WARNING: This post contains depictions and references to state violence and mass shootings against vulnerable communities.
At pride,
I watched two women embracing lips in the middle of the dance floor. Staring felt weird, but my impulsive joy overcame the social niceties I was always commanded to have. Nothing could have made me smile more in that ephemeral moment; seeing two people happy when there isn’t much hope left to gleam from the fields of future is an insurmountable joy. My eyes could, for a moment peer into their brains. I saw the dopamine release, an understanding that their pleasure and joy was simply founded within the complexity of chemical reactions to the bodily sensations they were bestowing upon each other. A reaction left as a vestigial of our ancestor’s hygiene practices, adopted by our culture.
But my elementary understanding of brain chemistry and evolutionary anthropology didn’t lessen the impression on me. There’s something wonderful about seeing people lost in such bliss. I’m aware it’s also a chemical reaction within my own brain. I don’t care though, it inspires me to go make the world a less ignorant and safer place for them. It awakens a new Great Commission within me, to preach a superior gospel of life affirmation to humanity; actual hope, not threats of damnation under the guise of love.
I want you to know,
Your neighbor necessitates that you be yourself right now. To conform is to surrender every leaf of our planet to the pigment of gray conformity, to give up on the people that need you. It’s the type of conformity which imperialism by means of capitalism requires to sustain oppression and exploitation. The capitalist mandates you to be afraid, to fall in line. That’s why the police intimidate entire minority groups. That’s why Republicans instigate white nationalists to commit acts of terror with racist and transphobic fearmongering. That’s why Trump sends a state funded criminal organization into your community. These despisers of life need you to maintain our course towards becoming a colorless void by making you feel so marginalized that you’re too scared to be a part of your community. They would love nothing more than for you to forget about your neighbor in the midst of your worry.
Capitalists who lie about your value desperately need you to believe that you’re not the one which makes the world colorful.
In addition to the lies our culture tells you about yourself, you’re constantly propagandized into believing that Apple makes the world colorful with a global supply chain of exploitation just because you’re reading this on an iPhone. You’re told you couldn’t live without Amazon’s two day “free” shipping. You’re force fed an endless lie that SpaceX is going to save humanity by getting us off this rock we allowed a bunch of supervillain-pedophiles to fuck up beyond recognition. You’re told over and over again that the state which sits upon a foundation consisting of a billion corpses allows the world to be filled with color by mitigating chaos as a result of “original sin”. You’re told your neighbor would murder you and everyone you love if the state didn’t fund a program to turn men into pigs just so they could take an hour to respond to a crime. Don’t you know such pigs trample pearls?
It is you, the pearl of great price which paints a rainbow upon the canvas of nature instinctively via your instincts to life. A corporation can only rip up the canvas to steal paint scraps, so that they can plaster a rainbow forgery over their evils. Now we’ve been forcibly burdened with the task of affirming life, simply because no one we’ve let run society even believes life is worth anything.
Perhaps that’s why I enjoy hearing about my friends exploring their sexuality. What could be more rooted as an instinct to life? It’s the greatest confirmation to me that they love life. Knowing that they’re learning about themselves with such life affirming instincts feels like religion again, what I desired of belief before. Now without the self-hate and guilt. Without the pain of wishing to be snapped out of existence when I realized heaven would be a torturous eternity of regret for every moment I lived below. All that replaced with only a feeling of pride as I get to see someone alive as themselves. In my vision now something tangible unlike the promises of Perfection, flesh and blood.
Once I viewed assumption free from belief, how quickly that anti-life ideology crafted within our minds became a blasphemy against humankind. To follow, all our assumptions about society crumbled with it: Capital is anti-life, for pleasuring the shareholder runs counter to being an advocate for life. The state, as we have formed it is anti-life. For it enacts slavery upon human beings that they might die on a battlefield just to control territory. Land that despite their sacrifice, future grandchildren will never enjoy after capital has run its course.
