On Slavery

The following is an excerpt from the conclusion of an essay I wrote approximately three years ago titled "The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: The Origins and Characteristics of an Islamic Institution." It is pertinent because I intend to submit the essay as part of my African Studies minor and have been revising it slightly. I have also been having a lot of discussions lately with friends and housemates about depressing subjects, so the topic of slavery is on the mental radar. There are many bad things going on all around me, in this country and abroad, and I have been thinking about them a lot. I must say that I tend to initiate these conversations on depressing subjects.

I know precisely why this is; I can trace it to a certain book I am most of the way through. It is called The Culture of Make Believe by a fellow named Derrick Jensen. Though I don't agree with all of his ideas, I can say with a high degree of certainty that I have never encountered a book that has made me question as many things in my life as this one. His work is stunning in its breadth and ambition. His quest is to understand the roots of hatred and violence in our Western civilization and culture. In the process, he confronts the buried assumptions and established pillars that prop up our culture. Connections previously unconsidered, unrecognized, Jensen throws into sharp relief. In the process he makes many blanket statements and sweeping indictments, but his courage is admirable, his focus unrelenting, and his attention to excruciating detail painfully accurate, researched, exposed. In short, he is working towards a conclusion that I will likely find impossible to support in the context of my current life. If I were to fully agree with him, which part of me wants to, I would have to reconsider and reject much of what I have learned in my 22 years on this earth.

What is the difference between the United States' economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, which killed thousands of people each day, and the murderers behind bars all over this country? What are the connections between the Ku Klux Klan burning and lynching black men in the Southern US and an industrial disaster like the one caused by Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, in 1984? Why does our definition of murder depend on the victimizer? Why is institutionalized violence perpetrated by governments and corporations acceptable, encouraged, or profitable?

I do not see the full effects of the life I live, I do not feel its impact; I am not forced to touch and feel and live with the cumulative effects of my consumption. I feel on one side the pressure to conform, to get a job and make lots of money so I can live a life like everyone else, to consume and vote and settle and save enough and retire and feel secure. On the other side I feel the need to work against progress and production, to actively resist the advances of society and technology, to help move beyond the destruction consumption-and-endless-growth paradigm, to localize, to not fall in line and get a job. Even as I sit at my computer I am scared of spending the majority of my life in front of a screen. I am scared of feeling disconnected, lost, lonely, of settling for objectivity and illusion, of being one more netizen of Jensen's culture of make believe.

Jensen takes McKibben's thesis to the next level, beyond the factual, to the realm of feeling and spirituality. He is digging down below the fabric and pulling apart each thread of Western culture. History shows how our actions repeat and perpetuate perpetual atrocities again and again. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

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Atrocities are being committed right now, all over the world, some of them in the name of the United States of America. In the context of my comfortable life in Boston, it is difficult to imagine war, extreme poverty, rape, murder, or poisoning from toxic waste. It is also difficult to talk about these horrible things. It is easier to go about my life and not think about these things, to not talk about them, to pretend they do not exist. Not in my backyard, not in my perception, not in my reality, not in my name.

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"Abolitionist sentiments and efforts became widespread in the nineteenth century and were largely successful by the turn of the twentieth century, yet for all of recorded human history (and probably before that as well) slavery was normal and accepted. It is only within the last 200 years that abolitionists and others seriously challenged the institution of slavery and wrought a change in the practice. One is therefore compelled to wonder about why slavery persisted for so long and why it was only relatively recently abolished, despite the institution’s widely known atrocities and largely terrible practices.

Part of the answer stems from the institution’s significance in an economic and, more importantly, social sense, a significance that the examples above from Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa show. This paper is an attempt at analyzing the trans-Saharan slave trade and some of its important characteristics in order to place this specific trade in the larger context of slavery worldwide. The institution of slavery is a self-propagating, never-ending cycle of violence and submission that keeps the powerful on top and the down-trodden weak at the bottom of the pile. Indeed, the never-ending circle is still spinning today, just in different ways. The answer to the above question can probably also be found in some aspect of human nature, for there seems to be a natural inclination to take advantage of those that are inferior. Perhaps this aspect of our behavior stems from our basic evolutionary instincts, the residual effects of natural selection and intraspecific competition for resources. This natural inclination can be observed throughout history, both with slavery and in many other examples.

