Polarization,and neofascism in the new century

aka Tribalism in the new century

Well here we are, 2017 6 Muslims murdered, 17 Jewish synagogues and daycare centres shut down by bomb threats, mass demonstrations, hundreds detained at airports across the US, and an unapologetic demagogue derailing the US constitution, dividing his country in the most tactless manner.

So where does that leave us? I’m canadian so what can I? should I do? I’m a quite certain I know what the answer from the Alt right citizens of america would be… what they would tell me to do…. And believe me no one anywhere would be happier right now if the US existed in a bubble where its current dangerous, horrific policies did not affect other nations, particularity mine… But as the slaughter of 6 Muslims in Quebec drew gory attention to (being as the perpetrator was a white nationalist, who espoused support for trump, as well as other alt right anti immigrant politicians) What happens in the US has profound effects in the countries of its neighbours, allies, and indeed the world at large. Canada too has experienced an empowerment of the alt right racist nationalist in our country due to the trump effect. not just in the circles of extremism, but in the daily lives of “ordinary” Canadians the increased xenophobic dialogue, individuals that now feel comfortable expressing all sorts of “opinions” (and ‘i put that in parenthesis not because I want to draw attention to the word in specific, but because hate speech is not just a simple opinion, its something that doesn’t only damage the targeted individuals self-esteem, but can lead violence that results in injury even murder of the targeted group/individual) towards a specific group of people, religions and indeed skin tones….

Racism is not new to Canada, nor would I imagine any part of the world. Tribalism it seems is evolutionarily ingrained into human beings…..sadly….However that does not give tribalism (or as many define it racism) a free pass to be an accepted part of our society and everyday lives. indeed it should be the impetuous for us to make all efforts to overcome such destructive behaviour. if you read socio-biological studies about rapes role throughout human history, it becomes clear that in more primitive paleo societies it was not viewed as the heinous crime it is now. I don’t think many of us would argue that this moral advancement in our society and behaviour was a positive one (and if you don’t believe that, feel free to send me an email and I will gladly forward it to creep catchers and the police) Like rape, tribalism is an evolutionary hang-over that we should all be actively fighting against, both in ourselves and in our societies. I feel any person with the slightest bit of humanity would feel the same….. but they don’t, we as a collective don’t. we excuse justify and enable… Does that make many of us amoral barbarians? (part of me screams yes. the part of me that rages at the Muslims hating posts that have appeared on several media stories about the 6 killed in quebec) however I think it has a deeper cause , a permission within our society that has allowed it to flourish unchecked well beyond its evolutionary usefulness… and Trump is a prime example of how this has happened. Tribalism is a tool for governments corporations, and indeed even village councils (trying to increase attendance at local events) to aquire and maintain your support….

Used for centuries by kings to gather the serfs behind the march of armies conquering new lands, it is still used with the same effectiveness on our modern populations. its breadth has been extended in to the daily consumption, brand loyalty and preference. I have even found myself falling prey to this in the android vs apple wars as I prefer androids more open platform (although learning today that google had given 14+ million in political donations during the election with the lions share going to the republican party has tainted my brand loyalty a good deal)…. So we are bombarded daily with tribalistic messages “buy this because we made it”, “do this because you are like us and that’s what we do”…. not to mention we are raised in environments where nationalism is how we start our day, followed by school loyal sporting events, team allegiances… it’s endless and non-stop to the point where very few even notice it, and find themselves participating in it with rapt enthusiasm….. Go canucks….. even socially we are broken down into ideological and gender based tribes, women’s coffee groups, mens poker night, big hair, no hair, old, young…… all-pervasive… so why should it come as a surprise that all this tribalism then manifests based on colour and religion. we are programmed for it, and one starts to wonder if there is even a way to break its influence. of course power structures and corporate entities have no desire because their empires are built on maintaining our primal tribal instinct.

As for nationalist/populous/protectionism…..We are such easy prey for this programming. natural human inclinations to shift responsibility from ourselves (or those that control us) for our misfortunes, makes it easy to set us against each other, rather than putting the blame where it belongs. job loss and weak economies are entirely caused by bad governmental decisions/regulations and corporate entities that siphon wealth from the land and people, yet being as we feel powerless against these forces, we are much more easily swayed to blaming those we can do something about.. (of course this leads us down exactly the path we are on now building walls and killing innocent people)

My conclusion is one of complete defeat on sadness on many levels. what does this continuing era of xenophobia and hatred mean for us? it means that we can only hope that profit comes before insanity, and the leaders of our new world see it as unprofitable to continue to exploit tribalism for personal gain and power (because we the completely inducted population will not likely have the will to resist our own tribalistic programming) that they realise they will make more money, have more power if they consolidate us into one large consuming tribe, rather than divide us into war…..

