Sigh. I don't even know where to begin.
I've been distancing myself from the internet in general, increasingly circumscribing the scope of what I allow myself to consume. Currently, I use newpipe with a list of channels I've collected, so as to avoid the youtube algorithm. I restrict myself to channels of "comprehensive input" for the languages I am learning, both in order to learn them better, and to distance myself from the anglosphere. Besides that, I recently got back to the habit of browsing z-library.
Z-library is a veritable rabbit hole. I've found so many books in there on a variety of topics I am interested in, and many more which I didn't know I would be interested in. I went in looking for some books on chinese culture, and ended up reading about the ottoman empire as well as sufi mysticism. Also Tarot, more on that later.
Doing this, I've had come to terms with using the english language as my vehicle for learning about the world. It is no secret that my relationship with the english language is conflictive. I associate it with imperialism, zionism, and genocide. Increasingly I've been noticing just how aggresive and belligerent the anglo-zionist empire is. This goes beyond a merely moral question. I have realized, for a few years now, how the english language has implicit the axioms of their way of thinking. I once wrote here about what I consider to be "anglo-thought", an elaboration of western thought. I think I need to revise some of what I wrote. I've been planning to delineate what I perceive to be the characteristics of these and other ways of thinking, a post that is still in the making. For now, suffice to say I am trying to unlearn as much as possible those elements of "western" thought that I have inherited through language and culture.
As I said, I've had to come to terms with the fact that, if I want to keep learning, I need to keep using the english language. It's both a blessing and a curse. But mostly a curse. Yet, as I said, going into z-lib I find myself in a deep rabbit hole of all kinds of new knowledge about the world and the different cultures that have inhabited it. There's also much new thought that is entirely compatible with my way of thinking. Most of the new learning and development of scientific and scholarly thought has been conducted in the english language. Can I believe that the english language can really break with the very axioms of the culture from which it is, by the nature of language and culture, inseparable?
That is now the question that I pose myself. Just like there's no going back on modernity, industrialization, and even the coercive nature of civiliation itself, perhaps it would be best to try to perform a kind of alchemical transformation on the imperialist language of the anglos and extract the useful parts about it, even though it may not be possible to completely remove the impurities in it. Of course, the same extends to western culture in general. I realize there may be two different meanings of "western culture", which may be more or less disinguished from one another, though they are in practice two sides of the same coin, having both developed intimately and in tandem. One of them is culture itself, all of it's great material, cultural, and scientific achievements. The reality of a way of living in the world and trying to make sense of it by millions of people who are throwin in this imperfect world the same as anyone else. The other is the aggresive, imperialist, self-aggrandizing perception that refuses to acknwledge the validity of other cultures, imposes itself on others and exploits the riches bestowed on all peoples and nature as if entitled to them as their sole heirs.
But are they at all different from other empires? This is a delicate question. On the one hand, I cannot imagine Mongols from the time of Ghengis Khan being much nicer. All throughout history we find examples of empires imposing themselves through force, in the process commiting attrocities such as uprooting and enslaving whole populations, as well as ethnicide and, yes, genocide. In fact, all languages that I speak -Spanish, Russian, Chinese, as well as english- share this feature of an imperialist past which have engaged in any of these practices. There is one specific reason for pushing against the english language specifically, and it is one of time and place.
We are living the end of european imperialism, and more locally (in time), the end of anglo imperialism (started with the brittish empire and continued through north-american zionism*.) I personally live in one of the countries that is being directly threatened with, not only surreptitious interference through "three letter agencies", but directly through military invasion, as well as having their militias financed and armed directly by the empire. The so-called drug cartels. Hence, the need to push against western imperialist axioms, modes of thought, and, of course, their language.
This brings me to another delicate issue: the question of blaming the citizens for the actions of their rulers. It IS a delicate question. Too often people like to divorce themselves from their rulers, claiming that they are imposed on them and they do not have a say on what goes on at the highest levels of administration. In the present case, I can use their narratives against them. Given that the anglo empire claims to be a democracy (which I know it really isn't, but they still hold that to be true), then there is an implicit support for the actions of their government. Indeed, the periodic ritual of surrogation of one's political powers to whoever wins a popularity contest is a way of backing whatever decisions this person may take for the next N years.
