The Trouble With Centrism

I'm point in life when I thought certain things would be solidly decided.

I thought I'd be in the career in which I would remain for the rest of my life; I certainly don't think that any longer. Far from it. I can think of nothing more horrible or frightening than to last out my days in retail or customer service. I thought I'd be settled in the town I'd live in for the rest of my life, even in the neighborhood in that town; if the past several years are any indicator, I've got a few more moves ahead, especially as I change occupations to stay ahead of austerity and poverty. I thought I'd be a homeowner; that's not even a priority any longer. But I think what still surprises me most is that certain key core values, even personality traits are still in flux.

I find myself in the midst of a personal ideological conflict regarding my own political direction. When I was much younger, I most closely aligned with fascism, largely due to a gross misinterpretation of ethnic pride. That position caused me a great deal of trouble when I attended university when I was confronted by a large populace that was both extremely liberal and diametrically opposed to my way of thinking. Opposed, but just as fervent in it's views. While this opposition helped me to see the errors in my way of thinking, it also served to illustrate the errors in their ways. Knowing you're wrong is one thing, but engaging in blind apologetics does NOT correct the situation; it exacerbates it. It is perhaps this crash of extremes that caused me to redefine my views in equally extreme terms and led me to identify with the extreme left-wing of the political spectrum and sympathize with Marxism. I've backed off to pro-socialism, especially since becoming a Buddhist and avoiding violence. Now, however, I'm far less than certain where my loyalties lie.

We are, as I write this, in the middle of a federal government shutdown caused by Tea Party opposition to the Affordable Care Act. I don't pretend to understand the opposition, beyond that opposition being an expression of total bourgeois selfishness. It's not enough that the "haves" have what they have---the "have nots" must remain have nots with no hope of improving their situation, including health. It's not enough that so few have so much more than enough; the remaining few have to have nothing at all or those at the top are incapable of enjoying any intrinsic worth of their benefits. At the same time, I grow increasingly tired of constantly working so hard while others who seem to not work at all benefit from my efforts. My family has tries several times in the past to obtain assistance in the form of both food benefits and utility assistance; we haven't qualified for utility assistance in nearly a decade based on our level of income, and while we could receive some food benefits, the laughably low level of assistance for which we qualify does not justify the routine intrusive certification procedure and questionnaire. Yet we have first- hand knowledge of others who work far less and receive far more, and to an extent such that they profit more from benefits than we do from work, and from the very fruits of our laborious, no less.

The end result is that I'm wholly uncertain "what" that makes me. Depressingly, I find it far easier to define myself in negative terms, i.e. as what I am not rather than as what I am. I know I am not a capitalist; I can't support a system that, more often than not, punishes hard work and rewards conniving and exploitation disguised as hard work. But, I'm no longer certain I'm a socialist, especially if being a socialist implies that I must blindly support the welfare state. I believe the current minimum wage is criminally low, and yet I've experienced workers whose work ethic don't justify remuneration even that high. And I have a real problem supporting minimum wage increase without the guarantee that my own wage would increase by an equal rate, regardless of how selfish that reveals me to be.

I suppose that, for the time being, I'm a centrist, but I truly miss belonging to something rather than opposing everything.