New Adventures in Materiality

On similarities that aren't different

The most hollowed out word in any language nowadays might just be: racism. The only time a derivative of the word is now intentionally used by anyone, is as part of the following sentence: "I'm not a racist, but..."

Then, the person claiming not to be that thing will candidly continue saying the most horrible things about some other group of people that appear to be different on some level.

Let's be clear on just one thing right now: every human on Earth is a racist at some level. And insects, animals and plants most probably are too. All lifeforms having to fight for survival probably hate the guts of any competing party, especially when competing with members of the same species.

Plainly put, any and all differences in characterization are fair game when one is in a fighting mood. And we, as humans, happen to love fighting with other homo sapiens over casual differences. Probably because we already fought all other serious competing parties into extinction.

The politics of all countries on Earth have been so fully saturated with racist rhetoric for so long, most people just probably forgot about what racism really is, and for some time now. And here we are, on the verge of yet another full scale racist world war in modern times.

Racism might be a dirty word we are all hastily running from, nevertheless, probably more than ever, racists we are. Every time one's call woke another, racism it is. Because before it's been used by alt-right folks to describe their many imaginary enemies, the word Woke was used by descendants of former slaves in the United States to reveal the idea that they were "Awaken" to the fact of being the second most absolute losing group in the face of American history, just after the First Nations.

Just like in some actual Slavic countries every time one call Nazi another. Or in the West Bank and surrounding areas, when annihilating inspired actions from then Nazis are passed onto others, pushing transgenerational hatred for one another to some totally new levels in modern history.

We are so used to fighting our own, it spills everywhere, all the time. And our fear of differences goes far beyond racism. It translates into war on women in central Asia and other places, war on gays or transphobia almost everywhere, war on youth in gerontocracies, not forgetting culture wars, religion wars, philosophic wars, class wars, gender wars, neighborhood wars, street wars, climate wars, Star Wars, war on drugs...

War on hatred is probably the only one we never experienced. Peace on Earth is nothing but a fleeting mood one can only Imagine.