Is Polyamory Queer?

Which does this describe?

____ Being openly gay in the 1990s

____ Being openly polyamorous in the 2020s

You won’t be fired from your job. You won’t be arrested. You’re not likely to be beaten up (if you’re behaving). It doesn’t disqualify you for running for office (but you won’t win). I mean, you’ll be fired and beaten up sometimes. But, ya know… for other reasons. Most would say it’s now widely accepted. You're free to openly be you and love who and how you want.

BUT you’re still seen as a deviant. Mentally ill, perhaps. You’re presumed to be diseased. Unfit for parenting. You would never show affection in public the way your strait friends do. That would be exhibitionism. No one wants to see that.

Striking up a mundane platonic conversation with someone will immediately mark them as prey in your crosshairs. Their friends will run over to act as a buffer. Their partner will likely get aggressive. You were just having the same smalltalk as anyone else there, but it’s not predatory when they do it. Careful who you talk about the weather to.

Your family is nice to your partner but they don’t see them as serious. They’re just… a friend… ok a close friend, sure. It’s a phase. Your family is not going to console you over a breakup the way they would a strait person. I mean, were you really “together”? Hell, they might not even console you when a partner dies. Those aren’t partners. Those are just other weirdo toys in your weirdo game. Weirdo. “Oh but we like them just fine, sure you can bring your friend… oh to Christmas though?.. I mean… Don't they have family?.”

They expect your relationship to fail. Somehow they overlook that 99% of the surrounding strait relationships also fail. But it doesn't count when a strait relationship fails. That’s just because one of them was was being dishonest… hmmm. One of them had a crisis… um… Well it’s just because that one person couldn’t be EVERYTHING for that one other person…(crickets). Ya know… Normal strait stuff.  But YOU… and your gross unnatural relationship (of 5 years) is doomed. And when it ends, they’ll reach deep down in their heart and find the words “called it!” before they find the words “you ok?”. Could you imagine saying “called it!” right away to your heartbroken strait friend? You simply wouldn’t.

Strait people voluntarily form themselves into 2 groups.

GROUP 1 is jealous that you get to do what they secretly want to do. They can’t admit to being attracted to anyone other than who’s designated. Just don’t check their browser history or ask where they were. What they do is none of your business (aka what happens in the closet stays in the closet). Do not try to hold up a mirror to these people. They are the ones who will get you fired and beat you up. Most commonly, they just say mildly dismissive and phobic things to you whenever they get the chance.

GROUP 2 is happy for you. Why would they care what you do? They forgot you were even like that. Those people are in a happy relationship and not confused about who they are, not closeted like Group 1. 

People who claim to be in Group 3 are actually in group 1, who are actually not strait. So really, group 2 are the only truly strait people. 

Naturally, you find the places where your types hang out. Parties, clubs, perhaps a particular weeknight at a bar. Maybe even a whole neighborhood. Your strait friends assume that it’s a non stop orgy. They talk about that bar or dinner party as though it’s dripping with bodily fluids. Little do they know, It’s just a dinner party. It’s a bunch of people talking about TV shows, enjoying food and music, trading stories about their kids. And ya, sometimes dating. Ya know... Strait people stuff. Because in this setting, you’re normal. You can relax and stop being.. those types.

Those hot spots tend to be bursting with creativity and innovation. Everyone knows the stereotype. “Those types tend to be artsy and musical and dramatic". Ever wonder why that is? You think there’s a gene that simultaneously causes someone to be both talented AND a filthy pervert? Hear me out. Could it be a gene that makes you brave AF? Is there a gene that keeps you from abandoning your true “type”, and resist falling into the mold presented by your oh-so-happy elders? You think maybe “that type” of person that insists on a challenging career of expression instead of a suicidal office job might also be the type of person to suspect that all the unhappy relationships around them might be wrong about how love works? Sure, in that case, it’s genetic. You have the gene. Simply put. You're just like everyone else, you just don't hide it.

Hang in there. In about 20-30 years, culture will evolve another inch. Your peers will recognize your family as family. Sitcoms will portray you as a person instead of as a lovingly delivered dirty joke. Your insecure sexually frustrated boss won’t dare share a theory as to why you were 5 minutes late. People won’t immediately point out “OH Not me Its not for me I could never do that” because why would they? No one’s asking them to. Chill out. Aggressing you will be a hate crime. Doesn’t mean it’ll be gone, but it'll be wrong when it happens. It won't be something that you kinda had coming. You might even go all day without being reminded what you are. The generation before you will age out of relevance while the generation after you enjoys a healthier understanding of their authentic selves. And when they roll their eyes at you for being prude and old fashion, give’m space. It’s probably because you’re shaming them about that new filthy thing they’re doing.

 

19th Century painting and Artificial Intelligence

There was a time when painters were necessary for documenting things. Every portrait, diagram, visual record of any place in time had to be an artist's rendering. Then camera's put 90% of them out of work in the mid 1800's. I'm sure that was frustrating after thousands of years of job security. 

But since they were no longer tied up with wedding pics and news illustrations, some of them started painting things that can't be photographed. Illustrating the emotion of a Bourgeoisie ballroom servant, or a family gathering around the potato. Eventually an over-photographed city scape leaps into a map-like grid of colors. Faces become inverted funhouse mirrors. Eventually they stopped painting forms all together and cut strait to the vibe/essence/whatever of a concept, like a hack into the viewer's brain. We could see thoughts, not just images.

Painters started to do the job of poets and philosophers.  Philosophy, for thousands of years, used words and now can use eyeballs, an organ with much more robust processing integration within a hunter/gatherer platform. Even prior to the camera, there were very occasional painters and sculptors who could hack brain code. Michelangelo could bring a repenting pope to his knees by showing what judgement day looks like. But this ability is no longer a rare boutique program. Now it's the common language spoken by ex wedding artists. Even the photographers started speaking the wacky language. 

Humanity split open its verbal cocoon and installed a whole new software suite. All because we no longer had to do what we now had a machine for. 

Today we hilariously try to prevent machines from taking the jobs of farmers, drivers, soldiers, builders. The end of their million year contract will be even harder than it was for the painters. After all, painters were 5% of the 1 billion people on Earth. Today, just professional drivers alone are over 1 billion. Machines will chase those drivers to whatever job interview they Uber to next, and then the next, and then the next. Just like machines had once chased them off the factory floor and into the driver seats. I'm not even going to bother googling how many farm workers, brick layers, and soldiers there are. My point is, more than there were painters in the 1830's.

