Friends and words and race and "-isms"

IThis post is about race. There are two portions: one is about history and the other personal.

Principles in human relations are often discarded in deference to "business". This is the basis of slavery, which is an historic basis for business and a business in it's own right that still occurs today. Business included war, so government, military and even religion were tightly integrated for most of the history we know of, because of the evolution of tribal to civil society and because of the need to ensure security.

Similarly, the historical consequence of losing a war is dispossession and subjugation. Throughout history, whole cultures have vanished due to conflicts, having been unable to secure the areas of their habitation.

In the United States and other modern countries, this started to change. But only two generations, in my grandmother's time and just beginning, two generations ago in these modern countries. And there are large parts of the world where this change has not occurred.

Principles, the basis for civil society, have been advanced in a way that human rights and dignity have been extended to the most vile people imaginable. This is because these vile people, although vicious, brutal, criminal and murderous, have rights due to them as a basis for modern society.

There is a very good article by a man named John Mohawk that discusses race, the foundation for racism. He traces a significant amount of modern racism to the Roman church, whose papal authority could in turn imbue kingdoms' rulers with divine imprimatur.

In essence, this church endorsed the dispossession and subjugation of non-Roman Catholics by the Catholic-endorsed kingdoms, much in the way the Roman citizen had certain privileges that non citizens did not. The first people to be so attacked were the Irish, who were also some of the first "races" to suffer this new type of onslaught. Then, the Canary Islanders, then mainland Africans.

The term race has evolved over time. Currently it refers to "phenotypes". In the era discussed at this point, several hundred years AD, it referred to cultures/linguistic groups and nationalities. The article by John Mohawk links this rolling series of dispossessions to racism. It happened that non-Catholics looked different. They were freckled, or darker. Non-Catholics were less than human therefore they could be disposed of as seen fit: tortured, killed, dispossessed, enslaved, all with papal blessing. Similar attitudes were held in Islamic controlled regions, and a common African racist attitude persists where Eastern Africans hold Western Africans inferior for this reason.

Every area of the world has it's racist pseudo-anthrophilosophy, where various peoples have various shortcomings or strange abilities. Unfortunately, these only obscure the truth.

As the European expansion and consolidation moved forward, Mr. Mohawk asserts, the association darker-pagan-expendable became ingrained. The pattern had been set, such that at the time of American initial settlement, it was nearly automatic. One of Columbus' first orders of business was to kidnap Caribbean natives and ship them back to his imperial sponsors.

The condition of the average European was poverty. People, serfs, peasants, etc. and the land "went together". The ruler/owner of the land owned the bulk of their output. As a result of some early adoption of various common laws, people had some rights, but not many. The thrall, or slave, had even fewer. There was competition for various favors from the landed nobles, who were "noble" based on the extension of those limited rights.

More rights and privileges were granted when it alleviated pressures and produced popular support, which included the provision of able bodied men to fight the nobleman's battles and extend his influence. It heightened the adherence to one's ruler to convey a sense of "Us and them", capital 'U' us. Racism served that purpose: making one army believe they were superior to the other, particularly blessed and righteous.

This pseudoChristian-Europeanism is now referred to as "white supremacism", based on the most recent propaganda of that ilk which was expanded and adopted as some type of actual divine mandate. Europe is not alone, of course, various supremacism occurs in the middle east, caste system in India, and there are similar belief systems in Far East Asia.

But any of these of course hold no bearing when held up to scientific study. Because these belief systems are not fact based, but are mechanisms to help ensure various armies wouldn't bolt and run, and that they would feel justified in fighting to expand the holdings of their ruler, paradoxically killing people who were more like themselves than these for soldiers were like their rulers.

Kurt Vonnegut used a wonderful phrase in one of his books, but I don't recall which. 'Breakfast of Champions', maybe: "Flipping them orts with their cane", describing the 19th-early 20th century tycoon who would take the briefest of moments to execute a one handed putt, chipping a discarded crust of bread on the street towards a beggar. It is the quintessential 'trickle down', the essence of relationship between "noble" and "peasant".

This may seem "apologist", it is not. It is to demonstrate the utility of racism as it is applied by ambitious people. They created these divisions as suited their purposes as social controls, then left the half-baked theories implanted in their subjects to fester and breed.

