What happens without a revolution?

The world will change ... or at least our perception of the world will change. Nothing is going to stay the same. Change is inevitable. Being born, growing, dying ... these are all marks of change. That's simply the way of the world.

Conscious change, however, can only happen where there is consciousness, where there is an awareness of what can, needs, or should be changed, when individuals gather like-minded others together to make a difference. Of course, that is next-to-impossible these days since everybody is right and everyone else is wrong, since there's no talking to most people anyhow, and you can't fight city hall.

Toward the end of last year, there was a spate of postings that appeared on my Facebook wall about individual responsibility. You know, things like each of us is responsible for the choices and decisions we make; it's not our parents, our neighborhood, nor our community who's to blame, we have to own up to our own choices and decisions. Some of these appeared concurrently with news reports of protests and demonstrations, the hand-up/I-can't-breathe/Black-lives-matter events. It's sad enough that such "statements" get made for what are obviously the wrong reasons, but while I am all for personal responsibility, if we apply the logic of the statement to the statement itself, we find it collapses into a rather pathetic bleating of it's-not-my-fault.

Think about it: we live in a world run by fear, directed by terror; we're restricted in our freedom by oppressive political and police structures; Americans are personally armed to the teeth to protect itself against everyone who's out to get them; religious fanaticism brings forth sickening violence and horror; there's not talk and discussion anymore, only accusations, claims and contentions, our infrastructure deteriorates before our eyes, illness drives so many to bankruptcy, and nobody can do anything about anything anymore. The logic of the personal-responsibility advocates tells me that since you choose to do nothing about any of that, then your are responsible that things are the way they are. You choose to buy your new car instead of putting the money to better use for the community; you choose to sit in front of the TV instead of getting involved in community projects; you choose to watch Fox instead of getting the facts and informing yourself about issues; you choose to put more energy into rooting for the home team instead of making a difference in the world. These are all choices we make, day in and day out, and each and every one of them contributes to how the world is.

The world is the way it is: unfair, unjust, unequal, inhuman, violent, dangerous, threatening, and deadly because we have all made those choices that end up making the world this way.

The revolution, should there ever be one, will never, ever start with the others. In can only start with you. If you don't consciously change, don't expect that anyone else ever will.