Eventually, like 19th century painters, they'll say, "welp, I guess you got this then". Billions of ex-laborers will start ________ing.  And ________ is so uniquely human, the machines never thought to attempt it. The robots will look past and through it, the way insects ignore jokes. And as we improve our _______, we'll once again look down at machines and fantasize about them someday being able to  _________ the way we do. We'll write scifi about it.

Most painters would rather express with their paint than copy a model. Just as most future _________ers would rather ________ than drive or build or pull weeds. 

We can't imagine what _________ is because we're only this old. Michelangelo never imagined cubism. He never thought to control the drips on the floor. He wasn't going to sign a mason's name to a urine troff. He was too busy trying to hide the brush stroke, literally perfecting techniques that a camera can do by accident. He never asked us if it's a cross or a painting of a cross the way Jasper Johns asked us about a painting of a flag, and therefor didn't question what that implied about Catholicism the way Johns asked what it implied about our current empire. If Michelangelo predicted the camera, he wouldn't have welcomed it. He would have worried for us. Just like we worry about drone delivery and laser weeding. 

Global job loss is scary. Different is scary. Unseen solutions look IDENTICAL to non-existing solutions. We confuse "current" for "correct". Things like parking lots and currency don't yet seem insanely archaic. The word "space" still means "empty" until anti-matter someday turns that into a linguistic trivia question. "Virtual" still means "fake" to us. Not knowing how our brains work makes us think we're not machines. Are genetics not machined by nature? That's not rhetorical (asking for a ______). We're so sure we can't think inside machines. We're so sure machines can't feel. We still don't even know what the hell gravity is, or atoms, and yet we use words like "can't". 

We're about to go through hell. There are too many of us for the world not to be both on fire and flooding at the same time. Hunger makes us dangerous and AI seems to be the tipping point. Our fear is justified. But I have a strong feeling that future humans will look back fondly at our fear. Machines are once again going to allow humanity to graduate to a new OS. I think we will recall, with gratitude, the day we started to ________. 

For Bible readers dealing with 2020

It's March 2020 and I'm seeing scared christians posting all over the internet about the book of Revelations.  I'm hoping this helps any of the people in my churchy past life who are crying in a closet clutching their cross necklace that they made at camp. 

I know. Floods, fires, economic collapse, famine, false idols, disease, etc... Even locusts. LOCUSTS! (Africa got hit hard while our news was busy) The most specifically quintessential apocalypse trope. Actual locusts! I see your concern.   

I was raised with a Biblical education. That ended for me as soon as I started studying history. But what I took from the combo is that some things are just natural truths. They get worked into literature and mythology. As we evolve, we need to learn to keep what's true and adapt what's obsolete. For example, I believe that Genesis describes evolution and relativity, but let's stay on track. 

I'm not going to tell you the Bible is wrong (to the surprise of most people who know me). What's important to understand about those apocalyptic signs is that they happen right before any large system collapses or changes to a new system. It has happened countless times before and will happen countless times again. The bad news is that it always sucks and it's always for the same reason.

Without getting too specific...

FAMINE = too many people for the farms

DISEASE = too many people too close to animals

WAR = too many people for the resources (and enough people for massive armies)

ECONOMIC COLLAPSE = years of compensating for the above problems without actual solutions.

etc etc etc... There's too many people.

The Maya abandoned their cities due to the "curse" of all these same symptoms. The Trojan wars happened right after a supply chain breakdown of Bronze ingredients and that started a 300 year dark age. Rome collapsed under all these same apocalyptic symptoms (And Rome was the boss when the New Testament was written). 

Writers aren't making things up. They're stating the obvious. "When civilization is abused, it ends and a new civilization will start". It's a prophecy that they KNOW will happen because of course it will. And if you're trying to get people to say "OH MY GOD('s son) YOU WERE RIGHT!" you would predict things that you know are going to happen. And the next systems (the Beast/Antichrist/2nd Coming) can move into power assimilating the prophecy. You never cancel a culture's beliefs, you just adapt them to fit the new king. So whoever is in charge now, we're going to call them the antichrist. And whoever saves us from that will be called the second coming of Christ. 

Every generation claims to have its antichrist and its mark of the beast. Not because they're wrong each time. It's because there's always a strong figure leading us away from natural/spiritual health. Emperor Constantine was both "the beast" AND the second coming of Christ. Hitler was both, depending who you ask and when. And while you might be thinking about Trump in this paragraph, I'd like to direct your attention to Amazon (once again, something that can destroy and save us at the same time). I pay about $116 per year for my mark of the beast. LOL. Or is the Beast currency in general? Or FB? Or all these things? Probably. Yea. Sure. Why not?

So the Bible isn't wrong. It's happening. We've pushed civilization past it's limits and we're going to have to reinvent ourselves. The environment is beyond repair. The economy is a fragile board game. We're having a Mexican standoff with nukes. It's not that it's "finally" happening. It's just that it's happening "again".

Granted, we've never been global before (or at least not that we remember) and so this'll be a big one. It's not just "a flood" it's the oceans rising everywhere. It's not just "fires", its entire continents at a time. Diseases aren't confined to a hemisphere. And economic collapse is going to be a reset button for humans, not just Europeans or Mayans or whatever. And yea, we have leaders who are denying this because it lets them live like kings. So while the Bible said "the world", it was usually talking about Europe and the Mid East. And yes, a lot of us are about to die. This is the first time it's been accurate when it says "the world" and I understand why that's concerning to a Christian. It's concerning to me too. 

But your response doesn't have to be strait out of The Book. You don't have to choose beheading instead of the mark of the beast. You don't have to believe that your soul lays in the balance. Scripture may have been written by people who understood history and humanity, but it was still a different time and language. And they had an agenda. I mean, locusts have a long hatch cycle. Talk about planting a fear bomb for future generations.

If you must consider this to be the prophecy, remember that that the identities of the next characters are not yet revealed. The beasts and saviors might be one in the same. Technology and medicine both caused this and will save us from it. Amazon helped to ruin our economy but will create the next one. Facebook divides us and keeps us connected. Artificial intelligence is not artificial. 

