We must look beyond politics for answers

I often hear that journalism – nonfiction for political/social activism – is vital for change in the world. That new, young writers are always needed to take up and continue the task of trying to galvanise the population. Young writers almost have the duty to use their personal experiences as subject for their writing forced upon them, because, as a writer, you have the power to be heard, and you should make use of that to promote change.

No doubt this is a noble undertaking, which I deem highly necessary in our world, but there is always that other side to me. The side that feels mentally abused when having to write about something I was personally involved in, which also carries societal repercussions – something important enough to get above sea-level, carrying a message important enough for others to hear.
Every impacting personal experience that is written about has to have the tag of something even larger:

“I wrote this story as a statement. A statement against psychiatries that see problematic children as fixable furniture. A statement against the lack of love in families. A statement against the horrors of war. A statement against our warped moral universe which revolves around fault and blame.”

But is that not the source of all aggression? Trying to imprison life, or, as Nietzsche would say, attempting to bar experience with dead letters? Cutting your personal experience to size, so that it fits your political/social agenda? Then you act like Procrustes from Greek mythology, who, when he found a victim, strapped it to his bed and, according to its size, either chopped off limbs or stretched the body to fit the frame.

These ideals and theories of political/social change and awareness are thrust upon living elements (writers) who must write for them – to give them life, to give them the energy to continue to revolve in our literary/social sphere like vampires.

The aggression lies in the fact that I have to subordinate my lived experience, my feelings, to a higher, bigger goal: political statement, social change, awareness. Through this, such writing echoes that which it tries to fight.

Hundreds of years of continental philosophy, cultural studies, feminism, post-Marxism, post-structuralism, postmodernism – what have all these things ever changed?

Yes, on the surface things have altered, just like, on the surface, one can blame a criminal for his crimes, a parent for mistreating his child. I am certainly not saying that what has been achieved – human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, etc. – is rubbish! These changes were more than important! But what I mean is what have we really, truly learned, as a people and as individuals?

We have earned more rights, yet our planet has not become more peaceful, more just, or more loving – the inequalities have just shifted, like an invisible matrix weaving itself through our lives. We have achieved much, but our planet is still on the verge of complete and utter destruction.

One only needs to look at the riots in Greece and England and across the world, and one sees these rioters openly say that they are not left-wing, not right-wing, not of any political group, but are rather distancing themselves from any political direction.

It is not social or political change we need – we as a people have not proven mature enough to transform our lives for the better.

What we need is a change of heart. And that happens in the individual: that is a personal decision. Adhering to political or social ideals, and either acting on them or writing about them may bring change, but it is only on the surface.

Rights for prisoners, elimination of the death penalty and more money for the education system are surely big issues, and it is vital to work towards them, but the actual change only adheres to our ideals and agendas. It does not, at the core, change mankind as a species, mankind as a people – it does not bring our collective consciousness to a higher, more sensitive, compassionate level.

We feel we are making a change by writing. At the core, however, we replicate exactly those boundaries of political ideology we attempt to oppose. As Slavoj Zizek said in his speech to the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement: “We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”

I’m not writing this as an alternative option to political nonfiction. I admit I have no answers and do not see any in the world we live in today. To me, the problem is no deeper than the question: why write a story if not even change brings change?