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The Blessing of Society
"Society in every state is a blessing..."
-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
What of Value?
Interaction among human beings has provided us each with unique, fulfilling experiences, fond memories, and satisfied desires. When humans gathered together to share their culture among each other, to find something common in others that may form the base of a unity, they formed society. As they collected together, working and living together, they created art, poetry, and music, forming the results of their culture. What exactly brought appeal or created interest was their culture, while the songs and the paintings were just its products. So the true culture of a people cannot be defined by its best painters and writers, but by the unique attributes of these artists that allowed them to gain popularity among their fellow men. The intercourse of these shared interests among a collective of people may be defined as the society of the people.
What of Virtue?
I walked down the cold, harsh streets of a city that had forgotten that liberty was the mother of order. A city that had the highest yearly murder rate, comparable with the death toll of some civil wars, accompanied by the most unforgiving police brutality, coupled with ancient legislation that had never been removed. Trekking through the darkness of night in a war zone, I carried everything on my back that I owned; totally maybe twelve pounds. "You want me to carry anything?" she asked. "Here," I handed her my trench coat. "That's sweet -- you gave me the lightest thing," she said. She was beautiful and I felt that every time I remembered her, I would think that I fell in love with her. Maybe it was because we were honest or had to cling together for unity. But I remembered her as someone I cared about.
What of Meaning?
I had been told by everyone that college was radically different than high school. Only several weeks here, and I decided that it was "High School, Part 2: Indoctrination Continued." Yes, there was a campus, and you slept right next to your school. So, by the age of 18, you were given some responsibility. But freedom of speech was a joke as I noticed my anti-police brutality posters were immediately torn down within two days. I talked to the local population, approached girls wearing Misfits shirts and introduced myself, asked if they liked Crass or punk. I found an overwhelming consensus among the people that in regard to politics, apathy and ignorance reign. "If it doesn't effect me directly, I don't care about it," and that was the first difference between life on the streets and life as the privileged class. As a campus kid, partying and going to class, politics is a matter of discussion. As a homeless, Anarchist squatter punk, it is a matter of life or death.
What of Purpose?
As a gutter kid, I was privileged to among a society of people who would die by yourself for what was right, or who would rip you off without a second thought. But maybe not all of it was cut and dry like that. As for those whom you did learn were your family and could trust, they became everything you had. I remember walking down the pavement, looking to the glorious sky, and just thinking, "Wherever I'm going, I'll get there somehow, someday." Dreams and memories of having a home with a real family flaunted my mind as the darkness above swirled by the great Pacific front. I felt that there was a true blessing of society when I had my arms around a girl who said that she cared about me. Her gentle finger tips, slowly running the length of my skin. In college I talked to one girl for fifteen minutes and found that she would secretly smile every time I said something witty or real. Upon departing, I said to her, "It would be fortunate if we were to have sex." Every encounter from there on, she imagined that I didn't exist.
What of Creativity?
It became quite evident in college that the middle class may have the wealth of gold and the depravity of the soul. Because "Politics doesn't affect me directly" was probably the excuse of every European nation that didn't oppose Hitler's regime, but it is the American swastika shining forth now. People are scared to death to say what they really think to the point where they lose the ability to think on their own. When a young teen agrees with the older kids in his school that sex is the only valuable asset a woman could provide he may just be suppressing his childhood dreams of meeting some girl and falling in love. And so it becomes reversed when he is speaking to his girlfriend, and claims he wants affection, when the goal in his heart is sex. Scared to death to say what we want because we're afraid that it'll make us look weak. The lives of this American society are based on deception. Truth is the casualty and sincerity the victim. Maybe there are some, who will say that a man is perverse if he out rightly states that he desires sex, just as there are some who will say he is weak if he out rightly states that he desires affection.
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Andy Carloff
Punkerslut (or Andy Carloff) has traveled all across the United States and has experienced American life in the urban centers, as a homeless squatter and as a blue-collar, working-class laborer. Since high school and early development, he has composed a variety of ideas on education, politics, and economy. His positions are ultra-leftist: politically an Anarchist, economically a Socialist, and culturally a Syndicalist. His writings are available through his website: http://www.punkerslut.com
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