elxn42: the final day before the final judgement.

So, it's come down to this, with under 48 hours left for us Canadians to cast our ballots in the federal election. 

It may be a bit of a surprise to see me coming in with a general evaluation of the campaign landscape so late into the game, but I've been preoccupied with a busy school life, work, and nervously biting my nails to sharp, awkward nubs trying to gauge the final trajectory of this election. 

The polls suggest, by quite a wide margin, that Canada's tried and true—tho not uncontroversial—Liberal Party is on its way to a victory of some sort. Whether this will fly so far as to become a majority mandate (requiring 170 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons), or turn to be a more expected outcome of minority governance, these are both potential outcomes that bode acceptable results for all those with the wider priority of ousting Harper. For those still caught within the bitter partisan divide between the Liberals and the NDP, however, a Liberal victory may garner a hostile reaction from those who hoped the more experienced Thomas Mulcair would take Canada's helm and deliver us from 10 years of what can be called, at best, clumsy mismanagement, and, and worst, outright evil in the form of power-for-powers-sake.

Personally, I found none of this years big political contenders to be either particularly fascinating, nor impressive. Harper, tho very well known to resort to dirty tricks as a way of leveraging himself and his party, took this a few surprising steps further when he battened down the hatches and dug in to a campaign dedicated entirely to fear and what Canadian's would hypothetically lose were they to lose him. He also allowed himself to slip even further from basic ethical standards when he began railing against the niqab, as well as preaching a false gospel of "weed is infinitely worse than tobacco" at the same rallies at which he campaigned with Rob Ford, the former Toronto mayor who smoked crack cocaine while still in public office just last year. In this sense, and due to an illustrious list of dark faux pas that date back to the very start of his political career, Harper was immediately crossed-off as an option in my mind as I've been a long-time supporter of the "Anyone But Harper" movement, and do sincerely believe he has destroyed the image of Canada as a constant and progressive contrast in the world. The strangest thing about his having done this, however, is that this image isn't something I thought I cared about until it finally became clear that he had irreparably taken it away, so I suppose that, by some basic relative standard, I am a bit of a nationalist. (A loose nationalist). 

Justin Trudeau, son of the late former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau—praised for such things as the patriation of the Canadian constitution from the United Kingdom in 1982 and the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, tho heavily criticized for his disastrous National Energy Policy and disproportionate nation-wide declaration of martial law in response to the FLQ crisis in Quebec—started this campaign on a very precarious footing. My largest point of contention with him had been his backing of the controversial anti-terrorism legislation, Bill C-51. For the first month (and prior), he was unable to articulate a clear reason for said support, and vaguely blundered on and on about "Real Change Now!" and "Helping the Middle Class" without elaborating on any clear policy position or platform promises until about a month ago, when he and his party not only began to make properly specific promises, but also gave articulate and reasonable justification to their backing of C-51 and how they intend to make significant amendments (such as adding sunset clauses and clarifying all the vague ambiguities left unclarified by the Harper government via Parliamentary committee and review). At this point, I began to see him less as a potentially necessary half-evil in the drive to remove Harper, and more as a viable option for Prime Minister, though not to a point I felt comfortable casting a ballot in his name (though I would have done so in a heartbeat had it been the strategic option in my riding).  

Thomas Mulcair, however, did—through this process of elimination—earn my vote, but it does have to be said that he wasn't one to particularly impress either. 

Throughout his campaign, Mulcair consistently liked to remind everyone that his priority was "to get rid of Harper," all while buying up ad-time online and on television that often baselessly tore into Justin Trudeau on a personal level as opposed to policy position, and sent a shiver of disgust down my spine as I dealt with the vicarious embarrassment of attack politics; something I strongly believe should be left entirely to the foaming mouths of desperate neoconservatives, as it's only their hawkish, confrontational ideologies that align naturally with such shallow, proto-fascist rhetoric.

Now, with less than 2 days to go, my biggest concern roots from the entirely unexpected Conservative victory in the United Kingdom last May, when, against all forecasts and odds, David Cameron won re-election with the help of a "master of the political dark arts," the infamous Australian political consultant, Lynton Crosby.

Crosby has won multiple elections for the right with the unethically strategic use of "wedge politics," which is to say issues of little to no importance that can be used to viciously divide an electorate and attempt to subdue it to a right-wing agenda with the use of fear. Far from being a legitimate option in a Parliamentary democracy, it is essentially a form of soft totalitarianism in the form of 'divide and conquer.' Though the good news it that there are reports Crosby abandoned the Harper campaign trail just 4 days before the election due to his disapproval of Harper's mingling with the controversial crack-smoking former mayor of Toronto and his pundit brother, Doug Ford, which means that Harper's desperation far surpassed what he believed Crosby could accomplish on his behalf. 

However, my nerve about the election doesn't simply end with the absence of Crosby on the Conservative campaign trail, as his basic strategies still apply, even in this atmosphere of flailing desperation. Not only this, but there have been serious allegations of electoral fraud and cheating leveled against the Conservatives in regard to every election they have run under Harper's leadership, with one lead eventually culminating in an arrest and conviction in relation to the 'robocall' scandal of 2011. The voter turnout for this current election has far surpassed that of the past two, but there is still very much a part of me which is still concerned the Conservatives may be cheating, as it has already been shown they don't feel the necessity to respect the basic foundations of democracy. However: the good news here is that Canadians are already cautious and wary of potential cheating, as is the independent body that oversees elections, Elections Canada. They have made a point of warning voters to the signs of a fake polling station or attempts at voter suppression. So, perhaps, in the end, I don't foresee a Conservative victory in the making, but I am wary to cast a final judgement until the conclusive results have come in. 

Remember to double-check your riding and to vote strategically, everyone.            

Humble Murder

You come out of the dark, and a young Japanese schoolgirl--couldn't be any older than 19--is standing in a heavy-lit archway, the blinkered 'sort-of's' of her eyes only visible in corners due to the convex glare rebounding from the heavy light and onto a parked Miyata windshield, right back into the bloodshot lower-left cleft of each eye, sleepless veins like miniature pipelines slogging her fossil fuel blood to the energy markets of her face (but it ends in death, hopeless economy! it begins in death like OPEC!)

There's concrete, and there's stone: the former a collection of synthetically compiled chunks of the latter. In either regard, it might just be the end of the World, tho just an intermission during an afternoon matinee for the world. There are a lot of things you don't understand. There is plenty more you do, and yet you believe your own humility when it whispers, "You don't," tho you are entirely unaware this is delusion and not humility, but some unconscious form of ascetic worship of WONDER!! You're going coocoo for cocopuffs WONDER! We can remember what J.B.S. Haldane once said: "I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

I was born at the edge of the Cold War. 4 years after America's Operation Just Cause deposed Nicaraguan dictator Manuel Noriega using heavy metal music and heavy metal weapons, loaded to capacity with heavy metal bullets. 4 years after the slow-dissolve tablet of the Berlin Wall finally faded upon the German palate. Brian Mulroney was my Prime Minister at birth. I was also alive (tho not 'conscious,' per se--intellectually conscious, that is) during the Prime Ministership of Canada's first female Prime Minister: Kim Campbell (she was only leader for just over 3 months and thus I cannot give her time in office the full credibility it would have deserved had she been a fully elected candidate instead of an inter-election Prime Ministerial appointment; when, for godssakes, will we have a First Nations' Prime Minister? I would like to believe the only reason there has been none is because the indigenous people have categorically rejected the game-fantasy we have stomped upon their land and the world and self-righteously crowned as 'realistic, sober, objective;' tho maybe I'm wrong, whispers Humility: "I don't know").

