Are we only WHAT we are, just that, no more, no less?
Our human sum simply the algorithmic yield of our DNA as stirred (not shaken!) by our random placement in our Parent's Home?
Without volition, captives of genetic fate, the accident of birth, our lives indelibly writ from the moment of conception on: is there nothing we can do? Or rather, is everything we do merely the ineluctable end result of our particular collection of category memberships as processed by a world filled only by categorical sorting imperatives...you're a this, go there, do that? Yes, sir, may I have another?
That seems insane, doesn't it?
Are Jews White? Who cares?
And if someone somewhere cares, so what? Why do we care?
Mom always asked us, "If everyone jumps off a cliff, would you?" "No!", my brothers and I always answered in enthusiastic unison, "Of course not -- that would be really, really stupid!"
As stupid, perhaps, as playing the "Are Jews White Game"? Or... Are Whites Privileged? Are Blacks Victims? Are Women Glass Ceiling'd? Are fat people jolly...short people Napoleons....gay people fashionable? And on and endlessly on.
Just because someone somewhere may or may not see us as a particular category stereotype... or maybe a collection of multiple category stereotypes (?!)....does that mean we must see ourselves that way? Just because some Sneetches have Stars Upon Thars....that does not make them the best kind of Sneetches on Beaches....no matter what Sylvester McMonkey McBean might say.
So let's stop it. Even if every other lemming leaps off the identity politics cliff....even if every other 'breaking news' story is about another sub-sub-sub demographic/sociographic category group whose feelings got ruffled because their sub-sub-sub demographic is 'you know'....just stop it.
For those desperate to find division and in that division the reason WHY their life does not match their heart's desire....it will not matter in the least just how completely "identity differences fade with intermarriage and assimilation"; it will never fade enough. The more things actually do begin to look alike, sound alike, feel alike....the more microscopically granular the intersectionality of victimhood will become. Witness Mr. Josephson still clinging to his two-decade-old turn down at the Narragansett Dunes Country Club because, or so he presumes, he was "too Jewish".
Just as, we might equally presume with Aesop's Fox, that the grapes on that too-high branch were 'too sour'.
So sure....yeah, absolutely... we're all Victims of Something. And if we insist on seeing the world only through an Identity Politics Lens, then... yeah, sure... there are any number of categorical identities we all inhabit that carry any number of categorical crosses. So yeah, given that pathetic mindset, every bad thing which has every happened to us....every poor grade...every promotion missed....every bad home repair experienced....every date we never got....every girl that turned us down....every team for which we were not picked....every foul beneath every basket...every pass we did not receive...every package that Amazon lost....every time the barista called on THAT guy and not me even though I'd been standing there longer....all of that is because We're a Star-Bellied Sneetch (or not).
But why on earth would we want to live that way? Why would we want to see ourselves that way?
And the truth is, the more we rabidly embrace our category memberships and carry and wave our category flags...and stomp our category feet...and gnash our category teeth ... and insist on having loud and louder Wild Rumpuses in that Category's name (Did I tell you that Short People who are Lions Fans Lives Matter!??) ....the more the Other will increasingly find reason to dislike our Category Face and want us to shut our Category Mouths...and just go away.
So stop it! Stop counting. Stop 'wallowing' in the mud that we ourselves are still helping to create.
Are we only WHAT we are, just that, no more, no less?
Our human sum simply the algorithmic yield of our DNA as stirred (not shaken!) by our random placement in our Parent's Home?
Without volition, captives of genetic fate, the accident of birth, our lives indelibly writ from the moment of conception on: is there nothing we can do? Or rather, is everything we do merely the ineluctable end result of our particular collection of category memberships as processed by a world filled only by categorical sorting imperatives...you're a this, go there, do that? Yes, sir, may I have another?
That seems insane, doesn't it?
Are Jews White? Who cares?
And if someone somewhere cares, so what? Why do we care?
Mom always asked us, "If everyone jumps off a cliff, would you?" "No!", my brothers and I always answered in enthusiastic unison, "Of course not -- that would be really, really stupid!"
As stupid, perhaps, as playing the "Are Jews White Game"? Or... Are Whites Privileged? Are Blacks Victims? Are Women Glass Ceiling'd? Are fat people jolly...short people Napoleons....gay people fashionable? And on and endlessly on.
Just because someone somewhere may or may not see us as a particular category stereotype... or maybe a collection of multiple category stereotypes (?!)....does that mean we must see ourselves that way? Just because some Sneetches have Stars Upon Thars....that does not make them the best kind of Sneetches on Beaches....no matter what Sylvester McMonkey McBean might say.
So let's stop it. Even if every other lemming leaps off the identity politics cliff....even if every other 'breaking news' story is about another sub-sub-sub demographic/sociographic category group whose feelings got ruffled because their sub-sub-sub demographic is 'you know'....just stop it.
For those desperate to find division and in that division the reason WHY their life does not match their heart's desire....it will not matter in the least just how completely "identity differences fade with intermarriage and assimilation"; it will never fade enough. The more things actually do begin to look alike, sound alike, feel alike....the more microscopically granular the intersectionality of victimhood will become. Witness Mr. Josephson still clinging to his two-decade-old turn down at the Narragansett Dunes Country Club because, or so he presumes, he was "too Jewish".
Just as, we might equally presume with Aesop's Fox, that the grapes on that too-high branch were 'too sour'.
So sure....yeah, absolutely... we're all Victims of Something. And if we insist on seeing the world only through an Identity Politics Lens, then... yeah, sure... there are any number of categorical identities we all inhabit that carry any number of categorical crosses. So yeah, given that pathetic mindset, every bad thing which has every happened to us....every poor grade...every promotion missed....every bad home repair experienced....every date we never got....every girl that turned us down....every team for which we were not picked....every foul beneath every basket...every pass we did not receive...every package that Amazon lost....every time the barista called on THAT guy and not me even though I'd been standing there longer....all of that is because We're a Star-Bellied Sneetch (or not).
But why on earth would we want to live that way? Why would we want to see ourselves that way?
And the truth is, the more we rabidly embrace our category memberships and carry and wave our category flags...and stomp our category feet...and gnash our category teeth ... and insist on having loud and louder Wild Rumpuses in that Category's name (Did I tell you that Short People who are Lions Fans Lives Matter!??) ....the more the Other will increasingly find reason to dislike our Category Face and want us to shut our Category Mouths...and just go away.
So stop it! Stop counting. Stop 'wallowing' in the mud that we ourselves are still helping to create.