Thoughts on Cultural and Religious Identity Theft

Avoid this if you don't like armchair philosphy :) AND I preface this with warning it is long-winded rambling stream of consciousness thoughts combined with other things I've even written elsewhere. I've had this in DRAFT form unpublished for more than a year from the time I wrote what is below and only came upon it again today because of a new post I'd placed on a topic that touches on a little of this one, too. See http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2012/05/christopher-columbus-and-jews.html
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This is all about spirituality and self-identity and being true to oneself while respecting other people. Every people and every person has a sense of purpose to existence or strives to find and fulfill one. It's an aspect of human nature. I'm not discussing or debating atheism vs theism or going to promote a pissing contest over whose religion or philosophy is "best", but I will talk about what people believe.

I think a spiritual void in modern civilization appears to lead many people who have have an identity void to feel entitled to appropriate the paths and identities of *others*. Taking on an identity not really your own isn't exclusive to the malicious, the huckster, the con, or the willfully bigoted troublemaker. People can be genuinely fooled in sincere acceptance and trust what they want to hear.

Yet, no matter the origin or motivation, in their so doing, rather than bringing them a sense of real identity and contentment of self-knowledge, it results in strife and escalates conflict.

In modern civilization, not just in the United States, the “melting pot” of so many different and conflicting cultures, histories, religions and philosophies there are many people living in a "spiritual vacuum".

**I specifically refer to people whose spiritual path, or sense of a spiritual nature is devoid of grounding in a sense of "self", a sense of who they are and who their people are and what their people's collective purpose and message is to the world through their own identity.**

I see this in so many different people who flit from one group, one religion, one identity to another. These people without a grounded center, a sense of *self in relation to others* often readily justify latching onto anything that fills that that void. This is how we live in a world where a science fiction author can create an idea that we’re all alien spawn and all women secretly want to abort their babies and all human problems stem from experiences while in your mother’s womb…and hundreds of thousands of other people can be gullible enough to believe it and where celebrities are spokespersons to promote it. ( the late L. Ron Hubbard, his Scientology and the Hollywood celebrities that follow it)

We live in a world where ethnocentrism isn't considered a virtue but it is still widely accepted in the manner it has taken on new forms. Rather than what more overt forms of this thinking inspired in the past, to try to eliminate peoples and religious or spiritual paths once claimed “inferior” by outright mass murder, the socially acceptable methods employed are assimilation, appropriation and identity theft. Fake Indian nations and groups are big business and show utter arrogance in their sense of entitlement to take ritual items, symbols, names and stories and misappropriate them for whatever purpose suited them. The "Black Hebrew Israelites" with their New Testament doctrine and racist ideology and the equally deceptively named "Messianic Judaism" in it's different forms based entirely on which Church is sponsoring them, displays extreme self-righteousness in their entitlement to claim Divine authority to either negate outright, or redefine Torah to mean things antithetical to Torah and Judaism.

All while claiming utmost love for the very people's whose history, spirituality and cultures they've hijacked and misappropriated very offensively.

Too many people who possess this spiritual void and lack of who and what they are are easy prey for the charlatan. They claim no responsibility for bad behavior to do so because they come from a paradigm that teaches "let the buyer beware" and that freedom means that you're free to do anything or say anything you want to say if you can say it is your "freedom of speech" to do so.

A more respectful way to live and actually honor any other group is to stop ignoring the ill effects such entitlement perpetrates. It is not respect that inspires groups or individuals to appropriate the identity, symbols, culture and history of another people and pervert those things by turning them topsy turvy, most often to impose beliefs that are offensive to and violate the laws of the authentic nation people.

The impostor groups also simultaneously declare great love and loyalty to the identity they claim while the words they use to speak of the original people display hatred and insult to the laws, ethics, values and the actual peoples whose identity they hijack.

While I'm only detailing a couple of different groups this applies to more than just the two I'll talk most about here.
The surviving Native American Indian nations and the Jewish covenant nation people have many different groups who openly display bigotry and hostility to the original nation peoples they will claim to *be* while they simultaneously corrupt and distort their histories, traditions, laws, and their different spiritual beliefs.

Other common experiences shared by these very different peoples:
Any individual or group that speaks out *against* the bigoted display of entitlement to hijack and remove the right of a people to maintain their own unadulterated history and laws, is then chastised as the bigot and condemned for their hatred at not being "tolerant". The commonly hurled deflection is to say you hate us because you don't want to give us the freedom to choose what to believe. This is also projection, but it is often effective to their co-religionists.

Sometimes the mention of love of all people or brotherhood is even brought up to deflect the misrepresentation of identity or history or belief.

The Europeans would not have survived on the shores of the foreign continents had it not been for the mercy/civilized assistance of it's native inhabitants who taught them how to find and cultivate foods. This was the case for both North and South America.

