Interracial Matrimony

We see traces of it on television with celebrities. The majority of us can at least recall one family member who took the leap of blind love, and consequently landed in the frigid territory of other outcasts. Perhaps social clout plays a role in the acceptability of interracial courtship, as some high profile celebrities flaunt their colourful love, suffering way less ridicule.

  As recent as the past century, interracial marriage has matured from something that could warrant jail time, to something that basically, instantaneously classifies you as a minority. 1 in 12 marriages as of the year 2012 were of couples of different races. In optimism, we can celebrate outstanding progress, as we have made grand strides from a time when the average joe could die from following his heart. In 2000, Alabama became the last state to lift its ludicrous, and divisive ban on interracial matrimony. The fact that there were, and is legislation in place to govern love, easily makes us look infantile as a nation. As people, our capacity to love acts as a glue that is capable of uniting anyone with any decent person, irrespective of colour or creed. This ability given to us by mother nature shouldn't be trifled with by any law.

 Obviously, how accepted it is to date or marry a person of another race, depends on who you are, what you are, your intellect, and where you are. Minorities and young adults were among the most tolerant and embracing of such courtship and marriage. Perhaps the harmful pollutants, in the form of passed down prejudices and hateful coaching of children, are being diluted as time moves forward. Is this an indication that this socially hindering beast is near extinction? -Maybe. But the mind of a child is pristine and malleable, which infers that if they indeed have these negative prejudices, they were taught. Pursuant to intellect, people of higher education seem to accept the idea of a person " marrying outside of their race" more than their less educated counterparts. If I had to submit a guess as to why this is so, I'd say that naturally intelligent people tend to "think outside the box", and hold conflicting views with the at the time norm. It is too probable that intelligent people seek to understand before they load their mouth full of judgments and carelessly fire off. The latter, I would opine, is the more accurate. Because people have much to do with the feel of a state, it might occur to one that there are varying philosophies among the states. The north is typically more socially liberal than the south. Western and Northeastern states showed more occurrences of interracial marriages. It is no need to expound on the stubbornness of states near the bible belt.

 What does all this mean? Essentially we should go forth and love unrestricted, instead of  being so preoccupied with something that's only about 2mm thick. That's how thick human skin is; it has surprisingly been a formidable barrier  between many a people. The  vast majority of black women act as though it is a heinous crime for a black man to be romantically involved with a white woman( I've definitely been guilty). But  no one should be held to the social letter of the law simply because they possess an open mind, and selects to think for them self. I've seen real life, and current examples of hindered hearts. These are people who may be free, but their hearts are imprisoned. There is a grandfather at this very moment imprisoning the heart of his granddaughter. Naturally occurring thoughts are being swayed everyday.

 I have the fortune of having been taught, that as a whole, we are more alike than we are dissimilar. My family remain wholesome, loving, and accepting people. During my school days, my mother dealt with my colourful, juvenile romances without even blinking an eye. Of them, she has met: everyone from the purest of African to the palest of white, and everything in between. Take a look at my family, and it will be evident that we love without parameter, from my grandfather to my brother.  

Cheers -D.A.

Oh God

Often, it is during our darkest, gloomiest hours that we find ourselves believing more firmly in the supernatural, especially when the rigors of life weaken our ability to manufacture hope.

When we are at our highs, we tend to rely less on religious, spiritual,  or superstitious practices for intangible comfort. Comfort contributes largely to the reason these belief systems are utilised still today, as they soften the blows of society, by distorting a person's perception of reality. However bleak it may be, it is easier to imagine a lamenting person on their knees praying for the change they desire, than it is to picture  a person with a shining smile thanking a deity for the misfortune they've acquired. From boyhood, I can recount being confused by many religious and superstitious customs, living with a family who held strong beliefs. I was oblivious that as my imagination widened, my confusion would only grow deeper, as I matured.

