Memo to the world if I’m ever killed in a terrorist attack.
I’d like to deliver a pre-event FUCK YOU to the media, sort of a “Panopticon friendly living will”.
I am an atheist, so please don’t drag God into it. God had nothing to do with mining the uranium out of the ground, or fabricating the explosives, or manufacturing the ricin, or in any way constructing whatever method blew me to bits or poisoned or drowned or suffocated me. Nope it was people, mostly men, who put me in the ludicrous position of trying to speak to you from my grave.
I don’t want the government to use my death as an excuse to harass people of colour; people who look different from my variously pink and white corpus; people who never had the complex edifices of hereditary and colonial privilege which are my daily and mostly unrecognized portion. The war on terror is a failure; my death is proof of that, but this proof will get drowned in a sea of wall to wall “How awful, how terrible, buy my hot chocolate pls” coverage. Besides, as I see it, I’m more likely to get killed by a domestic terrorist, lone wolves with grudges can walk into any church and start blasting away, and they don’t even need a coherent world view to act.
I don’t want the people I love to use it as an excuse to hate anybody. Fifty-two years on this ball o’ mud have taught me that only about 1 percent, maybe fewer, of human beings have the power to withstand social pressure when surrounded by the tribal emblems and ranting anthems and religious indoctrination that we grow up in, wherever we are; whether it’s the Inerrant Holy Text or the cult of Apple, we need our tribes and their shibboleths – and all the wit and good intentions and scientific advancement of 20 centuries means squat in the face of that drive. We try, we fail, we try again. A child is born; we vow to try again. A loved one dies, we rededicate ourselves. We are puny, but it’s hardly an excuse.
I have tried to join a tribe — or tribes — that at least look at human suffering and try to diminish it. I am angry, as angry as a human can be, at the starvation and false imprisonment and environmental destruction of people across the globe, but I don’t want to make it worse by running out and killing folks in revenge, even if I think they deserve it.
So my tribe of filkers (look it up, I’m tired of explaining it) sings and brings the making and sharing of beauty into its heart, and my family tries to integrate a lot of different world-views without breaking, and my tribe of Unitarians tries to stay cheerful, motivated and active for justice in the face of a lot of angst and doubt, and my tribe of coworkers tries very hard to make and support good products, although the way the global supply chain is looking that’s harder every year.
And now I’m dead, and my tribes will miss me. I’ll get a paragraph when they do a write up about the dead. Well let ‘em know. I loved the world, and I was sorry to leave it with so much undone. But I didn’t want revenge, and I want any grief to work its way into a useful memorial for the benefit of the world. And, FUCK YOU, mass media. Whatever you do, whatever you say, you’re going to get it wrong.
