Thursday, August 17, 2006

Revitalized but still very frustrated

I feel like things are worth speaking out loud, read blogging, out loud again. I guess I had allowed myself to get to where everyone goes sometimes. That place where it becomes evident that nobody really cares about anything. It seems to me it takes too much for people to think through things, it's too difficult to get out of the status quo that has become the everyday norm and people are walking around feeling doomed and hoping to find a loophole. Basically, we've all sold our souls to whomever it is that controls this status quo.

I started back at school again and that may be the source of my renewed vitality. It's nice to be in a room full of people with opinions, ideas and a definite determination to change things. Some of them with ways and ideas I would never endorse, but they are thought out and they have a valid source as far as their lives and backgrounds are concerned. But it simply feels good to know there are still a few people that are worth hoping for something in. Still, I wonder how many of them are eventually going to lose their current passion as they wade through the system.

Which reminds me that while taking a good friend to check out a law school in Ohio several months back (She went by the way, good luck to her!), I learnt that the discrepancy in starting salaries between lawyers who go into public/government service and those that don't is almost $100,000 a year. Yes, apparently, lawyers get started at about $39,000 a year in some cases. The average starting salary was $96,000 a year and the highest was I think about $126,000. As per the statistics then. Which begs the question, why would you go to the $39,000 job? Well, this is the only way to provide a true community impact. Translates to the fact that the status quo has made it not lucrative to go into jobs that fight the system. Now working in major law firms, high earners that have clients who are high income earners, survivability of the creme de la creme must always be protected. And they'll reward you for it. So there is hope because there are many people who, despite the knowledge of the pay discrepancy, opt for the $39,000 jobs.

My frustration is always with the people though. I often wonder about the reality of how history has played out. I think it's imperative that people fight back when pushed to certain corners. This is a theory that I think would have changed the outcome of the holocaust and Rwanda 1994. What am I talking about? Think about the documentaries you have seen, real footage from the holocaust. Some 100 armed guards to thousands of Jews. Fleets after fleets of the same thing. Had anyone of these fleets of Jews started an uprisal, don't you think chances are they would have stopped the carnage before it went on for too long. That this part of history would be different? Same thing in Rwanda. Why didn't the Tutsis pick up their garden tools and fight back at the point where it became obvious they were being massacred? Remember it took a few dead Hutus from the RPF to stop the massacre. My point being that a little resistance goes a long way. I believe things get out of hand because everyone sits back and hopes someone else will intervene. Closer to home, remember the Molo clashes in Kenya? Those things stopped immediately when the targeted kikuyus displayed a bloody uprisal and, using their pangas, fought back. The media portrayed them as horrible and cold blooded for having done it. Yet that fighting back stopped what could have easily progressed to a civil war.

So what's my point? My point is that I'm frustrated, always, from history and in the present by the inability we, as humans, portray to fight for our rights. I think my real frustration lies in how quickly we allow ourselves to be manipulated to submission through fear by our fellow human beings. And just how many things keep going wrong, even though they may not involve obvious loss of life, everyday because of this weakness we carry. I think it's worse for me because I'm still trying to accept that I personally and those people that orchestrated genocides such as Rwanda's are of the same biological species. Quite frankly, I suspect a deviation of the species here that I hope a biologist will one day prove.

So, while I know it's not the easiest thing to do anything we feel is tangible, I think we all could do better by informing ourselves and avoiding mass opinions. Choosing to make informed opinions, or have no opinions at all, based on no information. I think it would reduce our overall propensity to be manipulated, and that translates to somehow, beginning to weaken the reins by which the 'world masters' have controlled and continue to control the masses.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A belated response to your post since I only came across your blog today. Just wanted to take exception to the Rwanda genocide analogy about the Tutsis and resistance. They were a captive prey, were monitored to the hilt and were kept out of what was going on. It was their neighbors in most cases that dealt the death blow. By then the Tutsi's had been disenfranchised and their very lifeline completely taken away; much too weak to put up any formidable resistance against marauding and deranged gangs and neighbors. The wounds are still very much alive and hurting to this day.

That aside, your post is a true wake-up call...

Mimmz said...

Thanks for your comment surambaya. Thanks for the enlightenment. But it still does not negate the point I was trying to make. Example, a hutu comes to your house to kill you... chances are they will be many of them. Scald soem with some hot water, machete some with your garden tools and they kill you which they were going to do anyway.

Point is, you bring the reality of loss of lives to their doorsteps as well. And they stop the carnage sooner.