Causes @ MindSay

There are a multitude of causes around the worked each worthy in its own right.  Some are more in need than others.  Some are only causes in the name of a cause.  The word itself is speculative cause yet we find more allure in individual operations.  It is truly with great valor and honorability that we recognize the action of such causes, but with some hesitancy I would assert.  It seems that in a time of rapid technology and popular culture the increasing source of epistemological reckoning we fall prey to fetishism.  I have discussed in my talks about academic and intellectual fetishism.  Fetishism is referred to most often in sexual contexts.  The act of fetish is indulging in as a sense of “deviant” behavior that is an obsession produced by an egoic thirst (see Sigmund Freud).  Causes have become a fetish taken up by those with kind hearts and imaginations.  The more causes that are taken up the more causes that are produced to address those causes and thus and endless cycle of causes occur by an affective causation.  Ironic isn’t it.  So how do we navigate and negotiate causes in order to understand how we are attempting to bring about an end by our means rather than a continual supply of means with no end?  We must find meaning in ourselves that promotes us to stand for a cause that may encompass or willfully incorporate several causes under one distinct meaningful approach.  We must not take pleasure in causes but pain.  Sympathy is the oppressors understanding that his position is safe and distance from the oppressed.  Empathy attempts to provide a relational consciousness within the oppressed and victimized.  Charity is an oppressive tool that teases unknowingly.  Not all charitable negotiations are this way.  It should be understood that charity is not the empathetic consciousness but the sympathetic.  It leaves a noticeable distance form the charitable producer and the consumer of such charity.  In many cases the sympathy stimulates a brief moment of contentment that the charity has somehow participated in an active agency to better the situation.  It is nothing more in this case but a tithing of aberration for the charitable.  It is a cause which causes them to feel elated.  What dreams they rest with easily do not incorporate the stark and desperate realities of those whose charity they will receive.  At times I am cynical of the world and the cycle of charity.  Charity keeps alive the dead and the terminally oppressed.  At his point we can return to the original discussion of causes.  To take up a cause is to take up a life.  A life that is responsible not for the self, but for those that it aims to affect.  Education is a cause in its own right.  Though in understanding education as a cause it is not complete, absolute, nor terminable until death.  Time is irrelevant in understanding cause.  With a swift blow one movement is erased and another one takes its place.  We must caution ourselves in taking up causes.  It is not an easy task or one that promises great reward.  If anything there is certainty of consequence, pain, and relinquishing of what one enjoys in order to participate as an advocate and a possible constituent.  Great revolutionaries have understood that causes are devised by those who are often not constituents of them.  We feel sympathy for the suffering of a group but would refuse to trade places, to momentarily emancipate an individual.  When one refuses to give up his or her life even in an abstract hypothetical proposal then that person not only understands their position, they have strengthened it.  The strengthening of such positions continues to promote a cycle of dominance, unearned privilege, oppression, and willful neglect.  Charity becomes the financial penalty for refusing such hypothetical terms.  It is the opium needed to intoxicate the mind as it drifts into an abstract reality filled with sympathy and comfort.  Life is comfortable for those who are not within a cause.  Those who do not receive charity are comfortable in the leisure and ability to not be so.  We cannot condemn the charitable, sympathetic, and good intentioned.  We can, however, attempt to convey a consciousness and empathetic realization among those who are quick to give and take but not partake.  So much as we critically discuss these unknowing benevolents they are the advocacy and agents of transformation.  With clarity and willingness to be what they are objecting they become like the other which loses its rigid categorical form in place of self-affiliation.  So to the missionaries who give conditionally what has been taken away from you that heeds such condition for charity and cause.  Such understanding of support or “cause” must be negotiated diligently or we fall into a mindless fetish of causes for the sake of having a cause.

Antonio Garcia

Indiana University

<rant>

People are vastly misled these days.

Because the people who pushed for drastic moral and social change in the past have now been idealized and made into popular modern heroes, the obligations on the average person have changed to fit the new view of heroism. In the past we saw that because fighting in war was heroic, people foolishly sought out war. Now because fighting for a cause is heroic, people foolishly seek out causes. People feel as if this standard of moral justice is something they must live up to.

