Disclaimer: From where I am right now. This is a letter to American Christianity. At some point, it becomes something else, but I think it’s all related.
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My Dearest,
I should commend you. The effort you’ve made was naught but valiant. In your desire, your thirst to bleed and bomb into dust, you’ve told a story, spoken of heroism:
a calling
of the light:
a tale as old as our timeline itself.
Faith used to be the most precious thing I had. There are times I grieve my loss of faith with the strength I grieve my dead father. It’s been 27 since the latter and 13 since the former. Life was so much more simple when I had a faith, and even more so when I had my biological father.
In some ways, I’ve always been afraid of the most ridiculous and simultaneously, paradoxically important, ideas and people at the most ridiculous and paradoxically, simultaneously important times in life. Losing my father put me in a timeline when I had to be afraid the most of the stories you tell yourself, what you believe about them, and how you believe that affects you, those ideas, and what you believe about them. Read that twice to make sure you get it. I wasn’t so high that such a sentence was not intentional. Intention is my breath.
I want nothing more than to die anonymously, having lived a plain, simple, and average life. But sitting by and watching this slew of horror after horror is no longer an option. I don’t believe that one person can make a change alone. I hope to simply spark, keep the spark alive, or to stoke the fires that are already present and being built.
I’m actually not easy to write-off. The truth is, I have more integrity and less patience than anyone else in my family. I’m not sure to what degree.
I would give everything that made me who I am. Any semblance of respect my family had for me. Any relationship they would still be willing to entertain with me. And I’m afraid that writing this will be the thing that stops them from asking questions, and officially writes me off.
A brief aside: I love hip hop. In my experience, rappers tell truths that philosophers haven’t put to words yet. So, I don’t care about white and western ways of philosophy, standards of intellect or rhetoric. You already prevented me from being part of that world. I care about reality.
Daily, mundane, hard, ridiculous, petty, gorgeous life.
So…when rapper, Lowkey says, “What you got inside hasn’t gotta die once, it can die a lot of times, that I promise my son.” From Behind My Painted Smile with Akala. It resonates with the frequency of my soul. I trust that resonance more than any story I’ve ever been told.
You have killed the beauty inside me. What is left feels like a wasteland of despair. I understand Pandora’s box, because hope is the most devious of bitches. Sometimes I don’t know if we’re worth saving and yet, I feel so desperate to keep all of you alive. As part of our human record. But. Only when we’re all ready to give account at the same time can we become worth saving. I don’t want anyone to be eliminated – to become future people walking around with 2% “native” or indigenous blood in their bodies – unless all humans are 2% perfectly of each other and all of you make up my whole self. I can handle that – but I can’t handle this life without everyone who’s currently unique in it.
Each person in this world reflects a potential that might never be seen and even if that’s the most average or humble life, it matters.
It is only a dictator who wouldn’t allow themselves to be held accountable. It seems we’re led by a world filled with dictators. That is the lineage of the linguist. You keep finding more out about yourself by contemplating otherness, instead of trying to be and exist in sameness. Why must you grasp so hard at the straw of uniqueness?
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We might theoretically speak the same language, but I think we’re on the opposites sides of our most basic assumptions. I know who I am because of all the best and worst things about me I protected. I know they’re the worst because I feel so different from the people I grew up around – most of them. The best parts about me have led me away from my family, which might be the worst way to live, according to some. However, they are my best, because I can look myself in the mirror. Colonizer reflecting back, and accept myself. But, I’ve been living my life.
You’ve been living yours.
No one ever thought we would collide.
Honestly, we never should have.
This world filled with people who I love, adore and feel so much for, are the exact people who would have to know exactly who I was, forgive and choose me to continue being in their lives.
No one with my background could possibly hope to be chosen back.
The people I respect most in this world, are the people mine have ignored for thousands of years.
If this post is TLDR: here’s the tagline: I don’t give one rat’s ass about your fucking canal or the resource game you never stopped playing in college.
Not one single person who considers themselves humans in this world – watching you fuck around with our lives – cares about how long you got to jerk off to the world. No. One. Cares. From this point forward, we will only make long-lasting stories about people who stand up for humans before profit, business, or accumulation of resources and not for the sake of protecting government or political structural power. My metaphorical pen will only penetrate the digital walls of history with stories of people who remained connected amongst the worst tragedies humans have ever had to go through.
