Dominance...Has A Price

I was thinking about the economic crisis in the world and was inspired to write this.

Dominance of many countries, including the one I live in is evident. There is no reason to deny it. Its methods, its ways of systemic dominance, have place a stain on our human existence. The price for dominance has been our dignity, our freedoms, and our existence.

Was it worth it? Was the positions and status that were given to you by powerful people that never gave you anything, without a price, worth it? There is a mammoth amount of examples pertaining to what the price is for dominance.

Respect

In an effort to dominate, to hold another group of people down in order to lift you up, respect must be absent. How else do you think that racism, sexism, homosexual hatred, religious prosecution, and a litany of other nuanced subsets of “otherizing” is allowed to exist? There isn’t a single reason to talk about those tools of disrespect is there?

“____ism will always be around as long as there are people” So if you don’t respect others that you have allowed to be oppressed, killed without repercussions, robbed of financial gains, or even just bullied because their ways don’t match your own how can you respect yourself? Well, instead of “whining” let me continue.

Freedom

We always talk about slavery when we discuss a lack of freedoms(unless you are Americans, they believe if they can’t do everything they aren’t free) but what is colonization, annexations, expansionism, imperialism, Manifest Destiny, or any other guilty party that has used superiority to “expand their dominance”. But if you expanded your dominance how far is too far? Ok, I’ll stop carrying on.

Existence

While freedom and respect are very important, existence i.e. validation is needed in order for the other two to ever happen. How can a woman get respect if she isn’t a person, but objectified? How can we feel anything for Native Americans if they are considered savages? There are so many questions I would love to list, but why just blather on?

Why continue to state the obvious? Let’s state the needed. For all the privileges that some have received for being the right color, the right gender, the right sexual orientation, born in the right country, or born in the right family, the end game is slowly permeating into all of our existences. The powerful are now coming for you!

I ask you…are there anyone to fight for you?

I ask you…Anyone to fight with you?

Don’t answer…I knew the answer in the eighth grade.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

“Although people may have different status in life, everyone’s dignity is the same”

As there are many people in this world that are not nice, not caring, there are just as many that are strong enough to accept power that they don’t deserve, but too weak to stop it from being taken from them.