Forum Post: You Are Asking the Wrong Questions and Making the Wrong Decisions
Posted 11 years ago on May 30, 2012, 5:28 p.m. EST by jusdude
(15)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
This post is not to disrespect any of the beautiful, courageous people of the Occupy Movement that are challenging our system.
This post does go against my idea that I am not the person to educate people on what is the "right" way to see things. There is no one right way to do anything. But here I am being a super hypocrite.
All this time that we spend protesting an elite who can go into their soundproof conference rooms and ignore the hell out of the poor "hippie" protesters down on the street,
all this time that we spend arguing about what policies should change and what people should be in office is a waste of time when our masters can just ignore us and decide tomorrow to re-institute the draft and send all our asses into war,
all this time that we spend begging to be heard by people who decided a long time ago that money and mobility were more important than your grandmother who was denied treatment for her cancer because her health insurance people don't give a flying carpet ride about her stupid cancer shit,
all of this time that we spend pleading to our politi-parents for more allowance money so that we can eat real food instead of high fructose corn syrup in a can because the corn companies are funding those same politi-parents,
all this time that we Just Wont Stop ARGUING about who should be taxed when we're still getting taxed anyway.
all this time and all this effort, all this standing in lines and ranting and raving and protesting and begging and pleading and no one cares, and still NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
What we need to do is build ourselves up, grassroots style, in our communities and create real and pure democracy where each person's say holds the same weight. No politi-parents. No Gods. No Masters.
What we need to do is educate ourselves and other willing people about ways to grow food, make clothing, build and maintain shelter, collaborate and share resources, create sustainable off-the-grid energy.
What we need to do is start barefoot colleges in our backyards (look it up) sharing ideas, ingenuity, and real innovative solutions on the community level. Urban Gardens. Food forests. Free education. Resource based economy. Things that we need and want. You want a revolution. Take all your beautiful brains, put them together and make something in this world that represents what you believe. Create spaces that are a real-life representation of what you want. And then share the hell out of them. Tell Everyone!
Don't wait for these guys to fix it for you. Get together, love each other, and fix it yourselves. Ignore the government. Live as if they don't exist and create a community around you that represent your highest ideals. Make an alternative. Build a world you want to live in, from the ground up. Get out there and make them take notice. Show people what it would be like. Educate and challenge yourselves to dream bigger. Challenge every assumption you once had about how the world should work and how you should live.
Leave the bullshit realism to people who are fine with world inequality. Leave the pessimism for those who believe that hunger and poverty are certainties and not the result of hierarchical corruption.
Be an idealist. Live your ideals. Be bold enough to come together, talk together on the streets, everywhere, and build your world. Make it happen. Find people who also want to make it happen and create alternatives.
Do it now. Don't wait for tomorrow. Do it Today. Don’t depend on the people who ARE the problem to fix the problem. Help each other to fix it yourselves.
Am I saying something so crazy here that it just completely goes over everyone's head? Isn't that what any civilization has done since the beginning, build a world they want to live in? I am saying that we should do that, despite everything. Create a large grassroots movement that feeds the homeless for free and gives them a place to work and grow their own food. Create colleges where people can teach each other valuable architectural, mathematical, and science skills that they can use towards designing infrastructure and building homes and creating self-sustaining infrastructures. It has been done before and is being done right now!
Imagine people giving up parts of their lawn to grow food. Imagine thousands of people using parts of their lawns to make food. Then people can collect all this food, put it in one central home or area, where everyone who is partnering can come (with their voucher) and get food for free. There would have to be limits of course. But imagine if it grew. People would have to spend less on food. They would be getting free food, outside of government, outside of capitalism. Responsible partnerships with good people.
Imagine if people gave up their living rooms once a week or month, to classes on various subjects, for discussions, for debates, for hands on work on real solutions to real problems. How can you make solar panels and use them for electricity? How can you create water systems that can be refilled by rainwater and used instead of central water distribution? Getting normal people to learn things like that could be powerful, even if it is not plausible to implement it in big ways yet. Imagine people, sitting on the floor, huddled together, discussing issues, raising discussions, fueling real change on the small level and then building it. Now imagine if there were thirty homes that did this. Fifty. 100 hundred. You've just created decentralized, grassroots education where people can work on projects and solve real problems.
Imagine converting various secret places into food forests that grow various foods without needing a lot of management. Imagine giving out the location of these food forests to people little by little until there are enough secret food forests to provide for hundreds of people.
Imagine people setting up flash debates in the city, getting together and actually having conversation about real issues and people can just walk by and join in.
Imagine whole websites devoted to doing it yourself, equipped with videos and links. Imagine documentaries made entirely of these amateur videos, put together into something masterful.
Imagine open source information everywhere and anywhere encouraging the idea that ideas should be free. This is the work that you could be doing. Protesting is great, but it has been neutered by laws to be ineffective. And putting yourself in prison does not have the same impact that it once had. This is a world where democracy can be made totalitarian.
Treat the government like it has lost its value and create communities that are valuable. Then you can go back and show them that there are other ways and YOU DON’T NEED THEM. Who knows? Maybe if enough passionate people come together it could create a revolution of self-sufficient people, who will revolutionize the way society works.
If you want a "discussion" on this forum, you need more pandering, vitriol and above all, slam anyone who isn't a far left prog/lib; otherwise your post is doomed to fall to the bottom of the heap. Maybe if you just change the title to "Romney will never get it", you will get a hundred responses. Of course, none of them will address your post, but it will make for interesting reading.
Seriously? All the randomness that actually gets discussed on this website and no one even bothers to discuss something like this. A REAL solution. Not just more protesting uncaring corrupt rich people. Not just more mud slinging at other Occupy members. Not just more meaningless discussion about who and what is evil. And NO ONE even thinks this is worth a REAL discussion?
No no no. There will be no replies unless this post slams Reps or praises Dems or calls for some nonsense "action" that attracts five people. Maybe throw in a conspiracy theory or two and bash Fox and then we can have a "discussion".