The only reason you even started recording history is so you could start accumulating. A record to keep track of what was “owned” and literally shove it in everyone else’s face. You get to keep doing this because everyone has to eat.
This is why I cannot choose any individual lineage of faith.
Until humans are actually treating each other better, there is no god who could possibly be telling the greatest truth.
You killed this in me. And you keep killing it.
Yet you resent me, my words, for the wound you caused.
The more I questioned, the deeper your lies became.
Now I know I was wrong. You have actually consistently lied since the beginning. Since the inception. I no longer know whether you were unconsciously lying or actively, consciously (aware-fully?) lying. I’m not sure if that matters anymore. How conscious can you be when you’re doing everything you can to survive? Your survival was a story – an idea that held the weight of breath in lungs – not a human with actual lungs trying to remain alive entwined in crumpled bricks.
It wasn’t just a religion that lied to me. Told me … ” my vague intuitions “… were the truth. That heaven existed. That god – an all-powerful being was real. Only one power, though, right? There can only be one god – or did you mean one ruler?
If “as above, so below” is true, I think, perhaps god doesn’t look like one image.
It couldn’t be possible. It must be all of us. And Palestinians are not strangers to me. Neither are Jewish people. You bleed my blood. You read my stories, as I read yours. You cry my same salty tears and dream of living a life like mine in what I think are the strangest ways. Just as I dream of knowing faith and love the way you do. This has become a complete divorce of faith with the religion with the people with the concept of nation.
You should never have sought to divide us in order to conquer. Because history has always taught us that opposites attract and whilst I have no idea or inkling of what it means to be Palestinian or Jewish, their air is my air. Their lungs, mine. The vacuums created by the bombs you send have been choking me. And if you keep choking me, you only prove that you can kill yourself.
Because your hands are my hands, too. And I know the pain of having to realize that we sat the fuck back and watched people die all those years ago. In so many levels, I can see that. I cannot imagine having that kind of blood on my hands. But, because you did it, I did it too. There is a war in myself because I detest what my people have done and what you do to another people group so equally and self-righteously. And can’t you see that in each case,
there was a book:
a simple story
that made you think this was okay?
Your books means nothing to me. They are but neutral human accounts, and that is the only way I can come to see it. Books of faith which breed such blood-lust can bear no power. No magic.
If your ground was sacred, you have spilled too much innocent blood. To me, the land has been defiled, and can no longer be considered holy.
This is what the image of god has created in this world. Destruction and desolation.
How dare you say you speak for god.
When the real truth is – we don’t know.
Not actually.
Not in reality.
As in terms of matter being tangible to the senses.
Able to be experienced.
They are thin lines that separate us. You are me and I am you. We are nothing and everything together.
Please, have a belief, something that tethers you and keeps you connected in and to this world. How could I EVER critique that, knowing every gift it gave me?
I have come to a point where I believe I no longer need faith to remain. I would choose being here, present, alive, here in this physical form regardless of whatever creation or afterlife story was given to me. Even though I’ve been so disappointed by humans in ways that I actually didn’t have the capacity to imagine as a child.
In my particular perspective of privilege, I have been brought, numerous times to the question, are humans worth saving? Yet, I don’t want to give up my life (in terms of actual breath), because I’m still curious as to whether things could get better. I fully believe they won’t. Truly. How could they? Every ounce of “progress” we made was a story that “winners” of history told us they did for us – and every time. Every. Single. Mother-fucking. Time. It was at the cost of massive groups of people who were deeply harmed.
Let me be clear. I don’t want to live in one “winner’s” version of progress and history – or a group of them. I do not consider the advent of “billionaires” progress. I put billionaires in “” because the basis of your definition is the collective agreement of valuation of gold. Weird. That wasn’t even the main thing years ago.
My gold is people. That’s my center. Life. Self-determination.
Billionaires, if I’m honest, have made my life a living hell. I’m so fucking aware of what’s happening in so many inches of the globe, at the same time I’m aware of almost every inch of my body, at the same time I’m aware of every inch of my mind, at the same time I’m aware of almost every inch of my life, where I’m succeeding, where I’m failing, where I’ve been stuck, and where I’ve made progress beyond many other forms of life.
I have these things because I am the epitome of self-determination, in the greatest degree that I can acknowledge that I am self-aware, people aware, emotionally, socially, logically aware, and also simultaneously and in equal-proportion and oppositely aware of all the things I don’t know, and don’t know that I don’t know…and to be very honest, even a few more degrees away from that.
