Not being ignorant is painful

Greetings Joe,

Your article "Nine Billion Little Feet" was accurate in every way. We try to throw those rocks at the American Consumerist Shitty Evil Way. Not that the beast will ever feel them, but it's the throwing that matters.

Although I haven't yet gotten to your point of disassociation yet, I'm working on that. I don't buy those shiny bobbles that everyone else has. No cell phone, no TV, a job that pays crap, used clothing stores, community garden shares, the whole bit. For me, it wasn't all that hard to not want these extravagant lifestyles. I avoided college, figuring that since I had been subjected to 12 years of forced dumbing down education, all that had to be unlearned. So why would I waste another few years just trying to get some shiny high paying job, when I never agreed with the sick American culture that I grew up in?

Like you, I've been trying to tell people for years the way the Beast would fall, but people called me young and foolish. They still are blind, even while everything you wrote was SO glaringly obvious.

My love for humanity has suffered a great deal over these past few years. But it's still expressed to a few "diamonds in the rough." It's not the way the diamonds are torn from their homelands to rest on unworthy fingers, but the fact that the rare light they held before they were taken by shaking bloodied hands, wars and greed.

I need to atone for my "sins" as well. The times I've fallen asleep and wallowed in the same pits of shit that most other Americans do, consumerist blinded by greed and that "American Dream" of stepping on the suffering of others, to drive fancy cars. What have we become?

Atonement will be a long road for me, but I take actions more humanly every moment. I don't buy something unneeded. I guess learning to unlearn the blatant lies and bullshit is the hardest part. Being lied to for money, being in that belly of the beast while others suffer, it sucks.

But I'm a big girl now. Being in an insane country with the drugged sleeping cows is hard to do, but perhaps that is the punishment. Not being ignorant is painful.

Sincerely,

April

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April,

I am assuming from the tone of your letter that you are a younger person (at least compared to me). I can only say this: You might be surprised how many other younger people are coming to the same realization. It's just that they are spread rather thinly through society. But if they ever come to critical mass, all hell is gonna break loose in this nation. I hope I am still around to watch the fight, because it’s gonna be a doozy!

In art and labor,

Joe