CROOKED ADVANTAGE

We live in a dark age. It’s common to hear the man of the 21st century boast about the giant strides that the human species have made on the sands of time ever since he showed up on this blue sphere we have come to love and call home.

Man – that elegant creature was not always elegant. Scientists say he once had a half-stooped posture and crawled on all fours like an ape until he somehow stretched the genetic ladder and became Homo erectus. His brain however was still not fully developed. Therefore he dwelled in caves like the animals of today and hunted wild game for his upkeep. At such a time, the idea of agriculture may have sounded absurd.

Time, chance and many other biological events happened once more to this lowly creature and took him straight up to the genetic pedestal of Homo sapiens – the intelligent man. And now he stands at the top of the food chain: erect, intelligent, stately, and kingly in visage – an ecological lord. Blessed with the largest brain among the organisms in this planet, he has accordingly achieved marvels in science, technology and even the arts. It is not uncommon to find him puffed up, having found confidence that breeds arrogance; he worships himself, his accumulated knowledge, his many inventions, his large cerebrum. He thinks himself to be the peak of intelligence, and makes a god of his achievements.

Man seems to be so pleased by his new found ability to weave complex thought, his ability to conceive reason that it sometimes amounts to intellectual masturbation. The thought in his head is the valid one and sometimes gets so carried away by this belief, that he so quickly forgets that fellow members of the same species are as endowed as he is.

It is for this reason that a man will kill another just because he has absolute faith in his mental processes and its fruit; a perfect illustration of self-love. If only he could see that he is just an insignificant speck in the endless expanding universe; a universe that seems to be rushing to a yet unknown destination and within it sits man, as if on a train without a driver, engulfed in worship of a possibly erroneous thought in his head when he should look in awe at the stars and gaze in perpetual wonder at the beauty of the world and question in humility its purpose.

But here we have man, who not only glories in his ideas without even bothering to question its origin, and would hurry to kill another thinking man for it. So we see a man who is sated with ignorance is the garb of knowledge, for what is known is negligible to what CAN be known.

Sometimes a man in the midst of the self-acclaimed sages comes to realize his ignorance and like Socrates declares: “I am thought wise because I alone am aware of my ignorance.”

But sadly, like Socrates, they are killed for caring enough to share their knowledge. Now we encounter another characteristic of the so-called Homo sapiens: he would rather kill you than think differently. He will fight you because you say the idea in his head is wrong. He would quickly pick up arms and go to war and with bloodied swords and faces declare, “My idea is KING!”

That is Homo sapiens – a creature who is so lazy to think, and on many occasions, it takes the death of a thousand teachers before one new idea gets implanted in his collective unconscious. A specie that is named because of his intelligence, yet he would rather do anything but think. We go about with minds as tightly shut as an aeroplane’s black box.

But not every member of this specie is like this. On many occasions, one encounters those few souls who flow across our paths like a brief spell of rain in the Sahara; like a cool soothing breeze in the scorching noonday heat of the Harmattan. One kind of Homo sapiens who is more likely to be such a person is the Homosexual.

No one understands more than the homosexual the arrogance and ignorance of Homo sapiens. No one understands more than him the need to ask questions and give room for new knowledge. He finds this to be a burning need because he suffers most harshly from the close-mindedness of Homo sapiens. Many have hated themselves all their lives because of the burden of dos and don’ts heaped upon them by society. Many have toiled and wept over this unbearable biological burden of same sex attraction. For in that moment when they held their beloved in their arms, they knew without a doubt the total normality and utmost purity of their feelings and longing. And in that second they would release themselves to their passions and embrace that which they know with every fibre of their beings to be just and true. But soon after that embrace, they remember the stigma society has put on them and they weep, curse God and everything ‘cursable’, and soon forget that precious gift of open-mindedness bestowed upon them by their sexuality, the ability to call pure what society calls unclean, the ability to call beautiful that which they have called ugly, at the risk of being rejected by family and friends.

Shame upon Homo sapiens that it lacks the insight that in order to truly know, you should never assume. Shame upon society that it has made a taboo of thought and has taken from man the one thing that makes him apogee of evolution; the ability to THINK! So it happens that homosexuality, the most unlikely of all things, shows to man the deep stupidity and ignorance of the majority. It reveals to him how the machinery of society works; how ideas are thoughtlessly inherited generation after generation, and those who dare to think different are killed off.

Homosexuals, learn from your experiences. Set yourself free from the chains of society. Embrace your ignorance and you will come close to truth. Let the conviction that determines your action come from what you know deep within your heart to be true and not what has been parroted from progenitor to progenitor through the ages. Your sexuality is a gift, an open door into a new world of fresh ideas, true perspectives and honest inquiry. It is not a curse! It’s a blessing. Hate yourself no more, embrace who you are, accept it and prove yourself a true Homo sapiens.

Written by Sensuous Sensei. For any further contact with this writer, do email him at sensuousensei@gmail.com

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