Prose Selavy
Do artists have any responsibilities towards the systems that discriminate against them?
Do any oppressed people have the right to take on their responsibilities as if they were indeed equal members of the social community?
The danger of majority rule is precisely its ability to silence minorities. When minorities are silenced, that is called political oppression, a phenomenon incompatible with democratic principles.
It is my contention that the dust, the radio-active fallout of Platonically structured systems of education, includes the tragedy of deaths and mutilated lives that occurred at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
As much grief as it gave us to hear that these children killing their peers had been systematically hounded, vilified, humiliated and ostracized, no amount of grief justifies the denial that still surrounds this dynamic.
The valuation of people as unique and uniquely necessary must be taught, modeled and ceaselessly defended.
Who's to say which cruelty came first? Who knows whether the jocks feel more isolated or the geeks? Does it matter? Isn't it far more important for us to acknowledge that there is something in our society and in microcosms of our society like our high schools, that promote and support divisiveness? Is it clear to anyone that this divisiveness is erupting volcanically? That this volcanic eruption has the power to submerge the hopes we cherish for our civilization?
We have allowed ourselves to become hypocrites. We have allowed a confusion of democratic values and systems with commercial values and systems. I have participated in many conversations, in several countries, in various social arenas, conversations in which people do not distinguish between the principles of democracy and the principles of capitalism. Conversations occur in which militarism in defense of capitalism is glorified and justified with no hint that perhaps democracy has a higher purpose than economic imperialism.
Reject the blurring of these definitions. Education is useless if we can't manage basic classification. A blind merging of democracy with capitalism is a critical classification issue.