the radical kids club

on my sister blog, love & madness & liberation, we're talking about making meaning out of life in a system we abhor--capitalism, i would simply say--about how to resist and change and ultimately be alive. this is my dad's response, which i want to share.

Hi gals. I tried to post this to your blog but failed with the password thing. So instead I’m emailing it to, so I maintain the immediacy. Love, Dad
PS—hope I don’t sound like a wimpy apologist for myself.

Hey, I found this cool blog while cruising around on this other cool blog this girl told me about....

Anyway, I want to say that the excerpt posted by Z from Derrick Jensen is profound and gets directly to the heart of the matter. I've been wrestling with these same questions for 30+ years now and I'm immensely proud that my children are, too.

By way of quick response, I'd say that everyone who cares as deeply as you/we do has to explore and find a variety of ways to be alive, as you gals put it. To resist what we know is destructive of life--to fight against the system we abhor--to make something better. Understanding the truth of what DJ says, that because this is a culture we're talking about, the result of hundreds of years of human evolution and more specifically a couple centuries of American will-to-power, violent action to take it down isn't necessarily more effective than other actions. I don't think it's possible to know what is or can be effective, other than the certitude of love and life, except by trying and seeing and acting.

I've chosen a path and I know it involves compromises with my ideal and most profound understandings of the problem. It involves living in a place I love, in a loving family, among a web of other like-minded, like-working, like-living people who are also trying to grapple with the same understandings, doing things that feed my life and finding kinds of work to do beyond myself that feed those other human and nonhuman beings who must be protected as the system continues to collapse in on itself, as DJ states it so well. You know what those are--loving people, loving myself, moving wood, hunting mushrooms, cooking and eating nourishing food, experiencing/creating art and music, finding grace and beauty in life every day, striving to life according to the principles I hold most important along the way to the regeneration I know is necessary.

That's all for now. Alan