Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "indigenous-wisdom"

Greeks did not invent philosophy,
philosophy had existed across Latin America, Africa,
Arabia, India and China, thousands of years earlier,

not as some elitist discipline, but as everyday way of life,
later the europeans contributed their puny drop in the ocean,
but of course, the myth of europe as the origin of philosophy
goes deceptively well with the whitewashed history of earth.

Maps of the world are whitewashed,
history of the world is whitewashed,
ethics of the world are whitewashed,
knowledge of the world is whitewashed.

No wisdom is flawless ‘n absolute, ancient or modern,
but the point is, enlightenment and civilization
did not originate in europe, they were born of
the lands colonially categorized as uncivilized.

We cannot abolish systemic persecution
without dismantling systemic privilege.
You cannot wipe the slate clean, but you can
take the responsibility and stand to heal.

Colonizers are the second class citizens,
every land first belongs to the indigenous.
Landback is the mother of all movements,
it contains the plight of all First Humans.

Women are indigenous to their own body,
Palestinians are indigenous to palestine;
uncultured crowns and criminal uncles
have no jurisdiction over our Earthright.

Earth belongs to the Natives, settlers are
welcome, but as participant, not head of state.
Somos indígenas, somos indomables –
you can make us houseless, but never homeless.

Connected Texts:
White Man, Apex Predator of Earth (Sonnets 2399-2400) – Abhijit Naskar, When Calls The Kainat
Record of White Crimes Against Humanity (White Fragility Sonnets 1308-1310) - Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

Atheism is a white european invention,
outside the shortsighted gutter
of eurocentrism there are people who don’t
need to believe in a creator to be holy,

you can be sacred without being superstitious,
the human world is teeming with such cultures
where life is holy, duty is holy, laughter is holy,
but of course your whitewashed, eurocentric
little intellect cannot fathom nonduality –

that’s why you mustn’t confuse intellect with wisdom,
some of the brilliant minds are first class idiots,
their binary brains have zero capacity for nuance,
they confuse the backwater fiction-centric narrative
of the church to be the entire lifespring of theology,

so naturally, either they believe like sheep
or reject like robot, because in a world of sheep
and cyborgs either there is god or there is not,
either you submit to blind faith or icecold logic,
there is no place for heart, humanity and tolerance!

Not Christ, but church doctrine was
a major downgrade in theology existing
hundreds and thousands of years prior,
at the same time, european reductionism
was a major downgrade in a wholesome
life-centric understanding of truth.

We need a life-centric understanding of truth,
not truth-centric understanding of life –
we need a human-centric realization of divine,
not divine-centric realization of human.

At the end of the century,
fascism leaves no lasting mark
on thousand year old civilizations,
it’s only the adolescent countries like
the US that get wiped out of existence.

Tyrants come, tyrants go,
both foreign and domestic,
ancient civilizations endure political
upheaval like a bleep in the continuum,

whereas, destiny manifested on patchwork history
and bootleg culture, collapse into obsolescence.

So the world continues, culture continues,
reformation continues, even better without
the parasitic powers of world politics –
civilization thrives for they’re never aloof,
but ever entwined with Nature’s dynamics.