There is the endless and omnipotent consensus that the world's about to end. For those who study history, they will often notice that when 'then' was 'now,' it was often and always the end of history. 'Now' is the always-result of 'then' and it will never change unless we neglect its consideration. That's really all theory takes to disappear: stop thinking about it. (as if that were possible, ha!)
Because the impression has been one of pollution and confusion, our wide un-thought idealization as children has often led us to emulate all the bad habits we witness growing up, even if at one point we cloudlessly rejected them because the damage didn't seem clear, it was clear.

I was 8 years old when I took my mother's cigarettes from her bedroom while she slept, and proudly announced to her the next morning that I had thrown them out. She had become furious, tho I had done it out of a militant concern for her well-being. During my years of primeval arrival on this planet, mom had almost lost her life to breast cancer. I can't remember understanding much as it happened, nor do I recall fully understanding the implications of death until my grandmother died and I watched my dad fight back tears as he read aloud her eulogy, recalling a story I can pick through scattered memories stored in grey matter to resurrect only one fact about it: they were on a boat, pulling up to shore. My grandfather--the cheeky Briton-optimist he is--made some silly joke, and my grandmother pitched in. The rest is somewhere else in space.

However--regarding death-- I feel that even then we never understand the full implications of death in witnessing another's death, but only through dying ourselves. Which is fine. None of us need to understand these implications until the time comes (and even then, it may just drip away once you've reached the Light. Which is fine).

Returning to the cigarettes: I had absorbed the common knowledge they were awful for you. 'Death-sticks' indeed, just like that scene in Attack of the Clones. Tho I understood nothing of the chemistry, a box or a video or an authority explaining their potential 'results' or 'consequences' was enough for me to righteously desire to save my mother from her own acquired vice.

14 years later, I skulk through the streets of Victoria with Chris, high on cocaine and chain-smoking Export-A Gold on the subconscious condition that the world will probably end soon enough for none of this to matter. Tho as I said: For those who study history, they will often notice that when 'then' was 'now,' it was often and always the end of history.

History is comprised of an endless succession of losers who sincerely believe they've figured it out. The only redeemable characters in this Human Odyssey are those who have realized nothing in particular. The people who think, believe, and conceptualize as an infinite process; something without a result. Something with abstract 'goals' that only fit for awhile, not forever.

I'm nobody special. Tho, at the same time, I am; and at the same time and in terms of my relationship to this greater Human Odyssey, whether I will matter in this giant plot is in part up to me (should I write a book? 10 books? Relentlessly pursue the arts, whether that be rapping, writing, music?) and in part up to sheer probability (if I do write a book, will many notice? Or will it be swept under the Great Rug of the Present-Into-Past and be forgotten to thought?), and regardless of all this: the rocks will forget. The trees will forget. Both space and dark matter will have already forgotten what I am doing and what I may one day do.

But life can't be approached on a basis of personal impact; honestly, who wants to pursue the writing of 10 books or the creation of albums in the same way the capitalist approaches economy, for sheer attention and accumulation? Those desperado's, those who chase-the-game-of-success, they have already lost. They lost as soon as they tried to win. There is nothing to win, no award great enough to keep, no person you love or have loved who you will not one day depart with for the very last time. But to depart with a personality may be tragic, it is only a true void in concept; when one removes the individual (both themselves and the one they love) from the eternal context of the universe--the ebb and flow of tides to the movement of the moon, the soft breeze supplemented by a fan placed next to an open window, how your hand--when clapped to the surface of a wooden table--is one with the matter in that table regardless of how transiently you perceive such a touch as an interaction. In essence, it's all still here; it always was, and never won't be.

tho maybe I'm wrong, whispers Humility.

"I don't know."

Canada: A Dangerous Moral Precedent (Essay)

 Both of John Nuttall's hands shivered with adrenaline, sweat beading from his palm lines like two dammed rivers barricaded within his clenched fists. In manic, “hokey and harebrained” detail, Nuttall propounded ideas ranging from the hijacking of a nuclear submarine to launching rockets at a Vancouver Island military base (Omand). Searching his name on Google Images—algorithmically organized to create somewhat of an impromptu photo album complete with a haunted nostalgia for what's dead in another's life—paints a horribly incomplete retrospective of a friendly, yet tragic, naivety. In most of the photos, his hair is short and casual. In any average setting, he wouldn't notably stand out from a crowd. In others, taken covertly during the RCMP sting operation (Omand), his hair is gruff and Mohammedan, even Christ-like. In the backdrop is a woman—garbed in a black hijab—gazing outward with the same glazed expression of deadpan naivety etched across her face. Amanda Korody is the second half to this husband and wife duo, both of whom—egged on by a ring of undercover police officers posing as big-whig international terrorists—conspired to detonate pressure cookers stuffed with C4 explosives in front of the B.C. Legislature buildings in Victoria, BC, on July 1^st, 2013 (Omand). Both Nuttall and Korody were recent converts to Islam, sporting a childishly binary worldview in which they believed they were involved in a holy war with the West. Their plan ultimately failed, as it was actually a plan concocted almost entirely by the undercover officers involved. Though both husband and wife existed in delusional idealism and newly adopted dogma, it will now never be known if their violent aspirations were truly preexisting, or simply the result of the entirely intentional encouragement they received from the state. In either regard, the case as to who's the real terrorist in this situation presents itself as an easy origin point for the thesis of this essay. In recent years, Canada has become a greater source of national and international terrorism due to numerous diverging factors, not least of which has been the spectacle of regressive Conservative politics on the international and domestic stages fueling so-called 'eco-extremism,' as well as Islamaphobia and the misled persecution of predominently non-Anglo cultures in a country built as a settler state.

