Hey City Zen!

This Libra thing can be a total menace. I manage to live my life in two continents and hopping the political camps effortlessly. In almost everything I like seemingly opposing or distant things. Being a Libra is something like a quantum state: It is not so much that we sweep a spectrum of ideas, but that we adopt several disparate ones simultaneously, in an entanglement that is not necessarily incoherent (or so I think).

So, in the U.S., identity politics pushes me to the right, while in Europe, nationalism, racism and xenophobia push me to the left. Similarly, in Portugal the state-run medical system and the disgrace of its medical professionals lead me to the right, while in the U.S. the cost and depersonalization of managed care lead me to the left. On both sides, to the modern-day conservative, freedom means something like an entitlement to offend or to invade privacy. I can't get behind that. Meanwhile, the ragged left keeps on fighting for freedom from ourselves; still trapped to a self-hating notion that the World would be better without the Euro-American capitalist, rational culture. I can't get behind that.

So where is my Zen at? Some of it disentangles with Ursula Rucker, I rant but I am simultaneously humbled by those who can stay so neatly on one ideological spot. Check it out (in Real Media).