The meaning of the Buddha pose in the picture is probably none of those things, but that was my impression when I first saw it. I could not find this particular pose in a quick web search. Something created for the tourist trade? Or the dilettante? I don’t pretend to have any knowledge regarding Buddhism, however this small statue spoke to me…it depicted how I feel when I am feeling overwhelmed and the world is just too much.
The more barbaric and the less intelligent they are, the more white people try to rip off Blackness for fame and fortune. I think they’re creating a place in a hell not of their own making. Thieving appropriation…there is karma attached to that and it is coming full force for them. Make your own culture. You look stupid when appropriating other cultures. We know your own and some with the African phenotype will idolize you, but karma knows that you stole for your own selfish benefit. Your lack of empathy, along with your lack of intelligence and creativity, is on full display. Showcase your own culture. Oh, yes, as Gandhi said “what culture?”. Your group’s lack of culture is well-known. You know that old saying…best to be silent than to speak and tell everyone in your own words just how stupid you are. That’s my rant after seeing a video of a white female bragging that she was black and no one could stop her from saying it. About like the white woman with box braids. No sympathy when she had to shear her hair. Co-opt and pay the price.
I read an article about the black-eyed peas’ place on our New Year’s Day menu. We eat them for luck, along with cabbage, hog jowl (salt pork, ham) etc., on New Year’s Day. It is another story of let’s not tell the whole story…just the story that centers white people. Per Wikipedia…The Black-eyed pea originates from West Africa and has been cultivated in China and India since prehistoric times. It was grown in Virginia since the 17th century by African slaves who were brought to America along with the indigenous plants from their homelands. The Enslaved Africans grew black-eyed peas for their own consumption long before the Civil War. Yes, there is the story that the Union soldiers did not destroy the black-eyed peas because the peas were thought to be used for animal feed. However, the Wikipedia article states there is some doubt to this story as the peas would not have been growing at the time of Sherman’s march through Georgia as the march was after the first killing frost of the season and the peas would have been harvested well before the first killing frost. Also, I don’t see why Sherman’s army would have thought that salt pork was unfit for human consumption. Hungry men would have tried it and found it edible, if not to their taste. And I don’t think any Northern soldier would think that salt pork would be fed to the animals. I think there are too many holes in that story, but it centers white people.
From what I’ve scanned, black eyed peas were grown by the Enslaved for their own consumption and not on large plots of land. I would speculate that the Union soldiers left those small garden plots that might have still had peas that had not been harvested so the Enslaved would have something to eat or those small garden plots might have been overlooked.
However, hungry people, especially soldiers, don’t leave food, unless the peas were not recognized as food. Which is doubtful. Even if the peas were seen as cattle fodder, the Union soldiers would have destroyed the plants. The point was to devastate the South. Why would you leave food for their animals? The story told by white people just doesn’t ring true.
And the Enslaved might have shared the peas with the white people? No, no…that couldn’t possibly be. Or the Enslaved left and the whites scavenged food from the Slave quarters. But…if one looks at facts…black eyed peas, an import via the Slave trade from West Africa, were not usually consumed by whites but by the Enslaved.
It shouldn’t be so difficult to tell the rest of the story. But we live in the age of the narrative that must advance an agenda…not in the age of truth. Because a half truth is a half lie. A lie by omission is still a lie. But because we are dealing with oral history, there might be a bit of truth in the story and there might also be a bit of truth in my speculation.
Why do so many people want to be told what to do…from birth to death, from hour to hour, from minute to minute, from second to second? Seems like everywhere the hoi polloi want authoritarianism and the rich want to get richer at the expense of everyone and everything else. If authoritarianism will ensure riches, then they will spend whatever is necessary to put authoritarianism in place. The rich figure that their money will ensure that the authoritarian will not interfere with their pursuits. But the hoi polloi gain no benefit from authoritarianism, unless you deem a broken back from the foot of authoritarianism a benefit. Under authoritarianism, one has nothing…all is subject to be commandeered by authoritarianism. All benefits flow to the authoritarian. One’s life is worth only what the authoritarian deems it is worth. One has no personhood. One is merely a tool to maintain the flow of benefits to the authoritarian. Tools are disposable and replaceable. Seemingly, that is what a great number of people want to live in…an authoritarian regime. I don’t understand it. Is self-determination and responsibility so frightening?
Have you ever read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle? There is a scene in that book where in that reality all citizens do the same thing at the same time, with the same rhythm. All the houses look the same. There is a rigid conformity to some mechanical ideal. Anyone who does not conform is disciplined/tortured into submission. In the version of this I see in the United States, there would be no discipline…just a disappearance into oblivion. I don’t see the evil that wants control allocating any money to discipline.
It is 2024 and the animals who should be caretakers of our planet have not progressed beyond negative self-interest.
https://www.history.com/news/harvard-yale-admissions-social-rank?cmpid=email-hist-inside-history-2024-0103-01032024&om_rid= Read this. The United States needs to stop lying to itself. The United States has never been a merit based society. Never! It’s a fantasy, a delusion, a lie to justify white supremacy. Always has been. White American mediocracy protecting its status, the pathway to wealth and retaining wealth–that is the purpose of the lie. We’re the best because we say we’re the best. However, if held to an objective standard, the mediocre whites never measure up. That’s why they move out of neighborhoods when the percentage of Asian-Americans in the community affect their standing in the local schools. Whites can only maintain the myth of merit if they only compete among themselves. (And then only among a certain class of themselves.) And we are now seeing the depths to which they will descend in order to maintain their lies and delusion. What they excuse/tolerate/practice in themselves, they will use to destroy the Other. The former president(45) is a liar, among other traits which the so-called Christians would call sins in Others. For a certain number of Americans that is overlooked and even celebrated. A liar and a fraud was elected to the House of Representatives. That was okay because his vote was needed to advance the racist and destructive societal agenda of his party. (He was finally ousted. I suppose the criminal indictments could no longer be denied and explained away.)
The concept of merit sounds good, but the word needs to be dustbinned as an indicator of who is hired, who attends certain universities, who serves as president of anything and certainly of these United States. The United States is not a meritocracy and has never been.
We have a concerted effort by these mediocre white males to return to the time when they were in power solely because of their skin color and gender. And we have women, African-Americans/Descendants of Slaves/melanated immigrants, Hispanics, Asians who have signed on to their bandwagon. The rule of the mediocre was a time of bloodshed, economic disparity, no-class citizenship. It takes a split second to break a leg and months to heal that same leg. Think about it. A vote by ideologues and a fifty year right vanishes. How long to regain that right? Or is it the break that never heals? Causes gangrene? The loss of the limb? Or the eventual death of the organism or the organism never regains its essential nature?
Oh, a new year and it’s only January 4, 2024 and the first school shooting of the year. Another white male terrorist. The original American terrorist–the white male and his white female companion. But white males are not terrorists; they have mental issues–isn’t that the lie we’re told? Whatever! Thoughts and prayers…that’s the response. I suppose if you think the Earth is flat and homo sapiens and dinosaurs co-existed at the same time…you don’t have the intellect for any other response.
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