   One of the oldest of questions that I can recount from one of my youngest of ages, asked to any adult that would listen, was: "why does god have three names; are there three people?" --Exhausted questions about "the birds and bees" were taken care of a considerable time before that, as I happened to be a firy little fellow. What worked for me at the time, especially those times I was ignored(a lot), was considering the possibility of a first, middle, and last name. My mother thought my immature theory to be laughable. Instead, she did her best to explain that Jesus, God, and Lord were essentially the same person. "Baby, Lord Jesus is our God", is closer to her precise words. It is needless to say that fun strolls to the neighbourhood market were not so fun for her sometimes. 

 Fortunately, or not so luckily, I've retained the curiosity that plagued the sanity of my mother during my boyhood. Questions designed to discover the difference between Jesus, God, and Lord made the smooth transition to questions engineered to find a working explanation of puzzling things such as the Holy Trinity. To this day, though some of my believing friends think the answer is simple, I am perplexed by that divine trio. --The father, son, and Holy ghost. The manner in which I've been taught to theorize is in complete disagreement with any proposed religious explanation I've ever received. Is reason the culprit? If I even hint that this is so, I will never hear the end of it.    

Science permits us to peer at the world as it truly is. It is through utilising its laws, and seeking to better understand them, that the world makes sense to me. I've been unsuccessful thus far in locating a scientific theory, or law that demystifies the Trinity; how a divine father, son, and spirit are one remains inconceivable to me.  Many philosophers regard religion to be a cultural and historical phenomenon. Reductionism is the idea that a system is merely the workings between its parts. It fares well in providing an array of explanations, but it performs poorly at providing an adequate elaboration on how the inner workings of the human mind makes way for religious experience.  

 This is where neurotheology introduces itself, though greeted with fierce criticism. A scientist, namely Dr. Andrew Newburg, uses this branch of study to uncover what transpires in a human's brain when they are having religious, or spiritual experiences.  The jargon responsible for this madness is "single photon emission computed tomography". This process involves a chemical that emits gamma rays being injected into a subject. Once injected, a computer builds an image that depicts many areas of the brain.- Personally, it's just a bloody MRI on steroids to me. Dr. Newburg has analyzed the brains of people including nuns while in prayer, Tibetan monks indulged in profound meditation, and Pentecostals while speaking in tongues(that's pretty spooky, sue me). 

 The discoveries single photon emission computed tomography has afforded the scientific world are quite amazing. When subjects were entranced in deep prayer, and other spiritual practices, blood flow to specific areas of the brain changed. The frontal lobe suffered a dramatic decrease in blood flow; 
this has important implications.  The said area of the brain is known for its role in willful attention, and our humanly sophisticated consciousness. Closing down that area is likely to induce the feeling in a person that something divine is actively controlling their actions; it allows them, as evidenced by the scans, to have the realistic experiences. While I don't have the fancy equipment, and am definitely not as informed as Dr. Newburg, I am just as curious about the persistence and evolution of religious practices. I imagine that I will continue to seek understanding as long as I live, as there are multitudes of gods, and billions of people.   -cheers D.A.

Humanly Lovebirds

Pop star Ke$ha sang "your love is my drug". I posit that life plays a very dark joke on us. It seems to find humour in providing us the ability to clumsily fall madly in love, for what I believe to ultimately be a mechanism of evolution. -We procreate, purposefully or otherwise.

 The highs we feel when we are enamoured, induced by the pleasure chemicals' effects on the brain, are the reason for the intense longing for your mate when they have only been away for a mere 15 minutes. When one says that their mate intoxicates them, that can often times be taken literally. Love intoxicates you in a very similar manner to a narcotic. An opiate brings about a euphoria completely comparable to that of a perfect, under the moon light kiss.

 However, we must remember that life isn't always perfect sailing, and that there rests a dormant bitterness under the sweetest of kisses. The question of whether this bitterness activates depends largely on the person's ability to consciously control what nature has made subconscious, or involuntary to us.

 The bliss is impeded when the faculties that ignite the fireworks within us, when we look into the eyes of the love of our life, fail to stop creating those explosions when an anatomically correct curve ball is thrown at us. This curve ball comes complete with something different, something curiously peculiar that peaks your interest. The culprit can be an unfamiliar accent that you fancy or perhaps something about their attitude. This is often quite the confusing time. Irrespective of how much one's mate causes their breath to escape them, they aren't exempt from being the but of nature's joke.

 We have evolved in such a way that one man is attracted to women, and a woman is attracted to men (I do acknowledge the legitimacy of same sex couples as well). Being smitten doesn't erase the primitive tendencies that each of us possess. At most, they are suppressed.  All other women, or men will not become transparent because one's finger is weighted with metal.

  Fortunately as human beings, not only do we have primitive instincts, but we have pretty sophisticated frontal lobes. This area of the brain aids in fighting unacceptable social responses, and choosing between good and bad, based on outcomes. This area should indeed be utilised to its full potential. The divorce rate doesn't appear to be getting any more beautiful, after all. 

-cheers d.a.

Nine 11

911 was a moving day to most Americans. It was surreal to those watching as two monumental pieces of engineering crumpled to mere rubble. Hearts of love ones crumpled the same, as they struggled to make reality of irreplaceable losts. Political figures offered candid apologies with insincere eyes. The then leader of the country deemed the culprit a "faceless coward"( feel free to attach his easily mockable  accent).  Soon thereafter United States troops flooded the middle east, prepared or not. Wives and love ones prayed on bended  knees as young soldiers in unfamiliar territory were involuntarily brought to theirs. This would mark the beginning of a war that would reach near adolescence. This would be the nearest political mold that would shape the hearts of the American people irregularly.

  That day in recent history, has for me  made two things apparent: The power of Americans, when united, is damn near untouchable. And extremism and hate is as toxic as the two have  always been. We have the potential to be harmonious, as demonstrated during such a catastrophic time. However, it seems that we're only that perfect puzzle if we are uniting on a basis to fight.-Take care not to misconstrue what is intended here. It is obvious that one cannot verbally reason with a combatant that is smiting you with ferocious blows; in such a case you have  to counter with tactics, sometimes lethally. It is so that we've done.

 Just as it is crucial to know how to neutralize an enemy, it is equally as important to show your foe who you truly are, unless the bloodshed legitimately represents you. I'd like to hope the latter isn't the case, but I've gotten a sneaky suspicion that my hopes don't amount to much, as per usual. After the 11th of September, the news was filled with calculated footage from Iraq and neighbouring hotspots( no wifi intended). Every once in a while it would be contaminated with something good. Common gibberish in the workplace was that of the war, a minority of the conversation holders were conspiracy theorists-I haven't met one yet without astronomical amounts of free time on their hands. No matter what, the theme of most conversations pertaining to the war was revenge. But where precisely do you draw the line? When both sides are inflicting wounds faster than it takes for the recovery process to take place, it seems to be only a matter of time before a national body meets death. To my disdain, this arouses us. We pray slanted prayers for our own, while women and children perish  in robotic crossfire. They celebrate kamikaze deaths of their own, that take out Americans.  The cycle is nonetheless vicious.

 November of 2008, the fight continues. The only difference is that it was overseen by a new commander in chief. His philosophy, if my memory hasn't yet failed me, as it threatens to, had to do with stern diplomatic talks, and ultimately bringing our troops home. Sounds decent? I'd think so, but the whispers that floated around were actually sufficiently loud for it to catch on. He was deemed a coward. This is the same word that the prior leader scolded the terrorists with. This isn't being composed to paint the current commander in chief brightly or dull. However, it should be necessary to mention that anyone can throw a punch, but it takes a courageous, standup individual to be willing to converse to obtain mutual understanding after wiping away blood. As I've always said, I have an undying respect and love for my fellow soldiers, but the leaders of America, and many of it's citizens, could use a bit of work.

 This is a very real day for some. Each of you should offer an untiring shoulder to anyone that might be still struggling with memories. In the words of  Indira Gandhi, "you cannot shake hands with clenched fists".  -cheers d.a.