Was There a Moment that Radicalized You?
When did you become World-Weary?
When did you become World-Weary?
On the internet, there’s a common meme that pops up now and again where people post what ‘radicalized’ them. What was the moment that made them realize how inequality is not an accidental side effect of our society, but a built-in feature designed to benefit those in power?
For me, there wasn’t a single moment. It was a lifetime of small realizations, experiences and situations.
I didn’t suddenly turn hard to the left out of the blue one day, marching in the street with a sign and bright-dyed hair. I don’t think I’ve ever made a protest sign, actually — I’ve been to protests, don’t get me wrong. But I always wound up joining as a spur-of-the-moment thing.
I never had time to make a sign. I just turned up on the street and lent my voice when the cause was right. Also, the nearest thing to brightly dyed hair I’ve ever had is burgundy.
My first big ‘moment’ was in Middle School. I was born into a relatively poor household. We weren’t constantly struggling, but we had lean years and good years, and we did the best we could.
Fresh vegetables are a treat for me, because when I was little, they were often too expensive for us to buy. If you’ve ever heard me rant about food deserts and feeding poor kids in school, you already know this about me.
The concept of ‘School Lunch Debt’ still boggles my mind. Seriously, what?
Anyway, I remember walking onto the campus one day in ratty old pants that didn’t fit me right. I was in a growth spurt, and stretchy fabric was all I had. I was in between hand-me-downs from my cousins, so I was making do.
I remember some of my friends stopping, looking at me weirdly, and asking why I was wearing that. I’d obviously get sent home for being improperly dressed. I didn’t have anything else, I said.
Which is what I told the office after I predictably got called in and asked to change. Luckily for my parents, they assumed I was being a shitty kid rather than a neglected one. They gave me pants from the lost and found and ordered me to wear them.
Hot damn, new pants! Hell yeah.
I then got shit from another friend about having no sense of style and how I needed to go shopping. That was, apparently, something they could just…do.
That was one of many, many small moments I had where I realized I was perhaps not as well off as the other kids around me.
It wasn’t much of a leap then to start wondering about why.
I was always a Woke Commie Scumbag, per the right-wingers that occasionally turn up in my comments and get blocked before anyone sees them.
In High School, I was the kid who chose to do a social studies essay on the prevalence of child predators working in schools across North America. Yeah, there were never any signs that I would turn out to be a Social Justice Warrior when I was young. Not at all.
I have this pesky thing called ‘empathy.’ It makes it hard to see other people struggling and keep walking. I remember how awful it feels to not have the money to buy a small meal, and the intense gratitude I felt when the cafe owner — who knew me well — told me to take my food and pay another day.
That one simple decision on her part was the difference between me being able to eat that morning or going hungry until I got home to my mother’s house that night. For other people, it could be the difference between eating or going hungry all week.
That’s the kind of thing that runs through my head. There but for the grace of the gods go I, as they say. As long as there are people suffering and barely scraping by, if that, then none of us are safe.
As long as the basic necessities of life are locked behind a paywall, then none of us have the right to live.
And that’s why I can’t stand the insane wealth disparity that now exists today. There are people who live such wildly different lives that they cannot conceive of what it feels like to go hungry.
I have a friend who insists she’s not wealthy. But when my other friend and I talked about buying our food for the month, she was confused. Why aren’t we buying the ingredients we need for the meals we want on the days we want to make them?
We looked at each other in surprise. There’s no way we could afford to do that, we explained. We buy in bulk whatever is cheap and cook what we can out of what we have available.
She was floored. She could never live like that. She couldn’t fathom not having the freedom of choosing exactly what to cook. Having to plan ahead based on sales? Not a chance!
I told her I couldn’t imagine having enough money that I could make a full multi-person meal and dessert every night like she could, with ingredients bought on a whim. Especially not complex, bougie meals.
She eats well. I’m jealous!
It’s that kind of disconnect that showed me how wide the chasm between poverty and wealth can really be. It seems small, but damn. That puddle is deep enough to drown in.
I didn’t get radicalized by one small moment. It happens to me over and over again every time I read the news.
Every headline, every gossip column, every out-of-touch social media post by the latest celebrity heartthrob.
When I see the wealthy talk about their ‘struggles.’ When I see how out of touch they are, how utterly clueless they are about the reality of our daily lives.
When my family is splitting our grocery trips up so we can buy as cheaply as possible, expanding our ability to preserve food to eliminate waste and try to stretch everything we make to last as long as possible — people like Donald Trump are posting about ballrooms and gilded bathrooms.
People like Elon Musk are throwing money around like it’s a fucking meme, talking about ending world hunger — because he absolutely could, at least for a year — and then randomly deciding he won’t, even when he was presented with a plan that could work.
Yeah, that’s a real thing he did. I’m not making that up to make him look bad.
You want to know what radicalized me? Being a human fucking being in this fucked up world we live in.
It was learning how far greed can twist us out of shape. How the basic superpower of our species, community and cooperation, goes right out the window under the corrupting influence of avarice.
Money and the pursuit of power supersedes even our basic compassion for our fellow man, let alone the animals and plants we share our planet with. We wind up placing more value on the numbers in one’s bank account than we do on human life.
And that, to me, is outrageous.
But what about you? When did you become World-Weary? When did the reality of all of this light a fire under your feet and drive you to want to take action? When did you realize things needed to change?
I want to hear about your moment.
Solidarity wins.
So many moments so many experiences Sam, - it's difficult to put my finger on the pivotal moment. Stepping out of what my parents expected/wanted me to be and embracing my mosaic non-binary status that was the terrible secret that the medical profession told my parents that nobody (including me) must never find out about didn't help any. Memories of sitting on a footpath picking cigarette butts out of the gutter and being called disgusting by passers by is one abiding memory. But fortunately at some point I found out about a free government initiative to offer training to those who needed a hand up and I studied to become a social worker. Friends were horrified when I went to work for a district hospital's adult mental health service. They had me down as being murdered inside a week. As it happened I soon discovered that 'normal' people were far more dangerous than the people I was working with. Eventually though the job burned me out and I had to take early retirement on medical grounds. Absolutely no regrets though.
It was when I realized there is some truth in the old saying: “No good deed goes unpunished.” And yet, for some reason I keep trying! On the plus side, I no longer fear death, so I suppose that’s something.