I'm Proud.

What I think.

I’m Proud

I’m proud of my people, proud to be one of them,

that great mass on society’s bottom rung.

Those who, with coal-dust under their nails

in their eyes, in their lungs

claw at the earths entrails.

Their brothers,

cement in their hair

in their mouth, in their ears,

oil ingrained in their fingers,

on their face.

Sisters, glistening with sweat

midst the ceaseless noise of machines

that throw out shirts, shoes, toys, carpets

for other people.

Those with soil and sweat stuck to their skin

smelling of the earth, feeding the multitude,

grinding out their lives in a harsh pitiless system

weighted down

with a sack load of half-dead dreams,

sometimes brought to their knees

by a tidal wave of despair,

never defeated,

groping in the dark to find tomorrow,

keeping hope alive;

they amaze me.

Somehow, from somewhere

in this cold, cruel

unforgiving scheme of things

they find love for their children.

Not a teaspoonful, not a cupful,

but buckets full, to bathe them in,

to pour over them.

They seem to know

that one day this world will be ours

and to take care of it

we will need those who have been loved.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE TO SERVE?

That old debate about the individual and the collective from ReoCities:

CHOOSING TO SERVE.

        The more participatory a social system is, the more total its control is because the individual identifies herself with his role within the system. In other words, a democratic structure is the most efficient way yet developed to integrate individuals into a social system, to make them feel that they are essentially a part of a social machine. Partial rebellions, in the form of "radical "issues, which use democratic methods or demand more justice, equality or participation in democratic processes become lubricant for the machinery of social control.
      Those who rebel against the social context in its totality as they confront it in their lives are called hooligans, delinquents, enemies of "the People". They cannot be tolerated in a democratic system (not even the consensus process systems of certain so-called radical and anarchist groups) because their actions undermine the ideological basis of such systems, by showing that individual freedom grows out of self-determined activity, not any sort of decision-making process. Radical groups will merely expel such troublemakers, but within the larger social context, they must be punished, rehabilitated or destroyed if caught.
       Democracy is never anarchic, no matter how direct. Democratic decisions are not the decisions/actions of free individuals. They are merely choices made between the options offered by the social context, choices separated from the actions of individuals and used to control those actions, to subject them to the will of the group, the society. So to choose to participate in democratic processes is to choose to serve, to be a slave to a will outside of oneself. No free-spirited individual would accept the will of the majority or the group consensus as a way of determining how to live anymore than she would accept the will of a dictator or the central committee. I do not merely a want a say in how society creates my life. I want my life to by my own to create as I desire.

ann arky's home.