Crazy fucking shit, Black supremacist screamin’ on some Jews at York University

 

 

The incident described in this post took place approximately two weeks ago; I forgot to post my reaction then.

Yo I just witnessed some of the CRAZIEST SHIT IN THE FUCKING WORLD. There’s a big contentious explosive debate on York University campus, right? Very strong and powerful pro-Palestinian activist movement. Strong marriage of the Palestinian cause to anti-racism, leftism, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, the whole shit, and they’re a big presence on campus. So there’s all these accusations that Israel is an apartheid state and there’s this booth that’s been set up daily with a wall of material cataloguing the atrocities visited on Palestinians by Israelis. Plus you got these strong assertive pro-Israeli Zionist groups tryna counter all that, calling out Islamic states as the real perpetrators of apartheid, and demonstrations in the big spacious main hall depicting the fence Israel built in the Palestinian territories and how it’s necessary to keep out bombers and terrorists, and organizing against Hamas and Hizballah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an’ all these folks that’s aligned against Israel an’ working for the destruction of Israel. And there’s been mad confrontations, lots of mudslinging, right, security scuffles, flaps, brouhaha, sturm und drang, whatever. Fuckin’… craziness. But yo.

YO. This afternoon it got tooken to a new level. Okay so there’s this booth in the hall, right? Palestinian activists from Students Against Israeli Apartheid with they wall, an’ they holdin’ court as usual, keepin’ watch, an’ debatin’ a bit with some Jewish and Zionist students like always, right? Heated, natch, but civil. An’ then out of nowhere this Black man comes barreling in, intercuttin’ into the conversation, an’ spewin’ summat at the Jews ‘bout “You’re a white supremacist racist, you’re supporting oppression” and he’s got this loud foghorn voice an’ he’s screechin’ ‘bout “you gotta learn that you white folks can’t be runnin’ the world, you’re imperialists an’ racists” an’ he’s talkin’ how the Tunisian Jewish kid who’s arguin’ with the Arab SAIA folks is jes’ a wannabe white, a lackey of white supremacism. He’s spewin’ this shit, this crazy shit, screamin’ an’ screechin’, never lettin’ these fellas get a word in edgewise, and this European Jewish student joins the fray, this tall Jewish conservative fella, and he starts screamin’ back at ‘im, like, “You a racist, Nelson Mandela and Dr. King would spit on you”, an’ the Black gent—who looks a good spot older than I am, an’ he claims he ain’t a York student, but God knows—he’s like, ‘Well, all whites are devils an’ you’re a white so you got racism in your soul”, an’ he’s callin’ out the Jews in Palestine sayin’ they’s perpetrators of White supremacy, an’ the Jews is talkin’ bout “No they ain’t, Israel lets in Sudanese refugees from Darfur an’ shelters ‘em, plus there’s Black and Brown Jews from all around the world livin’ in Israel”, an’ it’s the Tunisian kid sayin’ this, an’ the Black man is like, “You a wannabe white, you know full well you can’t do nothin’ without the White man’s say-so, like this n***a Barack Obama runnin’ for President but he can’t do nothin’ if it ain’t got the White man’s assent, an’ you’re a racist and an imperialist, you’re a white racist”, an’ the Tunisian Jewish kid is like “A minnit ago you said I was a wannabe white”, an’ the Black man is screamin’ an’ screamin’, on and on and on, jes’ screamin’ on these motherfuckers. And it goes on and on and from about 20 people millin’ about, discussing this shit, suddenly it’s several hundred and they’s all videotapin’ it an’ phonin’ they friends tellin’ em “Get over here and watch this” or sayin’ “Where’s security? Where’s security?” an’ A HALF A HOUR goes by an’ still ain’t no security, an’ then finally Security shows up an’ they’re tryna apprehend the screamin’ Black man an’ investigatin’ the scene askin’ folks what’s been goin’ on, an’ ‘e’s like, “Typical, you run to the other White man try to get him to bail you out, run to protection from him”, and the European Jewish kid is like, “Right, that’s what the White man is supposed to do”, an’ the crowd is gaspin’ an’ videotapin’ tryna be puttin’ it all on YouTube an’ it goes on an’ on until finally the shit is dispersed an’ the hall is quiet again.

CRAZY FUCKING SHIT.

Par for the fuckin’ course, of course. When the Tunisian kid axes ‘im, “Are you with Farrakhan?”, tryna find out if he’s Nation of Islam, he says he don’t know who that is but most likely he was NOI or 5% Nation of Gods and Earths, or if not belongin’ to one of those then definitely influenced by Black nationalist thought. Hatred of white folks and Jews and the supremacy of nonwhites as superior beings to whites. That shit is par for the fucking course, yo. That shit is everyplace in hip-hop. Mad rappers who talk about politics follow that school. Political rap wouldn’t exist without it. And I’ve studied the NOI and the Five Percent. So I know from that shit. Trust me, I know from that.

