Joe,
I've been reading your website for months, and disagree on some points, but maybe that's just my conditioning talking. I am 20 years old, precariously upper middle class, and I live in Mexico City. I've read Marx recently and it's surprising how right he is, that every worker is servant to the owner of the things he need to work, be it an educational anointment, a machine, or simple money.
The problem with starting a youth movement is that it has to be attractive, youth is not in it only to do what's right, it wants something pleasant too. Free love had that kind of appeal. We also need a coherent program. The last two decades have seen crisis in all kinds of programs (and those programs not being abandoned are dying) that is happening to the model of the European welfare state. The rebels that we do have sometimes look a lot like freeloaders (Oaxacan teachers, an example you once mentioned, are paid very highly considering their state's poverty, yet have been absent from classes for most of the school year). For a generation that has long believed that Good = Money, and that wants to be prosperous, you'd have to sex up dropping out. But not sex, something else. You'd need a crisis moment, proof that today's mess can't last longer.
There is hope. It's just that rebels have to give up a ton of things, and they really want to have someone there on the other side. I'd have joined in already if there was a real opposition. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
I often feel like I have something special to say, but it's just so vague that I rarely decide to say it. Everyone is a curious mix of currents, but in my case there are a whole lot of intercrossings. I am a third-world citizen, but in its more educated class. In this educated class, I am not wealthy; my father suffered much from the death of electronics manufacturing here. I read a lot, but not in a single, designated area (that's the reason I am not studying philosophy). I have, if I choose to exercise it, a large amount of tradition on my back (Catholicism, Mexican conservatism, family values), but I am not comfortable embracing any of them wholeheartedly. I also want something other than the capitalist, materialistic state, but I have a lot to lose if I should choose to do so. The end result is I always have something to say, but I wonder what it means and who might hear.
Oaxaca is not only about rebels vs. establishment. The back story is that the current governor, Ulises Ruiz, won in fraudulent and violent election two years ago. He was a member of one of two rival factions within his party (the PRI), and his victory broke the power-sharing agreement between them. The revolt in Oaxaca began in May of this year, and is now represented by a single group, the APPO (Popular Association of the People of Oaxaca, their leader is Flavio Sosa). It began as a teacher's strike, then intermeshed with the presidential elections, and is now off on a tangent. Radical leftism in Mexico frequently goes on such a tangent, where at first they want one thing (say, land rights in Chiapas, that was the Zapatista rebellion of 1994), and it then snowballs with the many other causes for concern and other groups of disposessed people, so it ends up being anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-rich foreigners, anti-rightist, and nostalgic for Che Guevara and some undefined ideal of rural liberty. It gets confusing and reactionary very fast. You can see some of it right here in Mexico City, in the philosophy department of the National University.
If there's a pattern here, it is that the conviction that a lot of things need to change is not definite. Take a single conclusion: This state of things is not going to last, and we have to change it now if we would like to escape a post-apocalyptic wasteland (economic, environmental, or military) by the year 2035 -- or 2012, or 2020, choose your doomsayer. Evidence for that being the future is abundant, but many want to ignore it because predictions of doom have often failed before, and because they hope they can make it into the dominant class before then. It's the division of society that even Marx talked about, where the haves will be the owners of everything, and will have opportunities not even suspected now, while the have-nots will not own even the food they need. That's already happened in America: the haves can now vacation in Thailand and city-hop through the capitals of the world, as you can see in the New York Times front page, and the have-nots are losing the shirt off their backs, and will have their shorts stolen a few years hence.
Maybe the biggest contribution some public thinker could make refers to values. The postmodern generations do not believe in one religion, in progress, or even completely in human dignity. Since there are no lines that we will, on principle, never cross, the owners of capital can, slowly and subtly, make us believe anything is normal. Anything.
Do well,
Fernando
Mexico City
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Dear Fernando,
My god, you are one profound young man. What a wonderfully insightful letter!
I agree with you that youth movements are very hard to accomplish. Like you said, young people expect it to be both morally compelling and sexy too, as was, for instance, our Sixties movement. However, the Sixties movement was by no means the flower bedecked, drug soaked sexual orgy that is has been painted by conservative revisionists. The ordinary American children of Eisenhower generation parents did not instantly turn into fuck freaks, no matter how many drugs were available, or by some mysterious hedonic process, though sexual freedom was part of the agenda.
Let me digress into the Sixties a moment, before replying to your comments on risk.
The Sixties period offered many things just as sexy as the free love that supposedly dominated. There was a strong identity as a generation (probably a result of US marketing, oddly enough). There was a stone identity with the generations, our own unique music, which was a unifying factor. Though later commercialized, it united serious young people everywhere through a joyful, sexy experience. If you couldn't be in the streets of Chicago or San Francisco, you could at least read the underground press and listen to the rebellious music.
Maybe more important was that the generation was quite literate, all things considered, perhaps the last generation that took its most important knowledge and cultural information from books (I cannot imagine Herman Hesse's Siddartha being a major youth seller today). There was also a disgust for materialism in the early years of the movement and a huge aversion to war and violence. This opening of the mind, in many cases drug initiated, coupled with the obvious criminality of the Vietnam War, created a great driving force for a brief while.
People forget that the Peace Movement was not entirely about Vietnam, but was at the time a global movement well underway. My generation was very fortunate in that people like Bertrand Russell and Norman Thomas were still alive and writing and speaking before crowds at the time. World peace was sexy in those days, though it could never be now in our militarized state. People also forget that the Sixties movement was worldwide throughout most highly industrialized countries -- the Indianos student movement of Italy, etc.