Even today, many years after the abolition of slavery, countless reported instances exist of forced labor, child labor, human trafficking, sharecropping, forced prostitution, and more, all of which fit the definition of slavery. Consider also the circumstances of capitalist societies in which the lower classes, especially minority and immigrant populations, are exploited as cheap expendable sources of labor and used to fill the most undesirable but necessary positions. These unfortunate souls are usually overworked and underpaid, bound to live in perpetual uncertainty from one paycheck to the next in what amounts to essentially an acceptable, or rather, encouraged, form of slavery. It seems that human nature dictates a perpetual cycle of the strong dominating and utilizing the weak for personal gains. Though we have progressed away from the infamy of slavery as a legally sanctioned institution, its legacy lives on in societal and racial inequalities and in the unequal distribution of wealth that still plagues modern societies. True equality is perhaps an unattainable Utopian ideal, for it seems that man will always find a way to take advantage of his fellows. Will the cycle of violence ever come to an end? Only the passage of time can answer that question, but in the meantime we can always look to history and past mistakes as a way to guide our future."

Il cesse d'être plaindre si vous êtes toujours chiant sang

Cette chanson me touche d'une manière que je ne peux même pas décrire. Néanmoins, je peux essayer.

Laura opens her mouth and I listen.
The tape would be worn out by now.
Soft and quavering, as melodic as you need.
Reaching for the spark that is impossible to reclaim, recreate, or even locate.
A brief moment of pure audible ecstasy;
I wish it were possible for anyone to caress me in the way her music does.
All the more fun because she makes it her song.

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"Sing the fucking songs you told the world to sing.
Sing it right unless you want to fail.
Listen back and punch the things that we don't like.
You can't do it right in just one take.

Because you aren't good enough.
You were never good enough to sing your own songs oh so perfect.

If you fuck this up, you fuck the record deal
And respect of all our famous friends.
Drift too far and it is inaccessible.
Do it right! We worked as hard as you.

And we didn't come this far
For you to fuck this up and fuck our whole lives.

So write some songs with fucking hooks
Remember why you wrote songs in the first place.
Let's start a band.
This is all that you can do.

Cut the cookie. Five sharp points to make a star.
Cut the corners, get the biggest tours.
Traffic violations mean bad credit now.
Twenty triple zeroes in the hole.

And it wouldn't be so bad.
If we crashed the fucking van and watch our fucking debt go up in flames.

You know, it wouldn't be so bad.
If we just threw up our hands instead of feeding something
I did not want to create.
Your underground is a mistake.

So write one song without a hook.
Remember why you wrote songs in the first place.
Not for the band
You opened up for yesterday.

So write a song without a hook.
Remember why you wrote songs in the first place.
Not for a guy
Who runs a fucking focus group."

Bittersweet reflections during snow

Medford 02155
West Newbury 01985
Bamako
Ouagadougou
Groveland 01834
Ipswich 01938
Boston 02115
Allston 02134
Rabat 10101
Brookline 02446

A list of the places I have put down roots in 22 years of life. The briefest compendium of my geographical history, a manifestation of sabbaticals, studies, divorce, suburbia, leases, mortgages.

A zip code can say a thousand words. What is yours? What attachment do you feel to the physical place you live in? What are the effects of a life without attachment, of transitory employment, of a disposable culture? You can live anywhere, do anything, be anybody you please, but where does that leave you? what is the value of an identity defined by its transient adaptability, and what are the adverse effects of an ephemeral existence?

Christopher Hedges David Foster Wallace

David Hedges Foster Christopher Wallace. no, not my new law firm. Wallace's voluminous essays make my mind race make me read with a dictionary at hand put my brain to work. the man speaks volumes of truth dissecting everything, he articulates some of my greatest fears and fascination with exquisite exhaustive extradetails

whereas

Chris Hedges shouted at me when I walked in the French doors. squawked from the ibm really, and the man was talking sense. He was talking all about our occupation of Iraq, how the sanctions were working and Saddam was crumbling, how much the war coverage emphasized our weapons and high technology, how much propaganda media tried to build public favor, etc. He paints a bleak landscape that eerily reflects a lot of America today;

furthermore,

this gentleman talks of the impending falloftheAmericanempire
which is also the name of a State Radio song.

There is so much I find problematic with things I see around me, I can't help. An illusion is something different from a dream. bread and circus, poor Cicero. Oh yes I forgot, Hedges talks about how absent a revolution our current trajectory breeds facism. Some would say we are already there.

Cold Winter Evenings

As a consequence of staying up late last night and celebrating the end of the semester, I find myself sitting on the computer at 12:33 in the am without a lick of tiredness on my airwaves. Sitting in front of the computer I mean, it is in fact young Birdy who has tried several times to sit on the computer. The living room/kitchen stretches out in front of me on three sides, the space a product of two lives joined together for the past several years. Lights festoon the dying evergreen erected near the deck doors and glow with the bright pointy blur that tells me my glasses are lying folded on some end table. One cat snoozes prone on a red armchair, one cat is out of sight, two cats with long hair lie together curled like furry presents on the Christmas tree's skirt. I thought pets were bad, but now we're dressing up trees?

I am being critical, but really I love the minor transformations of living space that accompany the holiday season in my dear Mommy's house. I feel blessed to have somewhere I can retreat to during the winter break between semesters, this being the last of my undergraduate studies. cookie dough sits in the fridge, the santa placemats are on the table (used for approximately 3 weeks of the year), the impressive array of nutcrackers stoically gaze ahead into nothing from their perch on the wood hutch, a motley cast of frozen figurines stand arranged on the mantelpiece around a baby figurine in a crib, 5 stockings of different green red and white designs hang on hooks besides the fireplace.

the traditions of this time of the year seem untouchable, and the fun comes from their enduring presence. before i go to bed, I will go around and turn off each window candle. even though people gripe about christmas shopping, and spending time with family, and cooking all sorts of delicious food, we clearly still go through the motions. there is some value that these traditions provide for us, otherwise we would cease to uphold them. whatever the value you get, it is still fun to examine critically these certain annual behaviors that we engage in.

for some people the only value might be the presents they receive. It is unfortunate that for some christmas has become nothing more than a time to get new stuff (that you may or may not need/like), though I would be lying if I said I don't look forward to that part of the holidays. If not, what kind of American would I be? Christmas is the biggest time of the year for most retailers, probably the biggest and most successful shopping campaign of manufactured demand ever created. our economy is fueled by the volume of stuff we consume, and we have to go through a lot of it to keep the machine satisfied. I spent probably two hundred dollars in the past 2 weeks on christmas gifts. how much of that stuff will be used and appreciated by the people I love? there are all sorts of economic studies that conclude that Christmas represents a deadweight loss of some several billion dollars, maybe 10, maybe more, because so much of what is purchased does not end up being used or valued commensurate to its cost. probably half the shit is lost, broken, or discarded before the new year, or we relegate it to that pile in the corner of the room to collect dust. the perfect gift is a rare thing, especially for people who have alreayd satisfied all of their basic needs. if we really want to be efficient, we should take the money we were going to spend on someone's gifts and hand it to them in an envelope with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. BUT, all of the money that is spent goes to sustain the economy, and we must do our patriotic duty as Americans to buy things, amass, consume, discard, repeat.

I am not saying that all christmas gifts are worthless, or that we should stop giving gifts, or that I don't love christmas. I am proposing an invigoration of common sense during the holiday season, maybe a suggested limit on the # of gifts, and a re-affirmation of the season's value and purpose, which is not to fill out corporations' 4th quarter profit margins: a celebration of light and joy to carry people through the long cold winter, to look forward to the coming warmth and change of seasons, to reflect on the changing year and the passing of time, to spend time with family and friends and share with them food, drink, and gifts, all of these things and more are part of what value I find in Christmas.

