Why and who

I don't really like to write. It's too much like work that I don't get paid for and I type slowly, although I am getting quicker. So why do I blog? I'll try to explain.

I'll blame my parents for part of it. They didn't offer me much advice. Usually they told me to do what I thought was right. It was a bit maddening. I was just a kid. If I knew what was the right thing to do, I wouldn't be asking them. My father often told me that guilt was better than chicken soup. Now I suffer from a guilty conscience.

It's a crisis of conscience that motivates me to express myself. I am well aware that I stand on the shoulders of giants, leading a relatively privileged life of luxury. I know that if the rest of the world could live by our standards that we would need another four planets worth of natural resources. I know why we have all the cargo. I know the story of stuff.

I know that there are one-billion people who are literally starving every moment of every day. I know there are myriads of human, animal and environmental abuses happening all the time. I know that we are in the Earth's sixth mass extinction and we humans are the cause. I know that billions of innocents will pay the heaviest prices for problems they did not create. I know that power corrupts and money is power. I know that the Jeffersonian ideals that I hold sacred have been severely undermined by cabals of kleptocrats. I know that our present systems are unsustainable.

These things and more are almost always nagging me in the back (if not the forefront) of my mind.

But what can I do? I'm just a semi-educated blue-collar borderline poverty level middle aged guy with no extraordinary talents. What can I do?, is a question I've been asking myself for twenty years as I've struggled to grok the circumstance while working as a wage slave and trying to enjoy a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle.

I've learned how complex and interconnected things really are and how profound our problems have become. I've known despair and learned to hope within the blessed unrest.

There's no big thing I can do, but I can keep educating myself and try to share with others, chipping away persistently while supporting those who selflessly fight a righteous battle for the greater good.

By the vice of our being, we are all part of the problem. By the virtue of our being, we may all be part of the solution.