Well... this started as a news "brief", honest.
But deeper analysis was called for when I went a-sourcing a few claims. The problem with this week's failed ceasefire resolution is the error it continues to represent:
We keep acting like words can bypass the incredibly challenging factors shaping power in war.
So today's piece explores the lack of practical alternatives, regional instability, the challenge of courageous restraint, and more reasons suffering will go on.
https://onlysky.media/mclark/the-uns-failed-resolution-and-the-problem-of-power-in-war/
I suppose you saw this in yesterday's Guardian. I couldn't feel more like tearing my hair out if I tried.
As someone who's been following the wars we don't "care" about in the West for some time, it's been deeply demoralizing to see reactions to Ukraine/Russia & Israel/Gaza - because when the atrocity finally hits a place that matters to us, most don't have the vocab necessary.
Tigray was a HUGE turning point, because even major NGOs couldn't get in. *That's* when you know there's no shared trust on which to sustain civil society.
Climate change *will* make this worse.
We're so broken. 💔
@MLClark @LiseL And who weeps for the Uyghurs? Where are the mass protests in front of Chinese embassies? In the Financial Times the other day there was a long piece of how the CCP is systematically "Sinoizing" Muslim culture, changing mosques to have "Chinese" architectural features. Where's the outrage from the Muslim street for this? Where are the college students and their slogans?
@LiberalLibrarian @MLClark @LiseL Honestly. I've been speaking and quite upset about the Uyghur genocide for years. This new Temu website, seems to be sourcing a lot of products from their slave labor camps.
Oppression has become so so systematized and integrated into the world supply chain its become near invisible. I've seen stats like 66% of chocolate is source from slave or child labor. Coffee and bananas might as well be called conflict crops.
It's a lot.
@LiberalLibrarian @MLClark @LiseL
People like to say "no ethical consumption under capitalism" and then go right on consuming. I am not to judge, there is no way to do any of this perfectly, and even if you could reduce your impact to zero, that wouldn't stop the bleeding.
@LiberalLibrarian @MLClark @LiseL
We all have to pick our battles and give our all to it. We need the collective result of billions of individual actions and choices. We don't need to condemn each other, we need each pick our spots on the wall and fight like hell against the encroaching dark.
@NiveusLepus @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL
We don't have the tools necessary for systemic advocacy. We're fed each crisis in news cycles that mainly serve the media venue, and most are living in precarity, so who has time to develop a more holistic praxis?
I do not blame people for horror over the latest trending crisis. The ache is human. The desire to help is laudable.
But meaningful change re: atrocity requires a world order we don't have.
Local transformation is the best most of us can do.
@MLClark @NiveusLepus @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL All I can do, all I know how to do, is to try to do the most good for the most people I can.
I used to, and I still sometimes do, suffer "activist regret" -- that pain of "am I doing enough?" as I see the horrors in the world. But I simply can't change the world by myself, so I have to pick where I can fight and accept that I, too, am subject to the Machine and I can't fix everything.
"Weight of the World" is the song that stays with me here.
@lenaoflune @MLClark @NiveusLepus @LiseL
"Weight of the world." Or, as Wordsworth wrote:
oh, that's perfect 👌🏽
even then. the vanishing wild. the human need for urbanization.
pave paradise, put up a parking lot 🎼 🎶
@NiveusLepus @MLClark @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL I like that.
I try to live by, "if I can't take care of myself, how can I take care of anyone else?"
@lenaoflune @MLClark @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL
Its a good maxim. If you aren't in a position to provide care, then you can't be efficacious at the very least, at worst, you'll end up hurt too.
@NiveusLepus @MLClark @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL This is something I always have to keep in mind, because my Main Character Energy wants me to Do Everything Myself, to be the Heroine, and... sometimes the thing the protagonist does is step into the background and let another hero take the foreground role.
@lenaoflune @MLClark @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL You are a wise soul. ^_^ I think the reason I've always written with an ensemble cast, with partnerships instead of Mains and Secondaries is because that's my experience. No matter how much I'd like to do it all, I can't and life has made that very clear to me...
@MLClark @LiberalLibrarian @LiseL And your best will always be good enough.
I might not be head of a global movement or anything, but I can "do the damage" to the extent that it's in my power to do so, and I see you applying as much good to the world as you can too.
Small changes lead to big waves.
As long as I can do one thing, just one tiny thing to make this world a little brighter then that is my reason not to surrender to despair.
@LiseL @NiveusLepus @LiberalLibrarian @MLClark
if each of us lights the candle of life in the darkness of death surrounding us, we can find each other while lighting others' candles along the way.
civilizations come and go, like yeast colonies, so successful that they eventually drown in their own waste,
which we then consume, and so will it be with this human enterprise, eventually.
meanwhile, our mission, should we accept it, is to find a way through life with integrity & compassion.
@holon42 @NiveusLepus @LiberalLibrarian @MLClark
Stretching the metaphor pretty far... Every day I light a candle, every day tears of sadness, anger, and frustration extinguish the flame, and I have to search high and low to find where I put the damn matches. Fortunately, yes, most days I can just make out the blinking lights of other candles in the distance. 🕯️ 🧡
@LiseL @NiveusLepus @LiberalLibrarian @MLClark
yes, there are days when we rely on the light of others.❤️
whether they be flesh or words ancient or present.
grateful for the light that shines in the darkness. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
@LiberalLibrarian @MLClark @LiseL y'all don't wanna know how I really feel about a bunch of the protestors and those who want to simplify what's going on in the Middle East.
I know enough to know that I don't know enough.
Doesn't mean I'm not gonna side-eye those agents provocateur who are exploiting Israel vs Hamas to advance their own power schemes. That's what is happening, and I've seen such exploitation often enough to make me ill.
@MLClark @LiseL And who weeps for the Muslim Rohingya, as Buddhist Burmese loot and pillage their homes, declaring them unpersons?