Documentation and Our Death
How about taking the lead out of our pants and pens in the name of taking the lead out of children’s mouths and marrow… to lighten our leaden lives?
by Richard Martin Oxman

Everyone acknowledges that we have enough documentation. Or they should.

Meaning that (for quite a long time now) we’ve known/definitively established enough of what’s wrong, and our endless documentation is being pursued in lieu of taking action. Documentation in lieu of doing. Doing something new. Something that will make a difference.

It’s true that certain scandals deserve to be spotlighted (anew), particular cases reviewed from time to time, and earth shattering revelations made hay of this way and that, but… for all that… there mounts — incessantly — an unnecessary pile of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah that takes up heartbeats as it hampers our ability to make use of our evidence, our shock, etc. In the simple (but very real sense) of doing something about it all… or any of it, the shit.

Scorecard’s in, but we’re mostly still just keeping score… or scoring points on a scoreboard that nobody’s paying attention to in the least bit.

If writers and lecturers and filmmakers et al. truly grasped the urgency imbedded in the major issues we face, they’d be acting differently. For one, they wouldn’t stand on ceremony concerning their little corners, the tiny bubbles they inhabit, travel within. They’d be stepping out, stepping up.

But EGO prevents some from admitting that their next work or talk isn’t that important. That the public doesn’t really need them to plant their next seed. Certainly not as much as they need something done. Certainly, considering that there’s no time left to simply carry on as usual, writing another article, organizing another conference, etc.

And that’s not unrelated to what I call TERRITORIAL TRAUMA, which is all about not moving in solidarity with someone if the movement is initiated by someone else’s idea. “Hey, we get funded big time to deal with that. We can’t have some itsy bitsy outsider coming along and telling us what to do.” And so on.

Then there’s OSTRICH SYNDROME, which is about the same thing that’s operating when you come across someone who doesn’t want to know if they have a terminal disease. Continuing with one’s routine activity (like doing book tours) is a way of avoiding acknowledgment of, say,… the end of the world. More comfy, that.

Having direct action be one’s primary focus instead of education, organization, etc., etc., etc. can be a simple matter of perceived SURVIVAL. “If I get involved with that I’ll be risking some paid appearances.” “If I go down that road, we’re going to lose a huge number of subscribers.” And so on.

There are all sorts of reasons why left-oriented citizens continue to document and/or to dwell in the realm of documentation (in coffee houses, dens, the hallowed halls of institutes, etc.), but the bottom line point here is that such is doing us in.

One difference between now and, say, the Sixties is that we truly have deadlines. We cannot proceed at the pace that we did in the Sixties, nor with the attitude that we embraced at that time.

For — to provide only one example — if Che hadn’t been captured and killed in Bolivia, and was still operating there today… he’d have the additional problem of now not being able to drink from any number of the country’s contaminated rivers without succumbing to poison. Or, because of deforestation, hide easily. [Pause.] If he were elsewhere, the lack of potable groundwater, carcinogenic air, or increasing toxicity in other forms might do him in prematurely. [Pause.] And this is without any reference whatsoever to the decline of Beauty — possible Beauty — in our lives, without which life is not worth living.

The world isn’t ending. It has already ended in places. For both humans and other species.

And there’s nothing natural about that dynamic… all the disingenuous or uninformed arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. No, nothing natural at all.

Not any more than it’s natural to pontificate exclusively while the house burns down, not troubling to pick up a bucket.

Not any more than it’s natural to be anal retentive about plans for action, demanding that all kinds of niceties be spelled out, vying for refinement of one’s theories… before one picks up a bucket.

Unnatural… it’s unnatural to think others need your take on who the arsonist is instead of rescuing their children from the flames. And so on.

TOSCA (http://oxtogrind.org/archive/483) represents something you can do (following a new paradigm*). Can do without distracting you totally from your present routine. [Pause.] But I’m not attached to it.

*To underscore this point with a single example/question: Does it make sense for UC protesters to be petitioning a disingenuous Governor or self-serving members of The Regents of California (as per http://checkingeducation.com/petition) when they could have their “own Governor” and Regents whose appointments they’ve influenced? Such could be the case by 2010/2011. [I am also obliged to add here that a proper Guv and Regents would have a shot at putting an end to the absolute horrific momentum spotlighted in http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/23269; we MUST stop that. Immediately.]

I’d simply like to know what else seems viable/worthwhile to you. What else you see that we can do together that will cause enough trouble to stop our horrid momentum in time.

The author can be reached at tosca.2010[at]yahoo.com
The article was initially going to be titled “Documentation, Delineation and Our Death.”
P.S. Please see http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/fear-reasons-save-enviro nment.html and http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2624.shtml