The signs of the times surround us and beg of us to be
urgent. America has fallen to the ways of cultural
hedonism; we must have everything, all the time. By all descriptions, the
late “great” hegemon has transformed into Babylon. Mark 1:15 tells us that the
time is right now, the Kingdom of God is at hand. The Mayans, the Egyptians,
Nostradamus and many more have all made predictions for this very hour in Chronos time. Acceleration leads us to moving faster and faster until the wind-up
doll we have become is ready to explode.
Dromo-Colonization
has everyone chasing the next flashy screen: cell phones, flat screens, tablets,
and now you can even check Facebook from your watch! The worst part of it all
is it is merely a smoke screen keeping the general population distracted while
the globe becomes militarized, while wars continue to be waged for only
monetary gain regardless of the lives they claim. The question is born: what do
those of us who see do about it? So
many of us feel helpless as we remain vexed daily about the global state of
this perpetual cycle of war and militarization. The truth is almost impossible
to find and many of us feel as if we are losing our minds. Where do we go from
here?
In Global Palestine,
we saw the need to wake up and pay attention to the daily lives of the
Palestinians. The logic of denial
has many chasing their tails. Apocalypse sheds light on the unknown. It reveals
that which has remained unseen. The mask falls and shadows cast are lifted
revealing the bright light within us all that will never cease to shine. Movie
after movie imagines what the end of the world will be like. We have seen
visions of asteroids, aliens, tidal waves, earthquakes, and even humanity
turning on itself as in the Hunger Games.
Is Apocalypse what it is going to take to set us free?
Spinoza (Global Palestine, p. 234) states “every man’s
understanding is his own, and brains are as diverse as palates”. There are so
many prophets, preachers, conscious leaders, conspiracy theorists who all have
a different answer to the algorithm at hand. While everyone is trying to decide
what must be done, more and more of the lower classes are being de-humanized,
losing their agency and being forced into intentional poverty. Hannah Arendt
speaks of natality, a concept she
gleaned from Augustine. “Unto us a child will be born” and we might be inspired
as they to believe in the human capacity to begin again. With a system so
corrupt, so militarized, so set up to keep the rich well-fed and the poor still
struggling, how do the conscious rise to this occasion?
Capitalism is death to freedom. The rich keep gleaning
from the wages of the laborer. The privatization of prisons has led to more and
more of our men and women, especially those considered to be “minority”, being
removed from our city streets. Meanwhile, mainstream media has most people
distracted in the stratified diversion of keeping us separated. Christian
versus Muslim, Black versus White, Rich versus Poor, Educated versus
Uneducated, and so on. James Baldwin qualified that whiteness is not about race
or even color but about a mindset. The refusal to speak against the lie has
formed and kept in stasis a fantasy world. The continuance within this fantasy
world has arrived at a collective psychosis. What we need is cataclysmic
transformation.
We cannot rise to the occasion of our light without first
facing our darkness. This is what I propose. First, all conscious people must
unite! We must have a unified goal. We must dispel the ignorance and retell the
narrative without the victor always being in control of the storyline. We must
use art, poetry, music, and digital media to spread the truth. In a world where
two-thirds of terrorism is committed by white men, how are the prisons filled
with mostly African American men? Why do so many Caucasians make comments still
like, “Why are Black people still mad? Slavery ended a long time ago”. How do
we ignore the disparity between the funding and education at suburban schools
and the funding and education in the city schools? How do slumlords still have
the right to have tenants? What is it going to take for us to do what is
necessary?
Amitav Ghosh refers to it as the Great Derangement. He speaks of climate change and says that nature
to most has become an inconvenience, nothing more than a backdrop. How do so
many not believe in global warming when the polar ice caps are melting and the
weather is warm enough to now support life that was not native to its region?
There are ancient viruses being released! We have snakes growing to mammoth
sizes due to the climate change in the areas where they live. Areas that never
flooded are now flooding. There are so many weather patterns that have changed.
How do we prepare if we are not sure what exactly is on its way?
“Only poets, since they must excavate and recreate
history, have ever learned anything from it (James Baldwin, 1972).” Again, I
believe all prophets, poets, preachers and creators need to come together with
every conscious being and help one another become prepared. Not knowing what is
to come is perhaps the most threatening part. Ghosh asks what it means to be
human. Most live as though they are superhuman with no limitations. Humans have
become geological agents. We have transformed about half of the surface of the
Earth. We have altered the composition of the atmosphere mostly because of
fossil fuels depletion and deforestation. Anthropocene
is a real issue and not one that most believe can be forgiven. The damage
cannot be undone.