Questioning the reality of these divisions, racism, ethnism, culturism... this seems to happen almost by chance, but once the question is raised, the "-ism" is slowly erased, supplanted by truth. The truth shall set us free, so to seek it is to seek freedom.

The world of humans, on the whole, can be vicious and brutal. These old ways, the ingrained historic programming, are a fallback: only two generations away at this point, they are still ready for activation. These are powerful motivators and powerful identity carriers, but they work in a world based on greed and ambition above all else.

Can we imagine someone witnessing the brutality of one group against another-- the conquistadors against the Incas perhaps-- and imagine them thinking "did Christ really die so that at might do this?". It is easy to imagine, but the reality undoubtedly made dissent very risky.

Where does one go, where does one go, with such ideas? These are the ideas that when spoken aloud gets one hanged, shot, abandoned our otherwise put in harm's way.

So that is all of that. Read native American authors like Vine DeLoria, Jr. for excellent research and commentary on modern racism.

I'm going to tell a personal story, it is true and so I will eliminate actual names.

When I was young, my mother had a lady that came to do the cleaning. She was African American, and I loved her. I still love her, I love her because she helped take care of me.

My mother had a disease that made her life difficult and she felt hugely guilty for that also. Having this help was a blessing for her.

The drive that this lovely lady made to come work at our house was a long drive. When I think about that, I realize we helped her also. She had a difficult situation at home, and eventually divorced her husband once her son grew up.

My mother had been taught by her father, who worked for the railroad, that we should live by the words in the Declaration and Constitution with respect to equality of humankind.  As a result, he did not tolerate racist attitudes or language, my mom told me does of him helping all manner of folks during the depression, and my mother also worked to ensure people with racist attitudes were not among friends of the family.

(Having said that, she was not fond of Muhammad Ali, whom she thought was very vain, but it had nothing to do with his phenotypical characteristics.)

My father found the whole subject of racism somewhat amusing in the abstract, and was repulsed by it in the concrete. His experience was different, he knew full well the attitudes of various people. When I became older, I recognized why he reacted the way he did in certain situations with certain people that we should happen to meet, and then when I became a teenager, he would parody racists in a way that was very amusing. It was his way of making sure I knew people with those attitudes were cartoonish at best.

At the time of this story, the cleaning lady's son was my age: 8 or 9 or so. We did refer to her by her first or last name preceded by "Ms.". As I tell this story, it is very personal and really very brief, occurring over an hour or so, but this is important.

I know now that people who lived in my small town where I grew up (in a northern state, a middle class area) had very different, ugly, attitudes about race. But at that time two very important people around me were my mother and this woman who came to clean, one was white and one was black. I could observe that was unusual in the area where I lived, but that was the way it was and that was ok.

In fact, it was unusual in the area where I lived to see *any* non-white person, and my first encounter with racism was to be a result of that demographic. It has changed considerably since then.

When she came to our house to clean, she would from time to time bring her son. He was energetic and happy, more animated than me, but also quiet like me, so we could do things together. We'd go exploring in the creek to catch tadpoles, skip rocks and explore in the remaining trees around the nearby park.

The park itself was rather sterile: it had been a nice forest, but it had been flattened and turned into a playground with swings and such. We preferred to play in the trees and creek, looking for crayfish and other odd things. We would walk across the park, to get from one part of the creek to the other where the bank did not allow walking.

He and I were doing this one day, talking a bit but mostly remaining quiet, and a kid came up on a bike. He slammed on the brakes and yelled something, a name. This was a word I'd never heard, and it didn't make sense to me.

The kid was scrawny, buck-toothed with kind of a vicious face. I had not seen him in this park, so I picked up a rock and threw it at him. Skipping rocks was one of my favorite things. In this area, there was a lot of slate, flat and sharp, and it was easy to throw. The kids next door used to start rock fights, so I knew how to use this brittle stone to get them to back down, and I threw it as hard as I could.

He was a little far, but I could hit him. I didn't really want to get in a rock fight just then, but I did want him to go away. So I threw it arching over his head, landing well behind him so he could see how easily I could hit him if I wanted. I yelled at him, I cannot remember what I said but the gist was for him to go away, and picked up another rock, carefully selecting one and measuring the next throw. The desired effect was achieved, he was frightened and rode off as fast as he could.

