Written Jun 26, 2022
As the story goes, the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year and the longest night. When our ancestors, Homo Sapiens (Latin for “wise men”), were just beginning to understand the world, they saw this day as the death of the sun. When the sun finally rose back above the maria (Latin for “seas”) and the water looked like wine, they rejoiced. The day after the winter solstice marked the rebirth of the sun: the beginning of lengthening days to come. Our ancestors resumed their merrymaking year after year while embracing everything the sun had to offer; for example, light, heat, and solar energy to dry their clothes, crops, and animal skins.
“Direct self-observation is not nearly sufficient for us to know ourselves: we need history, for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves.” — Nietzsche, ‘Human, All Too Human’
During this time, L’inverno (Italian for “the winter”) was ‘il vero posto chiamato inferno’: the real Helheim (or “House of Hel”) of evil and suffering. Leaves would fade, fall, and wither, as the trees went into a state of dormancy. The wintry solstice posed the threat of starvation and animals were sacrificed so that the fresh meat would be preserved for several months. Hunting was difficult during the harsh winters and without refrigeration, food was preserved by salting, smoking, pickling, and drying- or freezing! Our sapient, discerned, and wise within their time, ancestors did as they saw fit.
Beyond natural evil, they were crude pioneers, people with only a rudimentary understanding of good manners: explorers, frontiersmen, frontierswomen, colonists, developers, and innovators. They were primitive tribes transitioning into hunter-gatherers, farmers, and nomads, who roamed from place to place with washed-out and co-opted trends and led war after war with ice-boxed hearts. Then, we mixed and mend, and we settled for winter, and we broke our natives: the aboriginal men.
We are broken in history. We are broken now. We are broken again and again and again. And I am a product of that historical war; I am a descendant of the island Española (Hispaniola) or little Spain’s collision of ethnicities.
As we have evolved, we have noted that strength and successful gains are positive consequences of conquering mental and physical pains. Who or what are we evolving into? What type of sacrifices are we willing to make? What justifications do we have to continue to evolve by emulating moral evil? If we are egotistical, self-seeking, cruel, and oppressive as Darwinism claims us to be, and as Richard Dawkins puts it — “we are the selfish gene,” then we must accept our reality; move away from our artistic temperaments, obsessions, and extremes of dark emotions; be-friend our reptilian brains (which is territorial and aggressive, but it is responsible for our survival); and move forward collectively as rational and emotionally intelligent beings.
During our ancestor’s dark hours, they would light up the night with a bonfire and provide warmth to their homes with a Tannenbaum (German for “fir tree”) and burn a yule log and candles; this happened up until the burning of light bulbs, and incandescent, fluorescent, halogen, and neon lamps. Today, if we can forgive and move forward into a more civilized pluralistic, multicultural society — like a salad bowl as opposed to a melting pot — with a greater understanding of our predispositions and decision-making processes, we can continue to light up the darkness with the warmth of our hearts and without narrow-minded, monocultural procurements.
When we illuminate the darkness, the darkness disappears. We are predisposed to form cliques, but inclusiveness begins with forgiveness which arises from a greater understanding of our predispositions and decision-making processes. If we are all one collective consciousness, then history is our collective shadow. And the only way to make amends and get justice, or to fully do this shadow work, is to shine a light on the history and create the history we want to see. We need new messages for this new generation and for future generations to come!
According to the Association for Psychological Science (2018), from Science Daily, “What we see is not a direct reflection of the world but a mental representation of the world that is infused by our emotional experiences.” We are everything we are exposed to; we are reflections of the universe! We are everything we do and absorb, and our beliefs, ideas, and thoughts are the underlying premises of our actions. Character matters!
The ego is like a triangle with the “self” prioritized at the top. The self is seen as separate in the hierarchy which can lead to power struggles and wars because everyone wants to be at the top. No one wants to be at the bottom!
Consequently, only one person or a few people can fit at the top and many people can fit at the bottom. Despite this, if everyone’s “self” (or self-purpose, to acquire self-actualization) is prioritized, then the triangle opens, and human flourishing can occur which will allow us to share our different strengths of greatness or brilliance with one another. When the triangle opens, it is flat. Now, all we can do is see ourselves as interconnected (meaning we let go of the sense of self/ego); moreover, continuously seek to understand our motives which are at the roots of our decision-making.
Regarding history, the underlying premise was never about color. It was always about fear, power, values, and cultural differences, but we made it about indeterminate wavelengths and the absence of visible light, and we called it two determinates; it made it easier to create the great divide. It was always about fear and power!
According to physics, black and white are not even colors. These are metaphors used to describe notions of race, a social construct designed to divide people into groups ranked as superior and inferior (Smithsonian NMAAHC, 2021). In color theory, we are all one pure color: “white” people are tinted, “black” people are shaded, and “mixed-race” people are toned.
It was always about cultural values and traditions; it was always about what was considered the norm per pack! I hope one day the world will no longer be seen as black and white or black versus white. Like wishes and dreams, our world is not binary! Our world is on a spectrum, and it is full of color!
Statistics and data sources show that racism and racial profiling have declined, but in this digital era where information travels fast, stories matter! The roots of our decision-making are grounded in soil which is nurtured by a part of the environment and each seed is formed in a womb (e.g., nature and nurture). And we have the potential to behave and act like any wrongdoer, if our soil and embryo were cultivated and nurtured in the same manner, or if our brains were logically inclined (e.g., if we had the same bio-socio-psychological factors). We cannot just get rid of the bad cop or guy and fix the problem. We need to cultivate a better environment that delivers better messages, which, in turn, will create innovative ideas and new subconscious thoughts or ingrained cultural beliefs.
Larry Elder discusses that America’s top domestic problem starts at home with weak or broken families which is demonstrated in a new documentary called, The Streets Were My Father (Elder, 2021). We shape our culture through storytelling! In clip #13: Love from the most unlikely place, from the movie Human (2015), Leonard tells his real-life story about how he misinterpreted what love was through his rough upbringing:
The movie “Origin” by Ava DuVernay tells the story of Isabel Wilkerson, a former New York Times journalist and the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. This movie not only sheds light on the insights I’ve written about in my Medium article “Our World is Full of Color” (2022), but it also dives deeper into our collective history, exploring how the struggle for power and hierarchy was created through caste.
Association for Psychological Science. (2018, April 11). The emotions we feel may shape what we see. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 25, 2022, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180411090441.htm
Elder, L. (2021, June 18). ELDER: America’s top domestic problem. The Daily Journal. Retrieved June 25, 2022, from https://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/elder-americas-top-domestic-problem/article_296e0d84-d032-11eb-b2e2-5ff27f379bab.html
Human. (2015, September 4). Human — clip #13: Love from the most unlikely place. YouTube. Retrieved June 25, 2022, from https://youtu.be/afvN6se3Yug
Smithsonian NMAAHC. (2021, December 28). Race and Racial Identity. National Museum of African American History and Culture. Retrieved June 26, 2022, from https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/race-and-racial-identity
Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation
Forgiveness: fact and fiction.