I don't want a revolution that is based specifically on gender. I just want things CHANGED. Capitalism is my friend.. it doesn't need to be changed too much. There is no problem, in my mind, with people working to get ahead. It can be done in a moral, ethical way. I just want people to start CARING. About everything. Abolish Apathy!

Yes, I was using gender as just an example.

Capitalism is my friend because my family is educated, middle-class. (Actually, it's not really because I'm an ethnic minority and I'm female and I despise its entire structuring, but let's just pretend.) I don't have problems with people working to get ahead, either. I don't think many do. The problem with capitalism is that not everyone has an equal opportunity to get ahead. Someone born in a poor family where no one is educated beyond high school is not likely to obtain a university or tech school education herself. She is not likely to become a doctor, or a nurse. She will have to work harder than her high school friends who are middle-class, perhaps find a part-time job when others don't have to, just to have enough money 'to do things.' She won't have as much time to devote to grades. She doesn't have parents whose example she can learn from, she doesn't have parents who have done it before and can therefore help her with her homework.

Also, I disagree about it being able to be done in 'a moral, ethical way.' capitalism needs people to remain subordinate. Capitalism thrives on people being 'lesser'. 'Success' is a relative term. In using it, you are, by definition, saying there are people less successful than you. Therefore, you need people to be subordinate in order for you to be successful. Therefore, the more people who start to 'work harder,' the harder everyone else has to work, too. It's why university degrees are becoming useless; it's not enough anymore because more people are getting degrees. It's no longer as much a marker of status as it once was. I'm not condemning this, as I think education should be universal and everyone should have equal access to a degree; but that's not the case. More people are getting degrees, and more people are having a harder time to get a job. It just means the bar of 'success' has risen and what was once deemed successful is now deemed average. Normal. I don't want to be a slave to some company that doesn't give a shit about me so I can "get ahead." I don't want to be a slave to my own personal business so I can "get ahead." I don't want to be a slave to anything. I want to live my life, I want to do some good, I want to help people and enjoy living instead of worrying about whether or not I'll have enough money to have a nice house on Point Grey in Vancouver with a picket fance and 2.4 children.

I, personally, think this bar will keep rising until all we do is work. Not exactly moral or ethical. The current structures of capitalism and globalisation mean that gap shirt, that marker of 'success', was made by a little kid in China because that's where labour's cheap. And that's all that matters, isn't it? Labour being cheap, people making more profit. All that matters to most students is tuition being cheap, and therefore being able to keep as much money as possible after graduating.

Me? I'm the prime example of apathy. I'll sit here and write about change. I may join a few protests, a few groups, raise a bit of money. But when it comes down to it, what do I really do? Absolutely nothing. And why? I dont' think anything can be done. I am selfish and and I am jaded; I don't think things will change, and want to spend the time I know I have right now, before I have to start working, having fun. I'm not going to change the world.

All this is fairly obvious; and, of course, there is much more to be said about what's wrong with capitalism and why it's shit and why it needs to change. And even more about why that change won't occur for a very, very long time. The above is just what first pops into my mind when I think about how fucked up our current economic structures are.

xxx

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