It is hard to stay silent in the wake of current cultural and racial issues, from the Charleston shooting, to the media's fascination in exposing Rachel Dolezal of the NAACP, and the "white appropriation" video published by Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg. It is said that art and music have been the catalyst to break through outworn times and taxonomies. Now- I want to share an observance I've long been uncomfortable with: Segregation is still so often most apparent in musical groups. How can Brian Hiatt (Rollingstone, June 2015) describe D'Angelo's artistry using the phrase "black music's past and its possible future" when it would read both awkwardly and inappropriately to write in the same magazine associating an artist with "white music's past and future"? To me, this is the same strangely overlooked system of classification we see, for example, when my friend told me he went not long ago into a record store in the UK where, among the genres "Jazz", "Blues" and "Rock", was the labeled section "Female". I believe that dividing music using taxonomy is already a major paradox within the utterly free essence of what music is (though i understand the his-story of this... and I write "his-story" because yes, the classification of naming styles has been a patrilineal descent of nomenclature's colonization). This is why we must pay close attention to how we identify things when we consider our highest aims for humankind's future.
The fact Taylor Swift's collaboration with Kendrick Lamar and their mutual respect for each-other was considered artistically ground-breaking as reported by wide-sweeping public news, reveals how behind the times we are--that this type of "inter-racial" and inter-stylistic collaboration is more an exception or rarity. There may always be ignorance and racism... both within our socialized minds and within the world-at-large. There may always be some who have been raised in such a love-less environment and uncared for that they breed self-hatred and cannot develop the tools to process through such, thus discharge their malcontent upon the world in wretchedness and public shootings, despite whatever gun control the government instills. There may always be someone telling us what is "reality", or someone to tell us what box to tick so that statistics can add us to an identification-based tally, which declares who we apparently are by mere single strands of DNA which have made our skin one color or another. We may long continue to use ethnicity as a descriptor or name of something i.e. "I'm going to run to the Korean..." (which was used in an HBO-produced movie I saw last week, as the identification of the store to which the character was heading). What to make of all of this? For me, I remember the words of a teacher of mine who said, "...seek what you love and leave the rest alone". This is why I've long stayed out of attempting to shed my little light on humanity. I've rather turned a shedding-light inwardly, pursuing spelunking the cavernous interior of the microcosm of Me. In fact, I've felt that many a political or proselytizing person could benefit from such self-speculation. Thus- this is why I would promote that a self-investigative, self-nurturing, "peace-in-every-step"-type of practice is the most promising way to outgrow outworn qualities of social conditioning and add to the world's acquisition of self-awareness. How could I fight racial hatred with hating racism? I see this as only a path of hardening my arteries further. I, too, am a "bundle of contradictions", as one of my tai-chi teachers described her "embodied self" while she was still living. I both long to not be perceived as any "Thing" (a color, a gender, a religion, etc.) and simultaneously, I long to mix as deeply as I can with those of other ethnicities... to connect closely with my friends and colleagues who are "other" colors than my apparent "color". Perhaps we can think about this quote a friend shared: "differentiation precedes integration". We can think about what it means to recognize the one in the many, the many in the one. My thought is that if we weren't so racially far apart sometimes, in art, music and life-collaborations, if we truly integrated our children while also powerfully encouraging their braveness to set out upon the intense path of embodying their individuality, a path that respects others' chosen identities, we'd find less hate-crimes in the world. Possibly, taking responsibility in this way we'd fulfill the real longing in our hearts to see the contrasting beauty of our hands intertwined, to be comfortable with who we are, and thus comfortable with others. Perhaps we can actively see all of this as a wake up call, as difficult as it is for so many, for all of us. I believe humanity is a wave, and these events are crests breaking and tearing off, into a new sense of potential, into newer collaborations and less ego-limiting, pain-generating existences.
