Tookie

Perhaps because it just happened and so my feelings are still fresh, but Stanley "Tookie" Williams gets my nod as person of the year. His executiion serves as the perfect metaphor for the direction this country is headed.

[Throw the race shit out of the window. The death penalty is not racist...it's a fucking penalty. To call it racist is terribly reductive and serves only to simplify a much more complicated social issue (thus making it easier for those who disagree to not take the issue seriously). More accurately, the people who inforce it may be racist, or more likely, society functions in a way so as to facilitate an unfair percentage of certain types of people toward actions that lead to their execution. Similarly, labelling Bush's slow reaction to Katrina as racist seems simplistic and reductive (do you really think he chose to come across as an embarrassing incompetent because he hates black people??) However, that those people did not have the means to get out of the way of the storm, now that's an effect of racism.]

Williams' execution brings up MANY issues, but I'm most moved by his choice to change, to move toward becoming a more conscious, open-hearted being (despite all of the evidence he had to justify his alienation) AND then the ways in which society as a whole reacted to such change with cynicism, mistrust, disbelief (Californians overwhelmingly were for this man's death, even though we killed a different man than the one who went to prison--different both physically, on a cellular level, and metaphysically, on a spiritual one).

If a man is not allowed to change, to evolve for the better OR if society functions to limit or discredit such change rather than support it, then where does that leave us?

The great commedian Bill Hicks said: The world is like a ride at an amusement park....Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people who have remembered come back to us and say, "Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride ..." And we ... kill those people. "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that and let the demons run amok. Jesus murdered; Martin Luther King murdered; Malcolm X murdered; Gandhi murdered; John Lennon murdered; Reagan ... wounded. But it doesn't matter because it's just a ride...It's a choice....right now, between fear and love.

That choice, the ability to choose who were are and want to be, is all we have. It is all that separates us from the animals.......knowledge does not equal power; knowledge leads to choice. Choice is Power

Tookie's social hegemony

Hegemony roughly equates to one group's oppression over another group, usually along political, racial, or gender lines.
What is so fascinating about this concept, hegemony, is the role that the Oppressed play in facilitating their own oppression (that they have so bought into the system that any attempt to break free is considered deviating from the norm and somehow wrong).
For example, classrooms tend to favor and reward competitive/aggressive (i.e. masculine) discourse practices (the person who speaks up, who interjects, who adds to the conversation, etc), which males tend to display to a much greater extent than females, who tend to be collaborative rather than competitive in their discourse practices.
Now, studies have also shown that when a girl tries to speak out, other girls will monitor her, ostricize her, and exclude her because she is breaking a social norm that they unconsciouslu regard as immutable and permanent (despite the fact that it serves to oppress them as well). We're talking straight up Jungian shadow work.

So, why is this interesting?????? Well, usually hegemony applies across racial or gender lines. With Tookie, it seems humanistic (settle down, I'm sure you're screaming race. Well so am I, the fucking human race). We can't believe that a man can change for the better. It's in our fundamental nature to kill him because we cannot imagine him to be breaking free of the social chains binding him to his hatred and self-loathing. We think he could not change because we think we cannot change and thus monitor ourselves for deviant behavior [such as finding love in our hearts despite the rage surrounding us, finding meaning in our lives loving others, having the strength to change, to see that we are bigger than ourselves). Did Tookie kill those people. I do not know. Even if he didn't, he certainly killed others and behaved in ways that led to a lot of pain. But he found his heaven in the worst hell in this country and for that we killed him.
I mourn his loss.
I mourn humanity's loss.
We've lost our way, dangerously so, to the point that we cannot open our hearts to someone who opened his.

random meanderings

If we really believed that the universe is benevolent and provides everyone with exactly what their soul needs, then we should do nothing but celebrate all that is going on around us.
War
Hunger
Pestilence
George Bush Jr
80s hair metal

Which brings up an interesting idea or set of ideas through which I may contextualize this idea of universal benevolence:

I always hear people talking about how lucky we are or talking about how sad they feel for those who are less fortunate. And while I'm tempted to agree (and appreciate this surface-level attempt at empathy), I realize that it's more complicated. Who is to say that suffering is hierarchical? Who is to say that one person's suffering is more or less than another's? It may be that one's suffering is more apparent or visceral (a starving child suffering in a war zone), but that doesn't mean his/her suffering is more or less than someone who is tortured by his/her existential angst or self-loathing. In some ways, the former has it easier because his suffering appears to have an external root cause and thus can, in theory, be allieviated whereas the person who "has it all" and still hates himself is just as trapped but without the benefit of "externalized" explanations.
Further, I would argue that viewing suffering as more or less serves only to divide--as if that OTHER person's pain is not our own and OUR pain is felt only by us and those like us. So rather than bringing us closer by acknowledging our own luck and lamenting that OTHER's pain, it serves as a reminder that we are not that person, that his pain can be felt from a distance but is meant to be pitied.

To me, this is part of a larger concept dividing us and inflicting further suffering. It's only when we draw lines, when we create "others" that we are able to inflict pain on others. If we truly understood that bombing another is in reality bombing ourselves, would any rational person be in favor of the war in Iraq? in Afghanistan?
If we really got that another's hunger is our hunger, if we really got that their sadness our sadness, if we really understood the universal consciousness of humanity that unites us, do you really think that society would continue to exist as if we live in our own little hives and are not responsible for our brothers and sisters?
Maybe. But I don't see how.