I won't be able to sleep until I get this out, I think.
I'm not a Christian, but everything I analyze is based on a Judeo-Christian value system, ultimately founded in scripture. Why is that?
Well, I think it's because I started with christianity. Then I lost that and looked to government, and realized, holy fuck, as messed up as the bible is, democracy, theocracy, communism, totalitarianism, representative democracy, republics, anarchy...it's all bullshit.
Fuck me, man! I need some sort of center. Fuck off, Derrida, because to be entirely centerless is to be apathetic. Of course we can't change anything. There's nothing to change to. And nothing to change from.
So, I find the teachings of jesus - and, for the most part, JUST jesus - to be a good enough center. I guess I'm desperate enough.
Jesus and Derrida. I think that means, work with your center. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you'd have them do. Love, love, love, love, love. But, remember that your center is a false one. It will shift. You know nothing.
I know nothing.
I will be wrong.
Humility. The practice of biting my tongue. The practice of admitting failure.
Imagine a presidential candidate that got up on stage and told us to fix the problems ourselves. To stop trying to pawn off the US problems onto a new policy, and take personal, individual responsibility.
I think I wrote years ago that I don't think I can survive looking at the macro. I need the micro. Things are...so messy up in the sky. The postal service had it wrong.
I can't do macro anything. I can't teach hundreds of thousands of students to read. I can't fix a budget crisis. I can't fight nation wide obesity.
I can just do small things. God, some days I wish somebody would remind me that the little achievements I make towards these goals are what matter the most.
I'll remind you instead. The little achievements you make towards these goals are what matter most. Your afternoon jog fights American obesity. And then, you encouraging your friend to jog with you fights it even more. Don't give up.
Your kind word, your willingness to engage instead of exercising the majority privilege of disengaging, your grief and your apology are a single stitch in the gaping wound left in the side of the native american population by manifest destiny.
I'm mostly talking to myself right now.
15 August 2012
Manifest Destiny.
"The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, my god, what are these people doing to each other? They're killing each other; they're killing themselves...this is the legacy of Manifest Destiny."
This crushes...crushes my soul.
We live in a country founded on a successful holocaust. Where the storming of Normandy failed.
250,000 out of 8 million? That's 96.875% of a population killed. 7,750,000 people. Perspective: scholars agree that approximately 6 million Jews were murdered during the Third Reich. 800,000 in Rwanda. 1.5 million Armenians. 600,000 Filipinos. 1,000,000 Greeks.
I stand on the bones of people who deserved to live. imago.
The "uhmurica" joke has become...less and less funny this year. I think I'm going to be sick.
I can't...see anything through this haze. Guilt and anger are unmourned grief. Grieve. Mourn.
And what the FUCK are they teaching in elementary schools? The schools are built from the bones of possibly the largest mass genocide of a people group in documented history. And we teach thanksgiving. Cowboys and indians.
Lets teach our kids to play Jews and Nazis instead. Sick.
Internationally, it's no news...we need a reality check. Humility. The US has a really big head on it's shoulders.
Nothing makes me want to leave more.
http://fadedandblurred.com/blog/the-shadow-of-wounded-knee-aaron-huey/ Thanks, Nikki.
This crushes...crushes my soul.
We live in a country founded on a successful holocaust. Where the storming of Normandy failed.
250,000 out of 8 million? That's 96.875% of a population killed. 7,750,000 people. Perspective: scholars agree that approximately 6 million Jews were murdered during the Third Reich. 800,000 in Rwanda. 1.5 million Armenians. 600,000 Filipinos. 1,000,000 Greeks.
I stand on the bones of people who deserved to live. imago.
The "uhmurica" joke has become...less and less funny this year. I think I'm going to be sick.
I can't...see anything through this haze. Guilt and anger are unmourned grief. Grieve. Mourn.
And what the FUCK are they teaching in elementary schools? The schools are built from the bones of possibly the largest mass genocide of a people group in documented history. And we teach thanksgiving. Cowboys and indians.
Lets teach our kids to play Jews and Nazis instead. Sick.
Internationally, it's no news...we need a reality check. Humility. The US has a really big head on it's shoulders.
Nothing makes me want to leave more.
http://fadedandblurred.com/blog/the-shadow-of-wounded-knee-aaron-huey/ Thanks, Nikki.
02 August 2012
imago
I've been thinking about this recently:
Why is identity important?
I'm a white, upper-middle class american male. I have time to think about these things because I am not afraid of starving to death. Identity is important to me.
When you're starving as Kim Jong Il terrorizes your country, well, it doesn't matter nearly as much, right? Eat, or don't eat: it doesn't matter who you are.
But when a N Korean refugee returns to his country out of national pride for a leader that would kill him without a second thought, I'm forced to reconsider the depth of identity. Maybe it's more important.
