Sympathy @ MindSay

    Why do many of us have this fierce quest to be right all of the time? Why do people think that being right ups their personal value more than anything else? Well, maybe yes, or maybe no.

    ‘Does it matter? He is wrong and we are right.’ That’s what we would always say. Aww c'mon, is that what it is?! But life isn’t all about being right all of the time. Right doesn’t always make us the good guys. If we pursue and defend right in a manner that appears heartless, mean, ruthless, or demeaning then whatever our good intent that sense of being right would be lost in the pieces of a shattered heart --- a broken spirit.

We go to extra lengths to defend being right or prove a point which we believe is the correct one. But has it ever occurred to us just how this hard badgering and hammering is affecting the other person? That the words we speak although of good intent may not be the right things to say to that person? That being so entrenched in our fervor and righteousness we fail to see that the other person is hurting?

How about trying on his shoes for a change and see how that feels? Maybe then you will wish so hard that the world or people were a little bit kinder? That it’s not so much being right but being kind which truly matters? That people can be wrong, true, but are we always kind? Such thoughts run through the mind of a broken man.

Being right is okay in its proper time intent and place, but being kind is more important --- cause it’s being human and humane that makes the grade.

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

I have two unrelated topics for you today.

1. There is a Republican debate tonight at 9pm eastern on MSNBC. Watch Ron Paul roll over the other knuckleheads once again.

2. My sympathy goes out to all the people in Buffalo after last night's debacle. I thought I rooted for a bad NFL team, but DAMN! Only the Bills could give up 9 points in the final 20 seconds of the game and lose 25-24.

I'll write more later. I'll remember Virginia Tech student body in my prayers. There is violence on this campus too. A violent neighborhood surrounds this campus. And if you're smart, you don't let your guard down unnecessarily. I suppose  it's good advice anywhere, even shopping in a mall, or walking to services, going out for something to eat.

I'm trying to acquaint my own fears, for lack of a better word, of the violence so near, and, then those students not expecting any of that, any perception of threats and then have this happen. It's overwhelmeing isn't it?

More later. Any thoughts?

(yay...ugh)

Not so enthused about Gwensday today.

A lot of my friends are going through some tough spit.

I feel guilty for being happy sometimes, which is stupid, I know.

I can't help it.  I don't know why.  It's ok though.

I know I've been blessed with cock-eyed optimism.

Or maybe it's because I can't stand being sad.

I'm no knocking anyone who likes to revel in misery, but

It is my least favorite emotion...

It would be foolish of me to think I could be happy 24/7

Lord knows I want it that way, but it's not realistic

Reality.  Hell, in this day and age of sensationalism,

even reality itself has become compromised.

Dat ain't right.

Pardon me while I find myself again.

If you see me in the meantime,

tell me I'm looking for me, tell me to come runnin'

Then, wait to see if my stubborn ass will listen ;)