IDENTITY AND VIOLENCE – AMARTAN SEN – SEGMENTS

Oscar Wilde made an enigmatic claim, ” Most people are other people.”

We are indeed influenced to an amazing extend by people with whom we identify.

Many of the conflicts and barbarities in the world are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity.

A major source of potential conflict in the contemporary world is the presumption that people can be uniquely categorized based on religion or culture.

A unique divisive view goes not only against the old-fashioned believe that all human beings are much the same but also against the less discussed but much more plausible understanding that we are diversely different.

The world is frequently taken to be a collection of religions or cultures, ignoring the other identity that people have and values, involving class, gender, profession, language, science, morals, and politics.

This unique divisiveness is much more confrontational than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that shape the world in which we actually live.

ADRIENNE RICH – JEWISH AMERICAN POET – For The Painted Note Poets

Adrienne Rich refused the National Medal for the Arts.

” I could not accept such an award from president Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration.
I believe in art’s social presence – as a breaker of official silence, as a voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright…I do not know that art – in any case, the art of Poetry – means nothing if it simple decorate the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
The radical disparity of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate…”

AARON WOLCOTT – PAINTEDNOTE

down by the river
and the ghosts of tens and the trading fair
a friend is there
and we walk and talk to the train tracks
with our stonetaps, till over the water
we drink painfully the white reflecting
of streetlamps
all along the calligraphy and we pulled
down the gravel slope to the home of the wraiths
that once frightened me, and i clung to the rocks
but here there there is only decayed bedding cut
by the splinters of moonbeams between
the clenching fingers of the trees
and we are quiet
as we cast the hooftracks of brave children
in the wake of the dinosaurs that stand on their graves
and blot the stars
aligned to the phases of the moon in mazes of water
and the fossil pipes we climb to the brow of the giant
that creaks and sway and we look down
and it is a thousand feet to the rocks
and to the day.

From original – Please visit Paintednote.net

OMAR MAWLOUD – AFRICAN THINKER

” In order to turn a man into a subservient, obedient, and trusting creature, we must strip his personality away. Because as long as he has a character he can not be a servant. And in order to get a good ride from a nation, human feelings must be taken away from them, or at least weakened. As long as the Easterner feels he is independent, noble, and worthy, he will never fawn and wag his tail for a Western morsel to be thrown to him.”

Consider reprogramming your self, Western thinkers do not represent the entire human civilization. In searching for a writer and thinker, we must look for those individuals whose pain, history, condition, and fate are similar to ours.

Suggestions: Omar Mawloud, Kateb Yassin, Omar Ozgan, Frantz Fanon, and Aim Cesaire.
Send comment and suggestions to H.A. 801-413-4061; poethector.com; poethector@Gmail.com

THE SUN – JUDAH AL-HARIZI c. 1170-1235

Look: the sun has spread its wings
over the earth to dispel the darkness.

Like a great tree, with its roots in heaven,
and his branches reaching down to the earth.

Translated from Hebrew by T. Carmi

“From Western political and economic theories, we get the idea that human beings are greedy and barbarous creatures, driven by self-interest and concerned only with self-preservation.” L. G. Boldt.

HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY / FICTION OR REALITY

Humans are naturally social beings. They are the most complex form of creation. The human race contains such a large diversity of individuals that perhaps it is impossible to find two persons exactly alike in any moral quality or external appearance.
If people were exactly the same in physical and mental constitution, they would act alike in the same set of circumstances.
There are groups of human beings that they will no be satisfied with all the wealth in the world, others question their desires and are content with what it suffice to live with minimum materials needs.
I as a poet, live with the hope that the hatred, quarrel, and wars will come to an end, but the present reality indicates the opposite.
The wolf is eating the lamb, the cow and the bear are fighting for the food, and the asp keep stinging the child.
The earth is full of nuclear weapons, over the waters and under the sea.
Ecological disasters are purposely ignore. Arrogance and greed, materialism, individualism and competition take different groups of men to the extreme.
Long live Poetry, authenticity and sincerity.
Hector Ahumada 12/28/2015. USA.