Afterwards:
Consider that cultural identity has been spread throughout the years by the storytelling of public word. When once publicity was marked on cave walls in days primal, our heralds of today are atmospheric, influencing cultural trend through wirelessly routed connections, globally accessible by one lazy click.
Interestingly, through every era, all human beings begin life necessitating the same-- there has been little evolution around the primary natal needs of an infant. Any sociological contrast between the primal and current human being's needs exist outside of the bracket of the period when we are in infancy. How we are fed, coddled, swathed, and cared for commences the discovery of our sense of identity, thus our needs and our sense of purpose begin their parallel, intertwined lifetime journey. As we develop from our earliest age within the currency of whatever specific generational time we've been born, we gather our "self-identity" and our place within the universe. Born into a universe of myriad life-forms, we establish our belonging to the world and forge necessary connections to sanely self-identify, taking note our skin color, cultural heritage and other perceivable variations. We are handed stories of our heritage, stories of various injustices our families have suffered, stories of what is pure and what is maleficent, and our needs begin to turn into beliefs, beliefs which at first are often malleable and, more typically, hardened into firm opinions by our middle adult years. We believe we've first-handedly experienced realities which we could perceive instead as the carrying out of human stories passed down through time. We could look at a hate-crime committed by a raging citizen as the affect of one human psyche scrambling to sanely self identify amidst constricting, critical stories projected into various ideas, groups or states. We could see the immoral acts of one super-country upon another as being the movement of a group who has banded together, identifying with a collection of stories, piling injustices upon injustices seeking their version of what "justice" is. Our developmental path is oriented around dominant family/tribal structure, not dissimilarly to the life of a frat boy rushing to be accepting by a fraternity; not dissimilar to the story of Tarzan, based reputably on a real-life occurrence sometime in the 1940's when a 2 year-old boy disappeared and was found some time later, having become entirely identified with the apes who were raising him in the Jungle. We aim our social evolution and concept of person around what role models are most powerful and available to us. Tousle with the idea that when we are first born, we have no cultural identity to defend but that it is the propagation of the media which has worked to divide and conquer us, calling this "black culture" and calling something else "Indian culture". Tousle with the idea that the very heritage we may feel we have immediate right to protecting is one we've been told we own and that we might benefit to design ways to aim our social evolution toward experiencing a state where we identify differently, where we take less responsibility to defend and take more to responsibility to learn.
Consider that the lifestyle and cultural identity we each feel belongs to us has been perpetuated by very basic, consumer-driven media, be it on cave walls or newsreel--a media that is not manipulative because it is evil, but manipulative just by the nature of its platform- a house for the insatiable hunger for humans to appear purposeful, identified, something more than a wandering form of life with a very short expiration date in the scheme of all time. Media, which benefits solely by subscribers, retains our attention by luring us to think we discovered a style fist, that we created a dance move, or a way to speak shared only by those who are our closest allies or neighbors. Consider that the language I am writing in has been formulated by media minds along the timeline of all human existence, limiting the essence of my expression to live within the frame of a timeline of popular consensus, defining what is what, directing my rhetorical possibility to the point that in one mere slip of a phrase my language could go from formal to slang.
In this same way my language can slip from the twang or jive of one demographic to another, from one accent to another, and speaking so I would have to be most careful to not steal from another's cultural idiom and simultaneously tread with the utmost awareness to not insult through whatever is deemed today (or better yet tomorrow) as politically correct.
When we are in our first years, typically we have no inhibition to meet others eye-to-eye, we have not yet dialed in to the complexity language, to the separation of self versus other, to the need to prove we are alive in any way beyond simply living. As the stories of "who we are" pile on to us, we begin to name what we are in comparison to what another person is. Could it be that we are each a living caricaturization of the heritage that the greatest media schemer(time) has, in its own economic/developmental interest, given to us as a costume, adorning us in a prison we illusively operate like gerbil wheels, defending, protecting, killing for and crying over as a way to bide time through the passages of life. One theme remains the same in all people from every culture; each needs to feel worthy, respected and oriented to some place or thing, each -if wise enough to figure out how to simply unzip time's outfitting and defining, has the entry key to an expansive inward and outward universe of self. It's valid to consider that instead of putting our energy into ending hatred, we can put our energy into fueling passions, building platforms and flexible systems which can mirror our strengths and show us how to build our own tools by fostering lessons of ambition, compassion and conscientious care. In this way, humanity could globally step into its purpose, not to possess and protect, but to bravely know thy infinite self, a bundle of light and life reflecting into many parts and returning to oneness, in many motions.
