HOW WE SAVE THE WORLD

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” 

This world has to end. 

And a new one must be born. Not because it’s imperfect or dying- and it is dying, but because it isn’t ours. Rebirth doesn’t always mean death. The reality is that this version of the world, this idea of the world is approaching its stopping point and we must decide how we will keep the world spinning, and imagine new and better ways of doing so.  

There are a billion things bringing this world down to earth. Everything bad, everything bad that’s ever happened to you, everything bad that will happen. It can’t be perfect, there are too many factors to account for, the biggest factor being the human component of our life here. Amongst the things ailing us (capitalism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, war, gentrification, fashion niggas, imperialism, gun violence, DJ Akademiks, etc.), we struggle to realize that it’s not incidental. The clothes you’re wearing, the bed you’re sleeping in, the music you’re listening to… it’s all by design. It began as an idea, before anything a dream. Even us, we are imperfect and incompetent by design. And that’s what’s going to save the world. We were an idea and a dream before that and that’s always more urgent than reality.

My whole life, I’ve been trying to imagine ways to make the world a better place. I wanted to find a common ground that all of us need or should have in order to be our best selves. I fancy myself a problem solver and a critical thinker. But to be honest, I don’t think I could figure anything out. Nothing sustainable or worthwhile or feasible or concrete. Nothing that felt grand enough to actually make a difference. Here are a few of the ideas I came up with, some bigger than others: 

1. More hugs (everyone gets more intimacy) 

2. Free healthcare 

3. ALL NEEDS MEET 

4. NO Racism

5. Peace 

6. Equality 

7. Yoga 

8. Art

9. Drugs

10. Therapy 

11. Journaling 

12. Stretching 

13. Therapy

14. Focus 

15. Knitting 

16. Jazz 

17. Sex

18. MUSIC 

19. DREAMS

I went away from the list for a few months and tried to think of anything else. School, work, my faith, my health, my relationships, myself. At the end of my incubation I found three answers (or ideas or realizations), three answers I think are worth engaging with: 

1. Destruction is the way. 

2. I have seen worlds end before. 

3. We must be more people. 

The first realization, destruction, brings to mind the elements. Water, as in the great deluge, the first event that reset civilization and the harbinger of the modern age. And the fire that was promised to us next time. Fire is a cleanser but it also swallows and damns all, indiscriminately. How we destroy ourselves is pivotal in choosing the path we take to salvation. What flowers will sprout from the embers we leave behind?

As for the second realization, all of the worlds I have seen come to an end were my own. I knew these worlds and they were either blown up or discarded or taken away from me or expired or not as good as I thought it was or some other thing. Each role of mine was a world and it was my responsibility to live within it. Everytime something about me would change, I felt like something was stripped from me. I used to be a child, then I grew out of it. When I moved into spaces where I was isolated and without community, I felt as though I was no longer many of the things that defined me. My life as a son, brother, friend, uncle, lover… it all felt foreign to me. I was just me, by myself, which led me to my third realization. 

We must be more people. 

As a people we should be everything to one another. Connection and community is the saving grace of collective understanding. By expanding community on a personal level, the ways in which ideation permeates our life could grow exponentially. We think we create ideas but the truth is, ideas create us. My mother and father dreamed of me for decades before I was born and my grandparents did before them. Since I became a physical body, the ideas of what I should be were imposed on my spirit and my mind. Those same ideas have gone a long way in sculpting who I am today. The vision that preempts execution is the most important part of change. We are ideas that can create more ideas and through that creation we can save ourselves and the world. These ideas should be based in unity and empathy as well as the understanding that if we extend our being outwards and onto each other, we will always be enough to overcome whatever comes around the bend. 

In Fantastic Four #570, during Jonathan Hickman’s run with the characters, Reed Richards was in turmoil. He erected a room in his lab covered with 100 ideas that he believed could change the world for the better. This all built to the seminal idea #101, which was: “SOLVE EVERYTHING.” With all his knowledge and all his power, he felt a responsibility towards what he had and what he was given. Idea #101 took shape as an interdimensional travel device that allowed him to communicate and congregate with different versions of himself and take advantage of the different perspectives/abilities they had to offer. This group was called the “Council of Reeds.” He saw himself as his brother or his wife or even his enemy. He saw what he had to offer in those roles and it helped unlock his own mind.  

Imagine a world where we can love like 100 people, listen like 100 people, give like 100 people, seek like 100 people, think like 100 people, or grow like 100 people. An intense knowing is found in multiplicity and perspective that could never be gained by simply being yourself and only yourself. 

Carl Jung described the modern man as someone who is aware of the immediate present, unafraid of the deep abyss of the future and untethered to the dregs of the past. This definition of a modern man is optimal for the development of our new world and it should be a status we all seek to find together. As a people it is crucial that we accept that we are a person and a process and with the right process, tomorrow we will be surpassed.  

The future and tomorrow is completely in our hands and it’s important that we put our best foot forward, whatever foot that may be. I began this journey looking for answers but along the way I only found more questions. I am not sure I know how to save the world but I know that everything we have was once dreamed of by someone else and that we can dream of something better. I want to build a different future than the one I see on the horizon. I dream of a future where I look out onto the world, dead at the center where the earth and the sky collide and there would be no horizon. I wish all of my (your, our) limits would die. I pray that all my limits can die. 

The truth is, it’s all happening. Everything we love and everything we hate, it’s happening and it’s all us. We save the world by being it. 

-

O mankind, We have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that you may know one another. 

Surah 49, Ayah 13

Bleeding Heart/Just What Happens

Catastrophe: An event producing a subversion of the order or system of things. 

As in when watching the series dahmer on netflix I kept hitting Pause. 

play. Pause. Pause. Pause. 

Hiccuping my breath to slur out the inevitable, 

as if to save these brown boys from becoming exactly as they ended up, 

dark meat in a white mouth, bones with which to pick his teeth. 

Not even a park, not even a flower

As in the way their families renounce their trauma packed clumsily 

into a film reel, loaded, laid out without so much as a warning. 

How their children’s hearts were jerked out of their chests 

/Off guard / And none of this is a metaphor. Just what happens 

I wonder what catastrophe would have to unleash 

itself to deworm our leaky ears 

The babes spoke and have been devoured 

And 3 decades later white men are still flushing acid on brown 

bodies in Milwaukee. And white girls on twitter complain 

that the story isn’t gory enough. And none of this is a metaphor. 

Just what happens

Next halloween I think I’ll go as myself 

because there’s never been a time the world wasn’t scared 

of a black body. Only what it can do, never what is done to it 

/On guard/ A classic

This is what it means to be lonely 

- to be delivered into the hands of your destroyer in accordance with the law. 

To holler in a room stacked with people and still hear the echo. 

Which is to say this is not the first time a white man has swallowed 

a brown body without remorse. Which is to say the very nature 

of this country has been preparing him for this moment 

I don’t even know if this is a poem, say a manifesto instead, 

I’m calling for death to the bleeding heart.

And on the last day, part of me hopes the sky will writhe with grief

And break open green in torment 

And on the last day part of me hopes 

that my God is a god of vengeance.