The URL of this article is:
www.rootsie.com/articles/2004/1203.html
     
     
For Ourselves and For All
By Rootsie
March 12, 2004

I find these days it's getting harder and harder for me to go about my business. These comforts and consolations we take for granted every day: viewed through the lens of basic justice and morality, these little things, going to the grocery store, sleeping in on Saturday, lying in my comfy bed and reading my book, take on a monstrous aspect.

There is such a thing as knowing too much to continue living the way you do.

"Well we all know the world is f*d, so what would you suggest? If all the suffering people in the world had the chance, they'd live like this too. So what are we supposed to do? Give it all away and live in the dirt scrabbling for food? All we can do is try in our little ways to make things better." Even the most 'radical' among us play for the most part by the rules as they have been set down. Membership in the global elite has its privileges, and we take these for granted, even as we protest and express our outrage among ourselves and pride ourselves that at least we know the score. The poor are poor so we can be rich. This is our historical position. We did not choose it.

O but how we suffer, and it's amazing that we see no connection between our numerous physical and psychological complaints, our general feeling of discomfort, and this historical position. It is also a moral position we were born into, and it is debilitating and deadly. Our favored status in the world is killing us in countless ways for the simple reason that it is unjust. And the universe, as any physicist will tell us, operates according to laws that are unwavering. No disequilibrium can be sustained for long. Our most 'primitive' ancestors understood that the same laws which govern the largest movements govern the smallest ones. And with part of us we know that this ride has an end, and this accounts for our flashy and gaudy and desperate culture. The hippie generation has entered its middle age, and to a great degree has simply fallen into the assumptions it despised in its youth.

The 'humanism' which has intellectualized the problem of injustice to the point where it maintains there is no solution, or contents itself with 'dreams' of a just future, is a false humanism, and is inhuman in fact. It is no better than the 'fundamentalism' it claims to despise. Like the fundamentalists, most liberals hold out an irrational faith that at some future point 'everything will be all right.' But can they live with the paradox that, while in some absolute sense that may be the case, even that in fact everything is all right all the time, at the same time humans must struggle to claim their humanity, and support others in their struggle to do the same? People born at the short end of this stick have the right to expect certain sorts of conduct from privileged people of goodwill. It troubles my heart to think that people all over the world are looking to the people of the West to get their houses in order, to get their rapacious governments and corporations in check, and get on with this business they keep saying they are about in their exalted rhetoric. I feel people waiting, with faith, for us to make a move at least to see to it that the bullies among us leave them alone.

The unique aspect of the modern world is the hundreds of millions of people who live in peace, safety, and plenty, with a voice in their destinies, license to move and speak freely, and an opportunity to dictate the direction of those who govern them. It is dishonest and in fact wicked to shake our heads sadly and say like Jesus, 'the poor will always be with us,' for the conditions that afflict most of the people on this planet are preventable, the solutions within our grasp, and furthermore these conditions are the result of hundreds of years of atrocious conduct on the part of our ancestors and countrymen. We are born into an inheritance bought with the blood of millions. This is the definition of dirty money, of 'filthy lucre,' and it poisons us with its filth.

We speak of 'grassroots activism' and 'progressivism' and yet allow our governments to crush popular 'from the bottom up' democracy wherever in the world it rears its dangerous head. And we literally live off the spoils of a massive pillaging campaign that has gone on unchecked for 500 years.

I don't want to give up my warm bed, but I don't rest easy in it, and that is justice. The malaise and 'depression' and 'heart disease' and 'acid indigestion' are just. Justice is done no matter what side of the equation we humans choose, for there are huge realms over which we have nothing to say, no matter how much we think we do.

But the things we do have a say in? To know and do nothing is a crime. To plead powerlessness or claim some moral high ground by virtue of political beliefs on which we do not act consistently, daily, is simply ridiculous. It is a hallmark of our privilege that, whenever we feel like it, we can revert to introverted pleasure-seeking without a second thought. The least we can do is to keep a constant mindfulness, and allow the necessary suffering which results to lead us to seek its end. For ourselves and for all. Once and for all.

It is amazing how u critize Rootsie's work in encouraging Whites to acknowledge their  responsibility and  complicity and then turn round and sidestep ur own complicity by talking about urself volunteering  weekends in Bible education work.