The fact Taylor Swift's collaboration with Kendrick Lamar and their mutual respect for each-other was considered artistically ground-breaking as reported by wide-sweeping public news, reveals how behind the times we are--that this type of "inter-racial" and inter-stylistic collaboration is more an exception or rarity. There may always be ignorance and racism... both within our socialized minds and within the world-at-large. There may always be some who have been raised in such a love-less environment and uncared for that they breed self-hatred and cannot develop the tools to process through such, thus discharge their malcontent upon the world in wretchedness and public shootings, despite whatever gun control the government instills. There may always be someone telling us what is "reality", or someone to tell us what box to tick so that statistics can add us to an identification-based tally, which declares who we apparently are by mere single strands of DNA which have made our skin one color or another. We may long continue to use ethnicity as a descriptor or name of something i.e. "I'm going to run to the Korean..." (which was used in an HBO-produced movie I saw last week, as the identification of the store to which the character was heading). What to make of all of this? For me, I remember the words of a teacher of mine who said, "...seek what you love and leave the rest alone". This is why I've long stayed out of attempting to shed my little light on humanity. I've rather turned a shedding-light inwardly, pursuing spelunking the cavernous interior of the microcosm of Me. In fact, I've felt that many a political or proselytizing person could benefit from such self-speculation. Thus- this is why I would promote that a self-investigative, self-nurturing, "peace-in-every-step"-type of practice is the most promising way to outgrow outworn qualities of social conditioning and add to the world's acquisition of self-awareness. How could I fight racial hatred with hating racism? I see this as only a path of hardening my arteries further. I, too, am a "bundle of contradictions", as one of my tai-chi teachers described her "embodied self" while she was still living. I both long to not be perceived as any "Thing" (a color, a gender, a religion, etc.) and simultaneously, I long to mix as deeply as I can with those of other ethnicities... to connect closely with my friends and colleagues who are "other" colors than my apparent "color". Perhaps we can think about this quote a friend shared: "differentiation precedes integration". We can think about what it means to recognize the one in the many, the many in the one. My thought is that if we weren't so racially far apart sometimes, in art, music and life-collaborations, if we truly integrated our children while also powerfully encouraging their braveness to set out upon the intense path of embodying their individuality, a path that respects others' chosen identities, we'd find less hate-crimes in the world. Possibly, taking responsibility in this way we'd fulfill the real longing in our hearts to see the contrasting beauty of our hands intertwined, to be comfortable with who we are, and thus comfortable with others. Perhaps we can actively see all of this as a wake up call, as difficult as it is for so many, for all of us. I believe humanity is a wave, and these events are crests breaking and tearing off, into a new sense of potential, into newer collaborations and less ego-limiting, pain-generating existences.
Afterwards:
Consider that cultural identity has been spread throughout the years by the storytelling of public word. When once publicity was marked on cave walls in days primal, our heralds of today are atmospheric, influencing cultural trend through wirelessly routed connections, globally accessible by one lazy click.
