Political Consciousness Pt2 - The Tools at Hand

Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.
Rosa Luxembourg

In Part 1, I brought up some of my most vulnerable stories to light, not because I wanted your commiseration, but because I believe that understanding how those traumatic moments exist in our memory helps us shape and structure our thoughts moving forward. And here, I hope to be able to present my version of connecting the dots, as well as more stories that helped my questions find answers... and more questions along the way. Ready Freddy?...

ACT 3 - The Anonymous Flea:

New millennium, new possibilities, new home. Due to multiple reasons that aren't relevant to this part of my story (Or perhaps at a different time), at around age 13, I decided to move away from my family and back to my hometown to live with my grandmother. This was perhaps my body aching for less sensory overload, looking for a more balanced life in which I could accomplish other things rather than spending almost three hours of every day riding public transit to and from school, along with the noise, smog, and overall pace that big cities often can't help but produce.

After arriving to Sevilla, this time for good, it didn't take a lot of time for me to settle in and find a new groove into a life that was closer to what my body was asking for: dynamic, full of community, and given the size of this town, with lots of time to get everything I wanted done and more. My grandmother loved hanging out with her friends, and so did I, and as a result our house was virtually empty at all times except for when we went home to sleep or have lunch in the middle of the day.

From an early age, when we got our first family computer in 1997 (A whopping i486, with a gargantuan 800 MB Hard Drive!!!), before the mainstream internet was really a thing, all I could do with it was probing and poking buttons with no end, and so I did. I learned the ins and outs of the Operating System and soon after started writing my own little automations, and most importantly, it sparked a level of curiosity only matched by the more complex academic concepts from school.

Several months after moving, I was gifted a new family computer, but this time, I was the sole owner and could decide what happened in it and how it would be utilized. Dial-up internet appeared and even though expensive, it was a goldmine for new communication forms and, above all, a wealth of information. I found out about free hosting and made websites for just about everything, learned how to code, etc... and soon enough I became the person others would come to for help with their own machines.

One night, my uncle came in with a special request as he handed me a stack of manuscripts hoping to have me type them out and lay them out in a form that could be printed in a single sheet, perhaps two, and that those sheets could then be folded to effectively quadruple the amount of information. He gave me the creative freedom to add graphics as I saw fit, etc.

I didn't have a specific tool to do this in my current setup, but if there's anything I like more than anything in the world, is finding out and learning new skills. So, it didn't take long before I found some potential candidates, and in around a week's time I had a first draft that was very close to meet the original request. After seeing what was possible, some editing and the smell of ink coming from that little Canon printer, we were holding the first edition of the new hot zine in town: "The Anonymous Flea".

"The Anonymous Flea" carried information about how the town was being run by the current administration, who their friends and links were, and how these links were being utilized to favour some people over others, and it was also a good introduction to the more structured anti-systemic concepts. This was also the time in which the largest collection of books was opened to me and presented without restriction.

I managed to edit the first six or seven editions of the Zine before one of the more senior members in the group took over my layout to streamline the process, I was after all a high school student with many other interests, and as engaged as I was, at 14, figuring out how to program computers to do what I wanted them to, riding my bike, playing soccer with friends, and learning how to play an instrument, were a higher priority than plotting text on a sheet of paper. I wasn't aware of the impact that text was having beyond my feeling of excitement and mischief, but the doors that it opened never closed.

The endless bookshelves were the access to a world I didn't know I needed, but once in there I'd spent countless hours devouring, taking in ideas from all sorts of sources, some good, some not; learning how to discern, sift, and find an explanation, a path that explained things like why my grandfather and my uncle weren't around, and why I had the ability to go home and sleep in a comfortable bed while there were people sleeping on park benches, walking around aimlessly and seemingly forgotten by the system. I learned that this was all by design. This was the system working as intended.

ACT 4 - Modern Day Servitude

This is not today, but close. This is the time in which I finally accepted that knowing that the system is unfair isn't enough, and that something must be done about it. This is my real political awakening.

There is no specific story behind this, but a combination of the things I've said before, plus countless little moments in life that slowly steered me in this direction. Material reality has this thing in which it doesn't care about you believing in it, because it exists inherently and in spite of us trying to mask it with ideas. We are creative people who like to have explanations for every mystery we find, and with that, we each have a distinct tolerance for what we choose to believe and when we are ready to move on.

When we speak in favour of those less privileged and encourage them to join forces and create collective power, the people who are currently in control must resort to all available methods to prevent an uprising, as this would inevitably lead to them losing control, and in a world consumed by consumerism and people drunk in power, our most basic instincts of self-preservation kick in and provoke reactions that we wouldn't think anyone capable of. This in multiple contexts explains why there's people sleeping in the streets, but also why there's people willing to go to unspeakable ends to eliminate the threats to their own self-assessed value. My grandfather was a threat to a system that viewed farm workers as exploitable and disposable, he had to go.

We all are part of a system we did not choose, a system that indoctrinated us from day zero, and that along with its normal day-to-day subtext, it also was able to create its own opposition, just so it could be sanitized and controlled. Capitalism's biggest win in history was the demonization and total caricaturing of the systems that opposed it. It managed to get individuals to vote against their own interests and smile while they're at it. It turned life into a zero-sum game in which for you to have something, others must have nothing.

Through these last few posts, I've tried to expose, perhaps chaotically, a brief introduction of the things that have changed my life and have lead me to join organizations, political groups, mutual aid spaces, and the overall conversation. We must use our tools to effect the change we want to see in our society. Every conversation is a political conversation in a world that is burning, both metaphorically and literally, and even choosing to not get political is a statement on its own. We can use our privilege to be explicit, to demand answers, actions, and move towards a world that will slowly move away from the disgrace of capital, and centre its views again in human life instead of profits and numbers.

No, we will not all be wearing grey suits and innovation will not suddenly disappear. In fact, humans are said to be more creative when they're not thinking about whether they are going to be able to eat at the end of the day, or whether they will have a roof to cover their head come next week. That pressure exists because the oligarchs need our labour for their continuous lascivious lifestyles. Get to work, or else...

And as I finish my story, let me ask you, how has your everyday life shaped who you are? How do you approach your community and what implicit biases are you aware of? Were you able to eat well over this last week? Is life getting more expensive and difficult to navigate? What can we do about it? What is to be done? As some guy once asked...

Hey! You've made it! - I put a great deal of thought and emotion into writing these very vulnerable pieces of my own story. there's a lot more to me. Want to read more? Let me know what you're curious about, email me at [email protected]. And if you're not subscribed to this blog, please do so in the form below!