I found no life in the idols formed after our own image of vengeance and ressentiment, I find it in you; my dearest friend.
Anyway, the alcohol in my bloodstream was invoking similar chemical effects to that public display of affection, it’s weird we would literally poison ourselves to better ensure a good time. Am I afraid I can’t be honest enough without a feeling of poison? Or maybe I simply won’t have the courage to interject with my stupid thoughts.
A swift passing of fresh air pardons me from my intoxicated internal dialogue as we wander back outside. The sidewalks now vibrant with the diversity of human beings. Tranquility amidst the noise of a united populace—shaken, a violent interruption eclipsed my peace as the blue MAGA cultists paced the streets they had lined with barricades.
I trembled at the image of a city block these state sponsored domestic terrorists dropped a bomb on. I remembered Walter Wallace, Thought about Thomas Sidero, Contemplated the scope of personal and systematic torment a single institution had wrought on every minority group.
As time slipped by I was sure the community would keep each other safe.
“Run!” As terrified screams filled the air.
What horrors haunt our world for someone as stoic as her to utter that word? I looked behind as everyone sprinted past. I want to tell you dear reader, myself included about my bravery in the face of what everyone in that moment assumed was some mass murder event. But I was honestly pretty zoned out; the space didn’t feel jointed with reality. I hurried over to you in your paralysis and tried to peel you away from the concrete parking garage, but it was no use. My brain started to process the situation, I was sorta fine if a bullet entered my back there, “Like whatever at this point, I don’t want to be tormented anymore trying to figure out how to navigate capitalism and my privilege without being the piece of shit I already am anyway.” Whenever I lack fear, it’s never some mythical bravery I’m conjuring up; it’s just me taking the opportunity to welcome the peace of nothingness – base instinct of selfishness.
Then I realized there were no gunshots found within those seconds of eon.
I recall hugging you halfway up the parking garage ramp, repeatedly assuring you it was okay. Thought about the violence your community constantly faces, “I swear, I won’t let it happen to you” rang through my mind. As if my weak appendages could do anything besides provide a false sense of comfort in this ordered hell.
We discovered later it was the usual terrorists of “order” responsible for such fear. You know, the ones we’re told prevent the terrorists the media tells us to always be terrorized by. They were trampling people with horses just for existing on a sidewalk this time. I think they have to change up their method of terrorism from time to time, otherwise they would get bored. Or they’re worried we would start finding their violence a normative portion of nature and wouldn’t be so terrified of it anymore. Similarly to how we just accepted that school shootings are a fact of nature and we can’t really do anything in order to prevent them from happening.
The city seemed to close in around us as we searched for a more serene place to process what just happened. We quickly found ourselves herded as cattle down the sidewalks, finally we hit a dead end at one of the “law and order’s” barricades. I guess effective crowd control is cramming masses of people into an enclosed space with no warning. Yeah, these clowns are here for our “public safety”, whatever you say bub.
I can’t shake the fictions I painted in my mind about what would have happened had someone obtained access to a firearm in that enclosure while suffering from the crisis of ignorant fear Republicans indoctrinated them into when they were most vulnerable. A crisis and vulnerability capitalists couldn’t be bothered to fund treatment for, all while parroting some bullshit about “personal responsibility.” Of course that responsibility doesn’t extend to the Republican claiming every person in the LGBTQI+ community is attempting to groom children.
I’m just glad you’re safe for this moment.
So that I can be proud of you for discovering more about yourself. If “pride comes before the fall,” I’ll gladly fall to be proud of you – simply for being you. Having pride in the person you’re realizing you to be equates to life affirmation, it brings you to recognize your potential. How could one acknowledge the potential deep within their life form if they don’t even know who they are in any respect? What would it mean to understand our every impulse and drive?
Why is the smallest sacrifice such a struggle? Yet I ask such daunting questions – To myself – Would I, die for you? Would I, sacrifice my Isaac for you1 – If you really needed him?
