jueves, 7 de abril de 2011

scar tissue that i wish you saw...

What happened to counterculture?  What happened to the beauty and magic of it?  The defiance of set societal standards and the fight for something better for us.  Have we left it all back in the 1960's?  Have we forgotten the battles that the previous generations have fought for us.  I hope not.  I dearly hope not.  But it sickens me to see, this modern day culture.  This media saturated culture.  Education has gone to shit.  We are here in college, not to become educated, but to become those people who make money.  Have we all degraded ourselves to this point?  Is this really what people think of higher education?  Of life?  Of careers.  Of course there will be the big shots, the guys who want all the money in the world.  But most of us, most of us will go to college, graduate, get a job, live comfortably.  But is that really the point of life?  To be either living the high life or being comfortable (and I can imagine that those who are living the high life are more than comfortable)?  No, brothers and sisters.  Life is about stepping outside your comfort zones.  Life is about taking risks.  Life is about learning and loving and working hard and putting your whole heart and soul into what you do.  Life is about finding a cause to live for, something to fight for.  Establishing dignity, breaking down boundaries, telling them that NO we won't take this.  If there is no desire, there is no counterculture.  If there is no hope for change, nothing will change.  If there is nothing left for us to believe in, then we have nothing.  But see it as this; there is always something to believe in.  Whether it be for a better tomorrow, or just hope in general.  It could be faith, religion, God, a spirit, who knows.  But there is always something to believe in.  Life is bleak and hollow without belief or desire.  I have been one of those followers of the crowd.  I have been one of those media-saturated beings that call themselves humans.  There is no life with that.  There is no hope in that life.  Sometimes we need to peel our eyes away from the T.V. screen, or even ask ourselves questions about it.  Why do the women always look in a particular way?  Why must the men all be of a certain race or class?  Why must certain characters remain plot devices?  Or why is there humor because of a character that is different than the rest?  If we ask questions in our daily lives, thoughts will grow in our minds.  Once we start asking questions and connecting things in our daily lives, it is then when we become educated, or on the road to education.  Education is key to counterculture just as belief is.  Is it not clear as day?  Do we not see what is happening, endangering our communities in our own country?  They call us aliens.  They say it is their country, and we are the foreigners...but whose ancestors called this earth home long before the pale faced man stepped onto this soil?  Whose traditions and families and lives happened on this continent before anyone else could step foot here?  It was our ancestors.  And it is our right to be here, in this land.  Immigrants?  We are not immigrants, we are natives.  Illegals?  We are not illegal, this land should be our rightful home.  So what makes this judgment of whose land it is or not?  Who says who "owns" this land.  Nobody owns this land, this land was our mother earth's gift to her people, and her people are supposed to respect it.  That surely never happened.  Do you realize who this world was built in favor for, when you see suburbs, and cities, and planes and trains and books and magazines?  Do you realize who things are made for and what everything is catered toward?  It is not for us.  It is not our world, because they have taken it from us.  But so many have slipped into this culture, being taken advantage of through their hegemonic means.  We think that this is all there is.  We think that maybe if we work hard enough we will get what we want.  This is what they want us to think.  This is what they want us to think when they take away our workers' rights, our scholarships, and our dignity.  They want us to think there is nothing more than what life they have given us.  It is our time to take it back.  It is our turn to get what we rightfully deserve.  It should never have been a crime for one to come here, in order to feed their family.  It should never be a crime to teach freely about our sacred culture.  It should never be legal for the government to require you to carry around "documents" just because you are brown.  Don't listen to their bull shit.  Don't let them take away your rights.  You are strong.  We are strong.  Revive the counterculture.  Viva la raza!

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