This Post is Not a Distraction: Eggheads Rally for the Children!

Purpose on the horizon.

I think I lost some romance along the way when it comes to my rebellious writer's life. I always secretly wished for an authority figure to burn the books I wanted to read, withholding me from true enlightenment. I had heard about it an awful lot, and I will usually be the first guy in line to sign up for the thing that exposes the evil-doings of the "Man." But combing through all of this priveleged enough middle-class boy's experiences, never once has somebody told me I couldn't read something I wanted to. Especially not something of intellectual challenge and value. So, while I commend you Sir Orwell and your futuristic accusations, let's talk a little about Huxley instead.

This is what I am talking about. I heard about the makeshift Occupy library being taken down in NY. And I am really excited for this idea that Douglas Rushkoff, as the writer of a staple on the Occupy reading list, Life, Inc., responded with. "A book can have more influence for being destroyed than having existed in the first place," Rushkoff wrote in his blog recently. From a writer trying to spread his ideas, that is an astute observation in how information gets disseminated among anti-authoritarian leaning folks. There is such a reactionary streak in humans, such a 1984 mentality, that in fact it can be a catalyst for needing to know what the book says. We want so badly for the oppression that's coming down on us right now to be simple, coordinated, and bloody evil. But it's messy, swelling organically, and a deeper symptom of all sorts of abstract things. We are going to need to dig deep on this one. In many cases, the causes of this system-gone-wrong are still obscure, let alone the solutions for it. But get 'em in, tell 'em it's Orwellian, right? The cops taking away the books can sound just like the evil Hays Code moralists or the religious zealots persecuting Spinoza. The truth, though, is the book just sits there until someone tells me I can't have it. Because more accurately, the real miracle is getting a large quantity of people to read a whole book, take in its ideas, and really bring them to their public life. Not that people don't do this. But let's be honest, many don't do this. I have spent a large part of my post-college years not doing this.

In this vein, I remember when I was younger I had heard some parents were mad about something on the sophomore curriculum, and knew some shit was gonna go down in Catcher in the Rye. I honestly wasn't much of a reader up to that point, or even a try-er in school. I did well, but I liked what I liked and my interest in books wasn't there yet. I had hoop dreams, man. But I devoured that book from the little motivations of my fifteen-year-old streak of perversion, only to find out it was only a few "fucks" and a platonic scene with a hooker. Also to find out? There was this guy talking who seemed just as weirded out by being a teenager as I was. That turned out to be one of the first instances of me connecting with a book--it planted a seed that a book could be something more than a homework assignment. That the human connections made in a novel could lead to healing, to helping me feel less alone. That a book could be sacred.

So, I pose that the real challenge in this climate is getting people's attention for more than a short article or musing. Is there an advantage to the 1984 mentality? A use? Because reading an entire book in this Info Age, is the crazy part. And if a cop told someone they couldn't read it, well I would abso-loot-ly be reading that book as a teenager. The absolute danger in this society, as talked over and over again by Neil Postman during the pre-Internet 1980's, is that we are in fact distracting ourselves with such immersion that the powers have no problem operating coolly behind closed doors. We assume the gates to what is precious in our Constitution is guarded heavily, when in fact the robbers just walk right in.  It's a costly assumption, not made on a "trust" that is being betrayed as much as an assumption as the result of our appetite for amusement. And the robbers have pulled off a shockingly straight-forward job--it's just filling up cabinets with board members, cutting each corner in every facet of civic life, one by one, and gearing policies toward the profiteers in order for profit. I mean, I don't really have a solution here, but I didn't even think about the park-dwellers having a library. Its presence, its pictures, and its reading list, is very important to this. It has meaning beyond a few people getting better informed ideas. Rebels read their way into effectiveness. Damn straight. And now THEY won't even let us do that!

Oh, that so appeals to me. And I know this is venturing dark/hopeless territory, but stay with me. There are still the trying people to speak of. And the trying people are the ones going on, in spite of. The trying people know that they can afford some intellectual skepticism if their hearts and feet are in the right place.

Well, I went to the public education rally tonight on the Capitol steps, and there was a lot of people there who have read, and I deem still do, a lot of books. A breed of eggheads going extinct? I don't want to get in to that, but it was amazing to see folks young and old, well-mannered and pissed, at least trying to know just what in the fuck was going on. Extremely articulate people who had figured out rally effectively, to nourish frustrations with words and inflections of voice. Who had the attention spans to listen and pull off a lovely human microphone. To quote our forefathers appropriately, and separate love of country and community with disgust for being in an abusive relationship with it. We smiled and shouted and marched to City Hall. It was a quality Thursday night. And you know what always kills me about what people say? That the politically active act like victims. There is nothing victim-y about protesting. It is empowering. If our society is organically one body, I think of the people still fighting among the vital cells. And it feels good to come together. The fight comes from this inner-source that says "I want to know what the fuck is going on here!" That's what happens when you get withheld from the truth, and you have the know-how to dig and think deeper. That's what happens when you go to school and want to learn and read and leave school with the same feelings.

The two most terrifying things I heard tonight, among many, were:

1) Privatizing Public Education since it is working so well for corrections facilities.
2) State government massacring school budgets, while profits are being made off of standardized testing, amenities, etc. And that we should just go ahead and kiss the feet of every one of our legislators for cutting just 5B, and not 10B like it was supposed to be (classic used car salesman tactics).

I don't know if these things are going to be changed, but I do know that it is imperative we work under the direction of our finest thinking caps on this problem. Seriously, the  fanciest ones we got. I still have a semblance of an attention span at 30 years old. I am grateful for that. Some use it at work then they feel justified for just letting their brain check the hell out. I have had about ten great teachers, and two amazing parents, that showed me everything I needed to see about why learning is the greatest joy in life. I'm lucky. In the current climate, at least a few of those teachers would have been working in a call center with no jobs on the horizon. And I'm sure my impressionable brain would be sinking deeper into this Huxleyan world of orgy porgies and centrifugal bumblepuppy. It is truly a great battle not being constantly distracted this day and age. To go through a day consuming information voraciously, and not really getting anything of real substance. Many don't win this fight. This is no revelation. Yeah, we can get stupid and stilted as adults, but the lucky ones never lose the love for the substance.

And yeah, the government is taking our teachers and their autonomy away,  and the cops are destroying OWS's books, but what we can all do our communities a favor by staying the hell awake. Battling the lazy brain. Pursuing challenges and interests. Occupying your attention spans. Not worrying so fucking much and being too scared. Like, scared to leave the house and go to a rally by yourself (which I totally kinda was tonight). See, I didn't think about it I just went. Talk about intelligence. Cultivate what the best part of you is interested in. I hope, dearly, it includes change. I hope the trying people can pass education on, freely, to the next generation. We can pass it on the good old fashioned way. Orally, by devotion, time, good quality interaction, and attention. Not out of righteousness and resentment, just out of joy, and a zest for living.