Friday, June 18, 2010

A Clean Slate For The Industrial Powers

I'm a fair person, probably the fairest person in the world. It was always that way even in school. If the ball hit the foul line, even if it was for the other team, I'd tell the truth. I'm not going to say I lived a perfect life or always did the right thing, because I know I didn't. But I had a sense of fairness somewhere in me that, once stimulated, just wouldn't quit.

I'm always dealing with the same thing today, wanting to be fair. The other obvious dimension of this trait is the general sense of unease I have, that then builds to an irritation, that then grows to an abiding annoyance, that then mounts to a feverish protestation, that then feeds on itself and becomes genuine anger, and that then fireballs and becomes the rage of a bear. I hate injustice in all its forms, from the bully taking someone's lunch money all the way up to the industrial powers making mincemeat out of the earth.

That happens and naturally I lash out. I've done that repeatedly in the last few months, so much so that my rage has become a kind of super rage, with lots of red hot aspects involving also white heat. I've spewed enough lava in the last few months to win the science fair. The landscape all around shows signs of molten rivers having flowed.

But today -- being reminded of my sense of fairness, having looked at myself nude in a full length mirror and realized that in every way I'm the full package -- I'm pulling back and taking stock. I need to reevaluate, to see if maybe my ire is justified or whether I'm simply feeding on it.

To that end, I'm declaring a temporary truce in my crusade against the industrialists and industrial powers. How this truce will go, I don't know, of course. It could very well be that something will set me off again. Or it could be that I will see things from their point of view and realize that I've been all wrong. I just don't know. It might be five minutes, five days, or five years. Then I could keep going like that, or I could suddenly erupt and try to make up for lost time.

So, starting right now, I'm declaring a clean slate for the industrial powers. They have this time right now, this respite, to show me that they're not as bad as I've said they are.

No comments: