Hindsight: A 2016 Perspective

Before I say anything- and perhaps this is really all that needs to be said- I feel a great urgency to offer a sincere apology.

I apologise for all of the hatred and rage I’ve spewed in the years of my online existence. In my youth, I was so angry. My eyes were forced open to the world and my initial anger was that so few people saw it- and, of those people, even fewer cared. I spent so many years directing my hurt and anger on people I felt were too stupid to understand that they were the problem. My anger had no real focus. I was mean. I was hard. I was brutally honest and, though forgiving, I equally refused to forget. I contributed to this culture of hatred we are trapped in today and I need to acknowledge that. And I am sorry for the way my hurt jeopardised your future safety.

I got to where I am now by refocusing my anger and self-analysis to a place of understanding and offering solutions. It wasn’t enough to simply be angry. Where could that anger take me? How could that anger benefit others? But it was too damn late. And I’m sorry.

In 2016, I see people doing what I did in 2007. They are suffering. Yes, actually suffering. It isn’t enough that we live in a country that genuinely everyone still sees as a land of opportunity when those opportunities are so strictly defined, unimaginative, and certainly not available to everyone. As more minority groups began to speak and demand the bare minimum- visibility and accurate representation- it began an itch. It disturbed the status quo. Instead of evaluating our needs as a society, we could only focus on the needs of our identity. And, for so many of us, the needs of our identity can only be met at the denial of another person’s humanity. Not just their comfort levels as people. Denying that they are an actual suffering person. Qualifying suffering. Placing it in a hierarchy.

We refused to take care of each other because we hadn’t been. The dialogue became about self-care. And, though some people had to focus on self-care and denial of humanity as a literal life-or-death survival mechanism, there was never much conversation about how we’d come back together once everyone got Woke™. It isn’t as though we were even truly at work on ourselves. We’re lost. We must admit, as a society, that so much of the world is lost right now. And we must focus our anger and be mindful of the paths we choose going forward, or we will destroy things for the next generation so much that they may be unable to salvage anything. Including themselves.

Personal accountability is difficult. It’s imperfect. It’s a constant flow of self-analysis and change. It’s hard to walk the line between blaming yourself and owning your mistakes. But, guess what? You need to do it. This is a skill you need to learn right now or there is no hope.

And discard your hypocrisy. A pattern of owning and refusing to accept your behaviour patterns will make it easy to forgive those patterns in others.

 

I am not saying I believe white supremacist scum don’t deserve an ass-kicking right now (don’t tell me violence doesn’t solve anything; the entirety of human history is predicated on violence being used to teach quick- then quickly forgotten- lessons). But that doesn’t erase their humanity. As much as they dehumanise me, I refuse to work to dehumanise them. But I will not put their humanity before my own. I won’t burden their suffering on a level that requires me to dehumanise myself. I can’t. We won’t. None of us should burden any suffering right now- including, especially, our own- unless we are going to burden ALL suffering and have a very open and tragically honest conversation about the steps that need to be taken to eradicate that hurt. To heal. To move forward.

We’ve developed this smug posh punk attitude, as a society, against community. But we need each other. We desperately need each other. I could not survive on this planet without you and that’s how it goes. And, once you’re ready to discard every identity that has roots in a fear of the Other, once you’re ready to turn that fear toward yourself and WHAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF, how you have personally contributed to this garbage culture, once you are ready to embrace personal accountability, I will be here to love you unconditionally and to help you move forward.

Because your government sure as hell won’t.