Being Human
Human beings are funny things, they really are. Despite the fact that we are all equally human, we seem to love inequality. We have created stratified societies; we have created divisions based on religion, colour of people’s skin, height, weight, language, etc. These differences exist but variations are just that, variations. The meaning we choose to attach to these differences is within our power, how we let it affect our interactions with other human beings is too.
Let’s get one thing straight here. As humans we are capable of both the good and the bad that other humans are capable of:
Courage or cowardice,
Bravery or bullshit
Heroics or hate,
Determination or despair,
Altruism or arrogance,
Insight or ignorance,
And so on and so forth.
No one group of humans has a monopoly on the better traits and no one group is immune to the bad ones. Reality provides the greatest evidence of this.
If you choose to classify yourself based on one of the parts of your whole being because you think it means you will or can only be associated with positive traits, if you wish to tell yourself this lie, then so be it.
But the downside is that if you choose to elevate these parts and give them greater importance than being a human, then you are dehumanising yourself. You are doing it to yourself, not others, not society, not the people who oppose you. That doesn’t mean some people are not trying but it is you who are letting them succeed.
So I won’t be joining the PoC brigade who insist I elevate the colour of my skin or the feminists who insist I elevate my gender above being a human being. Because while I have no choice but to be a human being, with both positive and negative traits and habits, I do have a choice whether I reduce myself to what is simply one part of the whole. Intersectionality be damned.
I will not support those who share the same skin colour and accept their word as gospel when they preach racism, hatred and manufacture history to suit their purposes, justifying it on the past actions of others. Because acting and behaving like the people who wronged ones ancestors is to disregard their experiences and suffering, not understand them or what they went through.
I will not support those who share my gender, who advocate discrimination and unfair treatment simply to sustain their grip on power. Who choose to undermine the greater cause of equal treatment just to corruptly prop themselves up in their petty fiefdoms and accuse those who oppose them of being sexist. I will not support their attempts to avoid criticism nor support the idea that they should not be scrutinised for some of the wrongs they have committed.
I hear much of the lenses of race and gender, and yet, no mention of the lens of humanity, which sees no less injustice or prejudice but demands that you fight these within and outside of yourself.
But it is a hard lens to look through. It exposes one’s hypocrisy; it highlights the contradictions in one’s arguments and ideas. It is unrelenting in demanding that one sees one’s flaws and inhumanity, and so I can see the reason for gazing through other, less judgemental, more flattering lenses.
Yet to view the world through the lens of race is to be racist and to view it through the lens of gender is to be sexist.
It is to replicate the very circumstances that led to the misery of so many millions of humans in the past. It is to ignore the basis of their suffering but use the fact that it existed to cloak one’s prejudices. It is to repeat, deliberately, the injustices of the past in new forms, based on new criteria. It is to reproduce the circumstances that led to gross injustice and inequality and justify inflicting them on a different set of victims, on behalf of those who sought an end to these ideas and practices.
It undermines and denies the very humanity that binds us and thus dehumanises us all.
December 21, 2015 @ 12:22 pm
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
December 21, 2015 @ 1:15 pm
Beautifully put and 100% accurate. Thank you.
As a “white male” who has often been accused (by the kind of people you describe) of being “middle class” I have grown sick and tired of the assumptions made about me and my views before I have had a chance to open my mouth (and in fairness sometimes put a foot in it).
The idea of wearing a jumper instead of leaving the thermostat at “tropical” would never cross their minds. £600 a month gas bill is, to them, no big deal. Perhaps this is why they seem to think that £45,000 p.a. is starvation wages. It probably is to them.
It wouldn’t bother me so much if people like them did not have so much power over the rest of us.
I can’t remember who said it, but she hit the nail on the head: these people have no compassion.
December 21, 2015 @ 1:24 pm
I see where you are coming from in the first and last paragraphs but not so much the middle!! Could you explain a bit more.
I find identity politics suspicious, especially when it involves bullying members of the group to think exactly the same!! The fact is that there is not a single grouping of human beings we can think of where every single individual thought and felt the exact same way on every issue. That is a good thing. I talk for myself. I represent no organisation and even if I did I could only represent it’s members. What I think is wrong is people who claim to speak for women for example yet really they are speaking for themselves and inflating the importance of their opinion by linking it to women in general.
December 21, 2015 @ 1:26 pm
As for putting ones foot in it – well we are all human and we all do it at some point. Being criticised for being malicious is one thing, for not being perfect is another altogether.
December 22, 2015 @ 2:53 pm
Rant warning!
Race
Up here in Scotland the race thing isn’t a problem for real people. Thankfully. However if you need to deal with the authorities (Councils, housing associations etc), then your race (i.e. skin colour) is suddenly important. Being white is minus several dozen points on the “give a damn” scale.
Class
I have been “persuaded” to leave several jobs over the years because I was seen as “middle class”.
I was accused of being gay because I refused to discuss the ‘intimate parts’ of my ladyfriend with “the lads” for their amusement. (Such an accusation is a clear threat of violence.) I was also found guilty of not caring about football and not drinking all my excess money. Also of trying to do my job to the best of my ability.
They made it clear that I should go back to daddys’ multi-million pound estate in the country and leave working class jobs for the working classes. Or else.
Of course there is no country estate and no piles of money.
In reality it meant going back on the dole.
The unemployment people also assumed that I was rich, and therefore I had no business claiming benefits which were for the “working class”.
Eventually I found the kinds of jobs where these problems could be tolerated.
Gender
I came across this lady by accident. Initially, I thought she was just another internet loudmouth with an axe to grind. Then she started to make sense. Horribly.
Suggested genocide of men:
I hope this explains what I was on about. I have a suspicion that Scotland is a very different place from most of England. I may have to immigrate!
December 22, 2015 @ 3:27 pm
It seems like a very extreme feminist view and not one I have come across. I think one of the issues with the internet is that people post and then it becomes seen as a ‘norm’ for that group. I don’t know any women or indeed feminists who think that way but then out of 6 billion people there are going to be some who are like that and have access to a webcam and can post. As for the rest of it – sounds awful!!!
December 22, 2015 @ 3:57 pm
Yes. A few nails hit on the head there.
December 22, 2015 @ 7:56 pm
Thanks for your comment!
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