The fact of the primary narrative continuing to revert back to simple, yet false dichotomies, making this narrative in which I exist one about an all or nothing choice between people groups. It’s not part of the problem. It’s the whole load of problem. This narrative has been seeded for thousands of years. Empires are filled with dictatorial vampires.
I do not know how to read god into fiction.
White European colonists took the language of chosen from the Jewish story. They also claimed to have a connection to god no other people had known. Whiteness became a dominant identity. Paired with the murder of enough people, white Europeans then defined “history”, “life”, “success”, “pain”, “fear”, “fair”, “just”, “intellect” – all manner of concepts that guide how we think about how we think. Read that again.
Once white Europeans accumulated so many of the world’s resources, then also defined and simultaneously assigned value. It was only through force that the story was told, retold, upheld, feared, and then – get this – “respected”. This is America.
Which is just like England
Which is just like the Catholic church
Which was just like Rome
Which was just like Greece.
But Greece didn’t have to deal with story of Jesus – they had Socrates – and they STILL created a story of one sacrificing self – for the good of government.
There were actually two problematic narratives at the turn of the common era. A “chosen” people, and a “chosen” empire. There was no god who chose a moment in time 2000 years ago to make a story, THE main story that would define generations to come. Empire did that.
Only those empires combined. They appropriated the religious story of the time, and Christianity and government became one and the same.
As a matter of fact, Christians have had so much time in power that they have imagined thousands – and I mean, thousands of unique subsets of denominations which believe they are more chosen than others who profess even their same branch of the same faith.
To any “powers” that be: your progress is neutral – you’ve actually not helped the world. You’ve only built an empire that is more complicated to dismantle. But, we will succeed.
Furthermore, when any individual power attempts to delete a people group from history – that’s where we draw the line.
If possession is 9/10 of the law, then Palestinians had been in possession of the land, most genuinely, and most recently. It does not matter what type of colonial interest was involved in “giving” the land away. It had no indigenous right to do so. By human law, we must revert to the most recent holder of title – before colonial interest or story swooped in.
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When I was young, I used extreme language because I experienced emotions the way people feel when they hear of horrible things happening. I don’t understand violence and have felt rather terrible of myself for having been angry in the ways I was. I have gotten very angry at at least one – two people and I feel horrified by it to this day. I don’t think I could survive a fight where I was willing to pull a deep punch with someone I loved and felt safest with in my life, verbally.
I cannot imagine the horror of taking another’s life.
And yet, I understand how some can hear of death and killings and not be affected by it. They’ve not experienced it, and in fact, knew such little about life, that they thought those headlines were hyperbole. Unfortunately, white people are getting there real slow, in a time when time matters. See, 4 months from now, the headlines will say, “6 months ago, a war started between Israel and Palestine.”
Only, Israel will have laid all Palestinians to waste, simply for being exactly who they are. We may only know of Palestinian Reservations in the future, the way America did.
We can actually prevent human history from going this way.
The thing is, it’s not about Palestinians.
It’s not even about the land – most of humanity doesn’t care about the land.
We own none of it anyways.
Most cannot even hope to own land. And even when we do, immanent domain will take it away in a moment’s notice.
It’s about the fact that you don’t just get to do this.
Every tribe. Every region. Every religion.
This land connects the world to itself – the heart of our world is African and Arab and Indian and Asian land. Why on EARTH would what white Europeans want matter?
The only reason white Europeans have a say is because they originally committed the most savage acts in history. They killed the most, the most relentlessly, the most thoroughly…
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Imagine what it’s like to be Palestinian.
Or South African.
Or Congolese.
Or Sudanese.
Or Japanese.
Or Uyghur.
Or Nicaraguan.
Or Mexican.
Or Guatemalan.
Or Salvadorian.
Or Venuzuelan.
Or Brazilian.
Or Black.
Or American and Black.
Or British and Black.
Or British and Palestinian.
We’ve accepted this for so long.
Fuck, the only reason Australia exists is because America demanded freedom from Empire and then proceeded to play dictator more deviously than any other empire prior.
One could analyze the meaning of every capital letter in this treatise, essay, blog post, memorandum…whatever label you choose to give at the end of this experiment.
