a/political

Before logging out, a thought came about my classmates and teachers who are apolitical. Their children would inherit the nonparticipation and will live inside a bubble that "that's the way things are". But I guess they will live happier.

Ignorance is bliss.

Happiness is the goal (the great humanity subscribes to this philosophy) and this end would justify the means. Good or evil, as long as you're happy, you do it. Even the law is not enough to police you.

But perhaps, we are political because we are happy to participate, aren't we? It transcends self-validation because you aren't only political for yourself - you are political for and because of others.

The idea that things can be changed and improved is affirmed by people who think the same. But you know not everyone thinks alike so you challenge yourself. You finally get to understand why people are apolitical. You cannot blame them for their neutrality or biases, can you? They might have as much as reasons like you do - you hope.

It frustrates you. That your former adviser who once escaped politics now dismisses dissent. Your confidante got used to with the system she never escaped. Your relatives always condescend to you. Only if they know that you took lessons from them; you just learned well. Now they confuse you.

They forgot what they taught and now it scares you. You think that you might just be like them...eventually. For all you know, they were like you when they were younger. Living with a purpose beyond self. But no, that can't be it.

You meet old and older people with the same fire in you. So you ask yourself, does it really have something to do with age? You knew that it never was about age. It may be true that wisdom comes with it, but age just becomes an excuse for those who lost the fire in them. Is it?

But my teachers and relatives have stood their ground. They know that they failed. The generation before them told them that they are the future. 

Now, we are the generation to be told the same hope.

But we can also fail.

We can only hope that someday, it will happen, even we don't get to experience it in our lifetime. Believing is crucial even it's futile for most. The only abominable thing that one can do is to invalidate the other!

Political people understand why people are apolitical, and that's what drives the former to try harder. But when apolitical people detest political people, no one even wins.

I only fear the day when children do not ask questions anymore. We would not only lose purpose, we would lose our humanity; this is a tautology, I know. If only repeating delivers the message...I guess that's never the case. 

To wish for a better world is too big to digest, to topple a government is too bloody to imagine, and to break the normal is too heavy to ruin.

This shall be known, and political people had lost hope more than the apolitical people can imagine. The only difference is that one doesn't ever leave the battle despite hopelessness, just almost but never really withdrawing; while sad to say, the other actively pretends that there is no battle at all. 

If happiness depends on this, then I don't want to be the happier.

Xx 

-R

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1 April 2020

Edited. Lifted from my twitter thread.