Soul Searching

All this time we’re talking and sharing our rational view
A billion other voices are spreading other news
All this time we’re hoping and praying we all might learn
While a billion other teachers are teaching them how to burn

~”Peaceable Kingdom”

I’m having a crisis.

Seems I’ve burned myself out reading and writing about all the troubles in the world and searching for the answers. Perhaps the answer is to burn it to the ground and start over.

Some days that sure seems like the best thing to do, and for most of my life it’s been a very real possibility.

I managed to live through the Cold War only to reach adulthood with the distinct possibility that nukes could fall into the wrong hands any given day of the week.

All the while our illustrious leaders, lackeys of the global corporate oligarchy, fiddle in Copenhagen while the planet overheats.

Who needs thermonuclear war when we’ve got the greenhouse effect just about to reach the point of no return?

The challenges we face, not just as progressives but as a species, are daunting to say the least; and I’m tired. Plain old sick and tired. What’s the point of preaching to the choir day in and day out when the ones we wish would listen are never going to hear us anyway.

We could all scream in unison from the highest buildings, prove our points with incontrovertible facts, and place our message on every media outlet from the biggest cable network to the tiniest backwater blog, and the delusional, fundamentalist neanderthals most in need of enlightenment would still refuse to hear us.

We of the progressive stripe have been hammering on this thing for generations and, yes, we’ve made some progress. Minor concessions, allowed by the ruling class to mollify the most radical among us and keep the movement from ever gaining enough traction to affect any real societal evolution.

For every minor step we take forward, two or three new ways of keeping humanity divided and conquered seem to germinate from the rubbish heap.

It’s days like these when I worry most about the future my descendants will inherit, and feel the most remorse for sentencing them to it. Will they remember our generation with sadness and rage for the ignorance and evil we allowed to rule and ruin their world?

Many years ago I tried to start a business, and the name I chose for my service was Atlas, because not only would it result in better listing in the phone book, but because in Greek mythology, Atlas had the unenviable task of holding up the world. What better name for a service company, right?

Today, I wonder sometimes if I don’t have a certain amount of “Atlas syndrome” – always out to save the world in word and deed; that’s been my way of living for as long as I can remember.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no delusions of grandeur regarding my ability to save the world from itself. I’m firmly grounded in the knowledge that I haven’t got a chance, but I do seem to have a long standing habit of taking on challenges I’ve got no chance in hell of living up to, and of making myself despondent, crazy, or both in the process.

I’m just not sure I can keep reading and writing about these topics week in and week out while nothing seems to change for the better. Beating one’s head repeatedly against a wall eventually leads to brain damage.

Maybe I need to stick to writing about zen and the art of splitting firewood for a while, or turn my word processor off and just break out the coloring books.