False Idols aren't false while we worship them.

Try this on... Jesus said that when the time comes, look to the east and follow the water barer into the next house (I'm paraphrasing). But speaking of paraphrasing, the age of Pices (Christian fish logo) started 2000 years ago (baby jesus) and ends now as we are going into the age of Aquarius (water barer). What does that tell us? It tells me that Danial and all the authors of this part of the good book were pulling from ancient wisdoms that vastly outdate Christianity. Archeology shows that we've observed the same zodiac calendar for literally thousands of years before our earliest documented history. In short, if this is the end of a chapter, it's not the end of our story. 

How your mom's cat can save the economy

Do you do things to contribute to the common good of society? Pay taxes? Do you (or would you) serve in the military/police/fire/emt? You follow traffic laws? Wear a mask and gloves in a pandemic? 

.....Do you have an $80 handmade cutting board in your kitchen?.....

What the hell does that last question have to do with civic duty? Well, it’s invisibly similar to this question.. "Would you drive a BMW if you could afford to?"

Right now we often save our money by buying cheep plastic crap, eating chain food, etc. We save $2 on factory grown meet instead of eating healthier from local farms. We go to Target and buy a cheesy slogan printed on some fake barn wood for $15 and hang it in our living room calling it “art” instead of buying actual art.

The money we save often gets wasted on showing people how much money we have. We buy overpriced cars, houses with empty rooms. Brand name apparel. None of these contribute to the people in your society as much as they contribute to the shareholders at the top of those companies.

And then when tech makes 80% of us unessential, it means that 80% of our economy is circling the drain. Can 20% of you cover 80% of the rest? Not really. And that’s why everyone has strong political opinions right now.

HOW WE REALLY FEEL ABOUT YOUR $200 SUN GLASSES:

-until the 1980’s, “Hey thumbs up. I’m jealous”

-1990’s-2018, “No one’s fooled. You have basic credit.”

-2020 and beyond, “Give me your wallet and sunglasses.”

I promise your mom’s cat has not been forgotten, hang in there.

But what if our version of showing off, instead of driving a BWM, was to flaunt how much of our spending goes to “the actual economy”? Like, what if all of our dishes and glasses were made by potters and glass blowers? What if we wore hand tailored clothes that fit us perfectly? What if we got rid of “bless this mess” and hung up some actual art on the wall? Could we afford it? Yea, actually, if you’re willing to drive a perfectly good Toyota instead of a BMW, you would be able to buy all those things.

Consequentially, the quality of everything will improve because there will be more people like me, selling my craft and dumping most of that money back into the economy. Right now my competition is limited to only the people who are willing to live small in a world that looks down their noses at us. But show some respect to the craft and I’ll have some steeper artists to compete with. Better stuff for you to buy.

The big corporations and factories and box stores are still very useful. No one wants a hand crafted TV or phone or car. And for those, we need the big biz. Amazon doesn’t care what they sell as long as they sell. Target can get rid of it’s “art” isle and still employ just as many people. Maybe shave down the furniture and clothing and dinnerware and anything else that could be done by a local human. Maybe they’ll employ slightly fewer, but those employees would be off doing things that they’re good at, now that there’s a market for them. OOOR maybe they’ll sell a ton of local art and clothing and pottery.

THE GOAL is to have substantial jobs for more people. Consequently, we’d be generating more tax money and asking for less welfare from it. Simply put, we’s be a stronger society and more resistant to catastrophic failure.

THE COST is 2 things. 

1) corporate shareholders make half as many billions as they do now. 2) You drive a perfectly good $18k car instead of a $40k car

HOW TO GET THERE

Social reinforcement. The same thing that made us give a F about cars and brand names in the first place. Stop kissing peoples butt holes every time they flash an overpriced factory item. Roll your eyes at them when they brag about two people living in a 4 bedroom house with a dog that has 3 acres to poop on. Don’t encourage them. It should be a fo paux to drain your money out of the economy like that. A serious party foul. Social accountability is stronger than it’s ever been and we can retrain our habits. #DontSpendLikeADouche #NoOneEnviesYourEscalade. #TrickleSideways

And when someone shows off their hand made jacket/shirt/jewelry, thats when you kiss their butt hole and say THANK YOU for contributing to society. When their home is 1 bedroom smaller and full of hand made dinnerware, art, furniture, that’s when you say “dope pad bro. Who made this cutting board?”. In fact, when they buy a modest car, an electric car, a well maintained used car, thats when you say “dope ride bro”, not when they’re commuting to work in something that would be overkill on the Oregon Trail. (no, this does not hurt the car companies. They will make just as many cars, only more reasonable ones, maybe even electric boogie woogie woogie)

If you pat yourself on the back for contributing to society by being a consumer, you may want to consider how you consume. Are you spiking a small population to a glamorous hight where they’re too rich to pay taxes? Or are you swelling a wider population up to a functional level. If you choose Olive Garden over a locally owned joint, thats your choice. But you lose your right to legitimately complain about people who need government assistance. YOU and me and everyone else are the answer. Capitalism works better than socialism ONLY if you are smart with your spending.

So for those of you who aren’t about to become homeless, take that stim check and buy a hand made wooden cutting board from a local craftsman. Buy jewelry from the countless people around you who can spend that money in your own community. Spend the extra few bucks on locally sourced food. And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD commission me to draw a picture of your mom’s cat for mothers day.

Haunted House Jobs and Modern News Coverage

I once developed a very effective tactic that makes this whole mess seem really familiar. Through my teens and 20s, I usually spent each October working for Universal Studios, Six Flags, and Riverside Park haunted houses as an actor, designer, and makeup artist. My job was to scare people. Not because I like scaring people. The job was to sell more tickets than the rival houses, and scaring was the way to do that.

Business depends on the level of emotional agitation (and pee odor) of the people seen exiting the building. Potential guests watch as people exit, deciding if they should go in. The more jittery and excited the people look as they flee the scene, the more tickets are sold.

The scare formula adapts as the guest (target) adapts. In the first few dimly lit rooms, some spider webs and creepy sounds raise the anxiety of people who are afraid they’re going to embarrass themselves in front of their date. But they adjust. When they enter a room where a demented figure is covered in blood and gore, it’s expected. You might get a grin from them but it’s just a warm up to set a base line. We can’t have people leaving the house saying “yea that was creative lighting and makeup”. We need their heart rate up.

