Just Like Cilantro
No two ways about this one
I’ll be writing a lot here about supremism, not to be confused with its infernal spawn, supremacism.
Supremism is just like cilantro.
Either you fucking hate it or you fucking LOVE that shit.
Supremism is unlike cilantro in that no person with even a marginally sane mind would enslave or murder other people over cilantro.
There is no grey area here, no middle ground.
Love or hate.
Defend-it-to-the-death or destroy-it-at-all-costs.
Over the years, I've heard from a lot of people who would swear they're not supremists but consider me and the things I say to be a "threat" or "dangerous".
They really, really don't like it when I tell them they are supremists.
There’s a problem, though. They don’t have a fucking clue what I mean.
I just chuckle and let them churn. I think Andy would smile. 😅
I used to say "supremacism" because -- face it -- all supremism throughout human history was perpetrated by those “above” on those “beneath” them — or, as Robert W. Fuller puts it, “somebodies” on “nobodies”. (Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank)
For the most part -- as disturbing as it is -- most of that “I’m better than you” heinousness all over the world has involved lighter-skinned people shoving it to darker-skinned people. What's the surprise there, though? How could such an obviously juvenile attitude foisted to compensate for deeply felt inferiority avoid falling to the despicable by sorting people in a way so stupid and simplistic that "infantile" would be a compliment?
Still, "white supremacism" represents a special class of demented idiot in the minds of (ironically) white supremists, so I decided to avoid it. I had fun using "white, supremacist ____" for a while, but it was a gimmick and, once people got what I was doing, it seemed glib to them.
Rightly so.
But I'm not fooling around here. I'm not glib in the least.
Do you feel glib about any of this, just a few of the inevitable results of supremism?
So, I decided to coin "supremism". "Supremacism" has Highlander, "There can only be one!" written all over it, while "supremism" a little less so — more of a, "The best will win, which means me!" or, in the case of cults, “us”. This lies closer to the nature of supremacism’s origins which, for the most part, are widely socially accepted, as you’ll see.
"Supremism" is so ubiquitous and normalized, maybe that’s why we didn’t have a word for the mentality that some people are more important than other people.
Supremism is more than just a belief. It’s rooted in damage to our psyches inflicted by chronic traumatic abuse.
To love supremism is to love the idea that some people are a "cut above" the rest of us, along with its fetid underbelly, “I’m a cut above those people.”
That's it and that's all.
All the heinousness in the world, ever, originated from that foul lie.
If that seems simplistic to you, or glib, or overstated, or naïve, let me ask: what makes you think so? What have you done to find out that it’s not exactly as I say?
I can tell you what I’ve done over the last 13 years to find out that it’s exactly as I say.
I don’t think you’re about to take 13 years to figure this out, and you don’t need to. A simple thought experiment is enough.
Think of any crime that you're personally familiar with: rape, domestic abuse, child molestation, racism, hate crime, slavery, genocide. Anything you have had experience with, either as a victim, perpetrator, or affected party. Ask yourself how supremism was involved. Now ask yourself if the crime ever would have happened in the first place if supremism had not set it up.
In Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explains how dehumanization works and that it’s been crucial in racism, war, and, ultimately, genocide.
Dehumanization begins in supremism. Dehumanization cannot occur apart from supremism.
The old story of Cain and Abel illustrates this.
The more profound point of the story is not the evil that Cain did to his brother, but that murder is the natural, inevitable result of supremism, whether it’s murder of the spirit, soul, humanity, reputation, socioeconomic status, or body.
Cain was a supremist. His problem wasn’t that he wanted to be better or at least "as good as" Abel, nor even that he thought he should have been regarded as better or at least "as good as" Abel. The root problem was that he had somehow lost track of his innate sense of his own worth (if he ever had one).
It makes me wonder what kind of parents Adam and Eve were. I’ve never sensed much love to speak of in the Jewish stories of Genesis, nor in most of their characters.
Cain was unable to comprehend his own preciousness except through the lens of envy: in comparison to others.
By comparing ourselves to others to establish our sense of worth, we make ourselves their slaves -- whether they want it or not; whether they or we like it or not; whether or not we like or detest them. This is how we become codependent.
As supremists, in everything that goes on in our heads and hearts, our worth means nothing except in relation to others and relative to our perception of their worth. Supremists cannot be confident in their own worth unless they’re "as good as them" or “better than them” — or, when the supremist is the “nobody”, by attaching to them as sycophants.
I’m not too surprised that I don't find many people who hate supremism.
Not yet.
Or at least, not many who are honest enough to admit -- deep down in their hearts, if there's any place in their hearts left that resentment and cynicism haven't yet infected and deformed -- that they hate supremism.
No wonder. From dehumanization of children, sexism, racism, and nationalism in our homes to “we’re the best” rah-rah throughout school to dehumanization of the weak, the “poor”, sexism, racism, xenophobic nationalism in society as a whole, we have been indoctrinated, mind-molded, and terrorized into supremism all our lives.
"Do they/don't they?" and "are they/aren't they?" questions are interesting of course, and the answers to whether or not people are supremists and behave like supremacists, in fact, do fall along a continuum bulging with a huge, murky grey zone.
All of us were damaged, tainted, and corrupted by supremism. I've never met anyone who wasn't. And, if you don't know me yet, I don't exclude myself from that.
All of us behave like supremacists, more often and more harmfully than any of us want to admit.
But on the question of love it or hate it, there really is no question.
We've either made our minds up or we live battered back and forth like a ping pong ball until we can't afford the luxury of vacillating anymore.
When it comes down to it, supremism is cilantro. We either love it or we hate it -- and, just like we know if we’re being honest or not, we know for a fact whether we love or hate something.
If a tree were conscious, it would know if it’s good or not. It would know if its fruit will be good or bad. If it were honest and able to speak, it could tell us. Maybe one day, science will be able to “listen” to what trees “say” about themselves and figure out what predicts if a tree’s fruit will be good or bad.
We don’t need to wait for that with human “trees”, though.
Supremists are not honest enough to own up. They cannot tell us what their fruit will be, because a supremist’s fruit is, by definition, always good.
So, we’re left to use Jesus’ method: the tree is clearly and obviously known by its fruit.
Supremacism stinks because supremism stinks. But we’re addicted to it. I talk to people all the time who cannot even conceive of a world that is not fundamentally supremist. I can almost hear their neurons sputter and short out as they try to stuff the new wine of peerness into their old wineskins without exploding them.
That’s both tragic and ironic.
The world is rife with theories about why human history has been so horrific. Religions are especially guilty of bullshitting about this. “Original sin”, “the fall of man”, “human depravity”, “fallen from grace”, etc.
Consider that the state of grace we have fallen from is none other than the native innocence we were born with, the mentality we operated under from birth until “adults” taught us — more like beat it into us — that we’re not worth as much as other people, especially not when compared to those they idolized. Peerness is our default, undamaged, preferred mode of relating to others.
So, now, maybe you’ve gotten a wee glimpse of how far we’ve fallen.
