The reason to believe.
Perhaps I should just admit that I now understand the world is corrupt and brutal, that most nations look out only for their own interests, and people seldom rush to dangerous acts of selfless sacrifice. No shit. Where did I get the idea I would find otherwise?
We actually set out to save the world. That is what was insane - not ten-year-old warlords with bad breath and vodoo fetishes in Liberia, no the Hutu militias who butchered a minority who had repressed them or the Tutsi survivors who executed the suspects - but me, for thinking I could enter a war and personally restore order.
So that's the easy answer: Forswear idealism; resign myself to a sad maturity; put away the things of youth; be thankful I survived and move on.
But that's horseshit too, a craven capitulation. I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naïve and romantic and idealistic - the part of yourself you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicism, isn't that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?
Kenneth Cain, April 2003
Emergency Sex
We actually set out to save the world. That is what was insane - not ten-year-old warlords with bad breath and vodoo fetishes in Liberia, no the Hutu militias who butchered a minority who had repressed them or the Tutsi survivors who executed the suspects - but me, for thinking I could enter a war and personally restore order.
So that's the easy answer: Forswear idealism; resign myself to a sad maturity; put away the things of youth; be thankful I survived and move on.
But that's horseshit too, a craven capitulation. I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naïve and romantic and idealistic - the part of yourself you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicism, isn't that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?
Kenneth Cain, April 2003
Emergency Sex
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