In early 2014, a surprisingly adept and well-equipped group of Wahhabi militants in Iraq and Syria—the local branch of the al Qaeda brand—split with their forefathers and founded the so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant,” conceding to the world that they, and they alone, were the rightful heirs to a model of Islamic imperialism based on the Rashidun Caliphate (Mandhai) of the 7^th century (Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica). Thus was born a modernised medievalism relying on globalised economics as well as global communications to both fund itself, and create a public relations (or, propaganda) umbrella under which it wields the unprecedented ability to attract the disenfranchised as recruits from all corners of the globe. One such corner has unfortunately been western Canada in the form of both British Columbia and Alberta, a potent example of which is Collin Gordon, a former student of Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, who—alongside his brother, Greg Gordon, both originally from Calgary—fled to join ISIS in the summer of 2014. Both recent converts to Islam as Nuttall and Korody had been, they were brought into the ISIS enfold via a recruitment ring active in the Calgarian Muslim community at the time (CBC News). Both Nuttall, Korody, and these brothers exmplify how reactions to the proselytizing project of Western modernity are not an overseas process long distilled and removed from Canadian society, but something which hops back and forth regardless of physical distance, allowing a proverbial form of geopolitical and historical 'karma' to project its inevitable effect directly back on to us at home and abroad. The challenge for the communities affected by these unforeseen departures will be to discourage and—if necessarry—physically block other individuals from following their example. The unfortunate reality is that there is not enough of a moral grounding to Canadian society lending itself to a halfway-decent example of anything that could be considered a cultural or political antithesis to extremist ideology. In fact, the genuinely well-intentioned colonial manifestation of Christian religious extremism—the residential schooling system—only came to a final end in 1996 (Fisher). As written by Alan Fisher in a June 3^rd blog-post for Al Jazeera: “[a]cross Canada, for more than 100 years, children of the indigenous population [...] were taken away as part of the policy of “aggressive assimilation”, or as one survivor put it, "They tried to beat the Indian out of us.””(Fisher). During as well as because of this process of “aggressive assimilation” (Fisher), it has been found that at least 4,000 abducted native children died from such causes as neglect, severe beatings, and malnutrition; but this is only a conservative estimate—one that will continue to grow as research deepens (Kennedy).

As a founded settler-state explicitly established on the repression, conversion, and attempted eradication of native North American's and their cultures, Canada—along with most of the colonial “New World”—has made strides in terms of democracy and general equality, though within the ideologically violent framework of predominant preference for Anglicized culture and appearances. Even in 2012, during the introduction of a new series of banknotes, a focus group charged with evaluating the graphical content of the bills reportedly found that a woman shown to be looking through a large microscope on the new $100 note appeared too 'ethnically Asian.' As such: “[t]he [Bank of Canada] immediately ordered the image redrawn, imposing what a spokesman called a "neutral ethnicity" for the woman scientist who, now stripped of her "Asian" features [...] appear[s] to be Caucasian” (CBC News). Though attempting to veil such blatant partiality as objectively neutral, the racially Anglicized tilt of this decision is obvious. In reality, an acceptance of “Canada” as the petri dish of the world should come as the natural instinct of justice in those not deceived by the fiction of national identity, as both the racial and cultural precedents for this entire continent were established long before the arrival of European colonists or the colonial establishment of democracies not at all unlike that of ancient Greece: with suffrage extended only to men— and, in the case of both the American Revolution as well as the democratization of Canada, only white men of European origin (University of Texas at Austin). Though the scope of democracy both north and south of the border increased dramatically during the 20^th century, unwarranted wars of terror (claiming to fight terror), deliberate ignorance of environmental responsibilities, and painfully blunt movements towards totalitarian democracy—often justified by the phantasmagorical threat of a specifically 'jihadist' terrorist attack—has left Canada (as well as the United States) with little in the way of moral validity. Contrary to the popular idiom, you cannot fight fire with fire without the blaze growing exponentially larger and slipping out of control. The delusions of Western universalisms may have begun the fire, but a plethora of delusional reactionaries—such as militant Islamism—believed they could fight this fire with their own flame. Unfortunately, the West's claims to wisdom, tolerance, and intelligence didn't stop it from responding with further fire—physically, via the careless invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, during the latter of which at least 174,000 civilians died as a direct consequence of the war according to statistics compiled as of April 2014 (Costs of War); and legally, via dystopian legislation such as the U.S. Patriot Act and Canada's newly implemented Bill C-51.

Canada's international regression on the world stage under the Harper Government—such as our unilateral withdrawal from the Kyoto Accord and the enforced removal of Islamic hijabs in courts of law—has worked to polarize activists concerned with social and environmental issues to such an extent as to make them vulnerable to radicalization; it has also worked to marginalize already mentioned minority groups such as Canadian Muslims, paving the way for self-justified extremism. Bill C-51—introduced following the inspired lone wolf attacks in Ottawa and Quebec (Reuters)—came as hazy, verbose legislation aimed at widening the state's room for interpretation. This came as the culmination of years of prior negligence and polarization under which the dialogue of democracy turned into a desperate attempt by activists to shout C-51's existence from the rooftops. Undoubtedly, it has contributed to a deepening of tensions usually resulting in said marginalizing circumstances and thus tremendously increases the potential for radicalization across the board. Bill C-51 (and all similar legislation) effectively adds oil to a hot bed of coal: it's boiling, dirty, and now it's on fire. It seems obvious that Parliament Hill treats terrorism and its omnipotent phantom as a cultivatable tool for political leverage, using C-51 to mow the lawn and keep the semi-manufactured crisis 'presentable,' avoiding a removal from the roots as this would make the declining acceptance of the settler-state further open to offensive approach.

In the end, the immediate threat of ruthless expansion and genocide by groups such as ISIS is nothing the world can reasonably close one eye to without risking the loss of both. It isn't strange that we should desire to avoid and combat such an unprecedented global phenomenon that grows with every passing day, leaving its fingerprints—both physical and electronic—across the breadth of the globe. The danger comes in the form of the precedent we have set in our conceited perception of righteous superiority, toying with the world in a way not at all unlike the 'terrorists' we so quickly denigrate as almost less-than-human in their barbarous sadism. Canada is built on the destruction of indigenous populations; it is founded on a moral base capable of such horrors as physical and cultural genocide. It's a country founded on a land very openly stolen from others, victim of an expansionism so irrationally absurd that its claimed national landmass is greater than the entirety of the European continent. If we're to lend ourselves any sense of moral validity—not only on the world stage, but also historically—we must set a new precedent. There must be a full capitulation to the demographic and historical realities of Canada by the political settler-structure, one which will allow every culture with a stock in Canadian society the freedom to grow and evolve on an equally recognized basis. Doing so will prevent the development of marginalization and will thus dramatically reduce radicalization and its attractiveness thereof. In setting this new precedent, we leave nothing to retaliate against, pulling the rug out from under the extremists' feet as any validation in their rhetoric against Canada dims until it disappears entirely. Both of John Nuttall's hands shivered with adrenaline. “Whose plan is this?” an undercover officer—posing as an international terrorist—asks in regard to the proposal to place pressure cookers stuffed with C4 in front of the B.C. Legislature buildings in Victoria. “It's kind of all of our plan," Nuttall replies, referring to the other undercover officers involved in the sting (Omand). The same undercover officer later writes off Nuttall's plan as “hokey and harebrained” (Omand), seemingly unaware of the perversely extreme nature of his own operation.

You can't fight fire with fire unless you're ready to burn yourself in the process. 

Understanding the Civil War in Syria: Yes, it's complicated.

 Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632, the issue of who was going to succeed him—not as a prophet, but as a 'Caliph,' or leader of the Muslim Ummah—grew from a simple disagreement into a full-on schism. Soon enough, both sides had blood on their hands, and neither could realistically claim a lesser responsibility for the crisis, though both often tried. Despite a passionate assertion that God's final Prophet had given humankind its 'Final Revelation,' the fractalizing movement of history pressed onward to prove that ultimately nothing had changed.

That there could be such a radical schism in Islam at such an early stage in its development seems to spell out how 'average' it is in relation to other religions, and how fractured of an organization it was destined to become from the outset.

