Stop Being a Stupid Liberal pt 7 of 7: On New Beginnings

(This isn't quite right but so it goes...)

We begin. We fail, we become depressed, we hit new year’s, we quit, we move, we have a crush on your mom…we begin again. Beginnings are a puzzling phenomenon, when everything, again, becomes new. In a simple way such changes make clear the difference between humanity and any notion of a single “world out there”.

But in any case—and this is the core of my argument—it is important to have positions. Your life is your position, your direction, your railroad tracks, and you can begin again. And just as by beginning again you have a new world, so too, we can construct the world we want for all of us, we can build the relationships, the networks, and the institutions to make it happen. And this is my life, so if you ever want to try to figure something out, my info will be out there so long as facebook is on the air.

And EXCO, however fragile and with however far to go, is only the beginning. Yet this project speaks to what I would like to see in how we organize our creation. We do so in a way that gives us and other regular people the power. We do so in a way such that there are not people who serve others and those who are served but that our collective liberation is built into the same project. We are all teachers and learners…all our humanities are at stake. We do so in a way that creates spaces and builds communities and encourage people to find ways to use those resources to fit their needs, goals, and projects. We find a small, beautiful idea, tend it, nurture it, figure out the kinks, and spread it everywhere like what should be done with flowers and food and hemp and friendship.

This is what I want to do in the Twin Cities, and then throughout the world.

And this process is work. It requires recognition of how we as people are living so as to prevent other people from being people, and how we’ve always known we were doing this and how we always hide it from ourselves. It requires desiring. It requires patience, and dedication to a task that doesn’t allow us to bask in the wonder of spontaneity, the practical naivety of believing that everything is equally important. It requires seeing evil and not dying. It is helped by a belief in the impossible, a willingness to hold onto it, and perhaps a willingness to see what capital and the State think autonomy looks like…us bleeding in the road.

But listen.

You live. You have ideas, desires, good vibes, visions. You know that a world built on speaking bullshit is bound to be pretty crappy. You know people who know people. To be passionate is simply to have a desire and hold onto it, to give it breath in your life.

Your life is your position. You have already begun. If you want, begin again.

david “the imf/world” boehnke can be contacted at db(at)riseup(dot)net