An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 80, March 20, 2012
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We would all like to think that we have a mind of our own, and we would all like to believe that we think and act independently. That is an ironic thought since we “subjects” of our society have been completely “subjected” by the authority and indoctrination of our own paradigm. Once I reveal that I am a late 40’s white male, 1st generation American from two WW2, German immigrant parents, born and raised in multi-racial Long Beach, California USA to uncultured and uneducated middle class parents without religious beliefs, in the 60’s and 70’s, that I am college educated in liberal studies, working in a blue collar job in rural California, etc. and more etc., I have revealed 98% of who I am. If you fill the room with many men with my same stats, you will in fact have my 98% of my clones. My values of gender and race and sex and class and religion and power and politics and economics and psychology and on and on, are cloned in the same room and environment as me and my clones.
So if we think we are so unique and individual and free thinking, and we all do, where did we get all of our ideas and behavior? We do in fact have the same behaviors as all of our clones in our local environment, and yet we feel that we have a mind of our own. White people don’t talk and act like inner city blacks, and rich people don’t have the mentality of the starving. Jews ironically tend to believe that they are Jewish, but if they were born Muslim they would believe themselves to be Muslim. Jews are sure that their religion is right, and not the Muslim religion, and the Muslims think their religion is right, and not the Jewish religion. This is ironic since being born Jewish or Muslim in Jerusalem can geographically be separated by 100 yards. Women tend to resist the authority of men, that is until the man has a stethoscope around his neck or a police badge, then she obeys unconditionally. Men tend to tribe together, that is unless they are racist or snotty, then they tribe with their own kind.
None of us really have much independence or freedom of thought, for we accept the authority that came down from above, since our birth. We live in square houses because everyone lives in square houses, but more importantly we live in square houses because we think we like square houses because we have never seen or lived in a round house. We supposedly believe in monogamy, while we all sleep around, and we marry monogamously, while we mostly cheat on each other, and we are all the same as everyone else that is like us, so sexually unique. It wouldn’t occur to us to have the free sexuality of some indigenous tribal cultures where we have no guilt or shame to sleep with anyone we want, especially en masse, or to be married to all the males in a family as a female and consider it normal.
Why do we stop at stop signs and say “yes officer” to the cops, or pay our taxes, or not sleep on the beach with anyone we want? We have accepted our authority, and we don’t have a choice once we are subjected, or so we think. There are many parts of the world where there are seldom any accidents, and no one stops at stop signs. I have seen many citizens across the world screaming at the cops and kicking dirt on their shoes fearlessly and without repercussion, and I have never seen anyone in the impoverished world paying taxes. Yes, I have slept on the beach with anyone I wanted in many parts of the world. We “think” that “it” is the way it “is”, and we must do what we must do, and we are in fact exactly like the Joneses next door, and we are in actuality not thinking but obeying.
Tom Petty sings in a song that if he were king, he would make dogs fly. If I were King, I would pass a law that all 18 year olds must spend 10 years traveling around the world, with one month required in each of 120 countries, all financed by my King’s de-cloning fund. I believe that this would end world hunger, and end war, and end religion, and racism, end sexism, end arrogance, end pride, and end the subjugation and indoctrination of children and youths into servitude to patriarchy and patriotism.
When we are conceived and born, we are “nature”, we have personalities and needs and ideas and potentialities, and futures. But the environmental and psychological and emotional effects of our “nurture”, or what happens to us and by whom and when and why, and how, create our cloning, based on what is repeated next door. As unique individuals we are “nature”, but when 10,000 “natures” like us are born and raised as white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, middle class, pot head, lazy, talented surfer chicks, how could we be surprised when we are just like them. But after 10 years around the world through 120 countries of trials and tribulations and adventures and loves and losses and eye awakenings, there is no way that any chick could come home as a clone. She comes home accepting all races, a hard worker, rebellious against authority, Buddhist, pregnant, vegetarian, independent, wearing odd clothing, talking differently, or perhaps 10,000 other varieties that in fact become her own personal signature, and . . . . no doubt with a mind of her own.
It is in fact a fact that the old world is dying fast, and hooray for that. The time is fading fast for race and sex and class and education wars. Soon we will all be brown and beautiful, and middle class and beautiful, and sexually equal, and so beautiful. As Mr. Smith says in The Matrix, it is unavoidable. The old world of abusing children is fading fast, and hooray for that. This is the most significant change in the history of the world, and we in our time are re writing Life. In America any child can pick up any phone and dial 911 emergency, and denounce their own parents to the police as abusive and ineffectual or inappropriate. In America any child can sue their own parents in a court of law, and win, and in effect remove the power from their own parents forever. This is the birth of free thinking and unique individuality, and this paradigm is coming to your country fast if you are not from the United States. If you are good to your children you will be proud. If you abuse or disrespect or neglect your children you are in trouble.
At this time it is of more importance than any time in history to question who we are and why and how, and determine what we want to be, and make that happen. Soon the planet will be largely a clone of each others exactly like all other each others, and “authority” will reign over those that are sheep as we are today to our acculturation and indoctrination at the hands of our parents and our society. If you were born white, it is crucial right now to go and live with people of color. If you were born rich, it is crucial that you live now for a few years broke and destitute. If you were born Christian, it is crucial that you go and live in Iran or India now for a few years. If you were born female, it is crucial that you spend a year solely in the company of females different than you, and then a year solely in the company of males different from you. If you are a white male it is time for you to live powerlessly in the heart of Africa. And we are a thousand other you’s out there. We must all expose ourselves to the “other”, and in as many ways and as often, and for as long as we can, all the while asking ourselves, “who am I?”, “what do I want?”, and “what do I think and feel?”.
We must all find a mind and self of our own, not the one that our parents and culture and religion and country gave us. We must all buck God and President and Governor and Judge and Jury and Executioner and Policeman and Doctor and The Father, The Son, and all Ghost Hole or not. We must question authority and embrace ambiguity and shift.
We are all going to have a lot of interesting fun together in the next 100 years. Let’s enjoy it as the person that we choose to be, and thereby align our “nature” with our “nurture”, the true meaning of Self, and ultimately of Life.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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