New Adventures in Materiality

On differences that are the same

People are living creatures. Just like every other living creature on Earth. Just like all the living creatures we don't yet know about populating the vast Universe. And that means we are part of the universal family of the living. That's a given, that's our bond. That's a way of saying we're all one with this Universe. All the living, united by the infinite vastness. As we could say we're all from this place we call home, and that any other place in the Universe may be home to someone else.

But people think otherwise. People are utmost interested in separating, collecting differences, regrouping according to pseudo similarities. We look for obvious peculiarities. We drill into the dissimilar. We separate and erect walls around what looks common, in regard to some shallow markers. We have it all mapped up. The entire living classified under Latin nomenclature. Looks like we don't know better. Yet.

When it comes to people, we tend to consider separation as especially relevant, as we obviously come in many shapes and colours, learning different languages, believing different stories and religions, making the idea of separation easy to apply. And from separation, we often go to deletion. We can't tolerate differences.

Our science tells us that many distinct humanoid species once roamed the Earth, at different time periods. Science also tells us that actual humans on Earth are all of the same species, all with the same genome, roughly speaking. What can we make of that? Knowing humans as I know myself, I can say with some assurance that this planet is way too small for more than one absolute predator. That's what we are.

Because we tend to exterminate anything and everything that's different from the image we make of ourselves. We do it all the time. We want everything and everyone to be like we are, to behave like we do. We want that very, very badly. We absolutely cannot stand differences in others, unless they accept total submission to us, like dogs. Everything must be looking and sounding and smelling and tasting exactly the way we want. So that everything different can be dismissed, lessened, sold, leased, purchased, used and abused, all levelled down from the precious vantage point we call our own.

We can be carnal savages. We can rationalize wiping out any challenger or opposing party in a fraction of a second, and when these are gone, we can joyfully fight among ourselves, all the same. Colour, accent, religion, region, story, continent, wealth, education, belief, culture, nation, strength, ideology, odour, clothing, hygiene, gender, preference, myth, martyrdom, family, neighbourhood, choice, trend and fad are only some of the divisive factors we can take into account. Our self-inflicted common Latin label is homo sapiens.

As we are slowly evolving, we tend to rest on a balanced equilibrium, as some people do cultivate opposite points of view, learning to appreciate and love differences. At this point in time, the more we find people struggling with acute xenophobia, the more some other people are growing to love dissimilarities, while most of us haven't decided on anything yet. As most people on Earth have not yet been acquainted to the minority, diverse, feminist, multi-cultural, multi-denominational, gender-neutral, LGBTQ+ way of living.

From here, three things can happen. Either we carry on with the full scale extermination war on the living we have already started, or we evolve individually then collectively, or it's already too late for us to decide on anything because Mother Nature has it all figured out for us already. An Alt-Right, a Woke and a Goddess walk into a bar...