All previous historical examples aside, we can see the bitter Sunni-Shiite divide play itself out in the arena of puritanical universalisms simply by observing the sectarian nature of the regional (now international) effort to fight ISIS and bring the nightmare of the Syrian Civil War to an end. In fact, you can almost (emphasis on 'almost' as it's not as cut and dry as some may imagine it to be) even schematize who's on which side by dividing them into their own religiously sectarian camps.

For example: President Bashar al-Assad, the calculated dictator who still attempts to thrive on a Soviet-style cult of personality just as his father Hafez did, hails from the Alawite sect, an obscure branch of Shia Islam. Essentially, they agree with mainstream Shia Islam in believing that Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib (Ali for short) was the first Imam (excluding the Prophet himself), and the rightful heir to the leadership of the Ummah (Muslim community). Shiism's dramatic split with Sunni Islam boils down to the problem of succession, where Shiism and its offshoots believe that Ali and his descendants, as the closest blood relatives to the Prophet, should be leading Islam on this hereditary basis. Sunni Islam, on the other hand, believes (by and large) that the leader(s) of Islam should be chosen by consensus. When Muhammad died, Sunni's took his father-in-law Abu Bakr (or Abdullah ibn Abi Qhuhafah, though no native English speaker has an easy time trying to pronounce his full name) to be the first Caliph as he was preferred by said 'consensus.' They did not believe that the Prophet intended for his succession to be based on the spiritually esoteric prerequisite of blood relations.

Over the course of the next 1,380 years, many smaller schisms have occurred within the two main traditions, creating a fractalizing landscape of conflicting religious doctrine and myth that often leads to more tension than attempts at religious pluralism. Bashar al-Assad's native Alawite sect, as one of many offshoots to mainstream Shiism, has a long history of keeping its beliefs a very closely guarded secret, thus leading to many accusations of occult practice (usually on partisan grounds) and the formulation of elaborate conspiracy theories by those not involved in this Freemason-esque organization. It doesn't help that the Alawites make up only 12% of the entire Syrian population, and are thus perceived as a gilded minority ruling over a fractured and oppressed majority. Since the year 2000, however, advances have been made in deciphering some of the beliefs central to the Alawis, such as the core of the religion being based around a divine triad which comprises of three aspects of one God that cyclically emanate in human form throughout the course of history. The last eminent expressions of this divine triad, in Alawite belief, were Ali, Muhammad, and Salman the Persian (one of the Prophets most loyal companions and the first Persian to convert to the new religion). For these beliefs—which are obtuse relative to the overall standard of Islam—Alawites have been persecuted. Under Ottoman rule, Alawites were brutally oppressed if they did not capitulate and convert to become Sunni. The Alawites rose up in armed revolt against the Ottoman's on multiple occasions, some of which ended in savage defeat, and others which ended in a tense calm during which the Alawites stepped away from world affairs, leaving the Turkish government alone in hopes of this being reciprocated. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War and the formation of the French Mandate of Syria out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Alawis, along with many other Syrians, were able to be recruited into the French armed forces for indefinite periods of time, and often didn't object as the French created small provisional states within the area for each minority population, including an Alawite State which was later dismantled but gave the Alawis key positions in both government and military.

Following a coup in 1949 (3 years following the end of the French Mandate of Syria and the withdrawal of French forces from the area), Alawites slowly consolidated their control of the state apparatus and, after 3 wars with Israel—each of which resulted in a humiliating defeat—Hafez al-Assad was able to maneuver his way up through the ranks of the now-ruling Baathist party to become its eventual dictatorial leader in 1970 after yet another coup. To his credit, he was able to reign in a relatively stable phase of political life in Syria, though mostly through the use of brutal repression and censorship of free speech. It's hard to say with any certainty what role Hafez's Alawite religion played in his 30 year tenure as President, but following his death and the inauguration of his son, Bashar, religion was—at the very least—being employed as a helpful rhetorical tool to inspire unquestioning allegiance as well as continue to elaborate on his cult of personality.

For example, in a 2011 speech to parliament in Damascus—during the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War—Bashar brazenly declared: “we’re reforming all the time. So anyone demanding more change must be an enemy. And we all know how our enemies are treated.” Similar statements followed, occasionally interjected with the so-called 'spontaneous' adoration of legislators who would cheer: “God, Syria and Bashar only,” followed by, “Our souls, our blood, we sacrifice for you.” This all culminated in a rather frightening final statement from a politician in the crowd, who endearingly screamed: “the Arab world is too small for you; you should govern the whole world, Mr President.” These statements, though not directly connected to Assad's religiosity, are as connected to his orthodox disposition as Mitt Romney utilizing God in his campaign rhetoric as a staunch believer in Mormonism.

By and large, genuine religious convictions on the part of Middle Eastern leaders is dependent on the country. For the most part, Syria has been ruled as a secular state. But when things started falling apart, the centrality of sectarianism in a geopolitical context highlighted how deeply-ingrained these divisions really were. Shia Iran immediately decided to support Assad's fledgling government; first with supplies, and later with direct (though undeclared) military intervention. This lent further impetus to the Gulf nations—represented under the umbrella of the Gulf Cooperation Council—to fund and arm the so-called 'moderate' Syrian opposition.

The Gulf Cooperation Council is made up of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia. What do these conservative monarchies have in common?

They each identify as Sunni.

There was even talk of them inducting Jordan and Morocco—both non-Gulf states, both Sunni—in some limited capacity, which was interpreted as their 'closing ranks' in the face of perceived proxy aggression on the part of Iran. And, with the rise of ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) followed by the groups' stunning military successes in northern Iraq and its subsequent declaration of an Islamic Caliphate—based on a historically utopian desire to return to the Rashidun Caliphate which was first ruled by Muhammad's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and followed by 3 Caliphs (leaders) who are considered, in Sunni Islam, to be the four “Rightly Guided” Caliphs—Saudi Arabia was accused of having previously funded and armed the group in what might have been a serious geopolitical miscalculation motivated by the fact that both the Saudis and ISIS share the same sectarian disposition.

This is not to say that all (or even most) Sunni Muslims support ISIS or the Saudi monarchy, but it is to say this is where things get a little more detailed, and a lot more complicated.

Following the Sunni-Shia divide, and as was stated above, there were further subdivisions and the development of sub-sects of either a Sunni or Shia origin, most of which differed quite radically from either main sect in their own unique ways. One particular sub-sect of Sunni Islam which spread with popular ferocity throughout the Arab world was the literalist, puritanical (and fundamentalist) interpretation of Sunni doctrine known as Wahhabism. Though I will refrain from delving into the history of Wahhabism in itself, it is important to understand the ultraconservatism of the movement in the proper context.

