i have little to say per usual.... the leadership question is simple to me as i remember a very recent convers about dog-fighting: the one who will take charge simply will... & when that is over it is over & on to the next. i may know a lot about some thing & very little about the next. gods help us whenever anything happens & we need leadership. anyway...

the problem as i see it is that we still act as subjects & objects no matter the circumstance. even as we declare our autonomy & that of our friends... we imply intrinsically by our visits & our good will cheers that we do not view any other as ourselves.

let me give a homegrown example of the way i see our plight as americans/ westerners/ whatever the hell anybody wants to say:  my friend of eleven plus years who is a lovely 67 yr old brit woman, divorce of an american military man & also mother of five american now grow-ups, says to me Sunday night: 'these women in [insert favorite arab/muslim country here] are in so much trouble. i saw where a woman (wearing her birka etc) made a click too hard with her heel in public & was smacked for doing so.'
i responded: shelagh, 'things have got so bad in the U.S., but not in the same way. in the U.S., the abuse & tyranny is psychological.'
& shelagh responds: 'you have made the little salad girl (we work in a restaurant) roll her eyes.'  

well, the little salad girl (about sixteen years old) may understand eventually... if i didnt already make clear by my rant that followed... that this life is a fuck all over the globe for the working classes: where they have seized & maintained power of the body in other lands, they have seized & maintain power of the mind in these. & where they (they?) do not control the mind... they encarcelate the body, in these parts, for example, in the drug war.

anyway you look at it, it is a fuck: mind or body. the way we categorize ourselves in these modern cultures-- we who proport our ideals of equality demonize the ones who do not control their bodies... as somehow different from us... less human... as if this control & these ideologies make us more human. & when we do not do so explicitly... we do so implicitly, by changing space, by moving on, by doing our deeds & moving to the next.

it is that there appear in different groups two things: inspiration & downtroddeness! there appear will & desperation, just like in each one of us individually!!
i think Al's question is: how can we consider ourselves equals when we come from such different places & then return to those, leaving behind our so-called work?

but i think we can... & often do NOT....

the question of individual ethics & morality has its place & always is the deeper motivation... & yet, if we do not act on something... we never will act! because ultimately we are the masses & the classes... all of us. the bankers even have to be written in here. so, maybe the get-go is a little rough, & we have to line up all the ducks to see where we are & where we are going.... but in reality, when we implicate that there is some higher reason... things get all messy & complicated! because those ideals & higher reasons are (in general) controlled psychologies which train humans to hierarchy in some form.

folks, welcome to chaos. the reality is you were always here. still the dogs will fight.... but hour to hour the winner of that fight can & will change... depending on the weather... on the tides... on what we had for breakfast, etc. THE THING IS THAT INTIMATE!

no mind it! till they keep us from what we love & want & NEED!!! then the fight is on!

sorry Al, but you know i am an animal/ & i love humanity & feel myself on the level more than most anyway.

a.