Portland on a Sunday

[lunaticsol]

I got in an argument turned conversation yesterday with a few flag burners, and some really pissed off dude (angry about the burning flag). Sadly out of the lot of them (them also includes the general portland crowd) I had way more respect for the beligerant redneck guy then the rest of them combined. Worse, it has a lot to do with my active

Comments

[zander_nao]

Growing up in Portland as a child was interesting. Mind you I lived on the other side of the river so I only visited the part Holly's in, but there was an interesting diversity of people. Mind you anarchists often do fit into a conformity factor of their own. It's sad when non-conformists conform to a group of non-conformists, like Freaks and Geeks for instance. I am sad you are gathering such disdain for the population there but I can understand it.

[lunaticsol]

I suppose I was rather harsh on the portlanders. You get fairly stupid people everywhere (and they seem to be no small minority), but the thing that strikes me about portlanders is that they claim to be the scholarly enlightened type etc., etc. but they are really just as short sighted and closed minded as anyone else. For me instead of seeing what they're 'saying' I see a bunch of weaklings who can't actually stand up for anything, so they band together and console each other in their weakness, and run anyone who actually has anything meaningful to say out of town. I think that's the other thing that bugged me a lot about that day (and others) is I saw a lot of people speaking out, but they all think the same way, and they all know they think the same way, so there's really not any courage involved in that, but they tend to think there is. Like a portland cab driver once told me (he was from Colorado I think) "these people are all living in a fantasy." I don't object to what these people are saying, I just expect them to live up to

[lunaticsol]

Or maybe it's just the yuppies and some of the street people, though even a lot of the street people are really cool. They actually tend to be the most free thinkers.

[zander_nao]

I think the cab driver had a really really good point, and your perceptions are very good as well about the lack of courage of a unified mass.

[sage13]

the world is too complicated, too many who seek to challenge the norm and find their own path end up conforming to societies views of them. The world needs to be simplified, but in its own way it's much too hard to make things simple. People simply arn't motivated enough to truely go their own way.

[lunaticsol]

Yea, and maybe it's not only a problem of motivation. I don't think those people actually believe in anything. So instead they just take it out as a common hate on something else. Worse still is a lot of them don't even know what it is that they are hating, and it's more of a social activity and group rallying than anything else. Even the active ones are only trying to prove to themselves that they aren't like everyone else who only talks. But even though they use more than words, they aren't actually saying anything meaningful. It's all an elaborate and tragic delusion.

[ashesofsekhmet]

the thing that bothered me about them was that they were dissing the country that gave them the rights to do such a thing. its incredibally hypocrytical. also, the one girls comment: "we cant help it if were are slaves to the country" really bothered me...i mean, seriously, if they dont like it, leave.

[lunaticsol]

The only thing anyone can ever make you do is die. And suffer, but there are a lot of ways to end that quickly (like dying). In that way nobody is anybody's slave unless they choose to be. Unfortunatly that seems to be very popular in today's society. Most people who say they're slave mean that they don't think they can change anything, and don't fight, because they don't believe they can win. It's like your kids... nobody could stop them from getting away if they tried. It's the same for anybody else, even in the worst places in the world.

[shogunori]

fuckin douchebag answer your phone - we gotta get drunk off our asses too

[lunaticsol]

Hell ya, I get in late tonight, I'll give you a call tomorrow