content to go about their lives as though nothing happened and let Mother Culture continue singing her lullabies. Others ultimately cry "enough!" and rip off the damn glasses so they can see the world for what it is, and perhaps proceed to try and do something about it.
The ones who rip off their glasses, naturally, are looked upon as absolutely insane by the majority who still unwittingly don theirs. The label might be "liberal," "wacko," "ingrate," "damn environmentalist," whatever, but the key meaning is, one who questions what everyone else, wrong or right, just takes as a given. Which makes breaking free of your bifocals that much more difficult for the would-be activist/nonconformist. And sometimes it takes meeting up with fellow spectacle-ditchers --- validation that, no, you aren't crazy, I see all of this, too, and I also want to do act on it --- to give one the courage to really do anything about their new way of seeing the world.
I'm reminded of a somewhat witty quip I came up with years ago, voiced in frustration at an entirely different issue. "Ignorance is bliss. That explains why I'm so miserable."
But I'm also reminded of a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh. "Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?"
Once one sees an atrocity, acknowledges its existence, doesn't one then have an obligation to act? I sign petitions, I write letters to my reps in Springfield and Washington D.C., I boycott where necessary... but it's not enough.
I want to go on an absurdedly quixotic mission, fight the demons... the ones in the world outside, the ones in my head, every last one if them. I want that magic wand and make all the world's problems go away without causing too great a stir.
Maybe knowledge isn't misery if you know what to do with the knowledge.
But... this is the part I am struggling with right now.
What to do?
What to do...?
