Mickey Z

Cool Observer

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Sunday, January 29, 2006

Utah Phillips sez: "Just get busy"

“We grow up in a world of cultural compulsion, cultural forms that we inherit that are imposed on us. We don’t choose them ... We live in a world of coercive combinations like parent/child, student/teacher, boss/employee, martial arrangements. All anarchists want to do is become self-governed enough to be able to create voluntary combinations that serve our needs as we define and not as they are defined for us.

“If you and I can agree to do our share of the work of the world around us and if you and I can agree to take only what we need and put back what we can and if you and I agree to care for afflicted and if you and I can agree not to hurt anybody ... Then you and I can begin in a small way to create voluntary combinations between us and get the work of the world done without the boss and without the state.

“We’ve come through much darker and harder times than this and we’ve come out better and we’ve come out stronger. Media sells conflict. That’s its bread and butter. If you’re listening to mass media, if you turn on the radio in the morning, you’re going to get a catalog of everything that’s gone wrong in the last twelve hours. If you sit in front of your computer and pull up all these blogs, you bury yourself in all that negativity ... I want you to turn all that off and walk down the street and try to do something useful, in a homeless shelter, in a peace movement, alternatives to going into the military, public schools.

“I walk the towns and I talk to people down at the street, There are too many good people doing too many good things to let myself be pessimistic. It’s self-indulgence to wallow in your angst, for lack of a better word. Plug into your community. If you can’t change it, if you can’t make this place where you work and live better, then where can you? Just get busy.”

(from an interview in Altar Magazine: http://www.altarmagazine.com)

“Just get busy"