Monday, July 20, 2015

Homo Orientalis, Homo Occidentalis

Syrian refugees, Omonoia Plaza, Athens, 17 July 2015
"The East" is the name of a lie; the lie of the West. Consciousness of the lie is the only path to truth. The East reveals the lie in which western (wo)man lives -- a (wo)man less human the more s/he thinks s/he is human, more than other humans -- a human protected from dehumanization, the deprivation of human identity, because s/he is white and "civilized." The East reveals the need of the western (wo)man for the lie, their identification with the lie. The foundation of the lie is the belief that exploitation does not poison consciousness; that there is a "spontaneous" expression that is not based on exploitation within societies dominated by capitalist relations of production. The western (wo)man is the one who benefits from the fruit of such exploitation but refuses to acknowledge it. It is the (wo)man  who has forgotten the East, does not wish to know about the East, and yet pretends to "know" what exploitation is. The western (wo)man is the one who may accept debating capitalism but does not wish to speak of imperialism. Because for that (wo)man, "capitalism" is not something that concerns the East, that is baptized in its blood; its protagonist and its victim, western (wo)man believes, is, once again, western (wo)man. Like imperialism, western (wo)man is a parasitic entity dreaming of being the universal subject: dreaming that his/her fantasy is reality, his/her desires are a moral law, the satisfaction of their Ego a moral demand, their pleasure the historical end justifying the means of martyrdom for others. The world, which is not western (wo)man, will keep turning into hell for as long as every human being does not rebel against the infamy of being "western" -- nothing more than western.

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