Interview with a stranger…

From onei­ota who I only know through zara­bee’s LJ, really, but who seems to be a smart and funky thing:

1) What is the most import­ant insight you have ever gained from a romantic/sexual part­ner, and how did it affect your world-view? 

That all things are rel­at­ive, best-fit the­or­ies and there is no Truth with a cap­ital T. I cried hard at the time and argued it with her, but she was doing His­tory and Philo­sophy of Sci­ence and I was a mere Com­mu­nic­a­tions stu­dent and she was right. It affected everything… I felt everything I’d ever known as a ‘fact’ unravel. I felt an awe at the enorm­ity of the trust we put in these the­or­ies that we use every day to get by. I don’t keep it in my mind at every moment but I think it’s a good thing to remind myself of from time to time as I too easily get bogged down in ‘facts’.

2) While young adults often have strong ideals and a belief that their actions can “change the world”, many people become more prag­matic and com­pla­cent as they pro­gress in their careers. What is it that keeps you ideal­istic, and what pos­it­ive changes do you see your­self con­trib­ut­ing to in the future?

Ha. You didn’t meet me when I was young and ideal­istic. This *is* me being more prag­matic and com­pla­cent. How do I avoid utter cyn­icism and des­pair? I pick my fights more care­fully. I teach and try to put fire in the belly of the next lot. I see that there are changes, on a huge scale. Some­thing like Wiki­pe­dia or the mass spokescoun­cil sys­tems that are now used glob­ally in the protest move­ments, the way SMS was used at the Repub­lican con­ven­tion protests, these kinds of large-scale anarch­ist organ­isa­tional sys­tems in play in the real world give me hope. Noth­ing like them exis­ted when I was younger. I watch video of protests from around the world. I see the cre­ativ­ity and cel­eb­ra­tion of the Italian anarchis­tas. I remem­ber that every little change makes a dif­fer­ence. That con­trary to the des­pair­ing “I am only one person, what can I do?” I can counter with “Every new person who res­ists is another drop in the ocean that will become the wave”. I remind myself of the saying attrib­uted to the Dalai Lama: Think you’re too small to make a dif­fer­ence? Try sleep­ing with a mosquito.

And these days, I have moved away from some of the people in my past who were a‑political and neg­at­ive towards my polit­ical aims, who under­mined me and made me doubt my cause. My really close friends are now ded­ic­ated to the struggle in their own way and we sup­port each other and renew each other when we are weakened.

As for pos­it­ive changes in the future, give me time. I still have many plans…

3) You’ve made ref­er­ence to chronic pain issues in the past. What can pain (espe­cially pain that isn’t from a vis­ible, tem­por­ary injury) teach us, and how has it affected your rela­tion­ship with your body?

It has meant I can’t trust my own body which is very con­front­ing. I can’t run for a tram… shore_fragments was talk­ing to me the other day about the joy of a pelt­ing run he’d taken and I could­n’t remem­ber the last time I flet that phys­ical joy from my body, that joy of exer­tion and strength. What can it teach me? Endur­ance. Resi­li­ence. Patience. Cre­ativ­ity. And new and inter­est­ing ways to avoid cramp!

4) Tell us about a belief you used to hold strongly, but which you no longer agree with. What changed your mind? 

That only lack of edu­ca­tion stood in the way of the people being able to clearly see the injustice in the world and that the people could be trus­ted to create a hol­istic soci­ety given enough know­ledge and time. What changed my mind? I think seeing how stub­born some people are in refus­ing to learn or in delib­er­ately hold­ing pre­ju­di­cial atti­tudes. Maybe I’m just not the right teacher. But I now think there are quite a few people I will just write off rather than even attempt to engage in debate these days. 

5) If you could only save one (inan­im­ate) pos­ses­sion from a cata­strophic house-fire, what would it be?

The laptop. It’s my music col­lec­tion, photo albums, poetry book, per­sonal diar­ies and doc­u­ment archive all in one.

Thanks for that! And now, ques­tions for you from a stranger:

1. How do you know zara­bee?
2. You’re quite young – 21, I think? So, how do we solve the world’s problems?
3. What’s wrong with the protest move­ment as it stands? What are we miss­ing? How can it be improved?
4. Ima­gine it’s 14 years’ time. You’re 35. What does your life look like?
5. What was the most import­ant thing you learned in high school?