Drafted But Not Published Letter to the Editor

As I listlessly leafed through recent articles on courses on religion and editorials regarding ‘ISIL’ in the Bee, I thought...

How tempting it is to explain 'extremism' with religious fundamentalism, even if doing so opens up a space for a not-so-hidden racism to rear its ugly head again, ignoring our co-participation in a tennis-ball-like-volley of the means of force which has exponentially increased the use of violence overall.

And while it’s easy to blame the opposing party (and I agree that some really don’t want to share the world with us), I still wonder: will annihilating them really create the environment of cooperation and liberty for which we, as a community, strive and stand?

Moreover, I think: are not the “zings” and “bangs” and flashes-in-the-night that make the news like Rambo-in-the-theater real scenes of death? Of real pain, of real destruction, of real, irrevocable annihilation for countless anonymous millions?

While I worry about our future, too, I still ask: who is the enemy anyways? and what do we win in this escalation of death and debt? Victory may seem to cover irreparable loss - even if another bears the cost - but is war really just a game to be played like any other?

On Writing, Critique and Audience

I don’t want my writing to merely become a stale indictment of my frustrated being in this place and unequivocal evidence of the fact that I feel poorly adjusted: I want to explore and think and test out and adventure and develop as a thinker, critic and writer. To this end, I feel I should hold letters to the editor to once a month in order to prevent my critiques from becoming too expected, unnovel and irritating to the general public.

Moreover, I’m looking for someone to vet my writings before I post them, because I do have a tendency for being far more critical than what is generally considered as such (and sometimes even unfairly, bitterly and meanly in ways I do not originally intended); or, possibly, I should always give an additional read (at least one) for meanness or for crotchety-ness: this will help me work through some ideas without going to far to alienate my audience. For maintaining a strong rapport with one’s audience is as key to being considered a credible speaker - of maintaining a status of being someone to whom others continue to listen – as saying the thing that might cause the rift.

The difficulty is knowing how to strike that balance, wherever or however one chooses to, not to mention being willing to - at the cost of fully indulging oneself in critique of the world – still say something that means something without being written off as a mere contrarian or an irreconcilable opponent. Working to maintain ties of community while still honestly publicizing one’s critiques is the name of the game, but doing it in practice is what presents obstacles.

Thinking about the possible effects of one’s utterances is also bound up with this practice of stating in public something of or about the world that may seek to highlight certain problematic, criminal or inhumane aspects in need of redress.

Friends can help us figure what might well become alienating, even if being alienated is sometimes the cost of distancing oneself from the problematic nature of the status quo. What one needs, above all, however, is an anchor: something to remind oneself that one can get through, that at least one other in the world “understands.” Without this person, however, the project can ultimately and finally be futile, doomed and fated to annihilation at the ends of lacking the very community it seeks to produce and engender.

The skill I need to work on, I think, amongst so many others, is identifying when I should say what I want to say and how so as to remain

Origins of An Organizer

It interests me as well how the social position of Community Organizer received far greater attention with the rise of the Obama spectacle. He effectively called attention to its importance, not permitting that people in high school, junior high school and elsewhere might note his ‘accomplishments’ and use them as a model for themselves, their own activity. I remember back to junior college myself, feeling as if there wasn’t quite yet a social position, a category for what I wanted to do, but increasingly, I see there is. Still, many have been left out in the singular scrutiny and credit Obama has received. So many Organizers who will remain unknown and unconsidered. 

It is a trend of the spectacle to fixate on a handful of individuals (possibly) in order to displace an explanation which suggests far greater participation in such activity or merely for the purposes of commercial and political concision, relegating those who do not cleanly fit the bill to official and written and archived historical oblivion.

On a more personal note, I feel the yearning for academic life has not yet deserted me, even if I have relatively little time to dedicate to it (while I do, certainly dedicate every non-committed waking hour to these questions and matters nonetheless). 

Other questions that continue to interest me - what do we mean when we say 'organizer; what and who are they organizing exactly and what qualifies them to determine the standard for organizing? That is, to what end? These questions remain marginalized as pundits and advertisers look for expedient ways to simply frame and circulate a superficial understanding of what it may be - assuming a lay appreciation of the term - in order partially to avoid a more complex discussion of what is assumed but not explained or explored.

Hopefully I'll return to them in up and coming posts.

Moreover, it's not just with his rise in notoriety that we begin to care further about the position of those who work to solidify, furnish and fabricate necessary community relationships within, inside of and between different local, regional and global communities, but with a more broadly felt sense that, perhaps the way that we've created this world - as result of the structures of political economy that predominate and are routinely reproduced - has directly resulted in the absolute demolition of community, or at least the production of a false or hollow sense of it that systematically fails to provide that which we hope to produce.

That we have people paid to fix, arrange and produce Community says so much about the tragic state of the world, and, forebodingly, a lot less about what we might actually be able to do to go about changing it.