What can I do? should I do? Well I would love to see us truly examine, with honestly, humility, and compassion, our motivations for engaging in hatred and blaming. I would like to think it is possible if we understand our weakness and lack of self-determination we can overcome our own natural instincts, much the way we have outgrown rape culture (for the most part). We need a good dose of logical, rational, self-criticism as a society, as well as individuals. Beyond that we need to stop hiding under excuses and fears, we need to take on the worst in ourselves, and confront the worst in others. Don’t just stand there when someone says “I fucking hate indians” don’t just look or walk away when someone makes jokes about bindi dots and curry, when someone berates Muslims, or suggests someone shouldn’t be allowed to be here. By silence you are giving permission, and if you sit down and have a coffee with that person the next day, you are in fact enabling them. you see, you are part of their tribe and by your silence you are assumed to be agreeing with them…. I know I have done this as well, and now regret every time i did not speak up. Because I am part of the culture that allowed a 27-year-old white nationalist to walk into a mosque and take 6 innocent lives… I am complicit in his crimes, and so are you….

An introduction

As it were……

 I’m not the great writer, or even a modestly good one, most of my grades were high in school, but not in English. my spelling is atrocious (thank the great flying spaghetti monster for spell check), my grammar skills are probably still at elementary school level. But I am also a determined arrogant twat, that thinks  that I still have a spark of insight that is worth sharing, as feeble as the delivery  may be.

 

why  did I start this? a question to myself, not that anyone is asking. Because I am now traversing a difficult time in my life, well really they are all difficult, our species being as insane as it is finds ways to attach emotional drama to almost every stage and journey though life… but I know I will get to that subject later…..  Anyway….. the difficult stuff…. I think the true self examination and change started 4 years ago when my mother died, death is probably one of the single most consuming events in a monkeys life. we fear it sometimes we relish it, but mostly for entirely selfish reasons we abhor it. when it takes our loved ones the changes that are wrought upon our daily lives are tremendous, and usually very unpleasant. It was no exception  for my families feelings of loss. My mother had been my best friend, I am extremely anti social by nature (perhaps my experience with other monkeys is to blame… later for that…)  I had ended up isolated in a small Canadian town with my small insular family unit, my daughter my S.O. and myself, and my mother was the only contact outside that family unit, my connection to the world. But in many ways she always had been. that secure feeling of always being loved and never judged, probably the only person we experience in our lifetime that will love us no matter our transgressions or abuses. well for us lucky enough to have that kind of mother. I did….

 

small cell lung cancer…. 6 months almost to the day, but I lost her a few months before that as she regressed to the unhappy child i never knew she was. It still makes me cry, it always will, because us monkeys have a very hard time controlling our  emotions. she was the only person I could go to when I cried, the only one I didn’t feel foolish with. now i cry alone… I don’t know anyone who might be reading this, so today I cry with you and I don’t feel foolish (maybe that is why I started this blog… no, fuck crying, it changes nothing and never feels better)…

 

It changed my life, of course it would, it always does, for every one….. It left me so alone… there was no one left to let my guard down with, no one to catch me if…. when… I fall.

 

I spent every day with her after the diagnosis, I had talked to her everyday before but now I was with her. I quit my job against any better judgement because I was the sole income for my own family unit. I went to all the appointments, chemo, radiation, grocery store visits. her and my father moved to this small town despite any better judgement any of us could have, but my mother repeated daily we just needed to stay together, because we were all we had. how I wish she was wrong. As her mind went and her body crumbled beneath us, I was there for almost every moment of memory and of sickness. the whole thing was entirely horrible, not just because of the disease but because of the apprehension and the fear, because of the unwillingness to die. life can be beautiful and no one (well mostly no one wants to die) but when the inevitable truly marches us towards the end the fight against death can make death so much more awful than it should be, than it could be. she cried almost constantly while her mind was still sharp. there were no beautiful sunsets seen, or fragrances inhaled. every moment was a painful battle against death and there was no hope though her and my father broke their arms grasping at it. It got so there was nothing to say, almost everything there was to talk about seem insignificant (I am not one to pretend or ignore. I can’t.) everyone was searching for a cure….. except me… there was no cure, is none, and doubtful that there ever will be. most of us seem to forget life is terminal, and something will kill us all…. eventually……  

 

I wanted to enjoy those last months with her more than anything, they were the last chance I had to listen to her voice to feel her comforting arms, to share a laugh, a smile, even a tear….. but there was very little of that… there was madness, there was desperation, and there was sadness so oppressive that we all found it hard to breath. My father was frantic and insane with grief, and made everything, every doctors visit, every trip to town a panicked frenzy. i know he loved her more than life itself, but I resent him even now for how painful his grief made those last few months for all of us.

