Unities, freakish and endearing ~ Malinda Words

More than ten years ago my friend Lasitha Yasanga Herath offered the following observation on unity: Unity = kneeling down ‘together’ in front of freaks, trying to intimidate others who have different views ‘together,’ and waiting ‘together’ silently until perverts shit on their heads.

Political ‘unities’ tend to be just as Lasitha describes them above. Yes, even those unities that have left/socialist pretensions of equal, fraternal embrace, decision and execution. There’s comfort in numbers when threatened or for whatever reason wishing ill on other collectives.

The problem is the facts of freaks and freaking. Demagogues and demagoguery. It has as much to do with freaks as with the tendency of the ‘freaked,’ if you will, to be slothful and servile. After all, birds of a feather do flock together. It is not unnatural to feel even slightly more comfortable among those who speak one’s language, share one’s faith, are born in the same geography or identify with the same political cause. One should add the caveat, ‘at certain moments, certain times of the day, certain periods in one’s life etc.’

And another note of caution: not all individuals who attract or gather a flock are freaks although certain elements of the following could very well be freakish and although the churches come up and the priests who run them in the name of the very same individuals can be freaking and freaks respectively.

In tense times, especially when sensing threat, we tend to forget that we are not who we were and will not be who we are. That’s the hour of the freak, clearly. It is also the hour of the inspired, benevolent and strident voice that understands the moment, the role, the community, the deeper truths of the particular doctrine and does not compromise relevant tenets, is sensitive to the larger realities, and more importantly, knows when end-point arrives and has the wisdom to retire. The world is made grotesque and broken again and again by the former kind, the freaks. It is mended and healed by the latter.

Let’s get back to ‘at certain moments, certain times of the day, certain periods in one's life.’ We are one with someone but not all the time, for we (and they) are made of multiple identities. We recognise a particular signifier at a particular time in one another. To put it simply, ‘we go home and we are no longer that which united us with a collective; we are someone’s loved one and we are with ones we love.’

Not just at home. Even in the battlefield, at the frontlines of engagement and heated debate, we are ‘one’ in one sense, but we are ‘many others’ too. We don’t completely retire those other identity-elements that make us. So, theoretically, even as we kneel down before freaks, even as we are not exactly ‘one’ with our fellow-kneelers. And, theoretically also, we could be one on many counts with those who are kneeling before freaks we intend to intimidate. These ‘onenesses’ we suppress, deferring to ‘the need of the moment.’

That’s the problem. The need of the moment. The heat of the moment. These things outlast ‘the moment’ and the onenesses we shelved remain untouched, unnoticed and even disavowed. The freaks prevail. They will, as they always have, focus on the limited and limiting unities, ridicule and vilify those other identifiers shared by all kneelers before any and every freak. The freaks will thunder from the podium and the kneelers will say ‘amen,’ they will cry out in chorus ‘I hear you prophet’. The prophets, for their part, as they always have, will profit.

Somewhere in a less corporeal universe those abandoned unities must be having conversations. Maybe they are still perfecting the communication devices that will give kneelers eyes and voice. Somewhere, as I write and as you read, there are millions kneeling before freaks. Somehow the sore knees aren’t relaying to the brain the hurt, the manipulation and the idiocy.

Somewhere, someone may be kneeling before a freakish idea: I am many and therefore I am one with many; the many may or may not recognise me, but I will refuse to spurn my brother of many unities.

And when that someone becomes 'some people' and these 'some people' forge unities different to those peddled by freaks, the perverts will not have a chance in hell to shit on us. Sometimes we make the earth bleed in our ignorance but at times we make the desert bloom in our awakenings and purities of intention. And one day my friend Lasitha Yasanga may very well write new observations on how things have changed and unities have become more logical and civilised.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

21 May 2023

Unities, freakish and endearing

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