I turned around and looked at my friend. I remember asking, "Aren't to going to do anything?" as I did this.

Then I saw how he looked.

He was a strong young man with a lot of energy, but he seemed to have shrunk. His shoulders were rounded, and his head was drooped. He seemed to have shriveled in front of me, and I could not understand it. That kid on the bike was a pipsqueak compared to us.

All I could think of was to get him to our fort, a stand of trees with a rocky depression in the center, where we could talk in private. But he didn't want to talk about it. So we started doing some things, I gave him a thing to do, to help fix the fort, so we started to dig it out a little further on one side pulling out stones.

I was upset. This was my friend, the son of my mother's friend. But he had withdrawn into a place I couldn't reach him. Also, I felt responsible, I didn't know why. I couldn't remember that word, it seemed like a silly sounding word. I was angry, and confused.

Some other friends of mine came along. I introduced them to my friend and we started to talk. They were a little surprised, but just because it was so unusual to see a non-white person. I told them about the jerk in the park, and how he called US names and how we might need to pile up rocks in case he came back. They were game for that, and so the conversation shifted. The kid didn't come back, so we left after a while.

That young African American man went on to do several things, for a while he was an NFL football player: not a star, but was paid to play. But he was successful at the things he did.

Many years later, when my mother called me to tell me his mom had died of a heart attack, I sent him a letter. I was very sad at the time to hear this, but at the same time I had no doubt that I now knew someone in heaven who would remember me.

My mother has since passed as well.

So that's three generations now since things began to change. It will take a while, I think, but it gets better and better. Forward motion, maintaining forward motion, is the key to moving it ever closer to the goal.

The global dynamic vs. the local tyrannic

Something that is interesting about the Bible is not what it acknowledges, but what it doesn't acknowledge.

What doesn't it acknowledge? That, somehow, pagan theologies rose to supremacy. The natural spiritual condition of mankind seems to be pagan, until otherwise divinely informed.

Do not believe this is an argument for the embrace of the various flavors of neo-paganism, much the contrary. Hinduism is probably the most evolved pagan tradition, which ultimately resolves in the thought that the dozens of deities are "manifestations" of a single divine being: ultimately, paganism resolves to monotheism.

Respecting the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the natural condition of all mankind. This is the conclusion of the founders of the United States of America, although the full implementation has yet to materialize nearly 250 years later.

In the same way that the believers of the Bible move forward in dogged monotheism while surrounded by paganism, it often seems the United States moves through the world without recognizing that the majority of people are ruled by some manner of dictatorial regime who regards "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as a laughable notion.

Comparing the founders' simple epiphany to the social reality in Europe, where the settlers that became Americans originated, it is a revelation indeed. The societies that cast off the bulk of trans-Atlantic adventurers were ailing. They had placed their outhouses too close to their wells, causing disease outbreaks. They had placed all of the power in the hands of landholders, who milked tenant farmers relentlessly. There were no new sources of revenue other than those that occurred when outlying areas were invaded and enslaved. If the outlying areas inhabitants fought off invasion, trade negotiations occurred between the representatives of the tyrants on either side of the conflict. As predicted in the bible, the rich got richer and the poor poorer. Business as usual, and nowhere was it stated that people were somehow entitled to life, liberty and certainly not the pursuit of happiness because they flatly were not.

The reason for this blog post is that it is still the case that in most places in the world, this still holds true.

The European tyrants were sponsored by the church, which endorsed their reigns as though approved by God. Conflicts with Islam, which occurred due to the clashing material ambitions of kings and caliphs, strengthened the identification of Europe with the church. (This is an important understanding, that most of the modern political ills in the world result from early rulers overriding  their own religious mandates in pursuit of corporeal advantages, but in the current context this is digression. If the God of Abraham is shared between entities, there is no reason for them to be in conflict, but of course the implementation is tainted due to the corporeal machinery involved, this being driven by the ambitions of rulers.)

