On the last Hax...
I am not sure how conspiratorial it all is and I'd like to get to the bottom of things so I can live my life loving and laughing - but I really can't imagine this collective rage and mallaise and its concommitent pharmeceutical reponses aren't in some ways sidestepping the frustrations and anger people feel in a place that is supposed to be the pinnacle of human existence. Some of us aren't made for this place and the isolation that it fosters and the creative responses to that, whether it be writing, painting, music, whatever, are the stuff of possibility, but living only in possibility without the made-possible is tiring, at least to me.
Briefly, (or not, whatever) I just realized that I neglected this notion yesterday and I have a few words: I believe -- because I am conspiratorial and shit -- that there is a greater force holding back our collective fight and that that force is fueling an unhealthy rage that will ultimately end in self-destruction. I mean, as long as I'm going there let's talk about hysterectomy -- or, as it was originally known, hysteria-ectomy which, along with labotomy, was a routine form of deprogramming those who stepped a little far outside societal construct [sure, there were those women who needed this surgery for health reasons and there were mentally ill people for whom labotomy was, at the time, the only option but let's play around here, shall we?]; now, I'm being pulled in three different directions by modern medicine, two of which are roads to so-called recovery.
If I take the first road, I live with my "condition," which might not be a condition at all -- I might just be naturally reacting to an unjust and corrupt system, I might just be slightly more insightful or intuitive or compassionate or erotic or whathaveyou than the average person and I might need to learn some cognitive behavioral changes to keep my mercury levels hedged.
The second road is chemical, the one where they give me medication -- and I insist on the minimum, the short cut -- and it's all quelled a bit so that I might keep my perspective on things without being numbed but by becoming tolerant of things that aren't so tolerable, really, but that I am not privileged enough to pursue to their utmost levels: That is, I have to work a full time job and raise a child, so there's no time in my schedule for a revolution. Should a slot open up, I'll be expecting you to take a sick day (or a sabbatical, depending on the degree of said coup).
The third road is hormonal, which seems benign in concept because it's so, well, organic sounding but it's really just sexist, plain and simple. I mean, it might be legitimate: I might have some phenomenon called PreMenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, I might be hormonally imbalanced and I might have come by it honestly since my mother seemed similarly blighted, but don't doctors toy around with women's bodies slightly more than feminists should be comfortable with? My mother spends her twenties and thirties plagued by the same demons with whom I currently wrestle, worries herself a uterine tumor and lo! The female parts are removed, early menopause is forced and the willful, lucid ignorance that we see in so many post-menopausal women sets in early, rendering her impotent in her rage and affect. The same is done with hormonal birth control, where women are now using 5-year hormonal IUDs that cause cessation of menses and confuse the body's natural course; the same can be done with pills, injections and subcutaneous implants.
Anyway, I know it's not just done to women and I'm really just using that last paragraph to get tangential, for exercise; men, too, are given unfortunately increasing doses of psychotropic drugs for myriad reasons, both mild and severe, and while I am not a strict opponent of these drugs -- after all, I take them myself -- I do feel that they might be our anti-revolution, that we cannot collectively take to the streets as long as we are told and believe that our rage is toxic and unhealthy and, worst of all, unfounded.
Here -- take this.
