Most Sunday’s, weather allowing, I set up a mobile comic book shop at local open air markets. I have done it for the good part of a decade, in doing so you make unique friendships with people who you may only see every so many Sundays over the years, you might not even know their names but you know their opinions on things, what books they read, movies they watch and at times the turmoils in their personal life. In being a fixture, you can be both councillor and sound board or, for some kids, an adult for them to share budding and developing opinions with.
It’s a fascinating thing to see the genesis of a strangers child thrive in social confidence and their ability to conduct themselves in a setting outside of the family or school. At first some approach with tentative unease, they search the comics, or lift up a toy, eyes wavering and when small talk is attempted, they are direct and short in response. Over time, some bring books they have found, or go into great detail about a story they have read, even at times sharing in their own creative expeditions.
This past Sunday, a young lass who when she would first come to the stall with her mother was often in a pink onesie, with buttons and patches she had collected. Most of them were either Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcakes or Pokemon. She would buy whatever comics on those properties, and when I came across any, I would keep them aside for her and her mother. Over the years, the pink she wore had been replaced by black. Leather jackets, the Care Bears buttons now My Chemical Romance album apparel, rings and menacing neck wear more akin on a bikies Rotweiler than a teenage girl. Her face in spots bristles with the barbs of piercings.
Despite that aesthetic, and with greater confidence when she speaks, she is very much that little girl who all those years ago would seek out vintage cartoon books. Outside of the music she listens to, usually alternative, punk and counter-culture, the conversations she likes to raise delves into social commentary. She opened up about her opinions on censorship, social media bans and surveillance with all the in depth analysis I may find in a conversation with a civil libertarian or with a remnant Boomer who retained a degree of humanist dignity. Her passionate words turned into a flurry of gestures and angry repose, perhaps the Gen X lyrics she had listened to had infused her with a defiant dignity. She had after all, that morning asked me if I had Heathers on DVD or the soundtrack on CD. Unfortunately, I had neither.
Her mother rang her mobile, then mine. Some regulars tend to take your contact details for buying and selling, or in their case, trading purposes. She answered, and in the distance sitting on a bench her mother waved and watched on. With health issues, her sweet mother did her best to walk the length of the rows of stalls, opting instead to sit and wait while her much younger daughter picked over thrift and wares.
“I won’t be long,” she said before hanging up.
She turned to me and continued with her extended ability to articulate her words, “I don’t trust any of them to tell me what I can’t watch and listen to. It’s about control.”
I did not express my thoughts on censorship or surveillance, there was nothing to add to the conversation, other than to agree. Her spirit of dissent did not need any further steering.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mum just nods and when I spoke to a teacher at school they told me not to concern myself with any of it. I have every right to be concerned. It’s nice to speak to an adult who lets me talk about this.”
In that moment, I felt a tinge of pain in my heart. I had gone to university to be a teacher, and I had this naive belief in the, ‘seize the day,’ lie told to us back in the 20th century. A period where the tug of war between individual rights and humanist morality fought with the collectivist ideological order which has now taken hold.
“You can say whatever you want and so long as you listen to other peoples opinions, they will hopefully hear yours. Never stop thinking and questioning, but always be open to other peoples views as well.”
She nodded, thinking as she did so, “What do you think?”
“I don’t like censorship and surveillance and feel that such coercion are immoral. I agree with what you have said,” I noticed a customer who held in their hands a Spider-Man comic. When I returned to her, she was looking over a pile of books. She put them down, “If you want to find good movies that are uncensored, older movies that are not on streaming or YouTube, check out this site…”
“Thank you and be careful on the internet.”
She said her good bye and ran to her patiently waiting mother. The spirit of ‘68 was certainly inside of her mind. The dissident energy that may have stood alongside a young man holding up a burning draft card, or, held the corpse of a fallen student at Kent State, a Czech protester throwing body or flaming bottle at a Soviet tank in Prague. Maybe still she could just as easily been one of the Red Guards who pulled teachers and counter-revolutionaries from their homes to beat and torture them to death, infected with by a Maoist establishment, anti-establishment revolutionary status-quo tyrannical disorder. Or, I would like to think, with such spirit sh would stand before Type-59 main battle tanks of the Peoples Liberation Army, in 1989 Tienanmen Square. Whatever, the dissatisfaction and energy, her instincts for rights invigorated her.
