I am sad and angry over Kavanaugh, just like how Trump’s election pushed me into a deep depression for a long while. These events are reinforcing how people are rewarded with bad behaviour, and it also shows how a lot of people are willing to support these bad actors in the system even at the expense of harming many other people because they want to preserve their own status quo when it comes to their sense of privilege.
People ask me why am I suicidal, I actually wonder why they are not suicidal. Society as it is now works on oppression, and I find it profoundly depressing. We seem to enjoy reducing other people’s potentialities in order to make ourselves feel better. I wonder why isn’t this ironic paradox more apparent to other people, what is the point of feeling powerful when you can only gain it through the disempowerment of other people? Isn’t true power the ability to feel secure even if other people are equal or more than you?
Unfortunately if we care about human suffering we have to care about politics. It is politics that are disproportionately determining whether people are suffering or not. I can’t help but feel like we’re at the prologue of The Handmaid’s Tale if we are not careful. I am also worried about how the destiny of America will affect global politics and the already difficult fight for human rights.
We are entering dark times, like frogs in a boiling pot. My inclination is to hide, to surround myself with mundane joys so I can avoid thinking about what all this means. Buddhist monastics are encouraged to detach themselves from worldly affairs, but how can one be truly compassionate and not be an activist in times like these?
I tried to make an analogy with the practice of medicine. If one sees a lot of deaths due to the unavailability of medical intervention, one may be called to be a doctor. But being a doctor requires years of medical training, just because we see people dying around us doesn’t mean we should be performing surgeries on them if we are not skilled.
That’s how I think of myself for now. I am not sure if that’s the right way to think about it. But I’m wounded myself. Everytime I think I’m recovering the wound splits wide open again as though to prove me wrong. My own suffering overwhelms me, much less being able to alleviate someone else’s.
I’m trying to take time off everything including interacting with most people to try to gain some internal clarity. If we are all frogs in a boiling pot, what is the best way we should live moving forward? What is the best way I should live? Maybe I am asking the wrong questions, because even the basic act of keeping myself alive and sane is already a challenge in itself.