Interestingly, through every era, all human beings begin life necessitating the same-- there has been little evolution around the primary natal needs of an infant. Any sociological contrast between the primal and current human being's needs exist outside of the bracket of the period when we are in infancy. How we are fed, coddled, swathed, and cared for commences the discovery of our sense of identity, thus our needs and our sense of purpose begin their parallel, intertwined lifetime journey. As we develop from our earliest age within the currency of whatever specific generational time we've been born, we gather our "self-identity" and our place within the universe. Born into a universe of myriad life-forms, we establish our belonging to the world and forge necessary connections to sanely self-identify, taking note our skin color, cultural heritage and other perceivable variations. We are handed stories of our heritage, stories of various injustices our families have suffered, stories of what is pure and what is maleficent, and our needs begin to turn into beliefs, beliefs which at first are often malleable and, more typically, hardened into firm opinions by our middle adult years. We believe we've first-handedly experienced realities which we could perceive instead as the carrying out of human stories passed down through time. We could look at a hate-crime committed by a raging citizen as the affect of one human psyche scrambling to sanely self identify amidst constricting, critical stories projected into various ideas, groups or states. We could see the immoral acts of one super-country upon another as being the movement of a group who has banded together, identifying with a collection of stories, piling injustices upon injustices seeking their version of what "justice" is. Our developmental path is oriented around dominant family/tribal structure, not dissimilarly to the life of a frat boy rushing to be accepting by a fraternity; not dissimilar to the story of Tarzan, based reputably on a real-life occurrence sometime in the 1940's when a 2 year-old boy disappeared and was found some time later, having become entirely identified with the apes who were raising him in the Jungle. We aim our social evolution and concept of person around what role models are most powerful and available to us. Tousle with the idea that when we are first born, we have no cultural identity to defend but that it is the propagation of the media which has worked to divide and conquer us, calling this "black culture" and calling something else "Indian culture". Tousle with the idea that the very heritage we may feel we have immediate right to protecting is one we've been told we own and that we might benefit to design ways to aim our social evolution toward experiencing a state where we identify differently, where we take less responsibility to defend and take more to responsibility to learn.
Consider that the lifestyle and cultural identity we each feel belongs to us has been perpetuated by very basic, consumer-driven media, be it on cave walls or newsreel--a media that is not manipulative because it is evil, but manipulative just by the nature of its platform- a house for the insatiable hunger for humans to appear purposeful, identified, something more than a wandering form of life with a very short expiration date in the scheme of all time. Media, which benefits solely by subscribers, retains our attention by luring us to think we discovered a style fist, that we created a dance move, or a way to speak shared only by those who are our closest allies or neighbors. Consider that the language I am writing in has been formulated by media minds along the timeline of all human existence, limiting the essence of my expression to live within the frame of a timeline of popular consensus, defining what is what, directing my rhetorical possibility to the point that in one mere slip of a phrase my language could go from formal to slang.
In this same way my language can slip from the twang or jive of one demographic to another, from one accent to another, and speaking so I would have to be most careful to not steal from another's cultural idiom and simultaneously tread with the utmost awareness to not insult through whatever is deemed today (or better yet tomorrow) as politically correct.
When we are in our first years, typically we have no inhibition to meet others eye-to-eye, we have not yet dialed in to the complexity language, to the separation of self versus other, to the need to prove we are alive in any way beyond simply living. As the stories of "who we are" pile on to us, we begin to name what we are in comparison to what another person is. Could it be that we are each a living caricaturization of the heritage that the greatest media schemer(time) has, in its own economic/developmental interest, given to us as a costume, adorning us in a prison we illusively operate like gerbil wheels, defending, protecting, killing for and crying over as a way to bide time through the passages of life. One theme remains the same in all people from every culture; each needs to feel worthy, respected and oriented to some place or thing, each -if wise enough to figure out how to simply unzip time's outfitting and defining, has the entry key to an expansive inward and outward universe of self. It's valid to consider that instead of putting our energy into ending hatred, we can put our energy into fueling passions, building platforms and flexible systems which can mirror our strengths and show us how to build our own tools by fostering lessons of ambition, compassion and conscientious care. In this way, humanity could globally step into its purpose, not to possess and protect, but to bravely know thy infinite self, a bundle of light and life reflecting into many parts and returning to oneness, in many motions.
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