Saudi Arabia—an American ally boasting massive oil reserves and a repressive absolute monarchy—is a Wahhabi Sunni state. Its medieval ultraconservatism has made it one of the most profoundly backwards countries in the modern world, being one of the last places where women cannot drive and must wear full-body veils by law. It is also the only place on Earth that beheads people suspected of witchcraft or so-called 'black magic.' During the period in which ISIS was beheading Western hostages such as American journalist James Foley and British humanitarian aid worker David Haines, Saudi Arabia beheaded at least 22 people in August 2014 alone. This, however, is a conservative estimate. As surprising as it may seem for those who have noted the Saudi's to be a loyal American ally, the Saudi Arabian government is exactly the same as ISIS in its nuanced interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Whether the Saudis were funding and/or arming the group in its early years—back when it was al-Qaeda in Iraq and fighting the American occupation—is a curious thought to entertain, as it would point to a utilitarian power politics on the part of the Saudis in which they felt impelled to fund insurgents hell-bent on annihilating the armed forces of Saudi Arabia's closest international ally. This, however, is simply a consideration on my part and is neither substantiated, nor even outwardly claimed. I've only posited it as a possibility due to a similar geopolitical miscalculation made on the part of the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) when they helped to found the Afghan Taliban in 1994 under the direct command of then-Interior Minister Nasrullah Barbar, only ceasing military and financial support after the attacks of September 11^th, 2001. However, it has been alleged this support did not in fact end at all; new allegations sprung up following the death of Osama bin Laden as to how and why the al-Qaeda leader was able to live in a fortified compound in the city of Abbottabad under the nose of the Pakistani government—though I'm going to stop this thought here, as it has no bearing on an understanding of the war in Syria.

Earlier on, I mentioned how one could almost schematize who is on which side by dividing them into their own sectarian camps. The emphasis on almost should be explained, as the situation is comprised of many more shades of grey than pitch black or bright white, and just because someone identifies as Sunni or Shia doesn't mean you can safely assume where their allegiances lie. Muslim society is as diverse and kaleidoscopic as society in the West—possibly moreso, in certain respects—and there are bands of Sunni militants who have sworn allegiance to Assad's government whom are actively battling to defeat the revolution. Even the Vice President of Assad's administration, Farouk al-Sharaa, is of a Sunni persuasion, though he is far from being the 'exception to the rule,' as both the foreign minister as well as the head of the National Security Bureau are also Sunni. This leads directly into the next important point in our search to understand the war in Syria: the standing government—regardless of each individual members personal religious persuasion—has been secular in its operative nature since the rise of Hafez al-Assad in 1970. Though it has used the toolbox of blind orthodoxy to leverage a deified persona of the Assad dynasty in the eyes of common Syrians, neither Bashar nor his father designed their agendas from a sectarian standpoint.

In fact, both leaders worked from within the framework of their Ba'athist ideology, which—though ruthless—has always been an entirely secular movement based on Arab nationalism as opposed to any sort of political affinity with Islam. This hasn't stopped sectarianism from poking its ugly head out of the dirt, however, as even the secular Assad dynasty has had to deal with the implied criticism of being a direct part of a powerful minority and all the complicated social issues this entails. The Syrian Civil war—though mostly affected by deeply-rooted sectarian tensions—has only become a religious war due to the Islamist nature of many rebel groups (such as Al-Nusra, the Islamic Front, Ajnad al-Sham, the Army of the Mujahideen, Hezbollah, and—obviously—ISIS, to name only a few). The irrational universalism of these Islamist revolts has led to many inter-rebel conflicts, stalling the formation of a rebel coalition and granting Assad the leeway with which to slowly degrade opposition to his regime.

It may help here to describe the political worldview of Islam in order to effectively illustrate why the war has essentially ground into a perpetual (seemingly unbreakable) stalemate. But before we do so, one important distinction needs to be made between Islam as a personal or group religion, and Islamism, the interpretive adaptation of Muslim religious principles into a theory upon which to politically order societies and ideally (as will be discussed) the entire world.

Islamism carries itself on the central dualism of Dar al-Islam (literally, 'house of Islam'), and Dar al-Harb (house of war, or—as translated from the slightly alternative “Dar al-Garb”—it can quite literally mean 'house of the West'). The Dar al-Islam exists in a state of constant tension with the Dar al-Harb, and the posited destiny of the former is to overcome the latter and establish the House of Islam as the universal operating system across the entirety of the globe. What's striking about such a concept is that neither Dar al-Islam nor Dar al-Harb are ever mentioned in the Quaran; as well, one must think of 'Islamism' as a term as diverse as its purely religious parallel terminology, Islam. There are multiple forms it has taken as a political ideology, some considerably looser than others, though the militaristic Islamism we are now referring to—as in the Islamism inherent to most actors in the Syrian conflict—is, indeed, the dualism between Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam.

The bipolarity of such a worldview posits that what is within the realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam) is in an eternal state of hot and cold warfare with the realms beyond Islam's current sphere of control (the Dar al-Harb).

PLEASE NOTE: 

THIS IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS

The Singularity is Here

Materialism aside, I've always lavished the weighted, sleek figure of a new device. Whether it's the smooth black of a store-bought notebook computer or the mousey compact of an 8 gigabyte iPod Nano, my enamor with high-technology has been a generational staple since close to the the day I was born. A more recent affair has been my relationship with substance; very rarely has said relationship been without purpose—whether vague or explicit—except during the odd cocaine binge or my popping an extra capsule of Vyvanse when I'm already a tweaked-out emotionless husk squat over a pile of finished homework, craving a stimulant euphoria so-as to keep on chug-chug-chugging my body and brain for fear of the alternative: natural fatigue, and comedown depression. As well, it's likely I try to avoid any potentially visceral realization that my body is beat and eternally damaged as a result of moderate abuse. As will be discussed, it never seems clear if I am making good or breaking bad in this world of liberally-sized lines, livestreams, BlogSpots, Pfizer babies, bursting housing bubbles, waning American hegemony, and the cultural return of the psychedelic. It is my wandering assertion that both drugs and technology—whether in their own respective rights or as a close synergy—are conduits and extensions of ourselves; the next logical steps in moving forward the complexity and intelligence of natural evolution.

* * *

I used to be addicted to following links. On Wikipedia especially, I would sit for hours upon hours upon hours absorbing information fragments that shot through me like visible flashbacks to memories that were not my own and lessons I could now learn vicariously through the conduit of someone elses documented experience.

The light emitting diodes would fiddle with my pupils; I would wonder, at times, if my eyes were just great black demonic puddles when the lights were out. It was that, or they would retract into two little black holes the size of one of these letters, surrounded—rather romantically—by small lagoons of darkish blue. These were my nights alone with myself, where I would recall with intellectual ecstasy and vigor one of my favorite movie lines of all time, spoken by eccentric tour guide and philosopher Timothy “Speed” Levitch:

“On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.”

* * *

Of course, the rise in complexity is inevitably accompanied by a greater demand for stillness and rest, lest the over-exertion of human cognition run our collective psyche into a hall of endless mirrors, spawning a horde of negative feedback loops that manifest in global anxieties and dangerous (even violent?) impulses. The ultimate end-result of this sort of feedback are such common confusions as believing 'theory' and spoken or written vocabulary to be the basis of ultimate and seemingly conclusive (dogmatic) understanding, whereas it's the intangibly indefinable reality of things which predicates all theory. Theory—as a concept in itself and in order to illustrate how we have deified it—can be summed-up in religious terms as “the [Almighty] Word.”¹ To counter this impetus, humans have naturally wheeled backward into the past for answers on how to balance the mind, finding a rich tapestry of practical advice in the mystic traditions of religious prayer and meditation—established ways of silencing the Word and subordinating it to (what Eckhart Tolle or any other Eastern mystic would call) the eternal Now. Yet, even here—in pursuit of mental clarity and reprieve from omnipotent thought—drugs have been utilized as a sort of express-lane into 'union with the Divine;' in layman's terms, this is the felt union with the “Great Big Mystery” we are each born into, and yet will never be able to encapsulate via mere concept or description. A Benedictine monk of the modern era—perhaps a little avant garde in his approach to religious practice—once said that “[e]cstasy² has the capacity to put one on the right path to divine union... It should not be used unless one is really searching for God.”

