Hint: Patterns – Legacies – Self

We are both governed and we govern.  We govern ourselves, to some extent.

We are also governed, in some extent.

When we don’t know histories, and the history of our own ancestries and legacies, we are ignorant, then of certain patterns and therefore reasons and connections.

We are connected.

In the United States, especially, there is a huge huge huge gap between the “self” we create and live with, and history.  This is because history and the relations between what is wanting and what has transpired and what is violent, are unknown because they lie in the forgotten and the repressed and the demoted.

This is not just about psychology.  Psychology itself has a history.  But we cannot write it off.  Psychology has some useful things.  But when we understand psychology in relation to indigenous sciences and that which psychology “disproves” and ignores and dominates (mostly, the contributions of non-northern European, Asian, indigenous, tribal, of women and non-heterosexist knowledge), then we understand more what we can think of as useful, and what repeats as acts of domination. These”unknown” and unacknowledged actions that we don’t consider as legacies of domination–  are what I point to as acts (both conscious and unconscious) that maintain colonizing mentalities.  These mentalities oppose the notion of social justice and decolonization.  They work in tandem in our lives.

This is why domination will always have in it, dominance and resistance.  But the more we know and acknowledge pasts and histories of power relations, the less ignorant we will be in making decisions.  There is no “good” or perfect place.  It will always be this way.

This is a “hint” in my whole reason for blogging and my writings for social justice.  It is not about “getting it right” (colonial) as a final resting place.

It is about increasing historical and political knowledge and the understanding of patterns and designs of society and social structure that have contributed to all of our identities and ways of living and assuming.

When this becomes more “real” for us (instead of unconsciously being motivated by colonial mentalities), when this resistance becomes more enjoyable as much as it is a struggle, then we become more effective–but never, never, completely so.

If we want something completely full-proof, then I ask that you question the self-colonizing assumption of why that is a viable and realistic goal of yours.

Patterns and legacies and freedom.  Dominance and resistance.

More effective, maintaining or shifting.

Social justice is not in the future.  It needs to decolonize away from “truth” or “right” or “good.”

Patterns.  Legacies. Life in motion.

Ethics, honoring, shifting, diversity.

How do traditions and the novel live? How do we participate?

Mixed-race? Only because there is ‘Race.’

No Race? Then there is racism.
No Gender? Then there is Sexism and Heterosexism.

All Equal? Then Classism and Caste-ism continues.

We must act and struggle with our racism, classism, caste-ism, sexism, heterosexism, able-ism, anti-semitism, anti-indigenous, etc.

Look at this square in the eyes.  With your body. Our bodies.