They’re entering each room expecting to see some kind of monster, a monster that they rationally understand to be a person in a costume. So you have to move faster than their brain. Simply jump out of an obvious hiding place and make a loud noise a little too close to their face. They jump and/or scream (and/or punch you in the face) but then remind themselves that this was part of the plan. “damn it I knew you were in there” they laugh. Their adrenalin is now in their system for the next several minutes.

Next room, let them spot yet another obvious hiding place. They’re looking for it from the moment they peek through the doorway and they’ll see it immediately. They walk in, acting brave because they see that human size barrel over there with a loose fitting lid. It’s 10 steps away. They have 10 steps to prepare their nerves. “Bring it” they’re thinking. But 7 steps away is where you actually jump out from the other direction. “Damn it” they say as they run laughing past the empty decoy barrel.

In the next room, they’re expecting you to jump out from anywhere and so their feet are bolted to the floor. Thats when you distract them with something shiny. A special effect. Something impressive and sorta beautiful. Freddy coming out of a mirror was one of my favs. They stare at the impressive installation art and their brain has to switch to processing what they’re seeing. They unwittingly unbolt their feet from the floor. “Wow, how did they make it look so ..” You jump out while they’re in mid processing. 

By this point, friends are clutching each other. Feet are being stepped on as they stay close to one another like a pack of prey animals. Hands are being squeezed tightly. They suspect that at any point their reaper tour guide will turn on them for a cheep startle. The only thing they trust in the entire room are the other guests.

They’re ready as they enter the next room. They keep a 360 degree view, knowing that the next scare will be too stealthy to spot in time. “It’s definitely NOT going to come out of that crashed UFO over there. what about that hay bail though..” And that’s why giant spiders descend from the ceilings. “DAMN IT! Now I have to watch the ceiling too!!!”

By this point, the jumpers and screamers have migrated to the back of the pack and the tough guys are leading the way. It’s time to walk them down a short dark hallway where nothing happens. Wink. They make it through the hallway surprisingly unalarmed.

Next, they’re walking through a scenic room with a lot to visually take in. Any one of those structures could fit a person in it. Anything could be a robotic critter. The glowing pickle jar is pissing them off because they don’t know what it means. They’re guarding themselves from every little object that might suddenly move. They’re still stepping on feet and knocking into each other when suddenly one of them lets out a new kind of blood curdling scream. It’s not the usual quick scream followed by a laugh and an F bomb. Instead, it continues and escalates. 

The people who don’t see it yet are extra alarmed because they don’t know what’s happening yet. “WHERE? I DON’T SEE IT!!!”. They look up to the ceiling and see nothing. The floor, nothing. Back to the details of the room, nothing.  This all takes 2 seconds, the screaming elevates as the screamer knocks everyone out of their personal space trying to escape it. And that turns everyone’s attention inward to the person screaming. They see that in the middle of their group is a person that they did not enter the house with. Maybe a zombie or Frankenstein or whatever (doesn’t matter). The point is that when someone clutches an arm for comfort and that arm is attached to a stranger, it F’s your brain up for a minute. 

When you were a kid, did you ever follow your parents through a store and then look up to see that they’re not your parents? You peed a little, right?

Now everyone is entering the final room. They are afraid to fan out but also afraid to get too close to each other. Their brain is multitasking the room and each other. Someone will inevitably get startled by a chair or a fire extinguisher. It doesn’t matter what happens in this room. Nothing could happen and that would be terrifying.

Suddenly they find themselves exiting the house and surrounded by regular people in a public space. There’s one kid walking quickly with their head down and their arms crossed. Some frat boys are loudly defending the accusations from their buddies that they “totally jumped like a little bitch”. Some big tough biker is yelling “HAAA HA I totally thought that fire extinguisher on the wall was an alien spider zombie for some reason! HAAAA!” And the shortest person usually has cotton candy in their hair.

New people outside see this and decide it’s worth the admission fee. 

Switching gears here. You know that the people who bring you the news are not paid to bring you the news, right? They’re paid to sell advertising. They, like me, don’t particularly want to scare you. It’s just how they make money. They need you to watch constantly, and nothing can do that (not even scandals and kittens) as successfully as fear. And when you adjust to the traditional monsters, they do what I did in the haunted house. They get you to fear each other. 

We’re going to find the exit. White supremacy is not unbeatable. Diseases can be cured. Giving people their rights does not take your rights away. Police want to be fixed. Poor people want to contribute. The Earth can grow back. Protests rarely cause fires. Addictions can be kicked. You WILL eventually get your phone to sync with the bluetooth speaker. It’s all fixable. We just need to stop fearing each other long enough to get to the next door. The first step is to assemble ONE news source that is paid for by our taxes and does not sell ads. While the government has to pay for it, the do not get to have any say in the reporting. It's a process that will have to evolve with many levels of oversight. We need a central source of fact checked information so that you are not arguing with people who live in an alternate reality. Fox and CNN and everyone else can still do whatever they want, but they will be clearly labeled as opinion and entertainment. 

Until then, expect Fox to show you looped footage of burning riots while they tell you that this is "Antifa" and everyone on the left is a terrorist. Meanwhile the other side will show you that the KKK is half of the country and anyone in the center or right is there because they hate women, people of color, and the environment. The truth is, these are all outliers. A small minority of people want to harm you. Everyone else just wants to go back to their video games. It's TV ratings and click counts who need you to jump at the sight of your own neighbors and family members. 

Your enemy likely wants the same thing as you, you just can’t agree on the facts. This needs to happen before anything else gets fixed.

Having the feels about statue vandalism

***To clarify, I'm not advocating anything, just making a historical observation. I don't think it's my place to have an opinion. I'm not the one having my life consistently threatened by institutionalized racism. This is also not about violence or looting. It's specifically about the role of statue vandalism in history.***

You can go back thousands of years and there’s one thing that has been consistent throughout. We always vandalize the statues. Its a ritualistic right of passage. When outsiders come in and take over, they remove or deface the statues of the previous leader. I’m not going to look it up right this second, but I wonder if it’s where the word “deface” comes from. The noses didn’t fall off of all those greek and roman statues because they were old. Stone is forever. The noses were smashed off deliberately. Even the Sphinx lost it’s nose to angry mobs (multiple times, actually). 