Clarifying the “eat itself” business (anxiety about Bahá’í rules and norms)

When I referred in the title of an earlier post to the possibility that the Bahá’í Faith could “eat itself”, I had lifted the phrase sans context from a post I’d been working on much earlier, and had never been able to complete, so I never fleshed that remark out. What I’d meant is that from what I’m learning, it would appear that the Bahá’í Faith’s central administration is authorized to act in such a way that certain dealings in the personal lives of the believers are subject to vetting by local or national institutional authorities, and further, that there are serious limits on the kind of political behaviour and activism that can be engaged in. The worries I have about this are twofold: number one, I feel that the  integrity of religion is undermined if it exerts too strong an influence over the free mental lives of its adherents; and number two, the prerequisite to work toward a unity of perspectives among people, while it could presumably have marvelous beneficent effects in a strife-torn environment where people could be brought to discuss issues civilly and recognize their common humanity, would create morally problematic conditions in a circumstance where speaking out with a potentially partisan voice on contentious issues would be a moral prerequisite for the advancement of human wellbeing in a given issue. A Quaker activist friend of mine who has worked as an irrigation specialist and elections monitor in nations like Rwanda, and who is closely involved with the work of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, has commented on his work with Bahá’ís by saying they’re “very good at taping over corners”, or something to that effect—what he meant was that Bahá’ís are never in a position to take a meaningful stand on serious political issues of the day, because fears of appearing “partisan” and thus being barrier to human unity are too strong. That attitude also leads, or so I’ve heard, to a kind of micromanaging of the activities of the intellectual class, and a vetting of the opinions they’re allowed to publish in the common arena, so as to avoid bringing shame on the community’s reputation or putting persecuted Bahá’ís in danger by dint of some risqué opinion being advanced by some Bahá’í thinker in some magazine somewhere. Simply put—there are severe limitations on freedom of speech. And also, I’ve heard, of thought. And that’s disquieting. And in addition to that, the political quietism advanced by the religion’s institutions means there are only certain approved channels through which a Bahá’í can direct her activism, which might lead to missed opportunities to make meaningful contributions to human betterment that can only be made by wading into contentious political waters.

 Sure, Administration-approved Bahá’í activism has sometimes led to great things. Yes, there’s a certain integrity and a great deal of bravery involved in the fruits of the non-confrontational Bahá’í approach to problem-solving. And yes, my anxiety over these issues—un-assuaged even after hopeful discussions I’ve had with some of my Bahá’í faith-teachers and friends—is partly owing to self-interest, in that I’d like to one day become a global opinion leader, member of the political-journalist class, influence the global conversation on political issues, say it how you will. I’d like to become a political editorialist, engage with other intellectuals on the issues of the day, and be free to speak my mind however I like about what’s going on, even to the point of critiquing individuals, policies, governments, decrying human-rights scandals, standing up for personal beliefs and causes dear to my heart, and so on. Some of this may be able to happen if I become a devoted Bahá’í, but most of it probably can’t. And either way, I’d have to wait ‘til I’m officially an adult, and I’m in such a milieu, before I deal with those issues, and that’s going to bother me until then. So I have major concerns, and I’m not sure if it’s possible to deal with them.

Now I am aged twenty years.

First day of bein’ 20 was yesterday. I’m here! I’m livin’! Motherfucker who want what?!

These are the final hours of my nineteenth year

And I have used this day much as I have used all too many others, in lethargy, listlessly going about the business of no business. Pretending to do homework, only leaving the house to cash a cheque issued two years ago. Intending to go to buy groceries but wasting my time on the Internet and losing my opportunity. Failing to decide what to do and where to go for a birthday celebration mandated by my father (not an event I’d like to take place, but there’s no disputing it; for his orders are to be obeyed, his will to be carred out, always, even on my birthday, even as he protests this isn’t so, that he is reasonable and fair, and woe betide me in the morning when he returns from vacation and finds his quota of at least four friends of mine invited—no less!—hasn’t been met.) Chastising my family’s good-for-nothing dog, so desperate to follow me about everyplace lest I perchance offer her food (and taking that which I haven’t, cf. the dinner of egg omelette I made myself, in one of the rare instances when I bother to cook for myself or indeed exert any effort of any kind on any task—an omelette made, of course, of no fewer than four eggs, perhaps half a block of cheese and surely more oil than was required, and which will likely kill her before morning’s light.) Studiously making sure not to apply for any jobs, not to actually complete long-overdue assignments, not to do anything remotely indicative of a working ethical compass or a sense of responsibility or even a pulse.

 

Wasn’t there once a time when one was expected to be an adult at twenty years of age? To be mature, decent, competent? Sure, many of those about to turn 20 are as mired in lethargy and complacency as am I. Sure, many couldn’t find their ass with a map. But does that give me any more of an excuse to be so venal and stupid? Especially since so many monumentally misguided people have praised me to the skies since I was a wee lad for being precisely the opposite?

 

At risk of sounding fatuous and self-pitying, let me take stock of my situation. One is oft-encouraged to dream of great things. To set goals and achieve them. To believe that anything is possible. Surely some measure of optimism must be preferable to the glib and glum dimestore nihilism I’m feeling in this last hour of my nineteenth year. But what if one has no goals, no dreams, no zest for life? What if one abhors his past, fears his future, sees no meaning in life or reason to continue living bar the societal prohibition on suicide, and an unwillingness to sadden his relatives, and a recognition of his comparative safety and affluence relative to starving African children? That is, no reason to stay alive that has anything to do with the quality or meaning of his life itself? What then?

