To: Yea-lee-as
From:  Qelemyelesh
Subject:  Arrem vs. Ivy

Wait one darnity-darn second!!  You mean to tell me that Ivy leagers don't know everything??  Surely you jest.  Say it isn't so, Yelias....please?? Here I was nursing the hidden hope that those who reside at the top of the food echelon actually deserve to be there because they know EVERYTHING, and those of us poor mortals who only know some things really should put up with the crumbs that get kicked over to us now and again and even be satisfied with it.  You have taken me from the doldrums to bitterness in one fell swoop, El.  May the street-wise gods of my arrem-covered college smite the smirk off your laurel-leaf wearing ones. I say, though, old man, you sure know how to resist a bait, don't you.  You let all those Eco-insensitive comments I made just roll off your back, not even a cursory response to them.  Sigh!  Okay, I'll let them go.  I was hoping to have some fun with you.

So, I'm quite impressed by your ability to convert your cynicism into positive energy.  I don't know how to do that.  I don't know how to rise above the rubble of humanity and see if I can help it figure a way out of our maze of centuries of planetary mismanagement and neglect.  I don't know how to communicate to those idiots who are cutting down the trees in the Amazon forest that they are screwing with the future of their children and grandchildren.  I don't know how to stop myself from ramming a fist down the throat of yet another clever politician who thinks dumping his toxic waste in central Africa somewhere will keep his backyard clean.  I don't know if I'm willing to give up tuna to save the dolphins.  I don't know if I could take public transportation to save the O-zone layer.  And I don't know if I am willing to adopt a child rather than have one of my own so that I don't add to the overpopulation problem.  All of this is too much for me.  I graduated from my idealistic notions when I got my BA and never looked back. I'm a sell-out to the universe of comforts and I cannot find my way back to the world of self-sacrifice in the interest of enlightened self interest.  I take comfort in the fact that we're not designed to live forever, that "....all we are is dust in the wind."  That says it all for me.  All this frantic kicking to get to the top (the top of what?), this endless struggle to be better, to do better....what is that all about?  When in the end we all end up in the same exact place. What happened in NYC and DC...?  Horrific as it is....unimaginable as it is....infuriating as it is...what does it amount to in the grand scheme of things?  How does it rate when compared to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, to slavery, to the Holocaust, to Apartheid, to the North/South  American and Australian Aboriginal genocide.  In each instance, the victims were non-combatants.  In each instance, their death was meaningless, infuriating, horrific....unimaginable.  Do we learn from this?  History tells us, No, and No again.  Will we improve our ways?  I suppose only time will tell, but I seriously doubt it.

Which brings me to your friends' comments about our common enemy, "John D. Whiteman,"  uniting with our black brothers (and I'm sure you meant to include sisters in this too), etc., etc.  I don't think that the "white man" is our common enemy.  Not in the way we think of enemies.  In most instances, we, people of color are our own worst enemy.   I believe that, were the positions reversed and whites were at the bottom of the power struggle, we people of color would not be any less cruel or any more considerate than they have been to us during our common history.  Left alone, without the brown/red/yellow races to harass, whites would turn on each other (Nazi Germany?) and pick on silly little differences to try to elevate their own sorry selves to one of superiority.  Blue-eyed brunettes would claim better intelligence over brawny blonds and the ensuing war would claim the lives of the red-heads as well.  We'd read about it in the history books, centuries later, and they'd call it, The War of those Silly Bastards. I don't think that any race of people is fundamentally better than any other at handling this question of racial differences.  We are all "silly bastards" in the end, at war with our own prejudices and furiously trying to win an uncertain scramble for power. Which is why I don't think that Africa would amount to a world power if left alone, if the international commercial entities were not constantly scrambling to rape it of its natural resources, including brain power.  This is not to say that I don't believe that international entities are responsible for the steady and sometimes dramatic decline of Africa as a whole, but we as a people must claim some personal responsibility in our own decline if we are ever to see ourselves rising again.  Some people believe that corruption is created out of poverty.  Not so.  Not empirically, anyway.  Corruption is born out of greed, out of a loss of a personal sense of values, out of a lack of morality.  Some of the most principled people in Ethiopia, for example, are those very people we consider the poorest of the poor, those living in the countryside, trying to eke out a living from arid land with no government bail-out in sight.  Conversely, the city where those with money seem to congregate is rife with corruption, disloyalty, a lack of morality and social consciousness.  Now, do we blame the white man for that too??  What of the fact that Ethiopia was never colonized...not in the way that other African countries were - yet, we rank near the top of the poorest-nations heap, if not the very top.   Oh you can argue (and I often have) that it is the white powers that be that corrupt our leaders who in turn make it impossible for the principled, moral people of Africa to get anywhere.  That's not wrong, either.  But again, to lay the trouble at the foot of an insurmountable obstacle, and shake your head as you walk into the factory that creates that obstacle so that you too can become part of the problem, it's rather convenient, isn't it?  Are we any better?  (Well, come to think of it, you might be...but I have already thrown in the towel.) Which is why I find comfort in my theory that we as human beings are not yet fully evolved.  That as creatures on this earth go, we are the least evolved.  We, like no other creature, murder each other for pleasure.  We know how to corrupt and be corrupt.  We live with total disregard to how we treat the very earth without which we'd cease to exist.  There must be some credence to the story in the bible that God made people at the last minute. I think God was tired after the fifth day, so, instead of resting on the 6^th day, a nice enough day to rest, God made humanity the way we are and forgot to come back and correct the factory error before moving on to other more interesting galaxies.  i.e.  we're defective, Yelias, all of us (except maybe for the San people of the Kalahari), and my deepest hope is that God one day will issue a factory recall so that the rest of life on earth can issue a sigh of relief and reinstate eco-balance.  (Meanwhile, back on earth, life still bites, and my under-educated colleague is getting ahead in life because she is white, our receptionists for 7 years running have all been black, and there isn't one senior person in our office.)

