Justification graveyard
"substituting one day for the next remaining attempt to emerge from the next gesture skip deity made entirely of language, to the next instant justification graveyard, like content, like everything else, like a given epic, like another battle dream beach distance, another metaphor without preemptive assumptions."
From '[the incompressible shuffles into place]' by kari edwards
This has been a tiring week, a relentless week. Not for me personally but for the world, or at least some parts of it.
49 people were killed on a homophobic attack. They were killed for who they were, for who they loved.
A few days later, a British MP was murdered. The motive is still unknown, but presumably it has to do for what she thought, for what she advocated. For who she tried to protect from the same hatred that killed her.
And in countless cities we haven't heard of, more nameless victims fell. Killed for who they were, what they thought, how they looked.
- And oh yes, whole countries are devastated but that wasn't just this week -
And then there's the shit that comes after that. More hatred. Stereotyping. Weaseling. The dredging up of excuses. The denials. "Of course it's the Muslims." "Of course we must keep our guns." "Of course it wasn't homophobic." "Obviously our rhetoric has nothing to with that action."
Justification graveyard indeed.
Language. Trying to make sense of things and yet preventing things from making sense, from getting better. Language like a deflecting shield.
Then there's the phrase 'a deity made entirely of language' and I thought, isn't that exactly what deities are? Language. Made up in an attempt to grasp the world and yet never fully able to explain it. Like language, deities can lift us up higher and show us a new perspective beyond our wildest dreams. And like language, they can muddle up whatever good intentions there were to begin with,
And it can be both.
The way out of this perceived dichotomy that is the world is to stop empowering it. It's not us versus them. Black versus white. Good versus evil. Mostly it just people. People who are more than their opinions, their afflictions, their loved ones, their deities, their dreams.
Perhaps it's time to realize that our deities are made of language and that it's faulty.
