Creative Maladjustment: Part I

I must be looking pretty forlorn lately, because people keep handing me these hopeful essays to read. They're all about how us do-gooder types can find it in ourselves to keep on fighting -- for justice, peace, freedom, children, the planet, etc. -- even though we don’t appear to be making any progress whatsoever, if only to prove to ourselves that we haven't given up yet. It's like that guy in 1 Giant Leap who says "I'm very optimistic; I can't be otherwise. We have to even believe that we are optimistic, and that will make a difference to ourselves." Wow, is that beautiful... or sick?

Many of these essays also cite the admittedly remote possibility that some tiny step forward might one day happen as a result of an unexpected byproduct of a seemingly vain action we take now -- though of course we are unlikely to live to see any of our efforts bear such fruit, or to know about it if we do. Think (say the essayists) of the countless people who struggled all their lives, died knowing their cause was surely lost, but later became inspirational touchstones for a future generation of hopeful activists. Well, okay, so maybe it didn't work out so well for them -- but you can't deny that they made a difference.

I know all of that is true. Really I do. And sometimes I absolutely feel the power of pushing the world just one millimeter along -- making it, as Josie says, a little more ideal. And of knowing that my puny efforts in my own limited arena somehow connect me to all the other people who have worked and fought and struggled in other times & places. I always get goosebumps at Passover when we get to the part in the Haggadah that says, "You are not expected to complete the work in your lifetime. Nor may you refuse to do your unique part."

Yet I also find many of these hopeful essays weirdly oppressive. It's like we're all in some kind of abusive relationship with the greedy corporations, the soulless bureaucracies, the corrupt politicians. Like we're dependent on them to maintain the world's misery, which we then struggle against, in order to give our lives meaning. But really we've just been drawn into this exhausting, pointless cycle of endless effort and sacrifice. Like that game Madrid, where you have to keep clicking on the candles to keep them from going out -- here, try it. And then tell me: beautiful, or sick?

(Enough for tonight. I have more to say about this stuff (hopefully in a more hopeful vein). In fact, I think I'm heading toward a kind of Creative Maladjustment Manifesto... Stay tuned for Part II: "Beyond Hope" and Beyond.)

-- Mikala