 

Another prong in the argument I use to impugn myself when I’m in a self-hating mood

…Is that one would think, after my having been praised for so many years as an uncommonly intelligent person, I ought to have superior capacity to reason as to how to most effectively dig myself out of such holes. When adults have read my writing or heard me speak, they’ve oft-commented that I ‘have the mind of someone much older’ or that I’m ‘possessed of wisdom beyond my age’. Those praises start to ring infuriatingly hollow once I’m grappling with such seemingly easily solvable problems. It’s mostly about growing-up, which means most adolescents probably go through similar trials, but when I’m in one of those moods where I’m inclined to severely and harshly critique myself, it reads like weakness and inferiority, abdication of moral responsibility, refusal to live up to ethical principles.  Flowery rhetoric without the concrete action that would validate any claim I might have to being a truly good person. And given how highly and how extravagantly I’ve been praised, by many people and over the course of many years, as being an intelligent and good person, the contrast between the high expectations for my achievement, the seemingly ceaseless confidence that I am to achieve exceptional things, and my intractable shiftlessness, self-involvement and avoidance of responsibility creates a huge cognitive dissonance that I find hugely taxing to deal with. In short, I get told by most that I’m the greatest guy in the world, but more often than not, I look to myself like a person falsely assumed to be good who’s actually a cretin, a pretend-ethical piece of shit.  That’s an argument I commonly levy against myself; I just stated it with a venom I’m not unused to unleashing against myself. And it’s probably not productive, but it’s human.

Some emotional and psychological problems I’ve been dealing with (postadolescent laziness, complacency and fear)

In a matter of days, I’ll have officially been alive for twenty years. Irrespective of how little responsibility the youth of today are expected to have assumed for their own affairs at that age in comparison to how quickly they were working and autonomous in days of old, that’s still something of a big milestone. It’s a nice round number, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to imagine that at least a slim majority of people will have done something interesting or achieved something notable and praiseworthy by age 20. And by that measure I don’t think I’m where I would have liked to be by this age. It’s not to suggest that anyone is responsible for having the world completely figured out, but I should think that there are certain elementary matters that most others in my peer group seem to grasp, and to have willingly taken control of by now, where I haven’t, and in addition, most youth my age who are at my level of intelligence have accomplished things which are more noble than me.

I’m not saying this to invite self-pity or to insult myself; it’s simply an observation, not intended with any of the kind of malicious self-hatred that inevitably gets parents and psychiatrists alarmed whenever it’s exhibited by any youth, as has happened with me in my past instances of depression and suicidal self-loathing. What I’m presently talking about hasn’t to do with any lingering perceptions of myself as unethical or unworthy of respect, such as they are. To whatever effect I can construct a healthy and rational self-critique to encourage myself to work to achieve on a level I haven’t yet, I’m attempting to do that now.

 

One of the most puzzling and damning things about growing up in extremely privileged, affluent circumstances in more or less the safest country in the whole world is that if the conditions into which I’ve been born are so naturally advantageous, and if I have privileges I haven’t earned through my own sweat and access to opportunity that an extremely vast number of people around the globe, whose worth on a person-to-person level is of course a hundred per cent equal to mine, simply don’t, then I think it might be objectionable not to expect that I (or someone else in my position) should do more to cultivate those opportunities, and be a benefit to others, than I’ve yet done.