“Prayer,” he continued, “is communication with God, but tends to be blocked by the internal dialogue, distractions and losing faith in oneself. Using [e]cstasy while trying to pray removes these obstacles,” he claimed. Though he only uses the drug from one to three times a year, the experience causes prayer to flow easier, while at times it has also provided him with valuable insights such as "a very deep comprehension of divine passion."

Where I believe this monk is right, I also recognize he is leaning in far too close to his ingrained dogmas when he brazenly declares how it should and should not be used, as if his 'spiritual plateau' has given him a mutually exclusive rise in religious wisdom and command. What this monk fails to recognize is that we are all—by implication of the human condition—looking for “God” (as the wide allegorical term used to describe the giant, ambiguously inexpressible and minutely-experienced infinity of Reality with a capital R), and that all things may be considered meditation if inwardly felt as such.

So, by implication, it is my assertion—on a macrocultural level—that drugs (including—but not limited to—MDMA) are the modern toolbox used to 'break the fourth wall'³ of consensual reality, thus inducing religious experience: an ecstatic recognition of ones implicit union with existence as a whole. As complexity increases, and intelligence piles on intelligence, this immediate portal into divine providence is exactly what is needed to equalize the growing hyperintelligence of our collective consciousness, as well as be sure our theories do not overcome and rule us, but rather, that we overcome and subordinate them with our acceptance of life as essentially unknowable. We do this as holy humans gifted with the creative ability to define and tentatively order almost all of what we perceive. Drugs have a proven potential to ground us in this divinely-felt reality, though in broad strokes, this can only be said of the overall trends and the ultimate majority, as there are plenty of individuals and groups that will fall off (or, perhaps, simply 'drip away') in this process. Whether it's death by overdose, or the triggering of schizophrenic psychosis as a result of predisposition, not all of us will make it through the ringer unscathed. Some of us will get lost in the hall of mirrors and forget it's just a series of reflections, convincing ourselves of strange and frightening delusions as the feedback loop grows louder. Others—trapped in this hall—will face the mirrors and face the fear with such reckless sincerity that each mirror will shatter into melting shards of glass, and we will stand in this allegorical space and realize: we are finally free. We will tune into the meditative equalizer of the collective psyche and find a level balance upon which to continue the dance of life. Sobriety is a relative term.

And by 'sobriety,' what exactly do I mean? When digging for a definition online, one source defines it as “the condition of not having any measurable levels [of], or effects from mood-altering drugs.” But—I believe—it would be unfair to say 'sobriety' necessarily means a lack of chemical intoxication, as both induced ecstatic experience—whether via drugs, meditation, or exercise—as well as 'insanity'—such as delusional schizophrenia and clinical depression⁴—are not qualitatively sober states of mind given the intensity of irrational behavior and thought. Typically, we would say that people in these states are 'not in their right mind,' but this often includes the relative imposition of 'right' and 'wrong.' People say this of those who are intoxicated as well, and in this respect, I think it would be wise to frame it as follows:

'Mental illness' can only be described as such if it is a negative experience with negative consequence, such as a clinically depressed individual with suicidal tendencies. This is often treated through a synergy of psychiatry and antidepressants, so in this sense, the administration of therapeutic drugs can be seen as someone using substance to find their 'right mind' because said 'right mind' was not a static given at birth. This is in stark contrast to the online definition of 'sobriety' which states that “[s]obriety is ... considered to be the natural state of a human being given at a birth.” But in the context in which I use it, 'sobriety' means nothing more than a rational balance, and as such, a new-born does not qualify as sober. When there is a lack of balance, those who are willing to take the risk can find said balance through the use of certain psychedelics in the proper set and setting, though I do not wish to sound conceited and pretend drugs are the only way to find this balance because they most certainly are not. There are many ways to plug into the meditative equalizer of the collective psyche, and drugs—I believe—are only an express lane.

This is, maybe, where technology falls neatly into the picture. Or, not so much 'neatly' as logically; with a sort of implicit and inevitable absurdity that measures itself in synonymous union with the rise of collective hyperintelligence, having acted as both its predicator and intensifier over the course of the 15^th to 21^st centuries (and prior, of course, but I place my starting point—rather arbitrarily—at the invention of the printing press, as it is my assertion—or, assumption?—that the printing press is what ultimately accelerated our overall advance). Though we live in the consensual (and waning) illusion of being separate egos carried about in flesh-bodies inside of a bag of skin, we linguistically recognize the absurdity of such a claim when we look down at our hand and say we have a hand, as opposed to we are a hand; or, “this is my hand,” as opposed to, “this is a hand.” In reality, the hand is an inevitable and compound part of you, though to further illustrate my point, I can utilize this same linguistic ambiguity to assert that you are saying the same thing when you pick up your phone and say, “this is my phone,” as opposed to, “this is a phone.” And, in this day and age of increasingly smarter phones with which we each have unbridled access to the entirety of collective memory, knowledge, and documented experience, it is easy to see the truth to Jason Silva's⁵ observation: we are already cyborgs; technology is an extension of both our intellectual capacities and our physical bodies. To further drive this point home, we have been in a self-amplifying feedback loop with our inventions since the advent of language, with said inventions acting as exoskeletons with much wider function than the basic human faculties of arms, legs, hands, and feet.

* * *

At this point, I feel it might be necessary to address—for posterity's sake as well as to further marginalize the Judaeo-Christian intuition of substance as taboo—the fact that I may never have come to these conclusions were it not for the use of drugs—which did, as stated above, break my 'fourth wall,' allowing my intellect to dive into thought and reflection from multiple and otherwise unseen angles. This came alongside my utilization of high-technology such as the internet, which exposed me to the entirety of our collective psyche—point-blank—from the day I was born.

* * *

Only a couple of nights prior to this writing, my girlfriend and I were on our way home from a friends house-warming party during which we insuffulated 2 or 3 lines of ketamine—the sedative-psychedelic and 'rising star' in the underworld drug scene—becoming deliberately lost and enamored with the misty visage of Victoria at 3 AM on a Monday night. The surrealism of a city of empty streets in an early maroon fog was truly something to behold, and the colonial vibe of old British architecture in fluid combination with the ancient totems of the First Nations people was an unbridled magic. At one point, we were gazing with psychedelic curiosity through the window of the gift-shop at the Royal BC Museum, a collection of Emily Carr books placed on a front-facing display. All I knew of Emily Carr, at this point, was of her career as a famous author born in this same city. My interest was immediately piqued, and I wished to know more, so I took the smartphone from out of my right pocket, held the 'home' button for close to a half second, and explicitly asked the device: “who was Emily Carr?”

