I thought this piece would be a poem, but I have prose to say about it. When I think about and experience (and have) power, I am taking my subjective experience of a context and seeking to apply it to others’ contexts. I’ve observed that the powerful often cannot see the possibility of contextual variation and can only see through the glasses that are bound to their faces with rope tied so many years ago. These lenses are often polarized in such a way that they do not reveal the subjective experiences of other people to the wearer. Just like imperialism in its historical, observable sense, contextual imperialism takes over from its wielders’ fear, greed, and resentments. In this way, contextual imperialism in a micro sense is a poorly understood personal response to unresolved personal history(ies). One has been unwittingly captured by narratives that drive certain responses (taking over the context, in this case), and awareness that one is doing this capturing is the key seed that can grow into the ending of the practice.
When one seeks to dominate the context of another person, one is denying the wonderfulness of variation in favor of valuation. Valuation is the pervasive myth that one thing is better than another (reliant on the pervasive myth that one thing can be definitively separated from another). If one accepts that things can be separated from other things (I’m provisionally willing to accept this), then one is in a position to potentially become a “great” valuator. Someone who can predict and then eventually define what is better than one. This is the fervent dream of middle managers, management consultants, Fortune 501-1000 CEOs, and philanthropists; each desires the sense that their values be reflected in the world through the decisions other people make, the data visualizations that become visible when the “right” things are measured, and the biographies that are narratively kind to their context-imperial subjects. To be truly potent as a valuation definer, one has to find things that people know to be intuitively “true” and bring these truths to the people in a radical, personally sacrificial way. Lincoln and Jesus were pretty successful and have been smiled upon by many historians for the contextual mostly-mastery.
There’s a dark side to values-making and world-shaking, however. If one thing is going to be higher than another, there will be things that are at the bottom. Things at the bottom, unless they are starfish or worms and both wise and disinterested, may not appreciate being ranked lower. Particularly if the lower ranking impacts their ability to see the world through lenses that they feel they have chosen and which prioritize their own needs, rather than sublimating their beings to the needs/preferences of others.
There’s an alternative to ranking. Rather than thinking, what’s my favorite meal, movie, person, coffee, think about differences as wonderful. Consider variation as key to the spice of life, if clichés are your thing. Seek out the new, the different, the low, the high, and the sideways. Germinate seeds that you’ve never imagined might sprout. Find belief in things that only initially inspire disbelief and skepticism. Re-do a pattern. The celebration of variation and the relatively arbitrary continuation of some of the variants is the real lesson of Darwin. The abusively propagated notion of “survival of the fittest” implies that only the strong (best) survive and that if you’re closer to the bottom you’re not fit to live. This is inhuman and awful, and is the prime heuristic of economics, finance, business, and government in most places and contexts. And it’s a contextual imperialism by the powerful for the powerful (who are not powerful for any “good reason”, only powerful because they were already powerful).
At least find variation and ignore valuation. But if you’re feeling particularly variation-ready, consider a more radical option. Consider seeing things not as distinct and then parts of patterns (a coffee this morning that’s distinct from the sleep and shower this morning; a coffee that is a habit and is the same as yesterday’s coffee) but rather as a continuity and a completely distinct non-pattern (the coffee this morning as a part of the sleep-waking-shower-living moment; the coffee this morning as a revelation first revealed in every sip this morning, entirely a new experience without any relationship to previous cups or sips of coffee). This is a context-free and free-context way of seeing, hearing, feeling, listening, smelling, and experiencing. This lens not only shrugs off the imperialism that might cause one to dictate the experience of another, but it also removes the yoke that one has created for oneself to attach to the past and future. Life in the moment, with the sense of variation highly tuned and yet entirely agnostic to the value and the differences.
Language is like a computer, in that the logical consistency feels like a cage that prevents creative, non-differentiating, “irrational” methods of expression. But neither language nor computers can perfectly prevent context freedom, even though language cannot exist outside of some context and computers can only speak in 0 and 1 (or maybe a few more numbers than that if you’re talking about different physics). Both language and computers can be used as mediums to paint pictures that illustrate wiggly, unusual, free contexts and start to diffuse imperial ranking and differentiation systems (imperial in the power trying to get more and more power sense).
So paint. Consider poetry. And ignore everything I’m saying; to free yourself from contextual imperialists, free yourself from the conceits of writers, the power-hungry wielders of language (and computers).
Roman Ryan 