Somehow I knew his mask was porcelain –impossible to hide the soul’s lightreflected in troubled eyes… I played along though,humoured his self-deceptionnodded at assertions of calm Knew that one day the facade would crackthe mask would slip and the rage escape Why I didn’t run; I do not knowMaybe it was recognition –my own countenance […]
Wrapped in reptilian attire, changeclimbs aboard my well-intentioned schemelike a boa constrictor – disarming me I am more inconvenienced than repulsed –after all, snake is my power animal,Or so the seer said…many years ago Days when I would wear the scalycomportment of power – invitetransformation- my essence a seeker But I am trying to settle […]
Met a bear who proclaimed himself to be a man;knew the instant I spotted him – lumberinggait approaching – that he was an animal,feared for my safety, would have retreated stayed at my mother’s side – sheltered infamiliarity – were I not so fixated on hisblatant woundedness. Sympathy blindingsensibility, i listened, hypnotized by the whiteness […]
One Woman's Quest II 
Really worrisome is the seemingly innate/reactive human tendency towards adversarial perceptions of ‘others’ or ‘them’ based on superficial traits, especially colour, foreign language and/or religious wear.
Sometimes I muse, what humankind may need to suffer in order to survive the long term—indeed from ourselves!—is an even greater nemesis (perhaps a multi-tentacled ET?) than our own politics of difference, against which we could all unite, attack and defeat—all during which we’d be forced to work closely side-by-side together and witness just how humanly similar we are to each other.
Still, maybe some five or more decades later when all traces of the nightmarish ET invasion are gone, are we not likely to inevitably revert to the same typical politics of scale to which we humans seem so collectively hopelessly prone; from the intercontinental, international, national, provincial or state, regional and municipal?
Hypothetically, reduce our species to just a few city blocks of residents who are similar in every way and eventually there may still be some sort of bitter inter-neighbourhood quarreling.
Nonetheless, as a species, we must keep trying our best to (at the very least) behave civilly towards those we perceive as different from us.
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There is truth in what you say. We seem to need an enemy or scapegoat. Recently, I heard a socialist explain that we are 200 years away from equality – the number of years it would take to eliminate the old order. Still we plod on. Thanks for your remarks.
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With the growing wealth gap and big business gaining greater advantage over the worker, I don’t see how very much can be realistically gained by the little guy, even through a social pendulum shift.
Unlike with a few social/worker revolutions of the past, notably the Bolshevik and French revolutions, it seems to me that contemporary Western world’s virtual corporate rule (a corp-ocracy?) and superfluously wealthy essentially have the police and military ready to foremost protect big power and money interests, even over the food and shelter needs of the protesting masses.
It could be excused as busting heads to maintain law and order as a priority.
Thus the absurdly unjust inequities and inequalities can persist.
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I agree with, Liz, that is a thought-provoking quote. Unfortunately, racism is ingrained in some folk through several generations and the mindset is hard to change.
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What I find disconcerting is the people who say: “Surely it’s not a problem here.” Dig deeper people!
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Yes, they don’t think out of the box because they have tunnel vision.
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That’s a very thought-provoking quote. It shines a new light on how systemic rascism continues to thrive.
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Exactly. Thanks for that Liz. We need to get out of comfort zone to understand the depths I’m afraid.
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You’re welcome, V.J.
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