“J'accepte la grande aventure d'être moi”
― Simone de Beauvoir
How many homo-sapiens can you fit in a carriage challenge?
Exactly how it feels/looks like crammed inside a tram on Bayram!
I was back from one of my excursions, this time to Arnavutköy, a favorite area of mine in Istanbul (I’m contemplating writing a Discover Istanbul beyond the cliché guide).
I was starving – was I never – aka, wanted to get home in lightning speed, howbeit, euphoric too. I had a smashing time, besides finishing a blog post I have been working on for days.
Enter man and son. Tattered clothes, exhaust-fume-smudged faces … dirt poor, I am guessing homeless too. We stood facing one another. Only dad kept pivoting sideways, clutching his boy, eyes on the floor, fixated on nothing at all. With clenched hands, and tight limbs, he was struggling to occupy as little space as possible … an apology for being there, his mere existence.
For some unfathomable reason, a sense of shame crept into me, I looked around, searching in people’s faces for signs of unease, anything that spells “Hey, you have as much right to be here as the rest of us”. Nothing, this man and his son were completely invisible.
I tapped his shoulder and signaled he let his boy grab next to my hand to steady his feet. The man complied. If I blinked, I would have missed it, a wave of relief went through his spine. He was seen by someone, anyone. This was not me kind, being charitable, or acting out of benevolence; more than I would if he was wearing a Brioni suit. Just ordinary folks, stranded together in a jam-packed space.
“To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Fact of life – like it or not - we go up and down on the scale of worthiness depending on our financial means and status. True, it has gotten out of hand of late, that yesterday celebrities were people who had something to offer the world – big or small - while today celebrities are – mostly - those who stop at nothing/ are devoid of any moral value/ and are merely maximizing personal gains.
To me, it is a closed loop, with its own built–in Karmic system, You become that of which you hold high, you idolize fake, shallow, and corrupt, and that’s what you get. I have sympathy for neither. We have a saying in Arabic that goes: فخار يكسر بعضه, translated literally: let clay pots break one another, and since this makes no sense at all the closest I found in English is “not my circus, not my monkeys”
One very simple example; I hear girls whining all the time – trust me it’s like an obsession - about the plastic surgery industry, makeup, social media filters, ya know fake everything as being so unfair to women, how men are falling like flies for the fake boobs, butts, and noses. Honestly, I think it is a pretty fair deal because fake is what those dudes end up with, it’s not like they are getting Marie Curie brains with bombshell looks, I mean what could ever be fairer than that? The same goes for those girls, whatever she invested her time/ efforts in, she will get; a low-value man, who will leave her for the next bigger butt. There is truth out there folks but we tend to choose not to see it.
On the other hand – people hate it when I say this -, sometimes girls/ people are upset not because they believe what’s happening is unfair, and they have the betterment of humanity at heart, but because of envy! Plain and simple, they want that, they cannot have that and so they go out there to crush that. Many people would go after every Tom, Dick and Harry if they have money/ status/ fame or what have you, but wait till they get their hands on some dough, and watch those tables turn!
Morals/ living la vida ética is expensive baby, and doesn’t come from a vacuum. You cannot claim it, fake it, or wish for it, you work uber hard to cultivate it, and you struggle with it …. some days you beat it, some days it beats you, but mostly you do pay for it, and depending on the sort of society you exist in, the price may be high or low on the scale. And I am here to tell you that the struggle is real, and that try as I may, I lost many battles and had to give up a few, not proud of it, but it is what it is. So the next time the unfairness of the world upsets you: ask yourself why, then resume with the hate, because hating evil is a virtue. And if you can do anything about it/ change it, DO!
Back to the subject at hand.
Poverty is also another fact of life – I mean DUH - and is as old as civilization itself. Nevertheless, fact or fiction, good or bad, poverty no matter how unjust and belittling in the eyes of society should not by any means erode someone’s humanness and deem them less than. And let me show you the difference between poverty as injustice/ lack of means and poverty as erosion of humanness and dignity.
Definitions are EVERYTHING:
The Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers and the Rwandan genocide did not start with the slayings. It started with the dehumanization of specific people
So let’s start by defining human. Human is what entails you full/ basic human rights/ dignity by merely existing. It protects you from being exploited/ enslaved/ owned/sold and bought/ and slaughtered. It provides immunity from being discriminated against or denied the protection of law. You get it.
Seems straightforward enough right? And it would be a hard bet to find someone who will – in theory – and bluntly oppose/ disagree … yet the reality is more complicated than that.
