2017-10-03
Radical humanism
I miss being in a place where people rather spend $1000 on a surfboard than on an automatic weapon. More than anything, a place where I am just a person, instead of facing a permanent mental calculation of identity that only serves to divide us. I kid you not, even in the arena of academic freedom, speech is tallied not by what you say or contribute but the identity someone else decided you represent. No other way to put it: the US is just currently messed up. Trump did not invent divisiveness, he is simply the natural product of a society where both left and right decided that it was better to focus on self-expression and individualism as political stance, rather than community and citizenship. Maybe it is the final gasps of the baby boomer generation and one can only hope they did not irreparably format younger generations with their pathetic need for self-expression and identity. We are not all individuals; we is society.
The more we play the identity game, the more it divides and pits us against one another. National, linguistic, religious, racial, gender, and sexual identities only divide us more and more. The only solution is to be radically humanist. The only identity that I self-identify with, and accept to be labeled as, is human. My nationality, language, chromosomal makeup, and all the other categorical inventions are my own business; they do not dictate my politics nor my actions.
# posted by Luis Rocha @ 16:19 
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