To me it is about making sushi with Mommy, a tradition we probably started when I was in 8th grade, and waking up early to peek at the wonderous packages that had miraculously assembled themselves around the tree during the night and opening stockings with Allan, a tradition we probably started when we were old enough to walk. It is about the christmas morning breakfast of whole wheat cinnamon rolls topped with buttery brown sugar, the scrambled eggs, the bacon, the sliced rounds of orange. It is about spending Christmas eve with Anna, Jennifer, and Eugene.

It is about family, first and foremost for me, and I dont plan on changing that any time soon. It makes me sad that my Papa is away for this whole break, and he will be sorely missed. We did get to hold a little goodbye evening for him, me, Allan, and Lois, last friday, to see him off for three and a half weeks working on Hausa teaching materials in Niamey, Niger. It was a lovely time, eating chiebou thienn (Senegalese fish and rice dish) with fried plantains, drinking adult egg nog, and sharing gifts and music in the living room of 511 Main street. It felt like an alternative condensed christmas, a fun change. It goes to show that the exact recipe for christmas at home will change, but it doesn't matter as long as the formula of family, food, (gifts) and fun remains. like I said, I am a sucker for the gift part; its only the buying part that I hate. [it is hard to beat the thoughtfulness of a good gift.] but that is more of an aversion to spending money, something I will never get over. I never developed my consumer genes, must be some weird mutation. I get physically uncomfortable after spending too long in a walmart/kmart/similar shopping experience, and a mall is the last place I want to go hang out in.

I still buy stuff, of course, it is just that I don't like to. No matter, I have come to recognize that it is a sticky situation that I will be dealing with for the rest of my life.

On Gumbo

The murky depths of a steaming pot of stew universally entice the hungry diner. Part of the allure for is the mystery of the pot, a riddle of ingredients that neither sight nor smell can solve. The path to understanding requires a spoon, for only taste can begin to unravel this tale. Perhaps gumbo best exemplifies this mystery of the pot, for it is a dish with impenetrable complexity and hearty strength. It pulls the willing diner somewhere past the exotic to a sublime balance of nature combining elements of land, sea, and spice. Ingredients work in unidentifiable harmony; a second spoonful is required.

Schindler's List

Just finished reading a review of Spielberg's 1993 movie written by Robert Leventhal of the University of Virginia. With the final credits of the movie and its violins still rolling over me, I found myself questioning everything I had just seen. Leventhal precisely deconstructs Spielberg's widely-acclaimed work into the sensationalist hollywood movie that it is. He concludes with this cool indictment, saying the film "colludes with the logic of reduction, condensation, compression, concentration and 'leveling' that are the trademarks of Fascism itself."

Leventhal raises big questions, and he found me right when I was reeling from the enormity of what I had just finished watching. After perusing the Wikipedia page, I found this review when searching google for more information about Spielberg's initial involvement in the project.

The cinematic quality of the movie and its acting is unquestionable, or hard to dispute, and I know it is near the top on many all-time best movie lists. I admit, that is why I wanted to see it in the first place. Now I realize that I, along with many others, was drawn into a narrative portrayal that distorts the truth and detracts from history by manipulating the legacy of the Holocaust for profit. Spielberg and others won fabulous awards for this work; it is Holocaust in the Hollywood mainstream. Though, as Leventhal says, it is valuable as an educational tool in this age, there is a cost to the design and success of this movie as a work of entertainment media. I do not mean to detract from the legacy of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Rather, I caution others not to take Schindler's List at face value, as I initially did.

Let us not forget the victims and survivors of any other genocide past or present, and let us work against future manifestations of such tragedies. The late Howard Zinn wrote eloquently of this in a piece titled, "Respecting the Holocaust;" I will leave you with his lasting words:

"If the Holocaust is to have any meaning, we must transfer our anger to today's brutalities. We must respect the memory of the Jewish Holocaust by refusing to allow atrocities to take place now...My point is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge upon it."