Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

Become the resistance

Arundhati Roy has one of the wisest worldviews I have encountered in many years, and also demonstrates by her convictions that writers have an important role in this Gutless Old World. Her speech in Sydney yesterday is a tonic to political and social despair:

Ms Roy also defended her call for people to join the Iraqi resistance.

"One wasn't urging them to join the Medhi army [in Iraq] but to become the resistance, to become part of what ought to be a non-violent resistance against a very violent occupation," she said.

"That is to redefine what resistance means, you know we can't just assume that resistance means terrorism because that would be playing right into the hands of the occupation."

In other words, change the paradigm:

Ms Roy, who urged Australians to vote against Prime Minister John Howard at the election, says it is difficult to see why the war was not a major election issue.

"The sense that that kind of brutality is good, or at the very least acceptable and in the interests of people here is, I suppose, one of the biggest dilemmas that face the world today," she said.

"On the one hand that democracy is circumscribed by the idea of a nation state and on the other hand these huge wars and the movement of global capital are global in that sense, so there's a big discrepancy there."

Exactly. Between power and poverty is a discrepancy measured by the degree we are all prepared to tolerate brutality and the abuse of democracy.

We need to push beyond the abusive dishonest conduct of those who think they are born to rule. We have potentially 3-4 very hard dark years ahead of us, with JW and GW now both re-elected. Make the personal political and not vice versa; we are in the midst of one of the most retrograde periods of recent history, and it is vital that we nurture the fundamental good will needed to re-form a truly civil society.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 3:34 pm ::