This is just an argument, though, a shorthand for the experience I've had interacting with anglos on the internet for so many years. Now, I will paint this picture from my limited perspective (I am always painfully aware of just how limited my experience is, a way of thinking that western thought generally eschews), but one could say that there are broadly two camps on the anglo internet, represented by 4chan and reddit. 4chan people look down on redditors, and the other way around. On one hand you have what is called the "right", and on the other what is called the "left" (which in US politics is just the right weaving a rainbow flag.) While the people at 4chan are much worse to interact with, being a good representative of the way the angloamerican empire has conducted itself with the rest of the world, redditors also represent, in their thinking, the axioms of the imperialist anglo-thought. On both of these sites and their satellites, whenever one talks with an anglo about loaded topics, one will always find themselves dialoguing with a way of thinking that is inherently imperialist. They will defend the free market, copyright mafia, liberal democracy, and the notion of "freedom."** Almost anywhere one speaks with an angloamerican, one would find them defending outright imperialist ways of thinking. The current war in Iran is another case in point. It is said that the current war has no support among the citizens of the empire (probably beause they are losing a humilliating defeat), contrasting it with all the 70+ wars the've been engaged in for the better part of their whole existence as a country, where every other invasion to nearly every other country, has been supported by the majority of angloamericans, even if based on lies such as imaginary "weapons of mass destruction." Conclusion: anglo-americans do support imperialist actions, they only disagree with their government insofar as *internal policy* doesn't align with their own thinking. As regards to military invasion into other countries, they don't give a shit.
I already went far astray. This has been circling my mind incessantly for a good while now, so I guess I had to let it out. I will keep insisting in this. I've been promising a numberr of critical views on nearly everything that I find questionable about western thought, so that means more of this is yet to come.
But I wouldn't want it to be all negative. This is all stuff that is seldom said up front the way I do here. But there is much more going on, and it is also important not just to dismantle westernism, but to try to lay down the foundations for what I expect to be a better world. Bitterness towards the bigotry of the west runs the risk of becoming exactly that which we denounce.
My intention is to write. Write, write, write. Most often I have these thoughts on imperialism to write about, in a way, it's easier. It's probably what they want, after all. I will try to make an effort to write about more constructive ideas in future posts, perhaps shift the balance towards positivity. Even if it just means writng what I've been doing, positively. It may seem that all that I do is complain. I come here to complain, after all.
And if you are an anglo-american (I'm writing this in english, after all), I guess I should say I am sorry if I am misrepresenting you. But in reality, I am not. I made my case already. Yes, there are a good number of anglo-americans who are not all that bad, at least, they don't seem to be from what I can read coming out of them. I myself am much of a hermit, and even though my own country is leading the way out of the old order and poised to become the power of north america, I look around and see that most of the people I meet still have this infatuation towards the decaying empire, or at least with it's more glamorous aspects. I am mexican, and I say it proudly, but I am a creature of the world, and of nature, and I refuse to limit myself to the axioms of a certain cultural identity, if that means adopting points of view that are against life itself. I have yet much to learn, and I am with all of those who also speak out and act against the disaster that is civilization, modernity, imperialism, capitalism, or whatever is responsible for the sorry state of things.
The sole purpose is to try to move towards the world one would like to see, that one believes could be possible.
* In a later post, I will elaborate on what I mean when I say zionism. For now I will just say that it doesn't mean the same thing as "judaism", and that one can be zionist and not jew, or the other way around. The imperial occupation of north america, what is now called the united states, checks all the boxes of what I define as zionism. All the same boxes as their bosses over at occupied Palestine. I won't pretend I am not sort of cheating here: taking a number of features shared by both occupations and defining them as "zionism." Some amount of though will reveal that in the light of current events, it makes a lot of sense.
** I've been promising to elaborate on the "poisoned dart" that is freedom, as of yet, I haven't, because it's a delicate matter I need to address properly. Suffice to say freedom is the banner which the anglo-american empire uses to invade other countries, orchestrate coups, kidnap presidents, bomb schools an hospitals, destroy social tissue, indebt whole countries, exploit other nations' natural resources, and also the big word which zionist argentina uses to defend it's ignominious conduct.