To politic or not to politic, that is the question

Whether 'tis better to work within the system and "take over" your political party from within to change it or whether it is better to change it from the outside.

I actually am thinking about getting back involved in Democratic politics in Arizona (which is akin here to trying to find an illusory oasis in the truly barren desert). I have the time. The problem is twofold: if I spend too much time I won't have time to actually make money, which we need desperately (the conundrum there is that if the Republicans run things too much longer here, I'll never make money anyway). The other "fold," if you will, is that I'm not sure that I can get in there and actually do any good or if the party here is progressive at all.

On another front, I had always wanted to write a scholarly book about paradox (for me, primarily in literature) but never got the opportunity because I never got that wished-for tenure track job. And then, in a little posting I got in email today, I saw this:

"If it’s not paradoxical, it’s not true."
Shunryu Suzuki

It certainly opened up the desire to write that non-fiction/scholarly book again as well as fiction. I have always seen the truth, indeed the entire world of possibility as well as truth, contained in paradox (it is not a dilemma to be resolved; it is to be accepted as true. This is the difficult concept for Western minds to grasp).