The church and analogous religious organizations in other systems are important entities, and their importance endures. Why? Because of the essential corporeal mission of the church remains essentially unchanged: to create a population that is essentially compliant while amassing stores of wealth and encompassing areas of food production that will allow the church to survive despite catastrophe. Does this mean the various churches is evil or corrupt? To some extent, yes. But it also ensures that in the event of catastrophe the teachings of various divinely inspired persons will persist.

Also, while the succinct statement of the American founders is seminal in terms of European thinking, it is not without precedent. English common law recognized various rights. The oldest parliament in Europe was the Viking althing as established in Iceland, a meeting of landholders to settle disputes in the law. Certain inherent rights were embodied as far back as the code of Hammurabi: for example, if one paid for a house to be built and the house fell down killing the owner, the builder would be killed: that is, the purchaser had a right to expect the house to stand.

Now, that the basis of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" being established by slaveholders and invaders is somewhat hypocritical on the face of it, and it is also often suggested that it would not have happened without the European settlers witnessing how the Indians lived-- those nature-borne persons who had never toiled in a feudal society, who went out into the land to hunt without fear of being put to death for poaching by the enforcers of the lord/baron/king.

However, and this is the primary point of this post, these fundamental rights truly and fully enmesh with the two Great Laws as stated by Jesus "to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and physical strength and love your neighbor as yourself". No church-sponsored ruler is required. The founders realization and the implementation thereof are distinct and work proceeds to this day.

But the point is that the implementation is limited to those places in which the realization of this innate rights, or similar enough basis for society, is recognized as the true operant condition of mankind. Everywhere else is subject to the whim of tyrants who establish their governments in order to achieve their own ambitions.

Worldwide Conspiracy!! Read all about it! Governments hijacked!

This will be a post with links! Not just boring boring text! The links are dynamic collages, montages of photos from the internet that tell the story of this post!

There is a worldwide conspiracy, and it has to do with energy. Energy, because energy is needed by everything in order for human survival.

In order to provide energy, gigantic entities that are "too big to fail" have been created.  They ensure the operational continuance of mankind, they ensure the energy infrastructure of Europe.

Interesting montages, yes? Kind of interesting what happens when you put those queries on top of one another and emphasize them again with "continuance of mankind". We see regular, normal, painful, funny, silly all at once, and mostly individuals.

The worldwide conspiracy has to do with support of the European ultra-right wing by the Kremlin. Another interesting montage. The reason for this network is the eventual establishment of the Eurasian Union that is controlled by Moscow. Unlike the conspiracy theories in the movies, the caricature of the mad villain that plans to subjugate the world, they are not looking for a voting majority. They are looking for enough force to push them one way or the other. This is critical, because all that is required is enough force to ensure a particular vector. The other operational considerations-- economy, production, business, agriculture-- these all will continue more or less unabated. Just slightly redirected

"Well, thank goodness it is only Europe!" with a sigh of relief.

But what makes you think it is only Europe? This montage contains pictures of David Duke meeting with Aleksandr Dugin. Aleksandr Dugin is a Russo-centric political philosopher who spins a marvelous circular logic that places Moscow at the center of the world as "The Third Rome" to which all roads lead. That is, if the marvelous Empire ensures the roads are maintained. But, it's all figurative of course: roads are for poor people, the rich travel by private plane.

These are interesting images, aren't they? Various interesting things co-occur. Why do those various things co-occur? This would be a point for many to jump off into "the 1%" rhetoric but that is not the point of this post.

The point is to get you thinking about the extent to which this same sort of infiltration has occurred in the United States. When weapons systems run into problems or are cancelled, are they the kind that have proven effective against Russian weapons?  When various foreign aircraft look just like the ones paid for by your tax dollars, how much of that was due to industrial espionage?

This is not a political blog, it is not a conservative, liberal or otherwise political blog. It is the writing of a particular individual wondering if what-it-means-to-be-human is being threatened by those powers that have come into place in order to ensure human existence, and if it is, what can be done about it? This nothing new, it is the underlying question in a great deal of popular culture, but it is worth asking oneself.

Why things have always happened the way they have

A modern perspective that has achieved wide adoption is to separate religion from spirituality. There is a certain amount of sense in this. Religion is another big business, there are spiritual crimes committed by religions just as there are environmental crimes committed by big business. Then, there is religion and government, where the separation of religion and government is less modern, but also relatively modern. Finally, further divisions in government between instruments that are the will of the ruler, the will of the people, and the operation of the legal system.

