Fuck The System

It’s The System Man

August 12, 2020August 12, 2020 kimberleen

I’ve probably been saying this while holding a joint and putting the world to rights since about 1998 when Fight Club seemed to capture the mood of a generation. Is it any wonder why Xennials are so fucked up? I still get really excited and explosively joyful when I watch the end scene of that film. At the same time very curious about Helena Bonham-Carter’s particular role given her inclusion endorses the artistic aristocracy. Hypocrisy lives everywhere. (Just in case you hadn’t noticed). Do you need me to critically unpack this further?

All sorts of things seemed to appear when I start to explore the systemic. For the last 30 mins I’ve been watching Brad Pitt on YouTube talking about his career. Brad was one of my favourtie actors right up until Angela Jolie happened. Even here in a flat in 2020 it came as a bit of a revelation that my flatmate and I might be on the different sides of Team Jennifer and Team Angela. Luckily about 20 years has passed for passions to subside. It’s moments like these that you glad that time machines don’t exist and that we can’t walk through them, or god only knows where that discussion might have ended up. Anyways what has all that got to do with The System? Sadly everything, from the media you consume, to the films you like or even the books you read. Like Girl Interrupted for example. What might cause someone to end up in a mental institution and at what point did that become glamorous? Or indeed necessary in society? After all it was quite clear the main protagonist wasn’t nuts. That the system she was being asked to operate in was, even the nut house.

Culture and The System has been portrayed in literature and art for a very long time. We only have to look to Dickens, Oliver Twist or even Great Expectation to see how The System or societal pressure dictates how our lives may or may not work out… Before that Jane Austin with all her matchmaking prowess. Until we get all the way back to Asops Fables. Stories about the way things are, rather than how they should be. They all relate to the stories that we tell ourselves, endlessly. More than this, the stories that we tell ourselves to build an anti-human system based on control. How did I get from Fight Club to this? Hmmm curiouser and curiouser. Do you have a smouldering pile of ikea furniture sitting outside your apartment, that you blew up during a psychotic break down? Recently I’ve been getting more and more interested in Shamanism and not for the ways you think? Why the fuck I would presume to know what you think is a little beyond me… More than this given that I write about trauma a lot it is probably highly probable that I might at some point reach out to grab hold of the idea of shamanic illness.

So yes Shamanic illness. Guess what? Your ancestors are fucked up. Your geographic location is fucked up? Your relationship to land is fucked up? Your relationship with wealth is fucked up? Your relationship with family is fucked up? Your relationship with yourself is fucked up? And you are surprised that you are ill? It’s fucking obvious isn’t it? We are so controlled and dependent on The System that we outsource our own liberation to the next well meaning movement of our time. That some governmental organisation might actually skip to our aid and look to ‘fix’ everything that is broken. Yet they can’t because what is broken within that system is broken within us. Why would you outsource your power like that? We are the ones we have been waiting for and yes I still retain the right to stand with a joint complaining about The System.

Heal Yourself First

April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 kimberleen

Churches used to be the quiet spaces we went to heal. Where do we go now?

Where was I? I was talking about sleeping. Yes, sleep. Before that, you might consider rest. Ask The Nap Ministry I love them. They are the badest and best anti-capitalists in town remember: Rest is resistance. Fuck the system. Yes, all of it.

I wrote this before The Great Pause and now we have been forced to rest. So much so that lethargy and timelessness is setting in and leaving us little lost. Many of us have been here for years. Living on the edge working through the choices that make our live and our world a better place. So much of what we have accepted as acceptable has been bullshit. We now literally have time for change and part of that is choosing to heal ourselves first.

You see climate emergency is not for sissies and you got to literally know some shit to do it well. It’s not going anywhere or indeed gone anywhere. It’s a very tangible metaphor for the internal war we humans go through most days. Even if its just the daily commute or navigating education for out children. We are at odds for with the world. We have been feeling so wrong for so wrong that we have internalised the failings of the system for the failings of the human soul. We have internalised the broken system for our brokeness and it’s time to claim back our humanity.

We need to be emotionally resourceful and resilient. What you going to do if they take away the self-care bubble bath. Yup, my friend you be fucked with your zen bliss vibes. Anyways because of the magnitude of the problem and the limited chances of survival I suggest you dive in deep into why your life is so important to you and why it might be that you are ready to burst on to the scene as a Enviro-mentalist and Humanitarian given that we the humans are clearly the problem. That running round fixing things like the sewerage problem may have stopped typhoid, however, it rapidly increased water consumption and meant human effluent ended up an oceanic issue. You see how fucked it actually is? We don’t solve problems we transfer them until of course a lone sailor come across The Garbage Patch. We were only trying to help. It seems to be the battle cry of most hapless causes.

It’s time to stabilise, it’s time to balance and if your life is looking like a string of boozy night out fueled by the pain of ecocide followed by an unrelenting anger at what the system always does (which is fuck us). How are you helping really? Time to take a long hard look at yourself. The good thing is that most of us agree climate change is real, fossil fuels are bad (Covid 19 is in similar states of collective acceptance and denial) . Stay at home for a bit, if you really need to get somewhere walk. If where you live is shit I suggest you start there. Tidy your room. Talk to your family. Speak to your neighbour cause when climate disaster strikes that’s who you’re going to be seeing in the end days with. Aye that. Heal yourself first. Things are fucked up for a reason. We the human are fucked up. Out of sync with our environments, doing everything we can to get out hands on our own little pieces of paradise. A scrap of land a stretch of water, discarding everything that doesn’t agree with us. Whole tracks of land. Swathes of society all in avoidance of our own pain. the pain of who? what and where we are. There is now running the only way out is through. (don’t worry you can swear while you’re doing it. Heal yourself first.

Honestly, I wrote this before The Great Pause. You see, in the end ultimately healing is the only option.

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