Part of what feeds this critique is the fact that many of the people I grew up around, in middle and elementary school and so forth, were exceptionally bright and kind individuals, altruistic in a very real sense, who were unpretentious and unassuming about exerting hours and hours’ worth of hard effort to go the extra mile to achieve selfless goals. Someone I knew from school, a ninth-grade crush, got involved with the United Way and did more than five hundred hours of volunteer community service instead of high school’s requisite 40. Another school acquaintance, David Berkal, was one of those supremely talented, organized and motivated people who has enough inner strength and wherewithal to achieve things many adults never manage to; he founded Project Equity, a nonprofit devoted to spreading awareness and demanding action to end the ongoing Darfur genocide, and also got involved in promoting microcredit and sustainable development in Africa. Some friends of mine went on aid missions to help schools in the developing world; others worked steady jobs and taught children to ski or swim or dance, something I never had the patience to even apply to do because I don’t like kids enough to want to work on their behalf, or pander to them, or deal with them—an exception is my adorable two-year-old niece, Aaliyah, but even she gets annoying sometimes. It’s not to suggest that these people I knew from high school were inveterately superior to me because they did these things and I didn’t, but I definitely felt like I lacked something essential that they had, especially because I never really saw any of them complain about having to perform such challenging tasks. None of them seemed to be selfish about it; they all just performed, and they succeeded phenomenally. There were many such people around me, throughout my childhood and early adolescence, and I was always awed by the way they willed themselves to do such altruistic things, but I was always too lazy, too unsure of myself, and too self-interested to follow in their footsteps. I did win awards from teachers and school staff, from elementary school to a prestigious citywide award for “courage and strength of character” or something in eighth grade, all the way up through some similar award at high school graduation. It was lovely of the people who thought to bestow these awards that they saw good things in me worth respecting, and I can’t deny that I have a good effect on some people and I have some characteristics that people have always admired. But I can’t help but feel that, if not mistaken, the people who’ve admired me so much—and there are still many people who praise me highly—have a subtly different criterion than I do for what makes a person worthy of praise and respect. I’ve said some things that others have found eloquent or inspiring, and I do like being (somewhat ostentatiously) generous and sweet to people, doing things like holding doors open for girls or being ready with a tissue when a stranger sneezes. But I do feel like most of that which is seen by others as the good in me is rather shallow and tepid compared to the actions and behaviours of most of the other people I grew up around, who expressed their goodness not with mere words, but with very substantive, and strenuous, deeds; things that they did at great cost to themselves and their comfort that benefited others and the world around them. Generally, I haven’t exerted a great deal of effort or put myself under major duress to do right for other people or commit altruistic acts; it’s almost all been facile, easily accomplished token decency, and although it’s almost always sincere, and practically never done for show, I definitely do revel in the attention and adulation it’s earned, and I did when I was younger as well. Nowadays, I look back at the younger me, who won awards for decency at school and summer camp, and I see a calculatedly cloying prat. And I look at the person I presently am, a week before I’m to be twenty years of age, and I don’t see a completely worthless, horrible person, but I see a chronically overvalued, silver-tongued, lazy, self-centred, risk-averse underachiever, hardly at all competent in a majority of the basic areas that are necessary to learn how to deal with in order to get by in the world, even if I excel in some trivial matters that won’t really help me excel or be of any lasting benefit to anyone else. And the way I’m talking about myself at present is gentle in comparison to the way it often is, when I don’t have the calming effects of prescribed mood-stabilizer and anti-psychotic medication to calm the seething spasms of self-hatred that sometimes afflict me; if I weren’t taking medication, it would be considerably worse.

The problem I now have is that after all of this very precise self-analysis (which, as I see it, probably bespeaks a certain self-importance just by being so exactingly detailed), I don’t know where to go from here, or when I do have some seemingly feasible solutions, I’m too lazy, afraid and complacent to put them into action. I’m seduced by comfort into a lethargic unwillingness to work to make myself more productive and more in line with the model I’ve got for how an ethical person should behave. Because I so regularly sublimate my ‘ideals’ to my fear and laziness, I usually critique myself rather harshly as an nnethical person, and to some degree I think that’s valid, because an ethical person should showcase their goodness through actions, not just rhetoric. I consider it unethical that I haven’t fought harder to find myself a paying job, for example; most of my peers got their first jobs at 12, 14, 16 and have been working steadily and with little complaint ever since, whereas the only jobs I’ve gotten have been through nepotism or through the forceful hand of my father, who’s pushed me to do many things I haven’t wanted to do in the name of my betterment, and whose manner and personality, diametrically opposed to my own in many key respects, bring me into conflict with him for other reasons that I could probably discuss in a long full-throated rant at some other time all by itself. He’s upbraided me about not fighting to get myself a job—not knocking on every door, asking every friend, pushing my c.v. into every pair of hands—for many months, and still I’ve done nothing. And while he and certain other smart critics, who can see through my nicely spun sentences to detect that I’m avoiding the issue and forestalling the taking of responsibility—notably my brother, who’s unfailingly perceptive, and not at all afraid to be upfront about critiquing my faults and calling me on what he perceives as bullshit (not always accurate, but always worth considering)—would probably lay into me even now for being evasive and letting myself off the hook by talking about my experiences with the issue rather than going out and working hard and resolving it—might rage at me, I’ve still done nothing. I find it easy to spin excuses and convince myself to believe them, which makes it more difficult. I tend to attack their methods or small inconsistencies in their arguments, which makes me feel good about myself and allows me not to feel as guilty about continuing to delay a confrontation with the problem. And nothing has changed. On most days, when I’m feeling an intense surge of self-hate, I tend to tell myself that I don’t even think I’m capable of changing, that I’ve let myself down so many times that I can’t trust myself to make positive change in any meaningful way. Sometimes I genuinely believe that’s true.

And the troubling aspect of that is that, by my ethical standards, it’s impermissible to allow that belief. Because if I concede that to myself, then I’ll never move on. I’ll have invented a mechanism by which my continually delayed progress—which sometimes leads me to spitefully tell myself I’m in ‘arrested development’, eternally a dependent child—becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, impossible to get beyond. And, because in my flurry of self-hate I’ll have pilloried myself so much and piled so much scorn and contempt on myself that I’ll think myself entirely worthy of abasement, I’ll tell myself it’s congruent with my fundamentally lazy and shiftless nature, which would make the continued suffering I’d feel by letting myself down over and over again and staying underdeveloped entirely justified.

I usually tell myself that the main challenge is to force myself to change. And when others inquire into how I feel about myself or when those friends of mine who know about some of these anxiety issues ask me how I’m doing in dealing with them, I usually tell them that I’ve met a roadblock in the ongoing effort to better myself, and that I’m stumped, but I’ll triumph one day. It’s very easy for me to spin such blather in very eloquent language, which stops others from thinking it might be revealing or necessary to inquire further. And the crucial missing ingredient is any hint that any real effort, requiring pain or suffering, or even a disruption of my present hedonistic way of life, is necessary, will be exerted, or is even possible. I don’t make those demands on myself. And that’s the problem. I’m at an impasse, and whenever I’m confident that I know what to do, I feel mentally blocked or tied down to daily life and unable to do so. Or I make excuses. So I’m stuck, at least for now.