The Definition of human has had its share of mishaps and has gone through a process of evolution. The jury is still out on the final definition though, and there are as many “real” definitions as there are humans roaming the globe. I say “real” definitions simply because there are the beliefs that we think/ believe we harbor and there are the ones we actually believe in and harbor, and they can be as opposite as night and day.
Let’s take a peek at modernity: enters a dude called Darwin who shaped how the majority of humanity – practically the Western sphere - today define themselves as humans past present and in the future still. One thing I want to say here though is that among all the people I have had debates with through the years, and who would argue in favor of all things Darwinian have not actually read the man. I happen to have read and studied him, and as much as I loathe his philosophical views I salute and respect him as a genius of natural science.
Weirdly enough what the Western civilization fell in love with was his philosophy rather than his natural science.
So D Man in his influential book “The Descent of man” theorized that man (as in literally, his views on women are obnoxious), having evolved from apes, had continued evolving as various races, with some races more developed than others. Darwin classified his own white race as the final stage of human evolution, and more advanced than those “lower organisms” such as pygmies, and he called different people groups “savage,” “low,” and “degraded.” He considered all of us Arab, African, Brown, Yellow whatever colors white folks invent to cast out non-whites (I find the whole color thing ridiculous, but humans are dumb) to be the missing link, as in the middle stage between the ape and the evolved superior human, aka white man.
Gotta love Darwin and the whole Western civilization adopting his “science” which is later to fuel the ugliest and most deadly racism. Consider the case of Ota Benga—a pygmy from Central Africa, who in 1906 was caged in the Bronx Zoo with an orangutan. Remember the Jews in the gas chambers devised by Hitler to advance the Aryan “master race.” Reflect on the Australian aborigines hunted down in the 1800s by evolutionists in search of the “missing link” the same phrase touted by Darwin, and let us not forget slavery in the Americas.
Understanding all this will also easily explain the whole horrid colonial – did it ever end though? - era and the slaughter of millions of human beings. How did that ever happen? Because in their minds, those populations are not fully human, they have less dignity; no rights to their lands and resources, and just like animals, the superior race can do whatever the heck they want with them.
Sad but true (enters Sandman). And believe it or not, according to Neuroscience, when we dehumanize others, the regions of our brain associated with disgust turn on and the regions associated with empathy turn off. And humans fall into a dark and disturbing mental loophole that makes it easy to inflict all kinds of harm upon others.
Let all this sink in, then apply it to our modern still racist/ sexist societies, and add extreme individualism, brutal capitalism, erosion of morality, greed … ya know all good stuff, and you will see how “poor”, once defined as lack of means, as misfortune, as injustice has evolved into poor as less than human.
And now you have all the answers you need to the brutality/ indifference towards homeless people, refugees, and impoverished populations of all sorts. Instead of seeing all this as a result of a failed humanity, it is seen as a plague or a nuisance that needs to be dealt with.
But this is HARD folks, so hard to deal with, you know why? Because it is subtle, goes unnoticed, and requires so much self-awareness and honesty with oneself. It starts with firstly acknowledging that – no matter how painful – that we harbor those beliefs.
So much of how we define humans is deeply ingrained in our psyche, it was planted there even before we were old enough to understand … then comes the media, then comes the fears, then comes experience … piles upon piles of tiny prejudices. So unless we, with full awareness, start to tackle them one by one and nip them in the bud, they will remain there, waiting for a chance to rear their ugly head, we will be just another member of the flock, too ignorant or too arrogant to change.
I have one piece of advice here, and I am not claiming to be void of prejudices, start with this: LOOK and LISTEN. When you walk on the streets, exist anywhere don’t just look and observe what you like/are used to observing (your phone, storefronts, women, men …etc) try to take in the whole scope of the world around you and see all things/ people/ life that is otherwise invisible to you and others. Look at the street sweeper, the homeless, the beggar, the stray animals ..etc, take it all in. Look people in the eye. We are accustomed not to look at the doorman, the waiter, and all those folks who are in service, sometimes even as we address or thank them. Make real sincere eye contact; never take the existence of any human for granted. A note though, when you do this just realize it is not an act of charity, aka you are not Jesus blessing people with your smile, you are just playing your part as a human.
Second, listen! As in real, engaged, and deep listening. Don’t fake it!
Ask yourself, When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened, without thinking about what you wanted to say next, glancing down at your phone, or jumping in to offer your opinion? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Was so attentive to what you were saying and whose response was so spot on that you felt truly understood?
We are encouraged to listen to our hearts, our inner voices, and our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and purposefully to other people.
I am afraid I have to stop here folks … yes without a proper closing statement; I don’t think one is needed …
To be continued ….