Those giant stone temple ruins are also a result of war. They wouldn’t have fallen over in a million years. They were bombed. And people left them there because it felt too disrespectful to clear out the remains. Half a parthenon is better than a jamba juice. Removing the remains risks the mistake of forgetting.

Why not just remove the statue? They did that too sometimes. When trying to hide the past (commonly religious symbols), a statue would be pulverized. But when the statues remained in place with damage, it was to post a reminder that “this failed” or “this is what we overcame”. GRAFFITI WAS INVOLVED! It has long since washed off. But trust me, the noseless pieces in the museums once had latin or greek hashtags on them. 

In many cases, a peaceful high functioning culture was invaded by greed and in other cases, the people rose up against their own leaders. So to say that defacing statues is historical is objective. You can agree with this assessment no matter which side you’re on. Rome is not denying that Visigoths broke their stuff and neither are the Visigoths.  

Quick sidestep. A month after 9/11, I saw the wreckage up close. I remember being struck by how much it looked like classical ruins. There was a large piece of skyscraper with it’s column-esque vertical lines reaching up several floors at an arbitrary angle. When they talked about what to do with the location, I had hoped that they would make a park around the stabilized structure. I wanted America to have ruins. Not to celebrate the attack, but to put it in perspective. It’s almost like a weird coming of age or something. We are the new Rome. We rely on imperial expansion and if we run out of places to devour, we will crumble under our own weight. In 2001, Rome was sacked, just like it is every few hundred years. Here we are in 2020 and many young adults don’t have an emotional memory of that day, nor can they look at the ruins in a park and feel what it means to have the responsibility of an empire. 

I’m not saying I’m right about a 9/11 park. Maybe its a stupid idea. But that was my feeling about it. 

‘Nuther side step. Can we talk about Graffiti for a sec? We tend to see it as vandalism, ugly, low brow. As an artist, I never got into it. But after learning it’s history, it makes sense. A marginalized class of people were prevented from owning property and businesses. They also didn’t have municipal armed forces protecting their side of the tracks. So they did it themselves. Gangs patrolled their own neighborhoods and they branded their territory with spray paint. Don’t judge. European and Asian gangs did the same thing. Inevitably, it became an art form. Sometimes it looks too simple to be considered art. Consult your nearest graphic designer about simplicity and branding. Also, tell me NIKE’s logo is hard to draw. 

When something is outside our own understanding of beauty, its easy to overlook. Remember how overlooked black ballerinas were? Well those days are over. That was the most beautiful photo I’ve ever seen. But enough about graffiti for now. 

So what do we do about our American statues? After losing a war for their right to own slaves, they put up statues of the men that lead the fight. To some people, it had nothing to do with slavery and had everything to do with states rights etc. And that remains the argument to keep them in place. I’m not going to get into that other than to say, we once built statues to honor people who stood up to their government. Fine. Descent is honorable. Rebelion is sometimes necessary. Is that what they stand for? Among other things, sure.

I remember when performing at Gathering Of The Vibes, I was on stage looking over the crowd at a Columbus statue. The festy crowd is almost always 95% white. Why? Because the cops would never allow 20,000 people committing misdemeanors all at once in a public park if we weren’t a bunch of well-to-do white kids. But that’s a different convo. Meanwhile, the only Latino couple in the whole place was getting their backpacks searched by the cops. This distracted me on stage for about 3 songs and then they clearly didn’t find anything. The cop stayed in that spot. The Latino couple left our set early (Maybe it was my singing). Me being the nerd that I am couldn’t help noticing the irony of this happening on the steps of a Columbus statue. The cop and myself descended from immigrant colonists to this side of the ocean. The couple being searched was not. I’d love to think that was a coincidence or that the couple was doing something more sketchy than the thousands of white people, but this isn’t the only time I’ve seen it by a long shot. It’s just the only time I saw it happen literally in the shadow of a Columbus statue. 

if you already agree that these statues are disrespectful, you can skip down until you see this *** ( ‘} *** 

Otherwise you’ve already heard it.

But we’ve grown up a bit since then. These statues watch over black and white and brown and gay and strait and christian and muslum and weird and normal and cops and homeless people as they pass by. No one looks at those statues and sees “yea! States rights” Just like no one looks at a swastika and sees “rebuild after WWI”. They look at these statues and see “Just because we lost the war doesn’t mean we changed our mind”. And the fact that it’s city property means that it’s the city who feels this way. The government, the cops, the judges. They all still honor this guy who tried to keep chains on the black family that live on that street. 

Do those government officials not feel that way? Is this a misconception? I would have believed that if after we hadn’t lawfully and peacefully petitioned for years to have the statues moved to a museum, and if that hadn’t been ignored. But they didn’t. Their argument is “well, it’s our history”. So I can understand black folks saying “No shit, it’s our history too”. I’ve heard the argument that “how will we remember our history if we remove our sculptures and our confederate flag” etc. Just a reminder, there are no nazi related sculptures or signs in Germany and there is no one there who doesn’t know what happened. We built a new skyscraper, yet we #neverforget. But lets put a pin in this one for a sec.

These statues absolutely DO remind us of something. They remind us that an overwhelming portion of their culture doesn’t give a rats ass that you don’t feel safe in your own country. And in a time when white supremacy is coming back out of the closet and literally terrorizing us, a mayor or governor can’t simply say “we don’t need this statue anymore” because they’re afraid of hurting white people’s feelings and losing votes. THAT is what a majority of us see when we look at those statues.

I get it. We grow up thinking that Columbus was a great man that invented the Western Hemisphere (on purpose). We didn’t learn in school that he raped, murdered, and enslaved the people who had been cultivating this continent. I’ve been to Santo Domigo where he first set up shop. The buildings are still there. The statues of people who wiped out the original population and replaced them with imported slaves stand right there in the park, surrounded by the grandchildren of slaves. It’s not a misinterpretation. The plaque says “suppressed the natives”. That’s a worst case scenario. In America, its simply lack of education that we see Columbus as a hero. It’s not totally our fault that we got a white washed version in school. And it’s ok to change our minds. 