Identity - knowing who you are outside of your individual self - is probably the most important thing any of us deal with day to day. I think for a N Korean refugee or a displaced child in the Congo, it's not as important as food, water, shelter, and safety. But I think it might be in the top ten. Who do you belong to? With whom do you identify?
I suspect that it's evolutionary. Without an identity, we have no family - without a family, no pack, and without a pack, no survival.
Now here's the part I find interesting. Identity doesn't exist without a population. We cannot define ourselves without comparing.
Example: I am white, have long hair, and am a good drummer.
But, compared to native Inuits or Finns, I'm pink.
My hair is short compared to Tim's.
I'm an awful drummer compared to Gavin Harrison.
Stick with me here.
We have no identity outside of our populations, because without our populations, our variances or similarities are neither - they're just traits. Our constant comparison to the group creates a unique, specialized identity which distracts us from a simple, terrifying fact:
We are all identical meatbags.
If we weren't, modern medicine wouldn't exist. The reason I can have corrective laser eye surgery is because we know what is correct and incorrect, based on the success of traits (natural selection, anyone?) in our population.
So we're all the same. Gayle Rubin said this in The Traffic in Women, possibly my favorite essay:
Now just take out the bit about genders - we're talking about humanity as a whole, not men vs. women - and you see just how un-special everyone is.
If you find yourself reacting negatively to this concept, lets talk about why. Nobody likes hearing that they are the same as everyone else.
Why?
Evolutionarily? Because uniqueness, the act of being different and better, survives in natural selection.
Theologically? Because, perhaps, the christian folk are embedded with the concept a personal god who knows us individually - suggesting that there is individualism to be known.
Theologically, I think there's a deeper root issue here. Humanity was separated from god, right? Man and woman walked alongside god and there were no qualms about identity then - we were naked, both physically and metaphorically, and our identities were exposed and known.
Humankind was separated from god. Humankind wore clothes, and was ashamed of its identity. Humankind began dressing its identity. Humankind lost its identity in a sea of self-definition.
So when our smokescreen is called out - when our clothes and politics that we define ourselves by are threatened - we bite back.
This is why we cling to romance. Northrop Frye said:
I am no different than Fred Phelps with Westboro Baptist church. We disagree on just about everything, but we are both the same flesh and blood that clothed ourselves when we realized we were exposed in the garden. I don't want to believe this.
Instead, I believe that he and I are different on the basis that I love gay people and he hates them, or on my belief that god doesn't hate america specifically, while he believes the US is doomed.
I forget that we both were born of human mothers, and we both have fathers whose genes make up half our own. We both eat, breath, drink, shit, and piss.
I don't want to be the same as Fred Phelps, but fuck it, I am.
Honestly, I suspect that this is why people are so opposed to compromise and understanding each other. Definitionally, compromise is coming to a conclusion where both parties are equally satisfied. I don't want to find common ground with people that make me so angry. I want to show how I'm different than them.
I want to hate them.
I want to separate myself from them.
I want to prove to someone,
perhaps, to god,
that it isn't me who deserves this curse;
it was him.
It wasn't my fault,
I'm different;
I'm unique;
I didn't take the fruit.
She did.
See, we've been playing this blame game since the very beginning. And it's all a ploy, to disguise our guilt. We find our differences, and we exploit them; we stretch them and hyperbolize them until they are stars born from carbon atoms, great chasms separating us from them, isolating ourselves from our guilt and grief, and consequentially, dividing ourselves from the source of our original identity, the imago dei.
And every time we scream and fight, we contribute to the chasm. We lose our souls to a hole we dug.
All I can do is see it in myself when people throw their weight behind Chick-Fil-A and Douglas Wilson. I'm revolted by some of the things these people say, and I want to get away - that's not me. They are the ones wrong, evil - I hate them.
My mother often says that anger and hatred are grief unmourned.
People are too scared. I'm too scared. We will never be able to do it. There are too many centuries of guilt hidden behind self-hatred for humanity to break free.
You christians are lucky. You believe in an afterlife, where we start over.
Just remember: we define ourselves, not by what we love, but by what we hate. We have to make the choice: find identity through hatred? Or risk losing identity in love? And, theoretically, finding identity in imago dei.
Why is identity important?
I'm a white, upper-middle class american male. I have time to think about these things because I am not afraid of starving to death. Identity is important to me.
When you're starving as Kim Jong Il terrorizes your country, well, it doesn't matter nearly as much, right? Eat, or don't eat: it doesn't matter who you are.
But when a N Korean refugee returns to his country out of national pride for a leader that would kill him without a second thought, I'm forced to reconsider the depth of identity. Maybe it's more important.