Within seconds, I had a detailed dossier on close to every detail I could have ever wanted to know.

* * *

I was brought into a world where the self-amplifying feedback loop of human progress has accelerated to such rapid intensity that we are witnessing evolution manifest within the short space of our own lives. In some cases, we also witness it within ourselves and within those around us, constantly pushing the boundaries ad infinitum until the glass sphere bursts and we realize it isn't glass, but a bubble.

Sobriety is a relative term.

Did you have your cup of coffee this morning?

1 As is stated in John 1.1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

2 Perhaps better known as the famous ethneogen, MDMA

3 "Breaking the fourth wall," in theatre and film, often means having a character become aware of their fictional nature. In this context, I use it to describe how acute transcendental experience often causes one to become aware of their own 'fictional' (or, conceptual) nature within the context of labelled and ordered society.

4 Clinical depression is not so much 'insanity' as it is a state of deeply self-conscious irrationality.

5 Jason Silva (born February 6, 1982) is a Venezuelan-American television personality, filmmaker, and performance philosopher. He is best known for his YouTube series, “Shots of Awe.”

Academic Journals for my Western Religions class

Week 1

General Insights:

As might be a commonly filled gap, I was entirely unaware of Lilith as Adam's first wife in the Garden of Eden. In an allegorical context, this seems to parallel the lecture material of the late Terence McKenna who would (and most likely did) find much kaleidoscopic significance in this version of Genesis. The clout surrounding this version seems mutual throughout the three Abrahamic religions, and the story in itself seems more valuable to Western mysticism than to its Orthodox counterparts. By far, this changes my knowledge and interpretation of Judaeo-Christianity as a whole.

Question: “What do you expect to learn in this course? What do you bring to the course, and what gaps of knowledge and insight do you wish to fill?”

Answer: Religion, in all of its facets, has always fascinated me. As an intellectual, I have run the developmental course of the passive Baptist turned evangelical atheist, swearing off religion and all those who ignorantly believed in the literal interpretations. Over time, this position softened into an acceptance of ambiguity, and the recognition of the symbolic value and allegorical importance of religion as a whole. I wish to learn the detailed ins-and-outs of Judaeo-Christianity as it continues to affect our collective psyche as both a race and a culture. Most recently, the monotheistic authority of the Church was usurped by the desired objectivism of science. When Nietzsche said 'God is dead,' he did not mean that a literal God was dead, but that our attempt at objective truth was dead and dying. I believe that we now live in a time that seems to be positively dealing with what was once a psychological trauma manifesting itself in philosophical nihilism and scientific reductionism. It's like the allegory of the finger pointing at the moon: both religious scripture and scientific literature are fingers. Historically, much of the race has been stuck staring at the finger, when the finger is wanting you to look away and at the moon.

Week 2

General Insights:

The story of Exodus and the rise of the ancient Israelites sheds light on the mechanisms that lead to the creation of a religion. As I stated above, the allegorical value of each religion is incomprehensible in scope, but does not exempt said religions from creating and developing cultish orthodoxies that eventually grow to fuel functionless dogma. This is due less to the importance of the stories, and much more to the use of these stories as tools of power, appealing to the lowest common denominator in order to establish and perpetuate a social control. The three Abrahamic religions are especially in need of constant scrutiny, as their symbols are often historically invoked in demagogic rhetoric as a means to a Machiavellian end.

Question: “What is the significance of the command to not make ‘images’ of God? Note the discussion on the‘tabernacle’ on p. 78.”

Answer: This strange commandment—made most viscerally in Judaism and Islam—has become a dogmatic crutch upon which many assume there is still a strange sort of anthropomorphic God (or Allah) with a humanocentric agenda, yet do not realize that a command forbidding anyone to create images of God is nothing more than the 'finger pointing at the moon,' with said finger shaking at the moon in a desperate attempt to make humanity look—as individuals—at nothing but the moon. It is an allegorical dictate that is, in essence, describing that God or Allah are symbolically representative of the Great Unknown; the massive scope of the reality we live in that cannot be described, discovered, or illustratively depicted (only reveled in). As far as my interpretation goes—aside from the dogmatic twist this demand has taken with the childish evolution of orthodox religion—it is meant to humble the hubris of the human intellect and arrogant assumption by describing that what is represented cannot ever be understood by anyone, ever. It is tantamount to what the late and great Alan Watts once said: “something we don't know is doing who knows what; that is what our knowledge amounts to.” This is not to say we should cease with our curiosities or attempts to better ourselves through philosophy, science, or spirituality; it is only to say that there is no truth in deciding a particular religion or school of thought is in any way objective. In some abstract way, the early Jews (in regards to the 'tabernacle' and the mysterious concept of 'Shekhinah,' a transliteration of a Hebrew noun which denotes the presence and indwelling of Divinity) understood the undeniable mysticism of their God, as well as the elasticity and essential 'invisibility' of truth as a whole. This, by and large, is how dogma evolves; as a result of trying to consolidate a certain amount of static consistency through the guarantee of ritualism, unaware that said consolidation is as impossible as freezing a cloud.

Week 3

General Insights:

The history of Judaism is much longer and much more complicated than I ever ventured to imagine. One of my main motivations for taking a class on Western Religions was due to my perception that I generally understood the basics of Christianity, and had ventured upon my own initiative to learn as much as I could about Islam as soon as I saw polarizing agendas and orthodox prejudices begin to grow in the minds around me. This Islamaphobia was obviously rooted in the attacks of September 11^th, 2001... but have been reignited with the military successes and sheer brutality (physically, ideologically, and otherwise) of groups such as the Islamic State. So, although I know I have many gaps I'd like to fill in my knowledge of Christianity and Islam, my knowledge of Judaism has always been one of complete ignorance. This is mainly due to the convoluted nature of their Holy Books (such as the Torah, the TaNaKh, the Talmud, the Mishnah, the Midrash etc) which I am still having trouble deciphering, but which I feel I'll be one step closer to grasping by the end of this semester. I learned, long ago, not to equate Judaism with Zionism, but did not entirely understand what separated the two as a result of my confusion over whether the Jews were primarily an 'ethnicity' or a 'religion.' With the help of this class, I've come to the tentative conclusion that the Jews—by and large—are a bit of both, but primarily neither.

Question: “What challenges did Hellenism bring to Judaism, and how did Judaism respond? Note the groups and the changes in Jewish ideas.”

Hellenism had a profound effect on Judaism as a whole. Not only did the Jews begin to adopt Hellenistic mannerisms, they also began a cross-cultural synthesis between Jewish and Hellenistic thought. This is illustrated in the writings of Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in the ancient Jewish diaspora of Alexandria. It is also touched on to a lesser extent in the writings of Maimonides, who was born in Cordoba at the beginning of Moorish Iberian rule (and thus also absorbed much in the way of Islamic thought and mannerisms). By the third century BCE, knowledge of the Hebrew language had declined so dramatically that the Bible was translated into Greek (called the Septuagint).