You look at me like you can read my thoughts and you don’t appreciate the burden of a generation I’m casting upon you. How do I find sacrifice so difficult and expect a measure of Fred Hampton from you? I write in my journal, “I am a revolutionary” every day; at least the days I remember how vital reflection is in a society that tells me it’s waste of time. This never made me a revolutionary though. It feels insulting to ever take up his words upon paper, as if I’d actually be willing to die for the people – for anyone.
Do I not see the yearning in your eye? An urgency from the suffering masses? A plea for hope in any form?
I see hope in you. You know who you are. Or at least grasp a measure of your potential.
In every living being exploring themselves, in you, there lies an understanding; a redemption from our lengthy conformity to the idols of assumption.
You inspireme,
To explore new depths what was once suppressed and denied through these assumptions. Maybe someday even my own sexuality, which these idols gave commandment regarding, with their declaration of “no.”
To being a human being I say “yes,” be one! To life, I say “yes,” one lived as a human being!
I’ve realized how wrong I was to be willing to shift conversations towards populist economic policy like taxing billionaires when conversing with “centrists.” For that I live with continued regret, apology is never enough to atone for that error.
To the “leftists” still claiming these “social issues” are worth conceding for political capital. Go up to a human being actively feeling the reality of racial discrimination and systematic racism and tell them racial equality is only worth fighting for if it’s received well by most of the general public. Tell a gay married couple it was okay to fight against their life together as human beings until the polling numbers swung. Look a trans human being in the eye and explain to them how life itself became a bargaining chip in modern “Democratic” politics.
Civil rights regarding race, sexuality, and gender affirmation are and always have been at the forefront of this battle for life affirmation – of societal progress itself. To deny someone an open and unrestrained life as themselves is to deny them life itself as a human being in all its complexity and beauty. It is, to look at the vision for a world full of color and declare, “I would rather live in the hellscape of greyscale societal conformity and waste the potential which diversity has in store for a humanity renaissanced.”
Just prior to my teenage years I learned that the lies I was told about an entire group of human beings equating to god-hating degenerates was ridiculous. I met a human being, they are a human being. They’re a person as “normal” as any “straight” person. I also realized what a meaningless assurance that rainbow of promise was. The idea that our idol would never flood the entire earth again was an afterthought, because I feared hellfire just for being me – for existing. I was headed to the same flames as the human beings I was told were living in rebellion against the idol we worshipped, because I was also in rebellion.
Life itself was guilt. To live was to hate myself.
My purpose was to deny life, a terrifying tragedy! What horrors are beyond our grasp when we are molded by our idols of assumption, especially regarding other human beings? What freed me from my folly and stupidity was a confrontation of my ignorance, a continual assault upon my idols of assumption.
Let our ignorance sink below our new horizon – alone, that it may not drag us into the darkness with its arrogance and we may live in the light of fellowship. Let our assumptions decay below the construction of new foundations, firm bedrock for life in all its rainbow of promise! ‘Let‘ is found not in a wishful hope, nor in our idols acting in our place. For ignorance never sinks without a love for life; love is a will to fight, to inform, to educate, to sacrifice. To love we must free ourselves from our assumptions, especially about other human beings and nature itself. We must also recognize the scope of our own ignorance, least we fall into the pit of those like Dawkins who became a greater blasphemer against life than the ones he critiqued. We must be willing to be corrected, to be taught, to be wrong. We must escape the apes of our ideals2 if we are to have the courage and clarity to be advocates for life itself.
I say unto you, love life, its expression is the rainbow. If we love, we are willing to meet the requirement of sacrifice.
If you ever think about me and you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not going to work for the people. If you’re asked to make a commitment at the age of twenty, and you say I don’t want to make a commitment at the age of twenty, only because of the reason that I’m too young to die, I want to live a little longer, then you’re dead already. You have to understand that people have to pay a price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle then damn it, you don’t deserve to win. Let me say peace to you if you’re willing to fight for it.
The Lambent 