Monday, April 28, 2008

You have to be asleep to believe the dream.

I grew up in a Caucasian, middle-middle class, divorced family. My parents maintained a very friendly and amiable relationship during the course of my growth period. As such, I was told I could do whatever I wanted for a living (which has been called into question as my career path has veered towards 'musician', I suppose my father meant to say 'Any career that will give you a steady paycheck.'). I've taken it for granted that my ethnicity has not detrimented my life path. There's nothing out of reach, but there's plenty of things I would never devote my life to. The question isn't "What do you want to be when you grow up?" the question is "What do you want to do now?". Our paradigm of life is totally skewed. Spending the first third of your life learning how to work for the second third, only to make it to the last third when your retirement can kick in and you can finally have some fun? No, nothing is out of reach, but there are plenty of things I wouldn't ever want that most would leap out of a skyscraper for.

Thinking about race and class wars in terms of an organic system causes a very different view to be conjured. Similar systems fall together and group, reinforcing each other. We see this when plants or animals of the same species grow/live together, and when they fight for resources and land from other groups. There is no difference with mankind. Races of the same type grow and live together, 'dominant' races (usually 'dominant' is synonymous with 'majority') ostracize and oppress minorities, stereotypes and racism... all of it stems from the basic principals upon which information organizes itself. Looking at the planet as a whole, at humanity as a whole, we are trying to sort everything out and attain a type equilibrium or entropy. This is by no means a conscious decision, it's just how things fall.

1 comment:

eweaston said...

But we're not bringing up you, Tyler, vs. the "organic" system of race and class- which I'm a bit confused by anyhow. Are you talking about biological dominance and making the case that that translates to social dominance? That argument holds no weight especially when discussing class, which is an entirely and obviously societally based system.

Additionally, usually dominant is synonymous with majority, but how does class turn that around?