The unfortunate reality is youth with all their exuberance and idealism, has much of it beaten and educated out of them, so they soon learn to become debt addled, obedient servants of power. What may have once stirred animosity and disdain from within, can become an accepted reality. A free speech advocate who once may have placed Wikileaks stickers about the place, called for the release of Julian Assange, may just as easily support big surveillance and censorship depending on the degrees of cowardice that comes with their age.
A lad around her age once told me, “my parents never want to talk about anything that matters, what colour the new bathroom tiles will be or whether we should renew Disney+, would be a highlight.” Is it an inability to discuss things or, has everything become termed as obscene and hateful, anti-social, dangerous that some people won’t even entertain another person opinion. Even if their own opinions assume coercive violence in order to implement.
“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it,” Hannah Arendt once wrote. Is it apathy? Or, as she also concluded, “the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” ‘Just doing my job’, ‘Be like everyone else’, ‘Don’t rock the boat’, ‘Make money to borrow money, to get a mortgage for a house.’ ‘ban anything that I don’t understand or that scares me.’ “The banality of evil,” after all.
Principles are less important than conformity. Perhaps, it’s a Westernised Confucianism, or as it has always been.
Power no longer promises any Utopian vision, the pseudo-religion of communism and fascism found in the past has little impact, outside of a few radicals and hold outs. Ideologies have in practice become a homogenised pragmatic balance between corporate and State interests, careers and profits perfectly aligning under the pretence of law, order and stability. The public, are in essence viewed as possessions, those to be protected and owned. To be mastered. Obedience and loyalty is an assumed civic obligation which is made possible through the direct means of dependency and debt. The notions of social contract and nationalism, infuse the realities that most accept and think little beyond. Freedom and liberty, individual rights are not firm principles, instead they are compromised away, whether through fear or insecurities.
The minds who may disagree are scattered, and by their very nature do not seek power. They are not politically motivated to use the monopoly of government to coerce their neighbours, so the dissent takes on a rather Ghandi like disorderly dissatisfaction. The politically motivated, tend not to believe anything, other than power and their personal ascent. The process is a lie, the system a status quo for power, liberal democracy has gone from a delusional balance of individual rights ensured by the State, so long as the State has certain monopoly powers. Now, it’s assumed that the State should have powers to command and control all things, it’s accepted and despite the magical legalesse meant to constrain, it only refrains the individuals right to self ownership. Maybe, in time this will include our words, our thoughts.
Perhaps, in time such a simple Sunday afternoon conversation in itself may be illegal. Dangerous. It may sound absurd or an unreasonable forewarning made by a philosophical anarchist, but the sharing of a website in a public place, a legally defined minor not being put in their place, and contraband in whatever form, are all which given time may become outlawed acts. The exchange of cash, a book that is no longer approved or thoughts, all can be seemingly harmless thing to a reasonable mind. To an insecure and power fixated one, they are to be controlled and contorted. Society and the political process, perhaps even the public mob, seem to reward insecure power.
Maybe, even the music she seeks out will no longer be available on playlists, replaced by regionally censored and approved versions. AI generated equivalence, and in a generations time, who would remember. When the older generations become apathetic, give up on principles, assuming they had any, to simply exist in crystal palaces or investment real estate Panopticon’s. Enjoying their careers, or pensions. The youth can suffer the world they destroyed, the one where the past in itself is now a nostalgic Utopia, when feral freedom could be in ways had. Free of prying eyes, and hearing voices, pay walls, and ID checks or softaware which monitored every step and transaction. Where dangerous words could be read, forbidden lyrics heard and conversations happened organically, without fear of reprisal.
This is the future we all built. Be happy with it. It’s what you wanted.
As for the Youth, they pick through records and CD’s to listen to the music some once took for granted, anti-establishment punk bands which now are fashionable shirts for politicians to wear. The spirit of ‘68 may have whispered away, the courage of 1989 when the tank man stopped a column of armour, the Berlin wall crumbled away and Romanians executed a despot and his wife, but to be forgotten remnants. Would such courage exist now, such dignity? Or, did we all just sell out. The price it turns out was pretty cheap. What did you get in return?
Hopefully she does not lose that spirit, and her peers find it too. Because, the adults in her life likely don’t care, sold their kids out and swallow power one eager mouthful at a time.