By not changing our mind, we tell our own brown population that we still think we “discovered” this continent. Or at the very least, it was our supremacy that allowed us to dominate it (not small pox). And if someone can get elected president simply by saying “I’m going to build a wall to keep brown people out of OUR country", then it’s a clear message that at least a portion of the country feels a sense of supremacy. And at the very least, just like the confederate statues, if we ignore the fact that a Columbus statue still stands then we are saying “this is white land”.

What do I have to lose as a white person? It was a pretty statue? I don’t want to forget my history? It scares me that a group of people can outnumber the police? Those things are true with or without a Robert E Lee or a Columbus statue. Maybe I could say “can’t you just petition it to come down? Does it have to be so messy and illegal?” The answer is no. It has been petitioned several times for years. Just a fraction of that many signatures would remove a rusty car from a driveway and yet no one wants to talk about the statues.

 ***  ( ‘}  ***

So after years of people saying “our lives matter. Please stop treating us like animals” and our response has been “don’t be silly, all lives matter”, after years of petitions and peaceful protests, after years of the problem getting worse instead of better, this is what happens. People throw down and stuff gets broken. Are we going to forget that this happened? Should we completely ignore the counter argument of “how will we remember our history”? Will it happen all over again in 80 years? Should we leave the shop windows broken? Maybe a torched cruiser on the intersection? That would do the trick, but it’s already so misunderstood and polarizing. 

Maybe there should be a monument reminding us that if you ignore calm requests from desperate people, their requests will get less calm. Maybe there should be a monument to show that no matter how powerful riot police are, you can’t keep oppressing a minority once the majority agrees with them. Maybe 200 years from now when people glide through an ancient American city on their hover shoes sipping cricket smoothies, they’ll see a statue in the center of where the cars used to drive. It should be a monument that makes it very clear to every oppressed purple skin mutant cyborg that in 2020, an overwhelming majority of people wanted equality, not just the minorities.  And I can’t think of a better monument than a headless statue spray painted with the words Black Lives Matter.

Happy Teenth.

Maya Prophecy

In 2011, I took a trip to the Yucatan to study and draw the Mayan ruins. People like to say that the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world on Dec 21, 2012. After visiting and talking to the descendants, I developed my own theory which came true. More accurately, it was coming true while I was there. I expected my theory would start popping up elsewhere, but it's not as interesting as, "The world ends in 2012", so it just remains the rantings of some deranged artist. For anyone with the attention span, here's my take on the Mayan prophecy.

Ancient civilization is a topic that consumes a lot of my time. If I'm caught daydreaming, I'm probably thinking about Egypt or Cambodia. The Maya are one of my favorite areas of interest. Not because they're older or more enigmatic than other ancient civilizations. They're not. What fascinates me about the Maya is that they deliberately walked away from their civilization. They didn't migrate away. They weren't conquered by colonists. They just simply changed their mind and went back to the woods like a giant civic "No thanks" followed by a mic drop. What was that about?

MISSING PUZZLE PIECE

When Europeans first floated up to them, they found entire deserted cities. Rome-like cities. Roads. Temples. Fortresses. Even sporting arenas. The structures were pretty broken up by the roots of trees that had grown in the cracks, but the larger structures were obvious geometric hills in unnatural formations.

Surrounding those large temples were forests with very rocky ground. I walked on it and it's weird. Those football sized rocks, often with one smooth side, were the remains of stone buildings for as far as you can walk. Had it not been for the larger semi-intact structures, we may have never known there was an entire city there.

So did they die or something? Did they find better land to move to? No. They're still right next door.

You can often tell descendants by looking at them. They're quite beautiful. Mexico has diverse DNA, ranging from native groups who have moved around the Western Hemisphere over the centuries as well as Spaniards and others more recent comers. But the direct descendants of the people who built those ancient cities are still right there in the same spot. They just, for some reason, don't use the ancient structures and don't really care to comment much about them. They say it's cursed. Some of them work as tour guides and artisans who will talk to you in more detail about it. The archeology was readily available in terms of dates, speculations, etc. But the fun part of this story is a grey area fitting awkwardly between archeology and poetic coincidence.

WHY IS 12/21/2012 THE END OF THE WORLD?

When the Mayan calendar was found and deciphered, it was a big deal for two reasons. Fist being that they seemed to make predictions attached to cycles on their calendar. And the second being that the biggest date of them all would be the 2012 solstice in which the entire calendar (thousands of years) simply ends abruptly. Why does it end? Do we all die? I hope it's not aliens. Or Zombies.

Their calendar of course was different from ours but it shared the same concept, small cycles inside larger cycles and so on. Our culture has days/weeks/months/years/decades/centuries/millennia. The Mayan calendar was based on a different mathematical system but it's easy to compare. There was a lot of base 20 going on. But for the purpose of keeping this short, I will use the language of our common calendar as an analogy to frame its context. For instance, I'll compare their 52 year cycle to a century and their 395 year cycle to a millennium. In fact, why not.. In fact, maybe I should just compare it to ourselves, thousands of years in the future, with someone trying to decode artifacts from 2020.

note: When I say "we" I'm referring to American/European, "Western Civ". Only because that's the culture from which I/this article originates. But it's true enough for modern humanity as a whole.

I feel like we tend to look at ancient civilizations as though they were stupid, or at least more religiously intoxicated than current civilizations. This is a disservice to their legacy and to ours.

How we dramatize round numbers on calendars...
Consider how we celebrate New Years Eve by reviewing the previous year and projecting our intentions for the coming year. Notice we celebrate a little harder at the turn of a decade? Like, in 2020 we talked about all the things that happened in the Teens and all the things we hope to see in the 20's. None of those things happened on new years day. But if, some day, you were to scrap book the conversations happening on new years 2020, you might get the impression that we finally woke up about sexual assault that January morning, even though the #metoo conversation picked up steam in 2015 and continues well into the 20's. We might also think that communisms ended on Jan 1 1990. Or that WWII started on Jan 1 1940. When we talk about "the 60's", we're usually talking about 64-73'. We have a natural tendency to generalize events by our base 10 labeling. So while the celestial events of the year 2000 didn't bring us the internet, it's conveniently celebrated during the turn of a millennium. (Ok, maybe "celebrated" isn't the word. We were terrified of the internet that day, literally because of our base 10 system. But you see what I mean.) A round numerical marker is a great time to recap and project where you are as a culture.