You asked me if we, as respective groups, are too conditioned to embrace the other as kin.  I don't think conditioning has anything to do with it.  I think we're just petty, superficial, irrational, half-baked cookies who can't see past our own self-interests to the good of the community, or humanity.

I'm afraid to read back over what I've just written.  Aside from the possibility that I've been leaping from on vessel of conversation to the next like a flea with ADD, I must have cast a cloud of gloom so heavy that it's going to be raining on your PC for the next millennia or so. Well, here's a bit of news that might cheer us both up:  "This just in:  God issues a recall on all of humanity.  News at 11:00!"

Qelem-yelesh (the deppresive)

To:  Qelemyelesh
From:  Yelias
Subject:  Hope?  It's relative.

So, it's good to see SOMEONE on this planet understands the beauty and joy shown everyday on the news!  Don't be too happy, now; you might set yourself up for disappointment.  Sorry for teasing you, but in truth, I think you've got it figured it out.  I'm the same way most of the time.  Really, I often don't see the point of trying so hard to create "change" or make the world a "better" place.  (I put these words in quotation marks because I think these terms are relative.)  But like I said previously, while I'm here, I'm just gonna try to do something worthwhile, keep my family happy and content with me, and then keel off one day able to say, "Hey, I gave it my best shot." 

Oh, and unlike most people around me, I'm agnostic, so I don't think about God coming in and doing something to either help or hurt humanity.  I think we were created out of this world, which we are on our way to destroying completely.  Give humans 500 more years and it'll all be over.  Funny thing is, talk to some evolutionary biologists and they might tell you this is the natural order of things.  We evolved, didn't recognize our world's (and humanity's) limits, and will naturally destroy ourselves.  In some ways I fall into that camp.  Sure, it's sad, but hey, c'est la vie.  But more importantly, this view of human nature was revealed in Terminator 2 when Arnold Schwarzeneger the cyborg tells young John Connor, future savior of the human species, that "...it's in your nature to destroy yourselves."  So now that you know I gain some of my insight from cheesy action movies, are you sure you want to here more of my ramblings....

Well, I'll venture to say you wouldn't mind hearing a bit more. 

I completely agree that greed underlies most of the perverse actions we humans exhibit onto everything around in the world, everyday. And I also don't think getting rid of white people will alone solve the problems blacks all over the world face.  White people aren't all bad.  And people of color aren't all good.  But I'm convinced that most whites are sort of guilty by association, considering Africa (and other places) still hasn't rebounded from colonization.  But what makes it worse is that most whites are simply clueless about this stuff!!!  Okay, sure; if you're a poor white struggling to make it in this country or any other, I can understand your plight.  You have to deal with your own problems before you can help your neighbor. BUT, those that are well off and privileged have NO excuse for not caring about what their ancestors did and hence initiate taking some serious action to remedy the problem.

But it gets complicated, for reasons you've already set out, so I need not repeat them.  We as humans see differences in each other, and as long as I've been alive, I've seen one person/group exploit and oppress another person/group for whatever reason or resource, and then use the our differences as a justification and/or driving force.  To me, all of humanity can be explained using the schoolyard scenario.  As long as different people occupy the same space, like kids on a playground, there is going to be conflict.  And in most cases, solutions are temporary, just like with this whole "War on Terrorism"  Give me a break!  As long as I'm alive there are going to be people from that region and others trying to bomb the hell out of the U.S.  And for a good reason too, in my opinion. Yeah, I said it.  (Now this e-mail is probably tapped and being routed to the CIA, NSA and FBI as I type..)  Who cares?!  You said it best: in the grand scheme of things, was that whole incident really as big as the media made it out to be?  Anyone with half a brain, some true compassion for all the planet's people, and the slightest knowledge of world history would quickly say no.  So anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but here's my point: this whole competing over the same resources bit, like the schoolyard bully syndrome, is precisely what's gonna push us to extinction in say, 500 yrs.  No big deal to me.  Like you said, everything is finite...even humans existence.

What more can I say?  Hmmm...I really don't have much to add.  Your recent cynicism caught me at a good time; I've been very nihilistic lately (it comes in phases, and as time goes on these phases get progressively longer).  I would just like to ask one thing: what has made you so depressed?  Is it your work?  The things you see around you?  I tend to thing the world is just a shitty place, and those people that feel depressed are generally more in touch with reality than those that aren't.  People that claim to be happy are fooling themselves and really setting themselves up for disappointment.  I used to do that, but now I don't fight it.  I just continue on this beaten path of going to the "right" schools to get a "worthwhile" job so I can "help" create some kind of "change" to make this world "better."  All this to keep me distracted from the mess outside my little world. Sometimes I just wanna give all this up and become a cook or own a bike shop or bookstore.  I'd love that.  Who knows, maybe that'll happen.  I'll just have to disappear somehow before the loan sharks come after me when I have neglected to pay my off my college debts. 

Anyway, this has been extremely fun for me.  If you ever wanna keep in touch outside of LD's my email address is no_hope8@hotmail.com.  There's a lot I don't know about you that I'd like to find out. 

Yelias