Generation 911 - A Doormat in Search of a Revolution
by Asia Kindred Moore

I am spiraling outward. Not up or down. Neutralized in my confusion, the world is much larger than I imagined, with more hate than I can muster a response for. So I ask those who know more than I, what’s it worth? Why am I still standing here in this place doomed to collapse? And why is this revolution so hard to start anyways? We all feel the pull of it but don’t know whom we’re fighting, or where the battleground is. Our elders don’t tell us anything about it, those who know (or pretend to know) disdain us as ignorant for not knowing, and most of our peers have no idea what we’re trying to accomplish anyways.

You’d think that everyone could understand the basic ethics of life; do not kill, do not steal, do not hurt, do not betray… These are simple things to embrace, and easy to apply to each individual life, however diverse. But the world, at least the one advertised on TV, isn’t like that. Illegal invasions, weapons trading, torture—all legal in the world, and my country leading the way. Who’s doing this, and what am I to do about them?

I cannot bring myself to hate these people entirely; there is always a part of me that is bursting with compassion, no matter how big an idiot I think they are. It’s out of their pain that they inflict pain on others. No matter how much I hate the action I cannot bring myself to hate the actor. In this way, I sometimes feel like a doormat. A compassionate doormat.

But doormats get walked on by people, so there’s a limit to my buddhistic passivity—and where’s the revolution that stops some people from walking on other people anyways?

Most people seem to always want to live in the comfort zone, like nothing bad is happening, or are glad that at least this shit isn’t happening to them. Maybe it’s just me, being irrational, trying to find something that isn’t there, but at least I’m searching for a mystery, instead of lying down with my head between my knees saying, “YES! Feed me this bullshit media news coverage complete with lying presidents, bombed out cities, murdered babies, rape and corrupt cops!”

History is a story of revolutions. If it isn’t the agricultural or industrial revolution, it’s the Revolutionary War or the Paris Commune or the Bolshevik Revolution or the Cultural Revolution. So what is the name of this idea I am part of?

I am listening for the answer, but I get so tired of people talking talking talking bullshit hotshot dumbass things like “Fuck the government” or “Freedom isn’t free.” These kinds of statements in a conversation always lead to some form of humiliation. Doesn’t matter if the speaker oozes a façade of anarchist illusion, or zombie nationalism, stupid talk solves nothing and has no righteous part in this tale.

Everybody wants to be happy and, if people weren’t at war with each other and the planet so much, being happy would make a lot more sense. But being happy as if nothing is happening makes no sense at all. So what happens to that need for happiness that everyone has? Craziness, that’s what. It seems most people are cursed to live, but not live fully, to die everyday until their bodies deteriorate before their forlorn eyes. Is this what it means to become conditioned in our modern day culture? Is it the most that we can expect? With all this brutality in the world, the best that people seem to be able to do is to brush aside things and people in order to maintain their own small dose of happiness, however frail. I don’t want this, you don’t want this, nobody wants this.

But if it works for you, then by all means make it your own, live it out fully. You might even judge my words and criticize my thoughts, think I am the irrational one. You’d be right in a way, because, really, these thoughts are all just in my head.

But here’s something for you to think about in your head. Whether I’m rational or irrational, I’m not completely off my rocker. All those revolutions in the history books, they started with real, live, confused characters, like me. And those basic ethics of life, they’re everybody’s hopes and dreams, not just for some. So the people who are doing the dirty business—killing, stealing, betraying, invading, torturing, abusing—those people deserve the revolution that puts them out of business, forever. I don’t care what this revolution will be called in the future history books, I just know that it has begun.

Asia Kindred Moore lives in Salem, Oregon, where she works as a barista at the Coffee House Cafe downtown. Asia can be reached at diminishing_soul@hotmail.com.