Now imagine it's the distant future year of 9,980 AD (20 years until 10,000 AD) and we're an advanced civilization looking back on Earth 2020. We don't use the number 9980 though. We've had a new galactic calendar for the last several Nebular Berb-Znerbals. But we found a collection of calendars and articles from the early Digital Era (2020 AD)... Here's what we might say about the finding.

"These ancient folk worshipped cats. Notice how they ritualize their major discoveries and ideas every time the sun reaches its solstice. Notice how they worship larger ones every 10 Solstices, huge ones every 100 and so on. Notice how they accurately predicted that the year 2000 would bring world changing cataclysm by way of the internet (and they were right. The world never went back to a pre-digital era). Look at how their shaman feared nuclear war for hundreds of years before it happened. Look at how their prophets talked about racial and religious equality for over a thousand years before it came true in 2400 AD. They were soooo superstitious about their calendar. Most of what we find from that time period are large stone church ruins, so it seems that all they did all day was worship stuff. Probably cats. Translation is hard though. We lost a lot of info during the hacker wars of 2043".

Point being, we were celebrating our passage through time just as all civilizations do. But future people who consider themselves far more sophisticated than us would accidentally dumb it down and crank up the religious aspect.

Now imagine, among our rubble, they find some sort of calendar that covers a much longer span. Maybe it's a geological or astronomical chart. Maybe it's just something that can only use numbers up to 4 digits.

"Why does it end in the year 10,000? What happens then? And should we look into this, seeing as how they predicted the beginning of the internet and the arrival of the Andromeda worm people? And this particular date seems to be far more significant than all the others put together. Why are there no predictions after 10,000? Is that because nothing happens after that? Do we all die? Their year 10,000 is coming up soon." Zombies maybe?


Obviously the chart ended at a nice round number of 10,000. We probably have a lot of things that end at 9,999. Not since the times of the Crusades have we added an entire digit to our date.  And we never expected any special enlightenment to happen at midnight on Dec 31, 9999. But that's the type of sophistication we're extending to the Maya. A prophecy chart inexplicably ends on a date that's coming up. Brace for impact. 


2012 on the Maya calendar was just that. It was just the end of a bʼakʼtun (or baktun) cycle. The count simply starts over again after that.


Yea but why did the calendar start and end where it did?
The beginning of the Mayan long count calendar starts thousands of years before the Maya started and ended just a few years ago. So, if this all comes down to their base 20 counting system, then why didn't it start when they made the calendar? Well, I have two arguments for that. 
1) Christian oriented civilizations started using our current calendar in the 4th century. It was backdated to Christ. 
2) Who are we to say when the Maya started? That particular empire may have only lasted several hundred years or so. But they came from another group who came from another group, etc. The Aztecs and Maya likely looked to the Toltec people the way we look to the Greeks. It's still the same basic people, just... later. It's like saying "Why does the American calendar start 1700 years before America started?" No one said the Maya created the calendar that we call the Mayan calendar. Or, at least, I'm not saying that. 

And I wont get into it here but there's reason to believe that they have been watching the sky for thousands of years. Long enough to notice the very slow moving patterns that we've only started to see take place from Galileo to now. It doesn't matter to this story, it's just impressive and, to me, suggests a long uninterrupted lineage not unlike our zodiac. 

Ok. That concludes why Dec 21, 2012 was a big deal. It wasn't. It meant literally nothing more to them than the year 10,000 AD means to us. So then how did I make a prediction about what would happen in 2012? Glad you asked. But first we have to talk about the excavation process because it's the focal point of this mind blowing coincidence.

THE EXCAVATION PROCESS

Here's how it works. We show up to a pile of broken rocks and start putting them together, literally like a puzzle. In the 1960's, it was something like 10% excavated (of what we assumed to be there).  By the 1980's it was 20%-ish. (These percentages are always contested and shifting because our expectation of 100% changes over time.) But my point is that we've only had the tip of the ice-burg for as long as we've been visiting, up until recently.

It takes a lot of money. And honestly, not enough people care. To the white archeologists who fell in love with the place, there's only so much money to scrape together. The Mexican budget has always had its hands full trying to deal with its neighbor to the north. And the Maya who still live among these ruins were fine with them returning to dust. So it's been a slow dig with occasional breakthroughs. 

Each time a stella (stone tablet with writing on it) is found, it helps to decode all of the previous Stellas. Anyone who's ever decoded a puzzle understands this. Small translations end up reframing giant portions of our understanding.

A key witness to our poor level of understanding is the ball courts. It's also a major clue for the unproven part of my theory. I've been in 2 or 3 of these ball courts. We found relief sculptures of two teams competing on the court. After the game, a team gets sacrificed. We already knew they were big on human sacrifice. Easy enough to decipher. They played for their lives, similar to the colosseum in Rome. Maybe the teams were slaves or criminals. Wrong. This was the assumption for years until someone made a breakthrough in their written language. Turns out, it was the WINNER of the game that was sacrificed, not the loser. Well, now we have to go back and rethink all the sacrifice stuff we'd found. Clearly, sacrifice was an honor. In fact, it's said that sacrifice is how a regular person moves up to the ruling class.

There was clearly a strong division among class. And apparently knowledge was a privilege. Only the royalty could read those stellas, or the calendar for that matter. Sacrifice was how you attempt to be... better born. Some of this feels like speculation again, but we do know that the class system was extreme and this isn't a huge stretch for human nature. 

COMMON THEORIES OF WHAT ENDED THE MAYAN EMPIRE

All my sources, including the descendants I talked to in Mexico, said the same things. We have evidence of events that happened and any one of them could be the cause of the collapse. 

There was evidence of famine and drought which is an easy suspect. Findings suggest an epidemic, which could leave a place "cursed". There was also strong evidence of an uprising by the people, resulting in the murder of all literate royalty. That explains why no one knows how to read the stellas (or at least they claim not to). With every possible reason for their demise, it started to sound more and more familiar.

My Theory
Drought = overpopulation. Famine = overpopulation. Epidemic = overpopulation. Rebellion = overpopulation. Those things can all happen without destroying a culture, but only if the culture has some wiggle room. My theory was that they got so good at progress, they ran out of room. The slightest dry season would have meant dying of thirst. A slight disease would fill the streets with bodies. And if 2020 lasts long enough for anyone to read this, you can see how these disasters interact with each other, especially civil unrest. 

