Saturday, November 22, 2003

One of the most effective aspects of voluntarism is that volunteering simutaneously stimulates and channels human beings innate compassion while divesting compassion from having any meaningful global impact. The idea of compassion for fellow beings is diverted into helping victims, as something separate from our raisan d'etre, something alien from the work of our lives. I think humanity's compassionate spirit is innate and ultimately irrespressible, which is why we must have so many contrived controlled channels for manifesting charity. If people were wholescale charitable, that would result in a world dominated by human goals, rather than commerce and control. Instead, those ideas are compartmentalized into notions of church or state, which can be controlled more effectively by a few - rulership of many by controlling the mythology. I remember being horrified that not one of my other classmates in 4th year English got the fact that we were already living Huxley's Brave New World. I ended up fending off arguments and mutual looks of horror and revulsion by all twenty or so other students. I found it so obvious - this wasn't science fiction, it was satire. Contemporaneous satire as well, still. Steps like the Patriot Act, the FBI's recent request to have fuller ability to intercept Internet communications, all lead to a fuller fictional adaptation of Orwell or Huxley, more authentic to the original. 1:30:19 AM