Will the Bahá’í Faith eat itself?

I’m intoxicated with God. I don’t know why, I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I’ve decided as of not too long ago to make God central to my life. I pray to Him every day, asking Him to spread His spirit of compassion over the whole world, and until recently I was pretty sure I had found a religion in which I would be comfortable spending my whole life acknowledging him—The Bahá’í Faith. I was all-but certain that deep down I was a Bahá’í, and that I would soon be ready to live my life as a believer in the faith.  Its teachings resonate with me on a profoundly meaningful level. The founder, Bahá’u'lláh, had emerged in 19th-century Persia and proclaimed himself the harbinger of a renewal of the ancient purpose of God, the most recent in a neverending chain of God’s prophets, His messengers and representatives on Earth, who were to appear sporadically throughout history, by God’s design, to further the development of humankind by teaching different versions of the same message, each one tailored to be appropriate to the specific demands  of a given age. Bahá’u'lláh made the claim that he had been sent by God as the most recent such messenger, in order to effect a re-establishment of what he taught were God’s eternal and unchanging principles: the equality of human beings, the oneness of religious truth, and the essential unity and dignity of souls under the parenthood of God. He affirmed that the meaning of earthly existence was for souls to develop admirable spiritual qualities and to progress towards the One, an idea that in some small measure has helped me to make sense of the dismaying trials and difficulties faced by human beings in the world. He taught that it was necessary to enshrine a world system where resolution of conflicts and action against human rights violations would be taken by a just and fair world government, and where acknowledgment of equal human dignity was inculcated at birth by a mandatory system of free education for children all across the world. I thought these teachings were as wonderful as anything I’d ever encountered before, and at first blush I felt like I could accept them and incorporate belief in Bahá’u'lláh into my life. I was searching for belonging, and I felt that joining a community of several million believers dedicated to such principles and spread all across the world, in contrast to the ethnic homogeneity of the environment in which I had been brought up, would prove meaningful for me and sustain me throughout the rest of my life.

If nothing else, the Faith deserves to be more widely studied by students of religion, and its teachings ought to be a lot better known, because on the surface of things, it seems to provide a workable answer to virtually every key question about the meaning of religion and God’s intentions for humanity. It acknowledges as prophets and messengers of God the central figures of the majority of the world’s religious traditions—the notable exception is Guru Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs, who is seen as a saint, not a prophet, and respected, not venerated—and describes the various revelations of religious doctrines as different stages in God’s unfolding plan for humankind, each appropriate to the degree of spiritual development as yet attained by human civilization.

This notion, termed “progressive revelation”, inspires me. Growing up in a Jewish environment, for example, I was taught that Jesus was a respectable person and noble teacher, but that he hadn’t come to my people, and that those who believed he was King of the Jews and the promised Messiah were misinterpreting prophecy. Given that the specific denomination which I have been raised (Reconstructionist Judaism) also disavows the existence of a real supernatural God, instead recontextualizing Him as “the power within us that enables us to rise above our brutish animal natures and do good in the world”, such prophecies about a Messiah were seen as unimportant if not illusory, and there was never any emphasis put on the idea that God might be a real Being, as opposed to an imaginary construct. But two or three years ago, I experienced something of a spiritual awakening, where I decided that, even if the ultimate question of God’s existence was to remain forever unsolved, I wanted to believe in Him and conduct my life as a pious person, talking to Him regularly, acting ethically in accordance with His presumed desires, and following a religion in order to recognize Him. To this day I remain devoted, asking Him to bring justice into the world and to show favour to my loved ones and deliver justice to oppressed peoples the world over. But I knew that in order to make Him an integral part of my life, I would need to find a religion that believed in the truth of all the prophets and wisdom traditions, that didn’t conceive of Him or His Truth in exclusivist terms, that is, one which didn’t believe that ‘salvation’ or union with Him was attainable only if one believed in the correct doctrinal interpretation. I believed, a priori, in prophetic continuity and would never accept a religion that, for example, saw Hindus or Buddhists or Sikhs as heathens, or consigned disbelievers in God to a fiery comeuppance in Hell.

