gandhi?

They say that you can pick your battles, and I have come to understand that we are defined by the adversity that we face, and choose to face. If life had been easy for Gandhi, none of us would ever have heard of him; he was confronted by certain challenges and injustices that he decided to throw himself against. It is not that he was the only man witnessing these things, merely that he was the only one willing to take issue with it at first. He picked his battle, and paid the ultimate price of assassination for it. We are picking our battles as well, but are finding ourselves left in the ever-growing ocean of mediocre and ineffective individuals because we fight the little battles, the personal ones for sustenance and income. Who is fighting the big battles today? Who is our Gandhi?
Does anyone really believe that there is less injustice and oppression in the world now than before? Because there certainly seems to be less protest over it. What we are participating in is not a culture of action, but a culture of distraction. If Gandhi had been able to watch The Sopranos on a semi-regular basis, it’s possible that the thought of activism might never have occurred to him.
I discuss all of this because I feel an overwhelming lack of contentment. Whatever part of the system I am participating in, whatever role I have in the American Dream, is not working for me. It seems to me as though life ought to be worth living for its own sake, but more and more trends are emerging making it seem as though life needs medication to be worth living, as the pharmaceutical industry is exploding. What are we compensating for, in needing all of the Xanax and Ritalin? Is it truly a case-by-case problem, as doctors seem to think, when individuals find it difficult to cope and function in normal society? That would be a logical conclusion decades ago when there appeared to be less people “needing” medication to function. However, it is seeming more and more like everybody is developing a mild case of ADD or clinical depression or anxiety for which they require some narcotic solution. The logical conclusion now, having observed this, is that most of us feel we can’t quite function in society!
So is that our fault? Is the flaw inherently ours for not fitting into this system? If it were just me, I’d probably say yes. But there are so many of us feeling this way that I can only think that the system is the problem, that society is somehow making us feel oppressed. I know that I’m starting to sound like some raving hippie, but I’m not an anarchist (yet) nor do I advocate that we all renounce society and become an army of Alexander Supertramps, refusing to participate in the public. These would be selfish acts of disdain towards our fellow men. I just think we need more activists in this country, more charity, more whistle-blowing, and more scrutiny directed towards our politicians.
At the risk of sounding like an extremist, the entire political-legal system is fucked. Anyone operating under the assumption that the Constitution is like some perfect, divine document is an idiot. It’s got more loopholes than an afghan blanket, and when people find these loopholes, they don’t correct them: They exploit them! Lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists can make entire careers out of this, reaping the benefits of their taxpayers’ ignorance. This is the upshot of our selfish, individual-oriented capitalist system, and so we even come to admire these people because their lack of moral fiber makes them wealthy and successful: So it is we see flawed people prevailing in a flawed system, while virtuous, hardworking men scrape by on minimum wage and are fooled into believing it’s sufficient, even deserved to live as they do.
So where is our Gandhi? Happily watching American Idol?

Brief but to the Point?

The problem with trying to be a writer is that it’s not all book signings and admiring readers. It turns out that I actually have to write something first, which, it turns out, is actually really hard. Especially when one is as fried and addicted as I am to a chemical which has no particularly necessary side effects, just an empty sense of contentment and enduring exhausted laziness. Don’t get me wrong, I love weed, and I love everything that weed has done to broaden my perspective and update my worldview, but it just may be that, at this juncture in my life, I have already enjoyed all of the benefits of marijuana that I possibly can, and that continual use of the substance is not needed to enjoy these effects for the rest of my life.
As it stands currently, I’m lucky to be able to form sentences for all the damage I’ve done to my short-term memory and basic mental functioning. Although cannabis has a tendency to make people think more deeply through long-term potentiation and an increase in retrograde signaling between synapses, it is also notorious for making them think more slowly due to getting them high and letting less oxygen reach their brains. Yes, this is all true, but no, I won’t link to any studies or sources because this isn’t a science paper and I’m frankly tired of all the pomp and circumstance that comes with doing anything academic in today’s world where ink on a degree is worth more to an employer than all the knowledge in the world. But that’s another matter, really. What I am discussing now is my inability to write, to structure, to plan what I am going to write and then execute it with no tangential ranting.
I must say that’s probably the only thing I am conveying effectively.