The thing about human sacrifice kept standing out in my mind. Controlling a population by using fear is not new. You can send a generation off to war if there was a believable threat to the homeland. But it's far easier if you glorify the fallen AND if they have some sort of heaven or reincarnation to look forward to. Valhalla, Kamikaze, Martyrs... Heaven... I'm not saying anything profound here. We all know how religion plays into the readiness of war. But imagine if sacrifice, even when not facing a foreign threat, was something to glorify. You could could build a strong loyal civilization in a jiffy. It would feed you and protect you, even if.. actually.. especially if it meant sacrificing your own health or safety. Enslaving people is hard. "Letting" people serve you is easier. 

I have to believe there was probably a portion of the Maya population who thought this was all hogwash. They followed the rules and were good neighbors, but didn't sign up to have their daughter thrown into the pit and they didn't play sports to win an obsidian blade to the chest. They probably argued about this with relatives on the holidays.

If I had centuries worth of star charts, here's how I would accidentally ruin my civilization with it. I'd make it illegal for anyone outside of my family and staff to understand how science works. I would be the only one who could turn the sun and moon off and on at my god-like will. I would enslave my entire culture without them considering themselves slaves. Then, when I can have whatever I want, I'll ask for way too much. 

We'll grow and build and grow and build until no other Empire could ever compete. Eventually, I would run out of land. It would become hard to keep everyone fed and happy. Disease and famine would put the pressure on me to fix Venus's orbit or something and it would take too long. My empire would collapse. The people who'd been fighting each other over water would inevitably turn on me. They don't stop after simply killing me and my family. They would abandon anything outside of their understanding which, do to my embargo on knowledge, means literally everything. All the amazing advancements of our ancestors would be tossed in the trash like a corroded battery. Survivors of the revolution and the plague would head into the woods to grow food, build simple warm weather homes, and burn off any tattoos that may have been in support of me and my empire. Just don't talk about it. Don't teach it to the kids. Erase it for ever.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm dumbing these people down. I do tent to roll my eyes at blind faith, but that's not just a Mayan thing. We still have the same silly superstitions today. We still do messed up things for class mobility. And we still misinform the public in order to make moves. Our morals are decided by god, yet taught to us by other humans who speak for god. I'm not dumbing the Maya down, I'm dumbing us all down. The Maya at least had the sense to trade it in for something more sustainable. 

SO THEN WHAT WAS THE DAMN PREDICTION?!?!

If we're assuming prophecies land on date cycles, then this would be the biggest date cycle and hence the biggest prophecy. The Maya would allegedly be expecting the most enlightening news in their entire history. Even though I've already sort of labeled that as our assumption, not theirs, let's run with it.

What would "the biggest enlightenment" be if it were us in 10,000AD? Whether we're being examined by the AI we created or the genetically engineered creatures that we chose to become, what would we expect to see during the countdown of 9999AD? The headline won't be about whichever team won the Galacticbowl that year. The headline would be about the fact that this was the era that humans jumped from bronze age to space age to dimension age. It was the era that we learned how not to collapse. In the same sentence, we would celebrate both the invention of the telescope and the treaty of the solar systems. We'd remember the Vikings and the people from the 11.111th dimension both as "this decimillenium's most resourceful navigators". Hamlet and 67th century polka hip hop would be on the same list of influential literature.

The question: What's the flagship knowledge bomb for a civilization who has no idea who they were or what happened to them? The answer is in the question. They learn who they were and what happened to them. That was my prediction.

Here's why it's crazy that it happened in 2012. Remember in our analogy, we're pretending that our future artifact was found in the year 9980 AD. That means we'd only have 20 years left to figure out everything we can about this ancient Earth empire before the big day happens. I mean, just incase it spells the end of galactic civilization, we should excavate the blue planet as much as possible by the end of 9999AD. The whole galaxy is watching and they're all going to lose interest by 10,001 AD.

When we found the Mayan long count calendar, it was shockingly close to 2012 (for something that spans several thousand years). We had excavated the tip of an ice burg and we were moving slowly. Once we saw 2012 on their calendar, a ton of global attention was given. Money was sent. Archeology boomed in the region. It became an interest to humanity, not just to Mexico and a handful of scholars. The tip of the iceburg expanded exponentially. We dug up a ton more stellas and cracked a ton more of their language. We learned the thing about sacrifice being an honor, not a punishment. We figured out that a bunch of faces were actually numbers and a bunch of numbers were actually words and a bunch of words were actually just turd fossils. It became slightly clearer. The memory of the Maya started to awaken in our collective minds. We found new roads and cities pretty much everywhere we dug. 

Many archeologists would say from looking at the newer thickly settled snapshot of the Mayan footprint, it was too big. Flanked by ocean on each side, there was no where to stretch out when the weather changed, when crops failed, when disease spread. The land was simply over-taxed. Their imagination and ingenuity is what did them in. 

Who they are and what happened to them is an enlightenment that their descendants (as well as the rest of the human race) received in 2012. It's not just my prediction. And it's not just a self fulfilling prophesy. It was inevitable. Did we unearth the key artifact on Dec 21 2012? Of course not. But given the length of a baktun, anything within hundreds of years would seem like a bullseye. And these enlightening discoveries happened in a span of 10-20 years on and around 2012, the dead center of the bullseye. They got their big news right when they would have expected it.

Not for nothing, we've found ancient timepieces all over the world that show a similar abrupt stop right around the same time (meaning now). If you're superstitious or open to the idea of ancient lost superior knowledge, you might assume that now is a pivotal time period in human history. And if you're skeptical, that's also legit. But wherever you are on the spectrum, you can simply take our ancestor's history as a cautionary tale. I keep jumping back and forth between describing the people who built the Mayan ruins and the people who built New York City. But I can actually wrap up both stories at the same time... 

There's only so much food and water. Tight clusters breed disease. Leaders throttle down our education and tell us not to look behind the curtain of science, but to instead glorify our pain for their gain. Our most common motivation is social class and it drives both our greatest accomplishments and our biggest mistakes. We as people are smart and strong but our system of the masses serving the few is a self destructive time bomb. We have more people than the ground can hold and we're flanked on all sides by an uncrossable expanse. 

The drawing series can be viewed at https://www.scribblesofdave.com/p-landscapes/maya.html