The abstraction of all of these layers and the separation of concerns lends itself to a certain purity of function in each area. In some countries/states, there are layers that are weak and almost non-existent, and others that are strong and overwhelming.

Governments throughout the Bible and most famously in the Book of Revelations have been referred to as "beasts", This is a profound observation, and because it is often revealed in visions, we see that it is the sort of observation that one has in a dream when one is objectively processing one's accumulated information. 

The past year has been full of troubling news. Extremism abounds: extreme weather, extreme acts of violence, hints of extreme shifts in geopolitics. "Wars and rumors of war" and all the rest. "The birth pangs" and all of that other stuff of religion, the big business.

That religion should use certain methods, "gimmicks", to get people to join their business is seen as reprehensible, especially because on the other hand the conditions that make those gimmicks effective don't seem to diminish. The atheist would scoff: if more souls than ever are being continually accrued and committed to a Biblical god, then why don't we see an improvement in things? 

The answer to most atheist's questions is "no man can know the mind of Gods, bu which of course does not necessarily move the debate forward but this author would posit that if the obligatory cleaning of one's sandals of the dust of atheism would occur more often, then people of faith would been seen as having more integrity.

There is a saying from somewhere that states "Earth's security is human integrity". The source eludes the author, my apologies, but it is a very sound statement. Integrity is actions that in are in accord with one's stated beliefs. It is often confused with a sense of morality, but it is not that. 

Individuals and organizations who lay claim to having a sense of morality are expected to have integrity. Individuals and organizations who do not claim to be moral at all are not necessarily expected to have integrity other than those instances in which they agree to have integrity 

But back to the beasts: of late, we have some new beasts running around the planet, and they have caused considerable grief. After a thorough wintry drubbing we enter into a new spring season in the northern hemisphere, and the blistering heat of the southern summer is cooling. A good time to take stock. 

It is the new year, actually, right about now. Why is it the new year? Because of the months, the moon. Oct is eight, Nov is nine, September is the seventh month, not the 9th. August the sixth, not the eighth. March is first, not third. This is the natural order which has been "improved" and regulated, but it really feels more like a new year about now. We take stock in the new year, because livestock is born: you see? 

This blog has concerned itself with big things and small. Conspiracy theories, always a favorite subject of the blog-o-sphere. As of late, a huge conspiracy has in fact been revealed, and as usually it is the conspiracy of the power of money versus the power of integrity.

Why things have always happened, according to many religions, is the struggle between dark and light. Darkness in people causes them to be morally weak, lightness in people causes them to be morally strong, so the story goes. But morality is less the issue, particularly with the non-faithful population. It is integrity: doing as you say you will do.

As you move through your day, you move through a web of commitments. If you walk on the street, you are obligated to abide by certain rules. If you open your window, you are obligated to abide by certain rules. If you cross a border, consume power, use services, tools or other items ruled by agreements, you are obligated to abide by those agreements. These agreements are intended to constrain people who do not have integrity to act as if they integrity in those instances in which the operation of society requires it.

Operational concerns very often outweigh other concerns. For the individual, corporeal concerns outweigh other concerns: when your corporeal/operational well being is threatened, you can act in ways that would otherwise be a serious breach of that invasive web of operational agreements. That is, extreme acts become justified.

This "right to extremity" is a loophole that is more and more exploited. A person/organization/nation is in danger of operational disintegration and therefore must act extremely. The exploit occurs when entities wanting to act extremely work to create a plausible condition in which their operational continuance appears to be in danger, thereby justifying their actions. We can name a dozen different instances of this engaged in by a dozen different entities, "beasts", in recent history and throughout history millions of murders in self-defense.

But why beasts, wherefore beasts? Beasts are creatures, creatures of habit and instinct, and not of lofty humanitarian action. What a fitting label for all the various brutish empires throughout history! This may seem to be a wonderful creation of some ancient author, but it is the creation of the human unconscious that renders it fitting because it resonates. Resonance is important, it is a tool used by beasts and humanitarians alike.

This post leads up to the next post, because a great movement is afoot by certain beasts that threatens humanity. The next post will stand alone as a bit of social commentary, but this post underlies it.

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