 

October 23rd 2010: after being in a coma like state for nearly a week , 1 day after i finally convinced my father that she should die in a hospital, not in her bed (where she writhed in pain for weeks,the 2 of us were barely able to change her diapers and administer her pain medication) my mother finally passed on. I was on my way home, the 1 hr drive through the mountains to get a change of clothes so I could return to her bedside. I came around a corner and there were nearly a dozen deer standing in both lanes of the road.  dusk and a fresh coating of rain on the road, my choices are a cliff side or over the side of a bridge into a freshly swollen lake. did I close my eyes? did I go into a trance? or did automation take over and i operate under some unknown mechanical programming to do what needed to be done? I come aware of where I am facing in the opposite direction perfectly within the boundaries of the opposite lane, deer on every side of my vehicle, standing staring, my horn is blaring. no one is even grazed. the deer and I exchange unspoken looks of horror , they dart off into the bush… I find a place to get off the road and inhale the shortest cigarette i have ever smoked.. when i get home my father phones and tells me mother is dead. If I had gone the way the deer pointed me I may have been at her side when she took her final breath. she was alone, my father had gone to his hotel room to rest. I hope she wanted to be alone. I hope she didn’t know I wasn’t there. I think my father and i probably still carry that quiet guilt, especially now that we are both so alone.

 

There wasn’t one thing about my mothers death that changed anything. nothing I can point to and say “ah that was an epiphany”. maybe it wasn’t even her death, or suffering, maybe it was the entirely selfish experience of no longer having someone i could lean as hard on as I had her. I don’t know, and to psychoanalyze myself is idiotic, I just end up thinking  in circles and self assured dead ends. What I do know is I view each day of existence as important, kind of a common conclusion for those who have seen the face of death. no longer is the future sprawled out in front of me like a empty page. each moment is a closing sentence, an entity unto itself. the importance of the last 5 seconds is nothing in the universal scope of things, but everything in the existence of one monkey that hardly anyone or anything knows about. I don’t give a shit about legacies anymore on an individual basis. upon my death any recognition of my ego is entirely irrelevant to the only person it ever really mattered to …. myself…. yet I still want to do and say things even though i have this overwhelming sense of meaninglessness to everything. nothing matters yet everything i do matters more than it ever did. interesting dichotomy….or maybe entirely uninteresting… but it has brought some importance to even the simple act of breathing, life isn’t about anything in particular it is about being, being alive, moving from one breath to the next and enjoying as many of those inhalations as you can. even pain is something, as opposed to nothing, we will all find nothing soon enough……

 

This fucking monkey is an atheist, she believe wholeheartedly in nothing. and relishes in it. because the alternative would bring an absurdity to the universe I can not except intellectually. there is no logical basis for a belief in something. if there is a god or an energy force, than there are unicorns fairies and santa clause, because the human imagination then has control of reality without any basis in measurable reality. not to mention what a fucking prick a God would have to be to create a mess such as this. I haven’t met a human warped enough to create the suffering and horror that is the workings of the planet and the universe (mostly the world of man). a sadist of unimaginable scope such as that, is to awful to consider…  nothing is paradise.

This monkey is an anarchist…. not a mask wearing  anti-authoritarian so angry that I need to smash shit. But someone who believe in the individual and the ability of us to rule our own actions (should we dare to take on the intellectual responsibility to control our monkey nature). as far as smashing the system, well I leave that up to those who actually created and support the system, why would I invest my energy in smashing something everyone else seems to be content with? no I will just sit on my sofa with a bowl of popcorn and watch us eat the world…… until there is a mass awakening…. for that i’m not holding my breath, breathing is far to important..

 

This monkey is an environmentalist… who believes that life as a whole, and  itself, is far more important than the existence of one species. our arrogance infuriates me daily,  only until I inhale, then I try to go back to not giving a shit because my anger is meaningless.  

This monkey is a misanthrope. that dirty dirty word than makes me a traitor to my very species. a far greater crime than genocide or matricide, I don’t like my own.  I see other monkeys and what I see inspires hatred, unimaginable to most. but I’m a hypocritical misanthrope; I love my child and other members of my family. I celebrate and champion the individual.  I lump us all into one and then separate us into the parts. I hate myself but love my toes the quirky little lumps of flesh they are…..

 

This monkey is a pacifist who was raised a Buddhist and had no interest in finding enlightenment, still doesn’t . this monkey doesn’t believe in enlightenment,  life is already full of enough delusions who needs another even if you find happiness and peace, its still an illusion….

 

what a long abstract meander as to how I got here, and why I’m bothering, I know I could go on, and I will…. I hope some one visits here,  at the same time I will tell no one I started this blog. this is a secret place for all my thoughts to go. I hope I return as I need this, and have so much more to say even if it doesn’t matter… my aching head says stop now, so I listen