----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- and the countless un-named So, I've watched a few youtube videos recently and together they don't seem to have anything to do with each other. But I drew a connection and I'll be thinking on it for awhile I saw a Vice news segment about the most recent school shooting in Texas. It seems like there is a mass shooting somewhere every day in this country. They asked a college professor some questions and he said that the thing the most recent shooter has in common with most of the shooters in this country is a "social dis-connectivity" and sense of alienation as well as a lack of "historical social linkages from which mental health is derived." So, if my feeble public school educated brain can wrap around his fancy talk, he's saying loners with no sense of ancestry are bound to have issues with mental health and with easy access to massive firepower, it's not a surprise that things like this happen. I also watched another video, totally unrelated to anything current event-ish and the word "appropriation" was brought up. Fuck appropriation. It is not a thing. At least it shouldn't be. It's like the 21st century equivalent of political correctness. I remember when that singer from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs wore a feathered head dress to some music festival and an American Indian community was outraged and demanded her to apologize and said she was disrespecting their culture, their spiritual beliefs. Who knew a pop singer was so evil? Who knew fashion and expressing yourself artistically was so wrong? They acted like she was Al Jolson putting on blackface and mocking their heritage. Maybe I'm just stuck in my stupid white person body mind, maybe I am totally coming from a place of privilege, but aren't we all supposed to be one? Like Bob Marley sang about, "One Love" My dad put a bumper sticker with Rastafarian colors that read "One Love" on his car and he asked me if he was a bad person, if he was guilty of appropriation. Because he wasn't Rastafarian or of African lineage, he was worried about offending someone that was. Because of Bob Marley's song, it's kind of just been... appropriated. I inherited that car after my parents died, and that bumper sticker was still on there. I don't think it offended anyone. It just made the cops think I was a pot dealer. Sheesh, I wish. Is "appropriation" a bad thing? Aren't we all human beings? Isn't consciously choosing to separate ourselves into groups and subgroups part of a lot of the problems in this world? The second video I watched was about someone discovering their genetic history. Getting DNA tests and finding out that cultures they were interested in, they had links to that they didn't know about. It made me wonder, how important is it really, that we know where our DNA came from? People argue that these severed ties are a lot of what is wrong with modern society, especially us white people. The professor in that Vice video sure seemed sure about it. They say "If you know your history, then you would know where you're coming from." Those are Bob Marley lyrics too, btw. So, they say if you don't know your family history, you don't know where you're coming from or where you're going. No roots. Like a plant with no roots or bad roots, the plant will not be healthy. Maybe there's something to be said for it, maybe. But I think that this is 2022. At least by our current calendar. Maybe we need to wipe it all clean. Burn it all down. Destroy everything we can so there can be a fresh start. A controlled burn on outmoded traditions, beliefs, ideas, bigotry. I don't think more boxifying is going to help anyone. Shouldn't our goal be united humanity, regardless of DNA or cultural habits? Aren't we more than this body we inhabit? Like that Alice Merton song 'No Roots'. "I got no roots but my home was never on the ground." Isn't the whole point of Transcendental Meditation is to dissolve from your current identity and try to experience the one-ness of existence. When you trace it all back far enough, we all have the same DNA as those little microbes in the swamps of the earth. Does it really matter how people we never met decided to paint their faces or what mountain they decided to pray to or what diet they decided to follow? Or maybe we're all just aliens in the monkey jungle and really don't belong on this planet, which is part of why things are so fucked up. Or maybe the evil lizard people overlords are trying to change the environment and our DNA to make this planet more comfortable to their own kind for the final takeover. Yeah, shit just got really weird inside my head. This lady in this video was worried she was appropriating cultures she had no link to. She was relieved to find out otherwise. And I think that is really fucked up. If something speaks to you, there is a reason why. Do you need to know the reason? Can't you trust your instinct to lead to where you need to go? And if it gives you a sense of mental health to incorporate aspects of cultures that you may not share direct DNA with, isn't that better than getting yourself a gun and going total psycho? Do people really believe that everything happens for a reason or it that just something they tell themselves so they can sleep at night? "Why do people only care when bad things happen, then they forget about it afterward?" I used to think maybe it was important to re-learn the ancient ways of doing things. We all probably go through that phase. Maybe it's part of evolving. But now, here, today, I wonder if it just needs to be forgotten. We need a new, not a rehash of the old, especially empty traditions or vaudevillian recreations of invalid ceremony. Maybe these old ways were lost for a reason. The things that really matter can not be destroyed by churches or conquerors or fashion statements. People need to chill the fuck out. All the time. About everything. It's in our DNA. Encoded in a Beat. Is it so much easier for me to find any sort of comfort in spirituality when I embrace the notion that there is no god. Nothingness makes so much more sense. I sit more comfortably in the nothing than trying to find the boxes I am supposed to be in. In the end, there is only the void. You've read your Wittgenstein, I assume? No, it's all good, I haven't either. I don't need anyone telling me what to think, especially some rich kid that had nothing better to do but sit around and over-think things. I can over-think just fine all on my own. 1:55 PM - Saturday, May. 28, 2022 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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