Identity - knowing who you are outside of your individual self - is probably the most important thing any of us deal with day to day. I think for a N Korean refugee or a displaced child in the Congo, it's not as important as food, water, shelter, and safety. But I think it might be in the top ten. Who do you belong to? With whom do you identify?
I suspect that it's evolutionary. Without an identity, we have no family - without a family, no pack, and without a pack, no survival.
Now here's the part I find interesting. Identity doesn't exist without a population. We cannot define ourselves without comparing.
Example: I am white, have long hair, and am a good drummer.
But, compared to native Inuits or Finns, I'm pink.
My hair is short compared to Tim's.
I'm an awful drummer compared to Gavin Harrison.
Stick with me here.
We have no identity outside of our populations, because without our populations, our variances or similarities are neither - they're just traits. Our constant comparison to the group creates a unique, specialized identity which distracts us from a simple, terrifying fact:
We are all identical meatbags.
If we weren't, modern medicine wouldn't exist. The reason I can have corrective laser eye surgery is because we know what is correct and incorrect, based on the success of traits (natural selection, anyone?) in our population.
So we're all the same. Gayle Rubin said this in The Traffic in Women, possibly my favorite essay:
"Men and women are, of course, different. But they are not as different as day and night, earth and sky, yin and yang, life and death. In fact, from the standpoint of nature, men and women are closer to each other than either is to anything else - for instance, mountains, kangaroos, or coconut palms...far from being an expression of our natural differences, exclusive gender identity is the suppression of natural similarities."
Now just take out the bit about genders - we're talking about humanity as a whole, not men vs. women - and you see just how un-special everyone is.
If you find yourself reacting negatively to this concept, lets talk about why. Nobody likes hearing that they are the same as everyone else.
Why?
Evolutionarily? Because uniqueness, the act of being different and better, survives in natural selection.
Theologically? Because, perhaps, the christian folk are embedded with the concept a personal god who knows us individually - suggesting that there is individualism to be known.
Theologically, I think there's a deeper root issue here. Humanity was separated from god, right? Man and woman walked alongside god and there were no qualms about identity then - we were naked, both physically and metaphorically, and our identities were exposed and known.
Humankind was separated from god. Humankind wore clothes, and was ashamed of its identity. Humankind began dressing its identity. Humankind lost its identity in a sea of self-definition.
So when our smokescreen is called out - when our clothes and politics that we define ourselves by are threatened - we bite back.
This is why we cling to romance. Northrop Frye said:
“Romance avoids the ambiguities of ordinary life where everything is a mixture of good and bad, and where it is difficult to take sides or believe that people are consistent patterns of virtue or vice. The popularity of romance, it is obvious, has much to do with its simplifying of moral facts”So here's the biggest romantic notion of them all: our differences matter.
I am no different than Fred Phelps with Westboro Baptist church. We disagree on just about everything, but we are both the same flesh and blood that clothed ourselves when we realized we were exposed in the garden. I don't want to believe this.
Instead, I believe that he and I are different on the basis that I love gay people and he hates them, or on my belief that god doesn't hate america specifically, while he believes the US is doomed.
I forget that we both were born of human mothers, and we both have fathers whose genes make up half our own. We both eat, breath, drink, shit, and piss.
I don't want to be the same as Fred Phelps, but fuck it, I am.
Honestly, I suspect that this is why people are so opposed to compromise and understanding each other. Definitionally, compromise is coming to a conclusion where both parties are equally satisfied. I don't want to find common ground with people that make me so angry. I want to show how I'm different than them.
I want to hate them.
I want to separate myself from them.
I want to prove to someone,
perhaps, to god,
that it isn't me who deserves this curse;
it was him.
It wasn't my fault,
I'm different;
I'm unique;
I didn't take the fruit.
She did.
See, we've been playing this blame game since the very beginning. And it's all a ploy, to disguise our guilt. We find our differences, and we exploit them; we stretch them and hyperbolize them until they are stars born from carbon atoms, great chasms separating us from them, isolating ourselves from our guilt and grief, and consequentially, dividing ourselves from the source of our original identity, the imago dei.
And every time we scream and fight, we contribute to the chasm. We lose our souls to a hole we dug.
All I can do is see it in myself when people throw their weight behind Chick-Fil-A and Douglas Wilson. I'm revolted by some of the things these people say, and I want to get away - that's not me. They are the ones wrong, evil - I hate them.
My mother often says that anger and hatred are grief unmourned.
People are too scared. I'm too scared. We will never be able to do it. There are too many centuries of guilt hidden behind self-hatred for humanity to break free.
You christians are lucky. You believe in an afterlife, where we start over.
Just remember: we define ourselves, not by what we love, but by what we hate. We have to make the choice: find identity through hatred? Or risk losing identity in love? And, theoretically, finding identity in imago dei.
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