 

In that sense, the Bahá’í Faith was a balm. It was like manna from Heaven, almost, to learn that there existed a faith that affirmed the validity and the Godly origin of the Dharmic religions, which are so easily dismissed as erroneous pagan fictions by dogmatic monotheists. The polytheism seemingly enjoined by early Hinduism is seen as an acceptable antecedent to later revelations’ emphasis on monotheism, and the nontheist emphasis on detachment from worldly affairs that is enjoined by Buddhism is argued to be a direct voicing of God’s teachings, as appropriate for the time and place in which Buddha’s ministry occured. It still irks and perplexes me that Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of a distinct and wonderful religion of whose essential truth I am sure and whose texts I often study in my spare time, is not included in the Bahá’í pantheon of major Messengers of God, but other than that, they include most of the key religious founders and teacher-men of the world: Most of the key Judaic prophets are noted, as well as Krishna (questionably, seen as the central figure of a straightforward, organized Hinduism), Gautama Buddha (alleged by Bahá’u’lláh’s son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as having originally been a monotheist), Zarathustra, Muhammad (whose life-story I have difficulties with anyway, but that’s for another discussion), and Jesus Christ. It’s not a perfect delineation, but that this universalist vision was taken seriously by a religious group as God’s actual intention and design was phenomenal. At once, almost all the missing pieces seemed to fall into place. Of course these messengers were all sent by God! So this means prophetic continuity is real!” It did trouble me somewhat that God’s renewal of his message meant the old way was always completely abrogated—didn’t that amount to a kind of religious supremacism, meaning in effect that those following religions other than Bahá’u’lláh’s were actually in error?—but in essence I felt I understood, and agreed. To me it signaled that God was compassionate, not presumptuous, that he had not erred in creating both Abrahamic and Dharmic systems and then leaving some religons’ adherents to attack others’ as to which paths were true, as I had initially conceived. And further, the Bahá’í Teachings explicitly disavowed racial, religious, gender, ethnic, and nationalist prejudice, and encouraged believers to work to dismantle these bigotries in the modern world. So I was flush with the sense that not only was God real, but he was an aware, perceptive, thinking God—alive to the difficult tenor of our times and possessive of a radical, but workable and sensible, remedy to the troubles we face.

 

I still get a serious rush of wonder thinking about that. But lately I’ve been discovering that there are chinks in the armour, which are giving me pause in my would-be headlong rush to embrace this marvelous panacea for spiritual ills. First there were some frustrating realizations about certain laws and ordinances that weren’t deal-breakers per se, but would grate on my nerves: the reserved attitude towards non-vocal music performed in Bahá’í temples (more of a curio than anything); the insistence upon heterosexual marriage as the only legitimate conduit for expression of sexual desires (which would mean I’d have no choice but to get married if I eventually wanted to fuck somebody someday, a troubling prospect seeing as I’ve no present interest in raising children and little if any pressing personal need to tie the knot); the opposition to the preaching of sermons and the impossibility of any role for clergy (which irks me only because I fancy myself leading a religious congregation of some sort one day, giving sermons on God’s universal law and the applicability of certain teachings of His through His messengers to modern situations); and other such minor caveats.

 

Then came the realization that because the Faith focuses so much on the building of a new world order (where perfect justice will eventually be upheld by this unified world government—a notion that’s worrisome in itself), participation in political affairs, and the open expression or advocacy of particular viewpoints or on behalf of causes, is discouraged, which worries me as someone with a reasonably high capacity for analyzing and proffering what I would reluctantly call intelligent opinions on and solutions to contemporary political matters. If I have to constantly watch my step to avoid the appearance of undue partisanship, how could I conceivably express full-on opinions about the political issues of the day? But since Bahá’ís place an extraordinarily high premium on the principle of the unity of humankind, any actions which might cause “disunity” are frowned upon, including those where the only people one might be “disunited with” are bigots, terrorists, or other such plainly loathsome people. The Faith takes the position that there are no truly loathsome people, and so taking a political stand against an unjust government or issuing a sarcastic and barbed editorial criticizing a particular public personage might be construed as violating the laws of the Faith. I value the principle of free speech highly enough that I very much fear that a life lived with a fettered tongue, constantly watching to be sure I didn’t overstep the bounds imposed upon me by religious authorities, would be too morally troublesome to be worth enduring even for the Faith’s sake.

 

Then comes the fact of obedience to the Administration itself—for the religion’s affairs are adjudicated by an administrative body, obedience to whose decisions is expected to be absolute—or else one may find oneself tarred and feathered as a heretic or apostate, and threatened with excommunication. There is a supreme council, which functions like a nine-person papacy, and which makes decisions on matters not explicitly addressed in the sacred scriptures. Service on this council, called the Universal House of Justice, is restricted to men—the service of women is engendered in all administrative levels except this, the highest one. The House’s members are elected, and from what I’ve read, the nine men presently serving all seem relatively nice and decent. But I’ve done some Internet research, and read reports of vile censorship and restrictions on freedom of speech and association carried out by organs of the Administration operating under the auspices of “protecting the Covenant”, that is, safeguarding the integrity of religion from schisms and attacks. Juan R.I. Cole, a critic of perceived obscurantism in the community who eventually resigned from the Faith and became a (rather shrill) leftist political blogger, was hounded for daring to criticize the UHJ’s exertion of coercive authority, and actions were also taken to hound participants in Internet mailing lists where issues were discussed freely, with no requirement to treat the House of Justice deferentially or always respect its authority. One of the first links I followed on the Internet when I first learned of the Faith led me to a website set up by an angry Bahá’í dissident, Frederick Glaysher, who claimed that the UHJ had become a tyrannical despotism and that the document alleged to have legitimized its founding, the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, had been scientifically judged at the time of its writing to have been a fraud. Not knowing enough about the substance of his claims, and feeling a little put-off by his vitriol, I decided not to involve myself overmuch with his sect, which he dubbed the “Reform Bahais”; but I kept the heart of his thesis, which seemed to be that the UHJ was exerting undue control over the lives of individual believers and behaving like thought-police, perpetually in mind. I read that the authors of an academic paper proposing the repeal of the law denying women the right to serve on the House had been expelled from the Faith, and that the price was high for any Bahá’í who dared publish a paper like this one. I had read that the aforementioned open discussion groups had been shut down, that the Administration had trademarked the word “Bahá’í” and was resorting to legalese and threats and intimidation to block the progress of fledgling dissident sects. I read allegations that the standards of scholarship and academic integrity in the Faith were meager, impeded by a policy of “Bahá’í review” that requires believers seeking to publish books or papers on the Faith to first have them vetted by a doctrinal authority. At this point I started scratching my head… “What the hell is the purpose”, I thought, “of a religion with no clergy if there are people charged with the authority of controlling and authorizing people’s thoughts and opinions?!” The question still vexes me greatly.