The point of this look back at the Sixties is that, while the world has changed dramatically, some things never change. Young people of goodwill still look forward more than they look backward, simply because they have more before them than aft.
I understand at least a little bit about your situation as an upper middle class Mexican citizen (why don't we just go ahead and call it upper crust, because we are talking about the world here). Years ago I ran a group of magazines, one of which was in Mexico. Our Mexican editor, a wonderful young man named Ignacio Bringas, was faced with the same dilemma. He probably still is. In a nation such as Mexico, where giving up something for principles means REALLY GIVING UP SOMETHING in a way Americans can never understand, young people think very hard before making the choice.
It's a bit the same here, but the overall picture is a actually worse. We have no politically recognized left in America to turn to, only a moderate conservative center graduating into a right and hard right. Our left consists of people talking like leftists because, in such a corporate militarist environment, being leftish is intellectually sexy, merely for its faux dangers. To live here, however, is to be humanly woven seamlessly into the grid, the economic, technological, corporate militariy totalist grid that sustains us all every minute of our lives as Americans. Even if it were possible for any significant number of young Americans to escape the grid in any meaningful way -- which is to say in a manner that would initiate positive change -- they would want to know a significant number of like-minded people dwell on the other side. They don't, of course. In the Sixties we had something resembling psysical and human proof. We had communes and cooperatives, etc., that functioned as proof of a survivable "other side." Sure they were fucked up in many ways. Hell, we were kids. But at least we were proof of solidarity in as much as we understood it. We were proof enough that police busted up our co-ops and shot the hell out more organized militant resistance such as the Panthers.
America on the whole is like Mexico in one major way. Good = Money. Period. And that is the key to meaningful liberation. It rests right there on the table for us to choose or reject every day oif our lives -- the abandonment of the fetish called money. Sure, we need some. But not much if we live right in the world, live in such a manner as to grow and flower as fully developed human beings, morally, intellectually, spititually, compassionately and meaningfully during our brief journey here.
I'd be the first to admit that I have not yet accomplished it either. But I am coming down the home stretch, both in age and in understanding of what I must do and am doing. Give it all away. Abandon global capitalism's walking dead puppet legions. Live among those who have little or nothing, but have connectivity with those things most human -- children, the earth as it was created, daily struggle, real need, and those small but achievable hopes normal to the human comunity.
In truth, in any materially advancing modern society, with few exceptions, there is seldom any real opposition one on the other side. Just the noise of one, and sometimes a brief flurry of action. I have noticed that the Third World (in the case of Mexico, Second World if you choose, these labels are becoming meaningless regarding the real quality of life) produces a helluva lot more such young men than the U.S.
When it comes to having something to say, I know what you mean about vagueness. My solution is to simply spit it out. People will either like what you say or throw eggs at you. Either way, it's not all that important. Life is not much about what we say, but rather what we do every day. Personally, I think you have a hell of a lot to say, just keep snatching it out of that heavy sack of tradition on yer back. You carry the weight of the world in there.
Your summary of America is right on, but like you said, the masters of capital can make Americans believe virtually anything.
And as to your final remarks about post modern generations not even believing in human dignity, you don't have to be a post modern to feel that way. I'm a fucking redneck geezer and I feel that way often enough. But I still do CPR on old homo dignitus whenever I find its prostrtrate form flattened out on the battlefield. And once in a while it coughs up some blood and staggers back to life. Th at's enough to keep me going. Call me sentimental. I just cannot give up on human dignity yet. And, don't forget to laugh when you can. Even a bitter laugh can save your sanity in bad times. iT'S SAVING MINE RIGHT NOW.
Regarding those in Oaxaca, I do not know the full dimensions of their actions (though I will when I go there sometime in the next few months.) But I do know that if the state is disappearing them and shooting them down in cold blood, then there is something viable in the name of freedom going on. Blood equals proof when it comes to true revolution. Those losing the blood are seldom perfect people and may even be spilling it for perceptually wrong reasons. But citizens of blood worshipping nations such as yours and mine. The Spanish and Indian ancestors of your culture and the blood lusting Celtic ancestors of mine, both honor blood as truth, at least to some degree when spilled within their own designated turf. That's why I can smell the blood in Oaxaca clear up here in the Anglo citadel near Washingtom D.C. No wall across the border can stop that.
You say, "and then it snowballs with many other causes for concern, and then it ends up being anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-rich foreigners, anti-rightists and nostalgic for Che Guevera and some undefined ideal of rural liberty." Well, all I can say is: Great god almighty, boy, that's about the best recipe for a liberty sandwich I've heard on ages! Lemme at' em! You may be over analyzing a tad there, son. When one is lucky enough to have the beans of revolution served up, who cares if they are all mixed in together? And if they are now serving up freedom soup, the genuine article, in your philosophy department, you're a friggin lot better down there than we are up here.
In the end, though, fear of losing goods and services is the natural state today, and it's only going to get worse as the global financial military state comes to weave us ever more tightly into its fabric of oppressed human lives. Like every other genuine moral choice, a man only gets to make one in his life. The one that changes his life forever. And that choice in made entirely alone. If there is anyone on the "other side," in these darkening times, he may then have the joy of see their lanterns. But not until.
In solidarity,
Joe
