I saw Saul Williams recently. It was deep. I'm still trying to mull over, distill and unpack before sharing at length. But he alluded to a quote by Paul Robeson which Williams used for the introduction of one of his books, and I thought it raised an interesting point.
The man who accepts Western values absolutely finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions, and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living.
He also broke down the word dis/oriented and through some slightly creative etymology said it meant "to turn away from the East". We are lost and we to turn back to the Eastern spiritual traditions to find our bearings again.
7 comments:
Aime Cesair has a similar quotation. Fanon has similar and more in depth quotations.
Eastern religion and philosophy are beautiful for sure, but sometimes it's only possible to find religion in a place you have to search for it - often amongst impurity.
Many from the Eastern countries didn't find the heart of their religion till moving here... I know many a Muslim who didn't find Islam till moving here (although they grew up in Islamic countries).
just food for thought. :-)
ok you got to finish this story i wanna know what happens next
sondjata - yes, I'm sure that many people have said similar things. there is no new thing under the sun, no doubt.
wayfarer - yes. very true, very true.
noriega - i'm not sure if it is really a story, just thoughts more than anything else. But I'll tell more about it, inshaAllah, later on.
I don't think we can really define "eastern" or "western" as being inherently good or bad. "Eastern" civilizations (which includes a lot of unrelated cultures) are often every bit as fucked up as we are, just sometimes in different ways. I didn't see anyone perform a clitordectomy, drown a baby girl, or chase an untouchable out of my neighborhood this morning.
Abdul-Halim S. said...
Yeah, alot of times I might post or quote something while at the same time wanting to "problematize" it too. I don't want to simplistically and superficially say that East=Good, West=Bad. But at the same time, I think there are alot of people who in the back of their minds simply reverse that equation. If I wanted to be more careful, I would probably say that there is something valuable in the "Orient" which alot of folks on this side of the Ocean seem to be neglecting and if as a society, we selectively incorporated some "Oriental" elements things might get better.
And about your example, I have an entry on it from a while back but in the Vagina Monologues (which I've been thinking about recently) has a blurb about how the "last" clitordectomy was performed in the US in about 1950 or so.
And even in modern times, you find occasional stories about unwed teenage mothers leaving babies in dumpsters or people get chased out of certain neighborhoods due to hate crimes.
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