It is not hard to see the terrrible effect that centuries of this mindset has had on the world. The time has come for people to access a different perspective on life.

out_of_Zion

Well you have to be a kind of arrogant, mad person to make a statement like this and criticize what others may or may not be doing without asking a question as to what indeed they ARE doing. I am also at a loss as to how setting up a not for profit website as a part of a series of not for profit websites can be mercenary but maybe your understanding of the  meaning of the word is flawed.

Furthermore if you really belive that teaching does anything more than propagate the  damaging nasty idea that we can sit in squalor and  wait for the saviour to make things better then indeed you are no different from those that rootsie spoke of in her article.

Do you know that there are those that give up all thier extra resources, all thier lives to overturn this system? It is not a part time thing, not some pity volunteering when you can spare the time. They have made a lifetime commitment to justice. You would do well not to cast stones at things you  seem to know very little about . You never know whom you may hit...

yan

out_of_Zion

Why didn't you ask her if she does anything else? Why attack and not ask? If she has no response than by all means criticize, but isn't attacking without actually knowing what she does a tad bit unfair? I commend the fact you are stuck in the "consumerism" trend that most people in the West are addicted to, BUT...Some people may look at your volunteer work about 'Jahova' and the Helio Biblio as a continuation in the spiritual enslavement of African people...Some people may think that you need to concentrate more on organizing your people instead of reiterating the version of the Bible the enemy forced on us Africans(and other oppressed people's)...Don't be so quick to judge others unless you are willing to be judged just as harshly...

Africans in the diaspora and Africans on the continent have not yet learned that no other people have continued worshipping another's God, especially their slave master's/coloniazers god or gods and freed themselves from cultural and physical genocide. Why should Africans at home and in the diaspora be the only exception to this historic reality.
--Dr. Ben

Judaism, Christianity & Islam are innovations on fragments from the periphery of the African cultural and spiritual system.
--Professor James Small

Everything that touches your life must be an instrument of your liberation, or you must throw it into the trash can of history.
--John Henrik Clarke

How can there be a nation (black nation) without political power? It is a contradiction in terms. The 'Black Nation' can only come into existence when Africa is totally free and an all-African Union Government has been formed. i.e. when the Black man is master in his own house - when he has political power, statehood. It is totally unrealistic to think that a 'Black Nation' can be created on American soil, since no Black Power movement can possibly succeed in seizing political control of the present white power structure in the USA.
--Kwame Nkrumah
December 9, 1968

If something is yours by right, then fight for it or shut up. If you can't fight for it, then forget it.
--Malcolm X
London School of Economics, February, 1965

Point taken.  I just feel like the point of Rootsie's article is one that's been stated over and over and the awareness of the problem is a foregone conclusion.  

At this point, anything other than action is banter and that's why I snapped.  I'd like to see people more active and it seemed her article was another one of those "awareness" calls...Perhaps I was a little too confrontory, I'm not certain.  I'd just like to see less writing and more action - on the part of everyone - myself included.  We've had enough time to wake up.

So sorry for coming across as self-righteous more than anything.  Just realize why:  I'm agitated and I took it out on Rootsie's article unjustly.

INI am realizing everything I am saying this week, online and off, is coming off as very abrasive.  I just verbally tore into someone a few minutes ago, and felt very justified in doing so.  I'm getting quite fed up with a self-righteous fellow brother in my hall who is trying to belittle my attempt to obtain an education and claiming basically that I am slaving for Satan by trying to get a degree so I can provide for my family.  Not coincidentally, he has not had to work his entire life, claiming disability for an injury he sustained two decades ago, is unmarried (and never will be at 370 lbs of morbid obesity), and has no conception of reality as we within the greater realm of connected humanity know it.

THAT SAID-
That in no way pertains to this thread at all, but you picked a very good time to mention passively religion - the organized practice of which I am once again becoming quite disgusted with.  I need to reflect and pray before I say more things to more people that are offensive, slanderous, and the whole nine.  

I would like to discuss things with you another time, gman, but right now I'm pretty agitated and I think I am going to have one drink and sketch or something.  Peace