At this point, we will also need the counsel of a group
of Earth Scientists. We need to see what our best course of action would be at
this precarious hour. It would be amazing if the global governments would
reprioritize their spending and began installing solar panels and wind
turbines, using all the money from constant wars and militarization for things
that would steer us in a better ecological direction. However, since some of
our largest global governments, like the United States, are not interested in
saving the planet, what are we to do?
Due to the constant waging of wars, the constant
militarization, and the strange conspiracy theory style reports of FEMA camps
and black boxes for mass burial, I think it imperative that we all become
armed. We must know how to fight, how to defend ourselves and how to survive on
very little for a very long time. We do not know what shape this cataclysmic
event is to take. We should have food and water stored in the best location we
can think for multiple types of natural disaster.
Howard Thurman in The
Search for Common Ground speaks about the potential of every human being. We
need to drop our pride, stop judging one another and find our common ground.
Every human being needs water. Every human being needs food. Every human being
needs air to breathe. We all bleed red. We all hurt. We all find joy. Remaining
segregated is destroying our chances of survival. Hall (p. 153) says a vision
of a different way “has to be made, constructed and struggled over”. Whatever
plan we all come up with is not going to be an easy process, in the formation
or execution of it. We must begin now! Time is running out.
What does it mean to be human? Is power/greed the
original sin? We have the paradox of the price. There is little personal
abstinence can do to save the climate now. What we surmise must be profound. Global Palestine discusses
redistribution of wealth on page 142. Organizations such as Uhuru believe this
is surely the answer. The playing fields certainly do need to be leveled. All
people should have the same access to resources, to education, to medical care.
We should all have the same potential due to our natural surroundings providing
all of our basis needs. Most people don’t know how to be poor. Most people
would not know how to survive the way the oppressed are forced to live each and
every day.
Five-hundred fifty thousand Israeli settlers in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem consume six times as much water as the two-million,
six-hundred thousand Palestinians. Israel’s control of the Palestinian water
supply is both unjust and illegal. The UN reports that approximately 1.4
million Palestinian people live in refugee camps. Their right to return has
been systematically denied since 1948. We must do more! People like Micah White
sure try but even he will tell you that the Occupy Movement was a failure we
must learn from. Dr. King marched for liberation and freedom. In 2018, we find
ourselves still lacking “liberty and justice for all”.
It is easy to get discouraged. Even if all the conscious
minds, focused on liberation and equality, justice and freedom were to come
together today, what exactly would we do? We do not have the firepower to
overthrow even the United States government alone. We do not have the capital
it would take to begin a movement so big the whole planet would quake at the
mention of its name. Or do we?
We must recognize that our search for a new creation is
also an acceptance of the destruction that comes hand in hand with new life. We
must accept that all the signs point to a cataclysmic event that must come and
come it will. We must accept that the only answer is for capitalism to fail,
for certain governments to be overthrown or crumble, and for all people to
return to a respect for nature. We must face our differences, and we must set
them down. They were never as relevant as we made them and if we keep clinging
to them, they can do nothing for us but serve to destroy us.
We must become like children, rich in imagination. We
must feel the words of Howard Thurman and believe in harmony and potential. We
must know, like Hannah Arendt, like Augustine, beyond a shadow of a doubt that
starting something new is not only possible, it is necessary. We must honor the
common dystopic thread of current movies and we must work together to build a
Utopic view that stands on its own and can carry us home. We must believe that
the waters can part. We must believe that the Promised Land is real. We must
know that our time in the desert is almost over. We must put down our
differences and take one another by the hand. We must form a council that
represents humanity at large. We must be as prepared as we are able for the
“shit to hit the fan”. We must stand against injustice. We must speak against
oppression. We must fight against violence with all we are, with all we are yet
to become. It is our time to rise.
Beyond
Sight
I once saw the Christ in Lucifer’s
eyes
I once heard the truth in the devil’s
lies
I once felt the anguish in an angel’s
sigh
But here we are asking God why
My why is not a fist at the sky
My why is not a wail or a cry
My why is a plea down on bended knee
Begging the Universe to guide me
please
It is our time to rise
~~*~~
