Revolutionary splendor and dismissal: Trials of negotiating authenticity as a revolutionary “Rida”

I have found a language that has allowed me to understand myself and my actions in more articulated and refined thought.  While this language has allowed me such fortunate definition in articulating myself as an educator and person it has not come without consequences.  There is a burden to having language and more so to have language established in deep education and reading of the world.  Such issue has left me wondering what, where, and how do I proceed.  It has become very difficult as of late but perhaps the most challenging time will provide the most fruitful reward.  Then again what if it doesn't and this is all an illusion trapped in the ego and existential understanding of the individual.  Perhaps the collective was never really meant to have meaning other than an abstract idealism.  In contrast, the individual is the supreme centerfold and subject of man's own objectification.  We are at ends and in a struggle whether we know it or not that we stand alone, but together.  It is a struggle that has pitted one against the other and one against the many.  We wage war in the name of a subjective idealism called "good."  Our righteous intentions still leave someone suffering.  It has become an inevitable, or so it seems, cyclical perpetuation of one and the other.  No equilibrium seems possible and at this point my pessimism starts to infect my will to move forward in a liberal progressive understanding of what social justice, equality, and man should be and act like.  It is not up to me to decide this for anyone, but to decide for myself and thus myself becomes important to me and to me only.  This existential reflection is not within my desire, but rather it has become symptomatic of something else.  I wonder if I am weakening.  Am I wanting to become comfortable because comfort and easiness are far more enjoyable than the struggle of progressive ideals?  So I struggle daily with negotiating myself, the world, and what connection I serve in both.  I find that my education, intellect, and understanding are at times an affliction.  They are not something to be revered, but something to be understood as powerfully endemic.  They are illuminating, enlightening, and yet, restrictive, reductive, and possibly destructive.  It is at times far greater to have the least amount of understanding of the world than to understand in such depth that it occupies your soul.  The old saying of “ignorance is bliss” becomes more than a common cliché, but a sound reminder of what we don’t know sometimes saves us from all that we know.  Is it possible to ever have such an understanding, or at least of feeling, of the world and things that it consumes you and controls you.  Education breaks certain innocence and eliminates return to such state, at least in the prior state that it was known.  Innocence and naïveté are the lustful accommodations of man that hold us in a state of blissful ignorance.  The ill man is often the educated who is conflicted and struggles with himself and the world, himself and himself, and himself as a relational, subjective, and objective of the world.  The fine line of genius and sanity is negotiated by one’s will and ability to maintain understanding while trying to find innocence. 

I am not enough because in the eyes of another I have not done what he has done which is in his eyes the way.  We all walk and understand the world in reference to our own way of what is.  Even our state of being is not without recourse of one’s own view of his/her way.  Thus, we see that the arguments and understanding, i.e., ideologies, become the undertaking of the individual against the collective.  The individual cannot survive against the collective.  Even if the collective is understood as every other individual existing independently, all those outside of the individual are formulated as “other” in relation to the individual.  “Every man for himself” is such an egoistic expression, but it is not fully explained.  Everyman is in and of himself in pursuit of himself.  This is not to say that he cannot exist or be a part of the collective in his pursuit.  What6 becomes problematic is that his pursuit will always be prioritized over the collective.  Even in the most sacrifice acts of an individual claiming an anti-thesis to vanity and individualism there still exist the individual ultimate fate in and of himself.  The individual cannot morph physically with the collective and it can be pondered and proposed through metaphysical and spiritual argumentation if a morphing, or melding, of the soul or composite energy can perform such metamorphoses.  The ideal of the revolutionary spirit must understand that to be a revolutionary “Rida” one must strive to be infused in my mind with the collective, but understand the physiological restrictions of the fusion with the collective.

The physiological can be represented in many ways.  Race, or the construction known as, is one way the revolutionary can be separated from the collective.  He can act as an individual in the collective, but the idea of ever being a fully incorporated melting of the collective is not possible.  With the most benevolent intentions of teachers, religious figures, and others there is still a malevolent ego that forms a barrier to ever being able to morph successfully with the collective.  What must be understood is that the revolutionary Rida is first and foremost a revolutionary of his inner self and egotistical conflict.  His first revolution is the revolution of himself.  The revolution of one’s self brings about the necessary elements of the psyche to begin revolutionary individualism as a collective effort and effort for the collective.  To know extent, and certainly reasonable, can the revolutionary ever be revolutionary with an internal battle still inflicted his inner judgment and egotistical dualistic desire of wanting to revolutionize himself and the collective.

Such philosophical pursuits in understanding revolution as an ideal must first be understood as a revolution of the psyche.  For myself, this revolution was one that lasted several years and was defined by further revolution.  Even as I start and attempt to bridge my revolutionary “Ridaship” to the collective, I must understand and keep in reason my continuous revolution of myself.  To negotiate the self and the collective is to be in conflict while in revolution, yet never be complete in either one.    

Some references of terms:

1) “Rida” See Jeff Andrade-Duncan’s article “Gangsta Wangsta Rida Paradigm.”

2) Existentialism has a number of people associated with it. See Sartre or Camus.

3) Conflict of the individual and collective: This maybe be seen through Marx’s philosophy, some possible influences of Michel Foucault, Derrick Jensen in Eco-activism, and Rousseau.

If more clarity is sought please email me.

Antonio Garcia

Indiana University

agarciaj@indiana.edu