But in the fast-paced modern world where efficiency has become a necessity and lack of attention span has become a commodity to be invested in, this need to end social injustice has been warped into something completely different by those who push their values too much to get a result too fast. It has caused others to doubt their own personal methods and morality, making the whole process snowball at a tremendous speed.

As a result, instead of fully educating people in their beliefs, or even sitting down to fully understand the consequences of their actions and the moral implications of the changes they are vouching for, rash actions are taken for causes that have become half-assed, distorted, popular misconceptions. 

In other words, instead of helping the original cause, people hurt it by bending it to fit their own personal needs on a specific time basis.

Feminism is just one of those causes that has been perverted (in my opinion) to fit the manipulative actions of some women. As soon as a man, intelligent or not, might lay down criticism of their thoughts that could be harmful, they are going to immediately counter it by saying you are sexist. It makes them untouchable, and therefore meets their needs. Feminism is being used as a tool to reach an end, and in my opinion this is wrong.

Get this straight: I am not writing a bash on Feminism. I’m merely saying that Feminism was originally started to create a mutual and equal feeling of respect and treatment among men and women. It was not brought about so women could drag men down and criticize their means of achieving their goals in order to further their own.

Granted not all feminism nowadays is bad. There are still causes worth fighting for. Women are paid less, they are broadcast as sexual objects, they are still not being treated equal in many ways, but for heaven’s sake, equal injustices are being put forth upon men every day. Men also hold stereotypes that are not favorable to them or society in their consequences. But because feminism has been changed into something of a male-bashing sport, few stop to analyze it.

<sarcasm>I mean, it must be their fault right? They’re men! </sarcasm>

In the long run it's not the causes that are misleading; it's the people who misuse the causes for their own benefits that you need to watch out for. And the last thing I want to do is sit around and listen to some hypocrite bitch about these things when they are unwilling to rise up and do something about it themselves. And by do something, I mean something useful, not just ripping on their male friends for something stupid and pointless.

You shouldn't label yourself with a cause unless you are willing to take full responsibility for the cause in every aspect of your life. I agree with some of the feminist views. I think that women should be treated with equality. But I don’t claim to be a feminist. Why? Because I don’t think that I live up to these things unerringly in my every day life.

Though I may correct what I think may need to be corrected, I may put someone in line if I think that they have gone to far in bashing a particular sex, there are times when I have done nothing. I am only human. I can only devote so much of my time. Had I devoted my entire life to a cause, perhaps then I could feel justified in saying I was a symbol of the feminist cause by giving myself that name.

But I haven’t. And honestly, I don’t think that half the people out there who claim to be feminists do either. If you are one of them, let me tell you something. In doing this, you are not providing an example. Rather you are bringing the example down. Why do people stereotype Feminists as whiney women?  Not because Feminists are, but because the majority of people whom improperly label themselves with that name are.

So, if you really want to help the cause, then do one of two things: Either get off your butt and do something worthwhile for the cause, or back off. Stop nitpicking the little things as they suit your purpose and then turn your back on the larger issues. Doing this is about as useful as telling Hitler that he’s not using the right wire for his concentration camp fences when you could be working to shut them down. There are bigger things to worry about, so quit wasting all of our time. You’re giving the cause a bad name. Even though you may have had the intention of helping, you’re hurting it in a big way.

Give the real heroes a chance to shine without making them scrape their way through the stereotypes you’ve created for them because you thought you’d be all noble one day and hypocrite the next and then you’d label yourself with the cause because it suits your needs.

And this doesn’t just go for Feminism. This goes for everything: Views on politics, racism, work ethics, social change, war, and religion. Anything you can think of.

If you believe in a cause, then support it by using your head. Think about the issues on hand. Read up on the things you aren’t sure about. Make yourself informed.

But do not, I repeat, do not give some half-assed opinion or criticism of some little non-important thing with the guise of a greater cause unless you can say yourself that you fight for the greater cause when it requires sacrifice on your part, not just when it’s convenient.

I’m tired of hearing “Because it’s wrong…” followed by some overused cliché. Perhaps before you go spouting armchair philosophy on some specific social dilemma, you should sit down and think about exactly why the issue is wrong, instead of just repeating what someone else told you just so you can sound intelligent. Half the time, you’ll probably end up wrong anyways.

</rant>

~Kira