Overview...

What started as an awareness raising and ethnographic styled walk through Sierra Leone, this site now details the encounters of a not so academic academic who spends more time occupying Wall Street and squats than a university...

Monday, July 11, 2011

What am I up to...

So I am spending my days working with people with "disabilities".  Trying to find them employment in a world and system that has ostracized them and that really has created no place for them.  It is truly sad to see.  People that just want to be accepted, loved.  That just want to feel "normal", to feel like they fit in and have a place.  Yet here they are in a society designed to work entirely against the assets they've brought to their table.  They are a true minority in the greatest sense of the word and world.  African Americans may be discriminated against where they go, women in the workplace, homosexuals in marriage, but imagine if you were discriminated against within the very socio-biological ways of society?  The way you talked, walked, looked.  The way you picked things up, the accessibility of places, people, how you physically did things.  Imagine if you couldn't hear your mothers voice, couldn't see the bus approaching to pick you up, couldn't walk in to a job interview and truly be heard, couldn't comfortably perform simple professional norms like shaking someone's hand? 

Society is set up for people that physically and mentally work in a certain way.  If you don't function in that way, you will never truly find a place.  I recognize it more and more within myself every day, and I'm simply dyslexic.  My brain processes things differently.  The conclusions I draw seem different, I don't organize information in the same way, and I see the outcomes daily as I become more aware of it.  But imagine if I had a completely different genetic makeup?  Imagine if my brain didn't just process or sort information differently, but actually worked entirely differently?  And that way of working was deemed by standard measures - such as IQ tests and such - to actually not be working?  It is a true travesty of our society that people that function differently on so may levels have no place in society, that they are not encouraged to be a part of global or national life as they are.  They are encouraged to conform, to try to become like "us".  Medicated, trained, whatever.  Where is their own personal voice?  Muted.  People that think differently are really the only people with the true capacity to think "outside the box", to work from an original canvas as they are not hindered by the mainstream.  They are different, and I truly wonder why we try to make them the same.  We need to hear them, listen to the ideas, try to hear the variance, the possible new directions.  What better way to change our society to be more inclusive than through dialog with and via the eyes of those that are actually ostracized? 

So this is what I do, I try to jam round pegs into square holes.  In my spare time I am still working on ideas with Africa.  I am saving some money for another trip and project supplies.  Things have been downsized a bit.  I am at this point simply trying to find a small fairly straight-forward and simple project that can be delivered in the next year during my spare time.  I am of course also still trying to find people to work with that will keep me going and help with the process.  No small issue...

Right now I am thinking that the internet incubator/cafe will be the easiest thing to deliver upon.  An office space for non-profits that would be funded by an internet cafe.  The proceeds cover the rent and computer upkeep while providing organizations with the space and infrastructure to do their work.  It wouldn't cost more than $10,000 to get everything set up and running and would require little oversight.

I've got some stuff I may do to help bring out the minority vote in Dutchess county where I am living right now as well.  Kind of a complicated road, but one that could be quite fulfilling.  I'm also looking into PhD programs again.  Doing a much more thorough analysis of the anthropology programs this time.  Narrowing down the ones that would be just right for my interests and theoretical vantage points.  This is the type of arena I belong in, but it is funny that the reason I am not there is because I am a round peg, I think very differently, and it caused me issues both in getting accepted and during my time in academia.

We'll see though, there is a lot of ways to get to the places I want to be.  It will take some time and a little bit of doing.  But if I can get something done in Africa, and survive my current job, it could all open a wealth of doors for the future.  Time is always an asset, and always a challenge....  

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Forever and a day....

So it actually sees like it has been about that long since the last time I posted, and it has been a tough road to get here.  I ended up taking that job, but went through a lot of unpleasantries before and throughout the transition process.  I've moved, had some family issues, got a car, took the job, spent some time living in the woods, lost a few friends, and on the whole have caved in to some of the realities of the life that one seems to have to live to exist in America.  I must say that I have found a decent amount of difficulty living here in the area that I am - I just plainly do not fit in.  It is tough to spend pretty much a third of your life (almost the whole of the adult part) abroad, living in different cultures, seeing different ways of life.  Simply changing as a person.  I seem now to be half American and half alien. 

There are so many things done well and exemplary here in America, but also so many things that I do differently from people here.  My priorities are quite different as well.  I don't just want to get a job and settle into a life here.  I want to make a difference, I want the life I settle in to too mean something outside my little sphere.  I want to make people in the far reaching corners of the world's lives more fulfilling, give them more options.  Yes, there are of course people here interested in this type of stuff, but the contextualization of it all is so different.  And I will say this as well; living in America is taking away some of my principles, waning on my idealistic motives.  You can't survive living the life of an idealist here.  People on the whole will truly respect your passion, the things you want to do in life, the changes you want to make and people you want to help, but American society is so individualized and focused on the local self that there really is little place for the idealist.  Yes, NGO's, non-profits, etc, but I'm in one now and it is so systemically neutered that there is no way to truly bring about change, and certainly not on a large scale.

American culture is to me very limited, very closed.  I suppose this is culture anywhere though, it sees through its own eyes, colored by its own past, its own social context.  But American culture places American ideals, ways of life, and standards of living as the preeminent ones in the world.  An arrogance that only seems to be found in other current or former world powers.  If we are the best, why change?  Maybe tweak things, but why truly change?  The way I live my life, the goals I aspire to, they run against American cultural streams, and change itself runs against every cultural stream.

When you tell people you want to change a world they feel comfortable with, they can easily become cross with you, especially if you are unapologetic about your views/reasons and assertive - two things I tend to be.  Not that we are all the same in America, and that everyone is included in this, but a social system is just that, a system with main streams and separate outliers.  I am an outlier.  The last several months have shown this to me in even more vibrant colors than ever before.

So now I just put my head down, do my job, and hope/work towards another day when I can do what I believe we all should be doing; working towards true systemic change.  The world is neutering me, but I will not allow it to be permanent.  I will not allow it to take away my dreams or my goals.