 

I don’t want to have to live in fear of shunning or excommunication for voicing a non-majority view. I’m skittish about deserting a modernist faith, which involves the laity in decision-making and fully enfranchises gays and lesbians, with a religion that has a central authority requiring obedience and which endorses heteronormativity. I’m scared of a kind of spiritual totalitarianism, and I’m a little angry at myself even for thinking that such a thing could be true of this beautiful Faith. I’m sincerely scared. I don’t want to have to watch my step to avoid saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. I want to be free to criticize whatever political leader or institution or policy or practice or individual behaviour. I don’t want to be accused of “promoting disunity” if I were to, for example, decry the persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan, or talk openly about the threat of Islamic jihadism, and the prompting it receives from textual sources. I’m worried about having to take an ultra-reverent attitude to Bahá’í foundational texts, central figures, history, and Administrative authority. Most of the religon’s sects seem like bands of kooks, but Frederick Glaysher’s criticisms seem pertinent. Yet I know that if I associate with him further, and believers in my local community (who include many of my closest friends) were to find out about it, I could be shunned. One of the first Bahá’ís I spoke to online, a girl serving at the Chicago temple named Naseem, warned me that “debate” was something of a dirty word in the Faith—that discussions could take place, but only within circumscribed limits that allowed for only the absolute minimum of conflict, contention or dissent, a way of doing things that seemed to me to fundamentally deny the inevitability of conflict and assume an immaturity on the part of human beings, that any dissent must necessarily signal ill-intentions, with no grey area acknowledged. The Bahá’í attitude against “promotion of disunity”, according to some friends, even encompasses a disapproval of attendance at anti-war rallies and of civil disobedience. When I tried to argue that Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi’s campaigns represented a kind of disturbance-of-the-peace that was utterly necessary for the advancement of justice, my Bahá’í friends, taught in Bahá’í classes to respect Gandhi and MLK but never to emulate their example, told me I was mistaken, that less agitation would have been better. When I spoke of the importance of fighting Islamic jihadism, one friend even insinuated I was a warmonger. This approach—along with the ideal of world government—seems to me to suck the vitality out of the human condition, and I’m scared at the prospect that a Bahá’í life means an inoffensive life, where one is not free to rake muck, where one must always be circumspect and seek only approved knowledge, ask only approved questions.

 

All these concerns dog me still. These factors and more frighten me, intimidate me, worry me. And it breaks my heart to imagine that this Faith, which on the surface seems so heartrendingly beautiful and offers so potent an answer to that which ails humankind, is itself so deeply flawed and has never rendered itself immune from dogmatism, from bigoted interpretations, from human frailty. And Bahá’u’lláh’s proscription that the clear meaning of the texts never be interpreted into something else means that it seems extremely unlikely that any of these issues will ever change. I’m hurt, I’m afraid. A part of my soul wants to leap in and declare my faith in Bahá’u’lláh and membership in the Bahá’í community, no questions asked. The nineteen-day month of fasting is due to begin today, and I’m eager to take the leap, to endure the fast in order to signal my adherence, my allegiance, to the Bahá’í Faith. But another part knows it’s almost inevitable that I’ll run into some kind of trouble with that later, and doesn’t want to be associated with a community afraid of asking questions. Yet at the same time, on the level of day-to-day interaction with my Bahá’í friends, the feeling of belonging and peoplehood is so joyous and overpowering that I feel I’d lose something integral if I didn’t make it official and truly commit to the Faith, damn the consequences. So I’m troubled. I could always stay a Reconstructionist Jew, which would be easier on my family in any case, or I could explore Universal Sufism, a path meant as an augmentation to traditional religion, not a replacement of it, with which my interactions have been very fruitful. But a part of me cries out, cries out, to be a Bahá’í. And because of the state of the community and the taboo nature of the problems I need to address, I may not even be able to bring such matters up, much less discuss them openly to a sympathetic ear. Ultimately, it won’t kill me not to be a Bahá’í. But it’s something I fear will haunt me, and I confess I’m not looking forward to the feeling.

Where y’all at?

Word up, this is how we gon’ do this.