Judaism responded in fractalized ways to Hellenization depending on the group or subgroup. Some acquiesced and began to adapt, whilst others continued to believe Hellenization and the Greek rule of the Jewish homeland was an abomination that must eventually be ended. After a century of Greek hegemony, a change in dynasty from the Ptolemies (descendants of one of Alexander's generals) to the Seleucid's (the rulers of Syria) finally predicated this end. The Seleucid's bastardized the sacred Jewish Temple by transforming it into a shrine to Zeus. This ignited the Maccabean revolt, which was successful in expelling the Greeks from Palestine and reestablishing a Jewish state. This victory is still celebrated today through the tradition of Hanukkah.

Week 4

General Insights:

It is common knowledge that the Jews have a long and illustrated history of marginalization and persecution—more than a few cases of which lead to either expulsion (from post-Moorish Spain and, at one time, even England) or genocide (in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia). What seems to be historically taken for granted is the grand scale upon which those of Jewish belief or ethnic connection were forcibly removed from Spain in the 15^th century, both as preamble to and because of the Spanish Inquisition. The expulsion was so rapid and chaotic, in fact, that in 1492 when Christopher Columbus was setting off to find an alternative passage to India (and accidentally came upon North America—or the Caribbean, to be exact), he had to launch his voyage from a quiet southern port because most of the major Spanish ports were so clogged with forced Jewish immigrants.

Most of these immigrants found refuge in states under the religious authority of Islam—such as the Ottoman Empire—and began to develop new twists on their ethnic and religious identities, as well as work to the benefit of their new respective homelands.

Personally, it still perplexes me as to why Jews were always specifically targeted as scapegoats. I've heard many different theories on the matter, the most unlikely of which are such theocratic assumptions as “God is punishing the Jewish people,” or that the Jews are at the center of a worldwide conspiracy tocontrol the financial system and such... but others, that do make socioreligious and economic sense, include the observation that the Jewish people (especially in Medieval Christiandom) were marginalized to such great degrees that they were either forced or decided to reside in walled ghettos surrounded by bigotry and paranoid superstition. This marginalization led to the development of a very self-sufficient and introverted culture that struggled with all of its might to resist the political and religious forces demanding its extinction. This magnified the external perception of peculiarity in the eyes of non-Jews, and made them a 'sore thumb' in many societies looking for scapegoats to ease any sense of personal or collective responsibility. This is, quite plainly, what happened in Nazi Germany.

Question: “Is mysticism a comfortable fit for Judaism, or is something like the Kabala, way out in ‘left field’?”

Mysticism, by my standard interpretation, is a good spin to have on any religion. Orthodox literalism is bogged down in useless rhetoric, committing itself to enforcing abstract laws of the spirit as opposed to embracing the fact that spirituality is an individual experience beyond the realm of verbal expression.

In and of itself, Kabala is an incredibly interesting take on the Jewish religion, but in its scope of articulation, it has developed its own specific dogmas and orthodox superstitions (such as the numerological aspect which stinks of a certain form of pseudoscience).

By contrast to orthodox Judaism, I would have to assert that Kabala and other such mystic traditions are radical exceptions to what appears to be very strict rules (hence why the rabbinic movement holds such contention against it) but expresses a more realistic version of and expectation towards religious “truth.” It's brazen cosmological assertion that it holds the key to a form of enlightenment, however, brings it closer to the same orthodoxy it seemed keen to allegorically reinterpret.

The Asterisk (A Personal Essay)

It was six in the morning: I sat in a cab dangling on small-talk with a middle-aged white male cabbie basted in the demeanor of the over-friendly uncle. He asked me about school—I'm hyperawake, paranoid, body pulsing, feeling loose, depersonalized, and lightly psychedelic—my vision wavering as if someone had entered my skull to punch raw brain. I did a gram and a half of cocaine that night; mixed lines with ketamine to simulate a proto-psychosis, but am convinced I may very well have driven myself past the point of no return. I'd been doing this strict mix for over 2 straight weeks, landing myself in out-of-body experiences and coked-out drawls on the floor like a sad, puckered monkey chewing on a lemon it mistook for an orange. Why I led myself to this existential precipice is both beyond me and totally within my rational sympathies if I pretend I am on the outside looking in.

When I was 18—drawn, for the first time—away from smalltown Powell River and into the Vancouver suburbia of Port Coquitlam, my only successful job-find was a McDonald's arched inside a Wal-Mart. The double-insult this presented me as a teenage anarchist pushed me deep into my first true emotional crisis which I only turned to accept after a particular phonecall with my father in which he appealed to me to think of this stint as a 'temporary social experiment'; a chance to learn and breathe this proletarian experience from the inside out. During the pre-Christmas nightshifts, the only customers we ever had were the dark, apathetic silhouette-people Wal-Mart hired to greet the absolutely no one's walking through the door. I incessantly cleaned what was already a mirror-wet floor and made sad conversation with Rosario—the slightly autistic shift-manager with a prickly-shave of a face and an awkward sense of humor I could never come to appreciate and yet always managed to humor in polite obsequiousness. Regardless, it was a form of spread and endless boredom that began to fascinate me; it brought me to a darkness I had never quite known. It was an experience—like all experiences—to be had at least once, to the fullest and truest intensity. To be pushed with reckless sincerity.

Ever since, I have found myself pushing every limit to disembodied extremes—on occasion, to points of such profound irresponsibility or feigned responsibility that I break a particular streak and wind-up on the other dichotomous side of whatever line I unintentionally (or intentionally?) crossed (or broke?) because everything is a social experiment and I've touched the multifarious lives of overworked modernity, residential care aide, dishwasher, Christopher McCandlessesque wilderness jaunt, melancholic Kierkegaard, psychonaut, and now: a short-lived junkie inspired by the excess of Burroughs and the early beatniks all willing to kill their darlings for the sake of blood-stained posterity.

And yet meanwhile—in the cab—I can feel my headache grow perceptively wider from my left temple. Almost like a mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll I am watching from as safe a distance as the physical body can withstand, according to some calculable hypothesis drafted by Oppenheimer himself. I am constantly amazed at how lucid I am in conversation with this friendly cabby; given that I feel as if I'm about to go schizo, focusing so deftly on the way the streetlights glide across placid puddles moving only with our tires intervention—and the way I keep imagining insanity in the form of a zombie-likeness of myself strapped into an electric chair, skin melting and eyes rolling back in my head as I seizure to metaphysical death—I still laugh away short quips about the blind-leading-the-blind (he has no idea how to find my destination, and keeps pulling over to check a book road-map for 4143 Hessington Place). The only reason I am with him now is that I am venturing to see my girlfriend at her group-house past Uvic where the door is always unlocked for friends and friends-of-friends, she being the only solution to this crisis with her stash of .5 Xanax pills.

I remember those tense moments—with my body and brain as taut as a bow—he would pull over or pull out and my entire existence seemed to move through space and time as if against a wind that was perpetually in resistance—as if my entire consciousness was going to capsize into some form of overdosed darkness. Even when I exited the cab and waved a friendly goodbye to the old man, I could feel my dopamine receptors attempting to fire on empty. This caused a latent buzz that was only solved with two milligrams of alprazolam and my eyes wide shut until my head shut down.

I held her close. I knew she thought I was an idiot.  

*PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A 'PERSONAL ESSAY' ASSIGNMENT WRITTEN FOR MY CREATIVE NONFICTION CLASS, JANUARY 27TH, 2015