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| path | date | title | author | type | image | draft | description | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /posts/dreams-of-gnosis-toc | 2021-05-20T23:19:51.246Z | Dreams Of Gnosis | blog | true | a poem about sovereignty and gnosis | Multiple Contributors |
Table Of Contents
- Body Sovereignty by Max Fowler
- Letter from Txanahuya Hunikuī
- Morgan Ash On Stigma
- Love Poem
Body Sovereignty
Sovereignty isn’t the same as individualism or as selfishness.
Sovereignty isn't about the nature of a decision that you make, it’s about the process through which the decision was arrived at.
Body Sovereignty, means “my body my choice”. Body Sovereignty doesn’t say whether a person should or should not get an abortion, it says that they should be the one to decide.
Body Sovereignty doesn’t say wether or not two people should have sex. It says that sex should take place without coercion.
Body Sovereignty doesn’t say whether or not someone should get a vaccine, it says that each person needs to make their own decision about what goes into their body.
Someone may choose to get a vaccine because they’ve read that getting a vaccine will help protect the vulnerable, and they choose to get vaccinated not to protect themselves, but out of care for the world. Body Sovereignty doesn’t say that each person is an island.
It says someone should make that choice not because they feel they have no other choice, but because it is what they believe and choose based on their best understanding of the world. Epistemology and power are deeply entwined, and body sovereignty is an epistemology of the people. Some call it gnosis. Some call it citizen science. Ayurveda has a related term called "Pramana". Body Sovereignty doesn’t say don’t seek the opinions of experts and elders, it says you must decide for yourself who to trust.
Some people may argue that disease is so dangerous and harmful, that disease is a special case which is more important than some theoretical principle of sovereignty. That freedom and safety are an axis which we make compromises between. Other people will argue that “people are dumb” and we need experts to make decisions for them.
My view is that sovereignty is not located on this axis. It is my experience that true respect for sovereignty even when you disagree actually leads to safety and connection at a deeper level. It was also the (continued) colonial violation of indigenous sovereignty that has led to genocide and so much destruction of the earth. It was also the religious missionary violation of sovereignty that justified so much harm under the guise of salvation. Every missionary believes their cause is worth the means at the time.
The idea that even suggesting sovereignty is a good principle, may be seen as a dangerous perspective, points to the level of coercion that is accepted as normal in our society. Perhaps this is to be expected in a world where we see advertisements against our will on a regular basis, and where platforms like instagram have a business model that relies on changing people's behavior to give their attention and resources to the companies that pay them.
Coercion and manipulation are deeply rooted in our culture (advertisements, police, data tracking, prisons, dark UX), but I’m still not really sure we can dismantle the masters house with the masters tools.
I have a lot of friends who are anti-colonial and anti-capitalist, but somehow see vaccination, medicine, and the pharmaceutical companies as exceptions from these systems. To me this feels dissonant. As though Pfizer doesn't have more than 1.3 billion in past criminal fines. As though crisis and trauma were not the perfect opportunity for power structures to establish themselves which will long outlast their virtue.
Given the long history of connection between religion and medicine in cultures all around the world, freedom of religion, and medical freedom, seem deeply entwined. Given the inherent uncertainty of the world, even of science, even between scientists, at what point does forcing a medical perspective on someone else become a sort of religious missionary activity? And who gets to draw that line? Do we want to live in a world where white billionaires make those decisions for everyone? Even if you approve of their decisions this time, what seeds do we sew when we outsource those decisions to them? Will “experts” always have the experience of marginalized people in mind? Have they in the past?
A part of me feels these edge cases where we want to make an exception and throw sovereignty away, are actually the most important to pay extra attention to, to bring about deeper change, beyond the current news cycle.
Beyond my objections to vaccine passports, I feel like ending this letter with something else.
Whether you get vaccinated or don’t get vaccinated I will not ostracize you or look down on you. That’s your choice.
Letter From Txanahuya Hunikuī
Inurua Inanibanu …
Yura Baka Nai Bai …
Native Nation Hunikuī of the Yuxibu Forest of the North Region of Pindo Abya Ayala …
Yesterday and today we lost two great Native Chiefs! One from the Native Native Nation Hunikuī, another from the Native Native Nation Katukina both victims of the vaccine they got!
I mean to make it clear to all of us brothers and sisters in authority that the extermination, ethnogenocide and genocides against us Native Nations in Pindo Abya Ayala continues to be promoted by the Brazilian state and its political rulers, managers, lawmakers, corporate business, industrial rural farmers, timber extractors, oil miners, etc!
We demand justice measures against the Brazilian state and its political rulers, managers, legal legislators, and its biopiracy laboratories, colonizers, killers of the ministry, health secretary, hospitals, Sesai, Funasa, Anvisa, Disis base poles !!! Who insist on wanting to vaccinate our nations, relatives, families Native from Pindo Abya Ayala where we have already warned that we have not adhered, we do not accept vaccination in our Native Nations from Pindo Abya Ayala !!!
We are sending a copy of the same content to the Courts and operators who are experts in the laws so that the appropriate legal measures can be taken against the Brazilian state and its political governors, legal legislative managers !!!
Txanahuya Hunikuī …
Natural Judge-TOAJ representative of the North region of Pindo Abya Ayala …
Deliberative Adviser of FEPHAC …
Morgan Ash On Stigma
More so of concern, maybe even than the effects of the vaccines, are what it's going to do to us as a society. How it's going to divide people, how it's going to create discrimination, how it could bring back racial segregation, because most people of color are anti-vaccine, so when they start segregating restaurants, which they're already starting to do here, you're literally going to have all the white people on one side, and the other side is going to be — it'll be mixed but it'll be all the black people and people of color on the other side...
It's going to create a stigma, it's going to bring back the idea that people of color are diseased or dirty or whatever, and just knowing how ignorant people are, that is really concerning to me, and that is really sounding like Nazi germany to me...
And people dont' see this. Some of my very intelligent friends, who I've had a lot of respect for in the past, people who really should know, and be able to have these intelligent conversations, based on real facts and knowledge and concerns, and based on historical trends, nobody wants to talk about it, everybody just wants to do what the TV says to do, and no one wants to have an educated conversation about any of this.
And there's a lot at stake, both for the people who don't want to have that conversation, and the people that do but are of the minority, I've been going to protests, I've been talking with people, I've been connecting with communities, basically also trying to get resources together, in case we literally have to go hide in the woods.
I know that sounds crazy, but you know its happened in other countries, that things have gotten to such extreme degree, there's no reason it can't happen here, and my concern is its already on that path, to becoming an extreme situation, where you might actually have to be hiding in a basement one day, I'm praying it doesn't come to that, I'm hoping we can continue to hold the energy off for that, but if we had done nothing, I am sure at some point we would get to Nazi Germany point.
So yeah, we definitely need to be having conversations about this, and talking to people who are pro vax, if they want to get vaxxed, cool, but they shouldn't be pushing that on others, its my body, I have to live with the consequences of whatever happens to me.
Love Poem
what if all the software you used was made by people who loved you?
what if all the medicine you took was made by people who loved you?
one of my dreams is currently more taboo than the other, I don't always know what to do with them
With Love,
Max