mnaz wrote:... like something I wrote last summer about "pride".... It keeps you fit (I wrote, "keeps the house clean", or some such thing) and it goeth before a downfall as well. Which is it? Both, of course.
Be proud of your roots, of who you are. Of course. And the only proper "in-group" is the planet, as J. Campbell put it. Both are true.
I was hauled off to church every Sunday in my generic, evergreen-choked suburb as I grew up. The preacher talked a good game about universality and God's boundless love, but there were too many rules, too many people who'd be crushed under various three-strikes-and-you're-out statutes of this boundlessly loving God..
I think that was my greatest gift as a sheltered, blissfully clueless individual growing up.... I took it for granted that most of the lines were imaginary, that it was all just one tremendous work of art, inflected with so many colors and textures. Black and white were textures. Cliche? Well, of course. But it worked for me. I remember one of my relatives who constantly tried to figure out ethnic origins from last names and I thought it strange. They're all parts of a greater sum, right? I always had a vague instinct for breaking down walls. But that's easy for me to say. I grew up in a sheltered suburb..
As for the word itself, I choose not to use it. Yet so many people today use forms of the word for impact or even comedic effect, which lends "spiritual distance"... Anyway, just some thoughts.
I'm going to try and explain msyelf, what I'm trying to say better.
My being a white american female are accidents of birth ... happenstance. I did not create them so why should I be either proud, or not proud of them. They simply are what they are, and while they do bring a set of experiences into my life; they do not define my life, or me.
My sense of my own value; self-worth; self-esteem; self-respect
as a person is
not dependent on being a white american woman; though society would like to teach me others. Still, I know better – and like you mnaz, knew it from birth.
We all did (knew it from birth), even all the fucked up people; like in my case – my racist and bigoted parents. They tried like hell to pressure me, force me to think and act and believe as they did … but it didn’t work.
Nothing has shaken me from my “childish” understand that we are all human first; flesh & blood, joy & pain, sweat & tears; all of us and every child is born knowing this and continues to know it until societies in all their various forms twists the facts and that teach us differently. Some of us conform to societies teachings … and some of us don’t. I’m of the later group.
I also grew up in "shelter suburbia.” (Yeah right!)
In 1964 I was 10 years old and I remember watching the Watts Riots as it was happening on TV with my parents. An incident happened, I was shocked when I saw the film footage of firefighters blasting the black people with these strong jets of water that sent them skidding across the pavement and slamming into walls and such all because they had been walking down the street yelling; and in my shock I blurted out a question, asking why were they being so mistreated, that they were being treated cruelly.
My father turned on me with such quickness and such fury, getting up into my face yelling at me about how black people where not human, that they were animals and didn’t know their place thus they deserved to be getting what they were getting and how could I be so ignorant; and I was stunned into silence. All of it stunned me; what was happening; the rage of his response; the hate; his own ignorance – all of it. Stunned me.
I loved my dad – and how could someone I loved so much be filled with so much hate?
I remember looking at the screen, looking deeply at the black people on the screen; trying to see, to figure out and understand exactly how how my father could be so mistaken; to understand (and then correct) why couldn't he see that these people were obviously human beings, just like us. … to see and understand what so just so simply, so plain to me.
I’m also an animal lover, and the idea that mistreating animals and being cruel to them was okay to him too, was just as shocking to me. I don’t like cruelty to things of any kind; animals, including the human animal.
But I couldn’t see it; I couldn’t see the reasons to be cruel, like he did. So I turned back to my dad and told him what I knew to be true; they were human beings just like us, but even if they were “animals” they are still being treated cruelly and that’s wrong.
My dad jumped up and came at me so fast ... he bitch-slapped me across the face saying "I'll teach you not to be a nigger lover! No child of mine is going to be a nigger lover!" He dragged me to my room, took of his belt and proceeded to beat the crap outta me.
As things turned out in my life, and as I am the person I am, that tactic didn’t work with me either.
And I was called so many things for not believe as they believed; childish, naive; overly sensitive; ignorant; etc., ... blah, blah, blah.
What I'm getting at is this: my sense of self-worth was
inborn, and while I took some hits, especially in my childhood – and I would lose it inside msyelf from time to time, I always recovered. And that’s how I found out that our self-worth is not dependent on outward things.
My self-worth is not dependent on outward things such as being a christian, or a buddhist, or an atheist, or non-religious, or white, or an american, or rich, or poor, or married, or a mom; or any of that stuff.
Our self-worth isn’t dependent on those things – unless we believe that to be so; and that’s what societies use the most in getting people to do what they want them to do (for good or ill); tie their self-worth up in all these self created beliefs – that are worth is only there if we are this, that and the other thing.
Our human spirit, our souls needs union, communication, cooperation and contact with others to feel complete, to be satisfied, to live well and societies know this as well; and it’s the other thing they use to their advantage (again, for good or ill) by withholding those things dependent upon how well we perform and conform as defined by our current societal beliefs of our times.
That we don’t have to buy into, that we can change these things at any time, that we’re born knowing better (knowing this) … that’s what I was trying to say.
And to Jack, I’m saying; you are a valuable person – not because you are a jewish white male, or because of your education, or even because of your personal experiences; you are valuable simply because you are you.
Each of us is, and for no other reason, we simply are.
