Excavating the Future: Pitting Private & Public Sector Workers Against Each Other

[Editor's Note: This is a follow-up to my article on Wisconsin published by Subversify (click here).]

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, 'Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.'

I was raised to believe in the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that American dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of American ingenuity and expertise would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble model of society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in an American future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

I believed in this dream because so many people were actually out there on the frontlines fighting to ensure such a society. Everywhere people were engaged in critically questioning the status quo. People of color, women, and people of different sexual orientation were fighting and challenging the oppressive institutionalized systems that kept us from becoming a greater whole. And in spite of all the conflict, there was the real sense of hope in that people were doing more than talking about it -- we were all somehow engaged in ensuring the American Dream for all people.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources. Lies. A cure for cancer. Lies. I was told of a future wherein people -- for the first time in human history -- could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit. Lies.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money -- if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. You’re less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if you have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now -- a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than being able to actually sing or dance. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching American Idol or Snowdrift Snookie’s latest idiotic political pronouncements. Either way, we’re amusing ourselves to death.

Sunday Sermon [Fundamentalism]: Gimme Some of that Old Time Hand-Me-Down Religion!

Man is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his ideology isn’t straight. -- Mark Twain

What I find interesting when confronted by “holy rollers” is that it always comes down to this: I’m going to hell for daring to challenge their beliefs. It is common for someone to state unequivocably that (for my sake) I had better be right, because (presumably) God is gonna have his vengeance on my blaspheming ass! LOL! It has been my experience that “true believers” are more interested in defending dogma rather than actually living what they purport to believe. If you’re a Christian and you find satisfaction in your belief that your God will sentence me to a hereafter of eternal damnation, then what kind of Christian are you?

Beliefs can be a ma’fucca some times… SMDH

Personally, I do a “belief spring cleaning” at least once a year as a matter of habit. What that means is that I regularly taken an inventory of my beliefs and dump the ones that have no real foundation. Now, this is no easy feat. Over the years, I have had to throw away some really cherished beliefs. One such belief was my belief in me! I used to believe that “Eddie” existed, but when I sat down to look for “Eddie,” I couldn’t find him. What I found instead, when I looked closely while suspending my belief, was an on-going process -- a series of beliefs -- that I cobbled together to create this entity we’ve all agreed to call “Eddie” (as well as some other choice names). In fact, what I found was an amalgam of defense mechanisms, beliefs, fears, personality quirks, that if you ran it really fast, looked like what I consider my personality -- or “Eddie.” It’s a lot like a film. A film gives the viewer the illusion of movement and substance because the individual frames move at a very fast rate through the projector.

But when I sat down and slowed down, suspended my belief system, what I saw wasn’t “Eddie,” but a bunch of different components that added up to what I call my personality or “Eddie.”

At first that was a fucked up revelation. How could it be that I don’t exist?!! I must be seeing things wrong, I surmised to myself, so I began researching this. After all, I had worked very hard and was very much attached to the “Eddie” I had created.

But nowhere could I find the basis of Eddie. The brain/ mind has no specific function that creates a personality -- an “Eddie.” There’s no central processing area in the brain responsible for “Eddie.” It’s all made up! At first, this was a very scary revelation. I mean, how will “Eddie” go to heaven if there is no “Eddie”? But then, upon further reflection, I realized that this kinda/ sorta liberated me. I mean if “Eddie” was something I made up as a way to cope with life, then that meant I didn’t have to defend myself as much. “Eddie” was a story I made up in order to explain shit, but it wasn't really who I was. Sure, I use the construct “Eddie” for stuff like paying the rent and crossing the street, but “Eddie” is still just a story, a movie I made up.

And that’s how I lost “Eddie.” Or my belief in it.

Another belief I lost early on was the hand-me-down belief in a God that lived in the sky somewhere and who either punished or rewarded you according to your behavior. That one was a lot easier than losing “Eddie.” I realized that belief in Divine Hierarchy that needed to be petitioned in order to curry favor was pretty much juvenile to me. And that shit about the world being created in seven days? Yeah right! I lost that one when I was about seven or eight years old (and got in trouble for it!). And why he gotta be a man?!! What’s up with that? Why can't God look like Halle Berry?!! What I came to experience and realize was that we’re all part of the Divine Spark, that God isn’t somewhere out there, but here inside of me (and everyone else). And some day, even that belief will be discarded!

Any hand-me-down belief system is a subtle appeal to your deepest fears and longings. It’s like a parasite that wraps itself around your mind -- almost like a demonic possession.

Sunday Sermon [A New Mourning]

The Pink Wound of a New Mourning

Cold rapid hands
draw back one by one
the bandages of dark
I open my eyes
still
I am living
at the center
of a wound still fresh.
-- Octavio Paz, Dawn

I have written before that’s there’s a potential upside to the current class war aka “The Economic Crisis.” Namely, what people of color have experienced for centuries as a group many whites now are experiencing as solitary and alienated individuals. Chris Rock’s observation that a white person would never trade skins with a black person has some merit, and truth be told, various groups of white Americans might feel as sense of belonging, that the system looks out for them. However, today more than ever, individually they suffer the stings of corporate indifference almost like anyone else.

At a group level, a white man might identify with a white, male, Christian president, for example (though that’s not true today). But how much does that identification mean when on the unemployment line or when a HMO refuses to allow possible life-saving technology?

Every American is a unit of labor. This labor is owned by corporations. Each individual may dispose his or her labor as he or she wishes, but ultimately the employer owes the laborer nothing. In a very real way, this fact can potentially unite the historical experience of people of color and the new day dawning on the rest of our nation.

It can, but we are pitted against one another. Even poor or oppressed whites can look further down and find (false) refuge in the knowledge that the faces at the bottom of the well are often black and brown.

I am attempting to understand, by looking at inequality, the unique challenges that we all face in contemporary America. I want to understand how we can free ourselves from the chains that bind us in this dysfunctional and horrific dance of death and hatred. While these chains are more easily recognized in the experience of people of color, they are also the same chains that shackle us all.

Some of us are looking at social change in fear. We view the reality of a black president as a threat somehow. Some of us see a Latina Supreme Court justice and fear that our freedoms will be taken away. We see that our religious beliefs will not be enforced on others and we seethe with self-righteous indignation and hatred. It’s an irrational fear with far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences. It even compels some of us to kill and maim.

Today, I am not looking to advance a particular dogma or socio-political agenda. I am not looking to socialist, Marxist, or capitalistic experiments as an answer to our social and economic problems. Rather, I want to look directly into the maws of capitalism to see if there’s a way to survive the onslaught.

I stand at the intersection of knowledge and action. Rebellion is the primary movement of knowledge. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no evolution, no recognition of Truth, and no tomorrow -- only an endless reverberation of gray todays.

If we refuse to look at and understand the restraints placed on all of us by history, economics, self-image, the media, politics, and the misuse of technology, we will never be free. The alternative to knowledge and action is ignorance and enslavement. The shackles I speak of threaten to enslave everyone in America and therefore, concern us all.

When the logical consequence of a popular and mass ideology is murder, perpetual war, environmental rape, and oppression, we are mired in a crisis that may compel us to become the first species to make ourselves extinct. Alternatively, we also stand at the precipice of what can be one of the greatest evolutionary leaps in our shared history. At every stage of growth, there is both the potential for destruction and the potential for transformative collective change. We all play a part in that choice...

Love,

Eddie

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