About 10 years ago, I approached a group of my friends for a project that I wanted them to work on with me. The project was going to be a collection of essays about the black male experience at age 30. I was going to pick a series of topics, each topic would comprise a chapter and all five of us would approach that topic from our own perspective. The name of the project was "Apologies and Other Useless Bullshit". Apologies was going to be the cornerstone topic, due to my deep disdain for America's thirst to make people apologize, to watch them be weak so they could have the satisfaction of forgiving them and relish how powerful that made them feel. My attitude towards apologies have remained pretty static.
I understand the power dynamic between men and women and the subjugation that women have had to endure throughout history and up to and including present day. I do understand that the objectification of women is a continuing problem that manifests itself in sexual assaults, domestic abuse, unequal earnings, the perpetuation of stereotypes that reinforce the glass ceiling, pornography, and general misogyny. I fucking get it, but I promise you, the President was not trying to put California's attorney general in a sexualized context. The dude is kinda corny and he wanted to give her a genuine compliment. I'm not an Oba.ma water carrier like most of the people I know, but this shit is pretty innocuous. I am pissed that he apologized, though.
I'd like to see the objectification of PEOPLE to stop in general. As a black man, if you feel like I'm not sufficiently "in check", I'm a menace to society. If I'm domesticated to your liking, I'm a tool to do your bidding. If you outnumber me, I'm ignorable. If I outnumber you, and you can't stop making reference to being outnumbered. You can't differentiate between who I am and what I represent. If you've been paying attention since I've returned to the blogging world, you'll notice a pattern in this part of my argument. Symbolism once again rears it's ugly head.
I'm bored.
KZ
Showing posts with label symbols. Show all posts
Showing posts with label symbols. Show all posts
Saturday, April 06, 2013
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Search For Actual Meaning Amongst Symbols
Everytime we want to express our feelings we grasp for the correct symbol to do so. If you love someone, you send flowers. If you hate someone, you send an article of their clothing in a tampon box to their job (it happened to my big cousin Juan). If you're a patriot, you put a flag up and gaze at it adoringly. If you are an asshole, you wear monogrammed shirts bearing the initials ZXZ. All of these things are symbols, things we do almost without thinking. The biggest part of the problem is not thinking. It's reflexive symbolism.
The greatest symbols in the world are words. Words stand in for feelings. We all agree that a word "means" something, and that's that. But do we ever stand back and think about that shared feeling. If someone says to you "I'm angry", you get an ideal of what that means and what it feels like, but does it really convey the rawness and the immediacy of that emotion?
When someone sees a cross on a building, do they instantly think of the suffering of Jesus at his crucifixion or do they think "That must be a church"? When you see a church these days, you don't think much of sacrifice, at least not at the mega ones. Overused symbols lose all meaning.
The basis of me writing this is to describe a struggle I've been having for awhile. I've wanted to expunge all bullshit symbolism from my life. I'm searching for the ultimate "me".
I eschew all clothing that identifies me as a "part" of some organization or legacy. I minimize what I say. And I try to be efficient in what I write. It's part of my backlash against movies and a gang of books. "That dark alley way symbolizes the journey that he takes on the way to salvation." You know what? Fuck that dark alley way. Just show me the journey, well lit and shit.
In America, we tend to put too much weight into what certain words or actions symbolize in a person. The over-reliance on symbols to tell us what we seek to understand lead us to ignore the real, the palpable, the ACTUAL. I want us to participate in the world around us, it's telling us so much, instead of relying on symbols to do the grunt work for us.
Feel me?
Be Cool,
KZ
The greatest symbols in the world are words. Words stand in for feelings. We all agree that a word "means" something, and that's that. But do we ever stand back and think about that shared feeling. If someone says to you "I'm angry", you get an ideal of what that means and what it feels like, but does it really convey the rawness and the immediacy of that emotion?
When someone sees a cross on a building, do they instantly think of the suffering of Jesus at his crucifixion or do they think "That must be a church"? When you see a church these days, you don't think much of sacrifice, at least not at the mega ones. Overused symbols lose all meaning.
The basis of me writing this is to describe a struggle I've been having for awhile. I've wanted to expunge all bullshit symbolism from my life. I'm searching for the ultimate "me".
I eschew all clothing that identifies me as a "part" of some organization or legacy. I minimize what I say. And I try to be efficient in what I write. It's part of my backlash against movies and a gang of books. "That dark alley way symbolizes the journey that he takes on the way to salvation." You know what? Fuck that dark alley way. Just show me the journey, well lit and shit.
In America, we tend to put too much weight into what certain words or actions symbolize in a person. The over-reliance on symbols to tell us what we seek to understand lead us to ignore the real, the palpable, the ACTUAL. I want us to participate in the world around us, it's telling us so much, instead of relying on symbols to do the grunt work for us.
Feel me?
Be Cool,
KZ
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