And you’d be right
and looking way too deeply
and giving me both enough
and not enough credit.
And you’d be wrong
and right on point
and talking yourself in circles.
The very aspect of my being white and posing questions like this to myself is the exact expression of the privilege and perfect self-determination I have been able to experience in this lifetime. And that freedom that I have received, to be sheltered and taken care of in my youth has been at quite a cost to almost every other human sharing this world with me.
I hope you find the right meaning for you in this lifetime. I wanted to understand the massive expanse of the universe, and it’s turned out that I had to find it in myself first. I didn’t know questions like this were possible. That thoughts like this were possible. And – for me – that makes life worth living. Fuck. I guarantee, if you believe hard enough, love hard enough, give up hard enough, demand hard enough, accept hard enough, the vast expanse of questions you could ask yourself enough…and you can make it through the pain of ALL of that, you will always find your reason for living.
When you encounter me, you will always get the honest response of the realities I’m questioning in that moment. I cannot promise consistency in that; yet, I am trying. There are times when you won’t receive this from me because, in that moment, I’m trying to save every ounce of energy for the patience of tedium.
I think with the amount of people I am attracted to, I could and would have wreaked a lot of havoc.
Have you ever locked eyes with someone and knew, in an instant, that they would change your life? And at every point in time you wanted to lean close, and step back. and touch your nose and say, “not it.”
Life. At EVERY point is worth living. It is worth fighting for the freedom and self-determination of everyone around to the extent that one’s own self-determination does not impede – by way of violently ripping someone else’s away from them – the self-determination of another.
Being inconvenienced is not the same as having your free will whittled away by an organization that does not acknowledge you as its equal, yet affects every single aspect of your life, including the path you take to work and how many people you have to prove your humanity to through checkpoints on the way there.
And I know that to have grown up Jewish in this world has forced many to negotiate the concepts of safety and freedom in unique ways. Israel was supposed to be an invitation to freedom and self-determination for those of the Jewish faith and heritage. However, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This, what’s happening now is 70 percent of the world’s worst nightmare…just read their prophecies. In laymen’s terms, prophecy is referred to as any time someone shouted, “If you keep doing this _________ (something typically “bad” will happen)!” into the void. EVEN IF one can argue these were the intentions from the world that passively allowed the slaughter of Jewish people in the 40’s. Based on results, that invitation has become one of Colonialism, destruction, conquering empire, control of resources, and slave to the currency of the time.
And frankly, aren’t we past that?
I don’t give a shit about gold. I don’t think it is the most precious or valuable resource on this earth. Gold can’t do shit for you. When has gold made you laugh? When has gold wiped away the tears, cleaned your wounds, kissed your forehead, or made you soup when you were sick? Drawn a bath for you at the end of a long, dirty day? When? Tell me?
The truth is, we GIVE value to gold every single day of our lives. We trade our own worth for material money at the end of everyday.
Aren’t you tired of living that way?
Fuck your oil. Fuck your gasoline. Fuck your malls. Fuck your holidays. Fuck your stories. Fuck your gods. If this is how you operate in the world. I don’t want ANY of it.
Starting from neutral is what it means to take back your own life from ANY narrative that has been fed to you.
We have only learned how to find value in something outside of ourselves.
What exactly do you think the idea of sin was created for? If you are so deeply vile, for the simple fact of existing, why would this experience even be worth it? If that is what you are fed, is that what you become? We are what we eat. Holy shit.
Imagine if the very fact of your existence was simply neutral.
Imagine that statement to be the truest truth you’ve ever heard.
Start there – humans aren’t born with meaning at all. We’re just born. Like every other animal. Yet, we’ve been given the most complex form of ability to interact with our environment and give meaning to it.
We give meaning and value because that is what we do as humans. We are not more or less special than any animal, because if we didn’t have ALL of the natural world, from the smallest bacteria to the most complex organisms, we wouldn’t know what was possible. The only way to preserve that possibility is to preserve the world AS IT NATURALLY IS with all the variety we have. Death comes to us all. But we don’t HAVE to so blatantly cause it to one another.
Conversations about nature vs nurture is complete and utter bollocks. Nature INCLUDES Nurture. Nature literally nurtures ITSELF – IT DOESN’T NEED YOU TO DO IT. To nurture is natural.
Please stop killing each other. Definitely stop doing it for financial gain.
onesharperworld 