the destructive power of western culture and language suffusing everything in my life. the destruction of my own gaze into a western one.

i can't live without feeling constantly like we lost, we are conquered, and that this feeling will never go away. the frustration at the parts of myself forever lost to this even as i write in english on a primarily western website shaped by a very western internet, in full awareness that i do not know how to access such concepts and spaces indigenously.

i need to read some books and relearn my mother tongue. i need help.

  • Gorn [they/them,he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Ya. I kinda mean all of it. The last time Europeans were Indigenous was before the Celtic invasion a few thousand years ago. Or, at least, before the Roman Empire did its thing around year 0, leaving us with the absolutely degenerate Medieval era for a thousand years before weaponizing that christianity against the rest of the world in the 'colonial era'. Celts colonized Europe, then the Romans, then the English colonized the Scottish, then the French colonized the English, then all the Europeans colonized a lot of the rest of the world, etc. etc. It's just been a dogpile of shit-heads colonizing one another, and themselves, for thousands of years.

    Like, which part of that history is a European supposed to draw meaning from? It's all shit. Always has been, for practical purposes. All the healthy Indigenous knowledge/lifeways, language/culture have been stomped on, ten times over. They're gone. But it was so long ago, there is absolutely no hope at reclaiming it. This is why so many White people fall into the trap of fetishizing their 'Viking ancestors'. Vikings existed for, like, 100 years. And everything we know about them was written by a single christian historian 300 years after the fact. It's all garbage, and it's all gone.

    So, like, what I mean is that Europeans don't have a not-colonized culture to learn from, or even reach back to. The pain of having been colonized is really dull-to-non-existant, because it was so long ago. But the emptiness, the search for meaning and connection to ancestors and all of that, is still very much there. People are people.

    So even as people of European descent are at the 'top' of the colonial hierarchy, if you're a decolonialist/leftist, it definitely doesn't feel like winning.

    I don't bring this up at all to minimize the pain you shared here. That is very real, and nothing like what a White person/European person would feel today. I just thought it might take the sting out of feeling like you 'lost' to share that the good-hearted White people definitely don't feel like we 'won'. Indigenous people I've talked with about this are all hurt, and angry. Obviously, and that's valid. But there's also a pride in that their cultures and languages are still alive, and that they have the opportunity to help revitalize them, if they want. I think that's a pretty cool thing, just from where I sit.

    Anyway, these are a whoooole lot of, just, my personal thoughts haha. Mostly I'm just reading this thread and finding it super insightful, so thanks. Also hell ya, Parasite was fuckin' awesome hahaha

    • frompeaches [she/her,they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Ah, I've never understood how exactly Europeans would feel disconnected from their pasts – it sorta seems to be right there in all the aristotle and the cathedrals and palaces. But I definitely see the symptoms when it comes to the fetishisation of Viking Culture, which I misread. Thank you for writing this!

      • Gorn [they/them,he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Ya, it's very true that a lot of the 'dominant' culture draws directly from European history, totally. And a lot of libs are proud of the Ancient Greek philosophers and Christian architects and all that. It's just... I'm not, cuz they were all so... bad. Hahaha. :af-heart: