I am 23 years old and only started being interested in politics about 3 years ago, when I took a political philosophy module in my second year at university. Before that, I had no interest in it, I…
“Recognising yourself and your life as something which is profound, scientific and political is not only powerful but fun – trust me. It’s hard for the changeable nature and powerful consequences of present circumstances to hit you when you are absorbed in studying and personal relations, which are both hugely important, memorable and formative, but still a practice level. The future holds much more nebulous and competitive political issues such as employment, finances, housing, general self-sustainment and in some cases, the responsibility of the sustainment of others. But you’re going to get there, and like whatever weird society you got involved with at university, you may well faintly wish you’d started a bit earlier. Maybe it’s age or it’s the particularly tumultuous political times we’re in, but I’m starting to feel the textbook-ification of times; the sense of seeing the present written out in textbooks being read by future generations, not fully digesting that it affected real humans just like themselves. It’s a strange chronological dissociation, and it’s hugely motivating. My hunger for social progression to be a real thing and not unrealistic optimism in human nature is insatiable and deeply purpose-giving. To have such a purpose express itself in everything you do, makes life that little bit more vivid. The way you feel and the things you notice are faintly immortalised; they’re part of political history. I am frustrated at every entry-level job going requiring years of experience which I’ve actually been spending getting a degree never mentioned in any criteria. I stress about the average rent prices, silly numbers which would clear out my bank account in 3 months. I notice walking past more homeless people when I’m in town. I notice longer queues in the cheapest shops, poundland, primark, aldi. I notice people from charities giving flyers to people going into supermarkets asking them to get a couple of tins of beans for them to take back to the local food bank. Fuzzy black and white shiny pictures of pouting children in big coats crouched in living rooms with peeling wallpaper and damp, holding the hands of their exhausted parents, aggrieved, flash through my mind. A textbook. We will not go through another depression. I will be part of a movement unstoppably furious about the poverty sweeping over the UK, beneath the underlined, bolded sub-heading, ‘Resistence’. “
