"Olive Drab & Shocking Pink" or "Chess-Players & Globaliz (standard:other, 1924 words)
Author: Paddy65	Added: Apr 25 2004	Views/Reads: 3267/2103	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A personal essay about coffee shops, students groups, and how I am becoming a curmudgeon.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

Hoffmann than to foster a new, loving nation.  In fact, in the course 
of defiling the Pope or president or racists, I never once went to one 
rally, one meeting or even volunteered at a soup kitchen. 

It was in light of all this that I formed my initial opinions of the
chess players and globalization girls.  “Get over yourselves,” I 
thought.  “You're young and you don't know jack about the world.  You 
can't save anyone and you're not that cool.  You don't even like 1984, 
you just say you do because you're supposed to like it.  You haven't 
been through things like I have.  One day you'll understand,” my 
graying 22-year-old self thought, fashioning as some sort of 
world-weary Bob Dylan type who actually, rather unlike a rolling stone, 
more of a moss-gathering stationary stone, lived with my parents in a 
comfortable, tree-strewn suburb of Milwaukee. 

But, upon further minutes of eavesdropping these members of social
action groups, I realized that they seemed to legitimately believe in 
what they were saying and the causes they supported and that any show 
of belief-espousing for the sake of their own radical image and 
righteousness was negligible and only to a point that is impossible to 
avoid (after all, a part of anything we do or say has something to do 
with our image).  Their cheeks were not rosy with suspicion of the 
others sensing insincerity.  They did not hesitate in speech.  They 
said what the meant and meant what they said.  This, to me, was 
buttressed, in the case of the shorthaired chess player, by his sober 
manner of dress, conservatively cropped hair and thick lenses sans 
thick frames.  Apparently, his righteousness need not be advertised 
visibly.  He looked innocent, almost square, like a person who came in 
to read a calculus book instead of converse about social action.  He 
looked young too, with ill-defined muscles and a smooth face.  The 
girls as well, though mildly attractive, were similar in manner of 
unostentatious appearance. 

On top of all this, it dawned on me that these people (I was almost
going to say “kids”), unlike my former self and those I was curmudgeous 
to, were, indeed, informed.  They suggested books to read, gave out 
statistics, anecdotes, strategies and official positions.  It was 
apparent that they actually read extensively on these matters and could 
back up what they said with well thought out arguments. 

Most importantly, these people obviously did engage in social action. 
They put their money were their mouths were.  They organized teach-ins, 
protests and passed out flyers (previously in the night, the guy handed 
me a flyer denouncing the Taco Bell Company for allegedly exploiting 
and enslaving migrant workers).  Even if there was an element of 
image-propagation in their words(which, as I said before, I realized 
perhaps there wasn't), they still acted to positively support their 
said cause which might make any possible insincerity moot if they still 
got things done. 

All of this depressed me when I thought about the bullshit way I used to
be.  A Marxist?  I didn't even know who Trotsky was (actually had just 
learned from reading that USSR textbook).  It was fake.  I thought I 
was some sort of revolutionary, but revolution requires some actual 
action.  The fact that no action was taken by myself shows that I 
really didn't have it in my heart, just my mouth.   I mean, I held 
beliefs that were similar I suppose, uninformed as the may have been, 
but to claim to be part of the Party?  I mean that is insulting to 
anyone who actually believes in something and knows a lot about it, not 
least of all real Marxists. 

I was also depressed by the way I immediately wrote off these people as
fakes.  I didn't know them.  It was disturbing to think that I was 
becoming a person who didn't tolerate someone who freely thought and 
held their own views.  Especially considering I have always thought of 
myself as someone who appreciates creativity and ideas.  Was I becoming 
so close-minded?  A right-winder even?  Well, there was never a danger 
of that, let me assure you Mr. Berkmann.  But still, why get worked up 
about such things.  Why disallow myself from going about my business?  
I was there to study for my USSR test in a couple days.  Who cares if 
these people were even insincere?  Have I ever been sincere in my life? 


I realized these people were doing something.  What was I doing?  Then I
began to understand.  I don't really believe in anything.  Not with the 
bottom of my heart.  Certainly, not nearly enough to take any action.  
In arguments, I am always the devil's advocate and the devil's advocate 
doesn't believe in anything or else they wouldn't be devil's advocate.  
They would take a stance.  Certainly, part of it is just to argue, but 
the truth is I can't bring myself to lend my full-scale support to 
anything.  Part of it, I'd like to think, that in believing in nothing, 
I believe in everything.  That the scope of knowledge, of wisdom, of 
life is so enormous and varied that there is some truth in everything 
and to fully believe in singular things is narrow-minded.  Nothing is 
completely true and everything else is at least marginally true.  In 
the realm of politics, I don't think that there could be a legislative 
action that could benefit everyone.  Someone is going to lose out and 
who's to say who is more important than whom.  I suppose I believe in 
whatever combination of action, legislation and mode of thought that 
benefits the most amount of people in the best way (an ethics professor 
would probably pinpoint whoever championed this stance).  But this 
isn't a stance.  It is nothing.  No amount of scholarship can manifest 
this thought in to something concrete; certainly not into something 
that could be practically deployed into everyday action, and to arrive 
at such a manifestation would require the derivation of a mathematical 
equation so complex and impossible that even Einstein himself would 
fail to even begin to know where to start. 

I digressed, but the point is, I believe in nothing.  And usually that
believing in everything theory disappears for me in no time and it 
becomes a depressing thought.  I have become sedentary.  These kids are 
active and vital.  They are coloring the world in manner they deem 
necessary.  I'm sulking at them alone in a coffee shop.  Really, I am 
just jealous of them.  That they believe in things and that they are 
not afraid of acting in concert with their beliefs.  I am jealous of 
this dorky looking guy having a stimulating conversation with some 
mildly attractive, socially conscious girls.  I am smoking myself 
silly, drinking coffee till I shake.  Pretending to read about Russia, 
green and purple in the face.  I don't believe in shit. 

That's when I decided to fuck this sourpuss attitude, and do what I can
to color this world olive drab and shocking pink.  That when and why I 
wrote what is before you. 


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