Meaning clarified
IN REACTION to my letter in the Cape Times yesterday, I would like to clarify some points that I am not comfortable with. My wry remark on the “bloody” Americans as a subtle play on Black Consciousness advocates who now seem to be at war with all the Western world, has been published without the play that I intended.
Especially my remark thereafter that they all, and we all, are biased. I specifically used the Americans and not the English because I deem the Americans apart from their own “firm” identity, also for sure to be criticised, as best capable to take dry humour on the chin without fury erupting.
As stated in a previous letter, I think the growing sense of Black Consciousness is not only understandable, but also necessary and healthy (contextually, for now). The risk is that it becomes an identity without a sense of the enormous spectre of “identities” that need to be reassessed as we get a more advance sense of the “provincial” attitude that we all have as very temporary dwellers on an Earth circling around a dying sun.
I also used the word “psychically” on statues to emphasise that whatever we next envisage as worthy of our unchecked loyalties, all “statues” of the mind and physically grounded, will resemble humans subjectively stating their longing for a lasting Identity.
We should rather be thankful for all presentations of the longing for more meaning and become part of a humanity realising our relative and biased approaches to make sense of things for ourselves.
Finally, we all should also be very aware how our words can carry antiquarian power plays and how other people could also present one to forward own agendas or mere favoured visions of what life should be like.
We need to get to the heart and soul of people other than our “home philosophy group” because this may be the only way to stop the never-ending viciousness between people and groups not discerning between more and less important issues. The only thing in the end that can stretch our “identities” into something never to be ashamed of is unbiased empathy. Wim van der Walt