Chinese Water Torture

This morning I awoke to the cold silence of my tower being interrupted by the steady, rhythmic gulping of new leak in the stone ceiling. I had had it again – that recurring nightmare of the eternal sameness. Every house, building, street, turn, car, sound, sentence, animal and human was identical. Everywhere hung in that drab font in an indeterminate color – like the whole spectrum turned inside out and mixed – banners which advertised in one word the whole of it: equality. I tried to flee into the hills, but they too were gone. I ran for hours it seemed, but never came to end of that flat, two story city. Then down the street, which was not a main street, there were no main streets, came singing a parade and a band of all drummers. From the nether world haze I cannot exactly remember what they said, if it was anything specific at all, but many times I heard the word freedom and something about the end of hierarchies. As the sound of their beating drew nearer, I panicked. They came from all sides, as they always do and I could not escape. Ever nearer, swallowing up my incongruity, boom, boom, boom, boom … and then I woke up to my leaky Hyperborean suite.

After plugging the hole and mopping up the water and got out my dictionary and looked up equality. There were several definitions. 1) The lowest common denominator; 2) An abstraction; 3) A lie. From what I remember about the world and its people, one of their most distinct attributes was diversity. It is this difference that marks humanity and leads to its highest accomplishments and lowest shame. The contradiction of my dream and my memory bothered me, so until now I have refrained from my daily routine of hunting, gathering, cooking, eating and writing. I have been reading Fred’s Phenomenology and meditating on equality and diversity.

It has dawned: There are an infinite number of possible hierarchies. Because the unique qualities of every person, because of the universality of difference, there is no equality and, in a vacuum, there are no hierarchies, only atomized individuals. However, in the orbit of reality, we are all connected and there is no value-less vacuum. It is value that constructs in an instant, from the fragments of humanity, the vertical order, the master and the slave, power itself. In Hyperborea, we all have power, we all sit atop some ivory tower, because here there are limitless valuations. In that sense you may say that we are equal. What is the concern with systems that reinforce hierarchies and power? Should not the concern be with values? It is values, not people, that are constructed hierarchically within the cultural discourse. Which values are permitted a seat at the table and which are not. Can they at least play duck, duck, goose? Where limits on values end, so due hierarchies – and a genuine equality is born.