I’m the Rhinoceros. I’s a rap cat. It’s one of the most important things to me in all the world. And I’m fuckin’ insane with it. I learns rappers’ real names and personal histories. I’ve prolly heard of the most respected rapper in any city you can name. I dip, dive and dash across my university campus hollering Camp Lo lyrics at the top of my lungs. I seem to be able to find a Scarface song to soundtrack my every experience. I can never seem to stop myself from lip-synching or audibly mumbling “Bring The Pain” or “Light Sleeper” on buses and subway trains. I spend hours and hours online debating the latest shit at the greatest place on the Internet and trolling mp3 blogs for new Bay Area hyphy singles or old De La Soul B-sides. It’s just what I do. More than that, I reckon it’s who I am. I haven’t got a choice in the matter, and I wouldn’t have it any other way regardless.

Now, it’s become cliché that inside jessabout every rap fan there lurks an aspiring rapper, especially those of the hopelessly naive, manifestly untalented, homely bleachskin sort who couldn’t sell a record if an entry pass into the Playboy Mansion were included with the purchase. This lot is mine, hopefully exempting the ‘untalented’ bit, an’ I’m more than well aware of it. Even my “slangwich”, my personal creole, that is the Queensbridge and Port Arthur-influenced dialect I may or may not choose to speak in here and in real life, raises a few “Aren’t you just a condescending whiteboy?” eyebrows. To which my answer is “Fuck no, I’m for real”, but point tookened all the same.

All that said, I fancy myself a very good rapper, and I’m looking to record a sampler tape of my own spittage. Given I comes from a way the fuck upper class bourgeois background an’ I’s neither known real poverty, sold crack nor even so much as seen a real live gun, it ain’t my business to be talkin’ gangsta shit, even if plenty of my favourite rappers gets they bread an’ butter that way. But neither does I reckon I’d like to get down with the main underground clicks, who too often seem like unimaginative, moralistic, backpacking nostalgia-pimps, and I usually don’t fuck with the wilfully oblique post-rap set either. ‘Sides which, put simply, I ain’t sure my life would make for great rap shit. The world don’t need to hear from a rapper who reads The Economist magazine and whose favourite movies are Persona and Before Sunrise rather than Scarface. So I’s tryna take a different route; I reckon I’ma try an’ spit some inventive imagery an’ some generosity slang, and see where that takes me.

As of the last eight months or thereabouts I’m also one of a number of righteous folks who gets busy out at Hip-Hop Karaoke. I do my thing. I make no claims to be exceptional, but folks seem to really dig the way I get down. The event has developed something of a serious following, and a terribly gracious gentleman called Jordan Timm was kind enough to write about it in a recent issue of one of this country’s most respected national newsmagazines.

Along with a real ill pal of mine and fellow HHK stalwart, I’m also a contributing writer at Dope-A-Lot, an online publication of uncommon sophistication and editorial élan, scrupulously devoted to cataloguing and detailing hip-hop-related goings-on in my city. Its éminence grise, its raison d’être, is the noble and gracious Philip Litevsky, otherwise known as Strictly Tev, a man few among his acquaintances regard as anything other than a most exemplary gentleman indeed. I also contribute to Allan’s World, the increasingly popular online hangout of a casual music-crit friend; we review groovy new shit from all over the globe, largely indie rock an’ whatnot. That shit is dope!

But some would doubtless argue, more than persuasively, that someone of my background ought to remain on the sidelines, rather than trying to jump into the ring. It’s not easy. White folks who come from moneyed backgrounds are viewed with suspicion in the culture, even though certain older or less-popular strains of the music find that they’re virtually its only audience. The rhetoric of Black liberation and self-reliance, and sometimes anti-white racism and separatism, arose in hip-hop as a response to white fecklessness and oppression, and if hip-hop is genuinely meant to be the voice of folks of colour (as I believe it was chiefly intended and shall remain), a bourgeois white person is gonna have a tricky time as an MC. And I’m not as angry and violent as the most credible of white emcees have been, so I can’t really authentically claim to have lived the kind of life most of the greats have lived. I’ve never lived in the hood. I’ve never even lived next to the hood. And hip-hop, for all its pageantry and smoke-ring-blowing, values conviction and authenticity above all else. So if I opt to try and make a name for myself, as opposed to making music for myself alone to listen to, it’ll be a long haul.

But I can’t stop, won’t stop. Hip-hop is my lifeblood. I live it an’ breathe it, I shit it an’ eat it. I never been defeated, punked out, retreated. So it’ll be whatever it is. Knamsayin’?

360 degrees of perfected styles

Yes yes! Fresh for twenty-o-crazy eight! It’s your motherfuckin’ mellow ya man, the one an’ only, the mighty mighty righteous Rhinoceros! Finna do it up this year, yunnerstannat? I’m sayin’, doe. True motherfuckin’ game!

In all seriousness, yo; I’m a university student in Canada an’ I reckon I’ll use this space to say what I feel, an’ offer opinion and comment on issues of the day. Musings on geopolitics, religion, literature, cinema, personal goings-on… whatever comes to mind, really. Spittin’ that real shit, but with fine sentence structure an’ such. Straight up wid no chaser, knamtalmbout?

I ain’t know how to start this shit.

Rappers, I monkey flip ‘em, with the funky rhythm…