Distance

We have all and for so very long defined ourselves by a conceptual difference and distance we now accept as necessary that we fail to see that the loneliness and isolation this exclusion brings has become the one thing that unites us all. It is as though we seek to experience and know the world by purposefully pushing it away and then by and through or as this tokenised alienation we aspire to extract psychological and symbolic leverage as personal value and tribal utility. This is a false economy and we would all do much better to rapidly discard it.

The truth, and as a matter of logic as much as of any natural and living complexity or intelligence, is that all assertions of difference and distance are as much interior as they are external and every act or word and thought of anger directed outwards meets an equal and opposite fate with us and as experience and memory. We reflexively seek to understand by rationalising measuring identifying and isolating it as something other than ourselves is always and already indistinguishable from that experience within and it is only some shared hypnotic trance of shared narrative self-deception that even allows us to begin to suspend disbelief in the essential and irreducible fictional character of these words and worlds we all inhabit.

Fear is the only possible consequence of any such self and identity built upon an enduring unconstructive dissonance and distance from self as other and the sooner we all begin to understand this, the better off we will all be. Difference as diversity and cultural change are key components in the flow of a history which sweeps us all and without exception along in its unknowing wake. Perceiving difference as an opportunity is at times difficult to do but opportunity it truly is and in embracing others, we embrace and engage with our own unbounded potential and the manifest hope for a shared and meaningful future.