http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUhRx38xtAM
Who says you should want to be a potent activist? That's up to you. I'll tell you if you're not, you're probably
done, just like, if my father’s generation hadn’t put on uniforms by the
millions, DC would be covered in Nazi flags.
If it's to be, it's up to thee.
If you don't do it, why would anyone else? We haven't seen any real activism in 40 years
now - Diane Wilson, Rachel Corrie, some of the people working on the
Palestinian issues - occasionally some sheroism out of Green Peace, often out
of Sea Shepherds... but they are by far the exception, whereas in the 60s, to
my shame I had nothing to do it, but there was real activism.
If you can think of a real activist, someone that's brought
major change throughout history, that didn't value every second, as though it
was someone's live, I can't. I can't
think of such a person. Gandhi didn't
hang out. If you find Diane Wilson at a
party, you'll find her over in a corner sitting by herself thinking, planning,
or working with people on a campaign.
Alice Paul declined marriage to someone she was passionate about,
because she knew the lives were depending upon her work, and was unwilling to
sacrifice those lives.
Who should say that you should be a potent activist? But if you're in denial, if you're in
delusion, and think you are one, and you're not, you're depriving yourself of
the choice of saving your world, or squandering it for a few months or a few
years of activist masturbation, pseudo-activist masturbation, and hence I share
this essay, this Personal Trainer with you.
Do with it what you want .
I'll not chase you down. Soon I may
not be around the chase you down, but I wouldn't anyway.
But if you're, huh, understandably, equating activism to
what you see around you, what we've seen in the last 40 years - the worst parts
of the antiwar movement, the worst parts of the civil rights movement; if you're following the lost leaders that are
trampling on every historical precedent of what's worked, and you're doing it
by accident, this material is for you.
Gandhi hanging out with the guys was incomprehensible; he
understood what was at stake. He was at
war; he was a total, all out, Unviolent war.
Guys and gals in and a fire fight in Afghanistan, they're not hanging
out, they're acting like every second life depends on it, because it does. Your opposition, they are serious, working
12, 14, 18 hour days, 7 days per week if necessary to be sure you stay
defeated.
What calls itself activism in this country is so
joyless, becomes it holds itself to no account. When it fails, it goes home. Failure is an
option for it. Failure is death, torture, hell for the clients it ALWAYS fails.
Failure was not an option for people that they were
supposedly fighting for, they die, they get sick, they get killed, in this
case, your children, regardless of your age.
You'll be able to lie your way out of it I suppose.
And if your conscience isn't awake enough to find the guts
to step up to standards like this,
holding yourself accountable for each second you have, not as though it is your second, but it's a
second you owe to those who you represent, if you don't find the guts to stand
up like that now, you're humanity, all of ours, tends to ebb away quickly in
this sick society; so if you don't do it now, you'll never get it figured
out. Real activism realizes that every
second is someone's life.
A device I develop to keep myself honest, many, but but one
recently that is among the most powerful - I take the population I'm concerned
with, in this case people of 2050 Earth, and I summon them back in time to
stand alongside me, and I arm them with AK-47s - they are living the hell that
is the current plan, and I want to feel their righteous rage; and if I waste a
second of the time that I could use to give them a life worth living, it's joy
man, its life.
If you want to waste your life go ahead. If you want to use it for what you are put
here for, to help our global neediest, then listen up.
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