Oppression is King!

(By Donovan Ward)

Oppression: (Noun) - 1. The act of subjugating by cruelty. 2. The state of being kept down by unjust use of force or authority. 3. Arbitrary and cruel exercise of power. 4. The experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice.

Freedom: (Noun) - 1. The power to act, speak, or think without externally imposed restraints. 2. The capacity to exercise choice. 3. The right to enjoy all the privileges of citizenship.

“Oppression is the experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve the legal system (as in slavery, apartheid, or the lack of right to vote) nor violent (as in tyrannical societies). Harvey has used the term "civilized oppression" to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life.

Civilized oppression "is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules. It refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions which are supported by the media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms."” Morton Deutsch – 2005.

Thoughts on Oppression and Freedom

Ancient hunter-gatherer societies were for the most part egalitarian until about 12000 years ago. Families and clans became overpopulated tribes that could no longer be sustained from the land that had until then supported these cooperative communities. This necessitated the expansion of territory and the development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

With the accumulation of surplus food, new occupations such as traders, merchants, administrators, artisans, soldiers, and rulers emerged. Social hierarchies developed as some became more successful than others which in turn led to the reliance of the less successful communities on the more prosperous ones.

Inevitably this led to conflicts that ultimately resulted in the emergence and development of warfare.

These four little ailments that will be the death of mankind.

The new old four horsemen.

Over-population, land, agriculture and the mother fucker of them all: warfare!

Often the size of the gun doesn't hide the intent.

Base and uncouth: something I once referred to as ghetto logic when working with kids in prison. It’s the same shit on a global scale with full-blown sociopaths at the helm.

“You have what I want. If I take it I will have it and you will be okay with that or you’ll be dead! Either way, fuck you!”

In this world of the petrified, the most ruthless men are kings.

And even supposedly rational thinkers doubt the evidence, choosing to accept the cesspit called reality because
“That’s just how it is.”

And ...
“Things are the way they are.”

And...
"What can you do?”

That’s why I can be a proud human being, while not being proud of being human.

I was born in the nationalist South Africa of 1969 and I live in another nationalist South Africa in 2013. In what kind of South Africa will I die?

I am proudly Azanian but right now I am not proud of being South African. I am a proud African and yet I think Africa’s pride is being willingly bartered by everyone of us for a handful of plastic beads and baubles in the form of a religious-capitalist paradigm that serves to make us oppress ourselves and each other even as we are being oppressed.

And as for freedom, it does not exist while oppression is king.