From farming methods of the Natives of the northeast that taught Europeans how to rotate crops to ensure soil fertility that when imported to Europe staved off famines that had regularly plagued parts of Europe for thousands of years, to the 5,000 year old weaving techniques of the Peruvians that were incorporated into textile making, to medicines (aspirin among a great many others) to systems of law (Ben Franklin and other "Founding Father's" directly credit) borrowed from the Iroquois, the Europeans were far behind in many areas thought to represent "civilization". Modern farmers still use an adaptation of the Iroquois "three sisters" system of corn, beans and squash that preserve soil fertility.

In a time when the very lives of early European astronomers were being persecuted for their "heresies" to declare the solar system to be heliocentric, the Incas and others had accepted and gone far beyond this in astronomical knowledge.

The native inhabitants of the Americas helped the very peoples who committed genocides. And the effort to eliminate them still exists, although rather than through outright murder, this is continuing through assimilation, discriminatory laws and other forms of socially acceptable bigotries that are even sometimes perpetrated in ignorance.


What can we do if we are genuinely caring for another but wish to learn about them and the wisdom that another people may have to share and not misappropriate?

There is a difference in sharing wisdom and culture with one another in the methods I illustrated and in misappropriating the identity and spiritual wisdom and life of other nations.

As humans who wish to know brotherhood and respect for one another we also hope to learn from one another. We can learn from many different First Nations Peoples..but they key is to let us learn what they want to TEACH us.

ASK rather than take. Some things can't belong to every person. Mixing the customs and religions of the different nations who still survive is not respecting them. Their ways belong to them.

Use that guide for any people, not just the different nations of the Americas.
Those precepts are what I wish people would also do for Jews. The world would be a much nicer place if people behaved in a way that simply respected the rights of peoples to be different from one another in their own purpose and path.
Jews are more open with our beliefs and practices than many Native peoples, but we are also accustomed to seeing this openeness abused in the same manner. We don't proselytize when we share to help dispel misinformation that leads to hate.

Perhaps if history and sociology courses included the topic of cultural and religious identity theft, tragedies of the past may be averted from repeating themselves in new forms.

If we can't learn this lesson, we are indeed doomed to keep repeating the history. The legacy of culture vultures, no matter which one's bones they're trying to pick clean, will ultimately doom the vultures, too.

Finding out who you are and where you belong may lead you to a path you might not have always chosen for yourself before you began a search to learn about the past of your ancestors, but if you don't know where you came from, it is certainly easier to get lost.

You may decide that the people you came from are not the people you wish to belong to now and your loyalties and path is elsewhere or you may decide that someone else strayed away from where you should have been all along. But if you decide to be a part of a particular people or path, you can't redefine their criteria for membership/citizenship to suit YOU, you are obligated to abide by their laws. If you don't meet their criteria for belonging, you haven't really found your people if that's the case.

Shalom y'all.

Serenity From Self Acceptance

The following is an essay I first wrote in 1999, then copyrighted in 2000. It appeared on an old blog but I repost it today for a few reasons. While at the time I wrote it I was recognizing that bigotry of all forms and in particular, antisemitism was rising, I now see that escalation has taken a sharper rise.
I grew up the child of parents who promoted civil rights and like them, joined both interfaith groups and civil rights groups so that how I lived demonstrated the values they taught in both word and deed. Perhaps something of what I've learned may help another. I give a link at the end that I hope all parents will view.
Now here is the short (for me anyway!) essay, reposted again.


The serene and straightforward manner I most often maintain in responding to bigots comes from both faith in God and in self-acceptance of my human nature. My self-esteem is neither defined nor validated by the approval of bigots whose values I see as harmful. Instead, I focus on opinions gleaned from respectable people; insights gained from interactions with the wise and not so wise. I begin with the premise that each individual is worthy of respect. Since I claim no sainthood, it is no hypocrisy to reveal I can lose all respect for people who behave in a willfully ignorant, disrespectful, dishonest or hateful manner. I believe they have a right to their choice. I don’t have to respect all choices, or disrespectful people; that is my choice.

Some people are so maladapted to human interaction they enjoy conflict. I do not enjoy conflict. A conflict addict spends much time devising or refining new methods to propagate it. When someone tries to make a well-mannered person feel bad about civility, they do so to project the discomfort they feel in the presence of respectful behavior. A taunt of “ goody goody” on the playground by a bully a perfect example. Quite often we hear the adult bully replace that with other words and phrases, “ politically correct” is one that comes to mind. Recognizing and correctly labeling another’s behavior as that of a bully or bigot based on their actions or words may even inspire them to try to make the victimizer the victim to shift the focus and blame. I don’t have to view another as inferior or demonize them to boost my ego or justify my values. Like a moth drawn to a flame, the social misfit conflict addict is drawn to the more peaceful whom they view as weak to be the target of their venom. However, a serene demeanor does not imply weakness. Serenity is not found in a mind that is self-absorbed with the bliss of religiosity from either psychosis or indoctrination into a cult.

It is unfortunate that an above average intellect conveys no immunity to bigotry. While there are many reasons for bigotry that I won’t begin to address here, often a choice to create conflict is derived from attention seeking. Think of former classmates, the child who was bright but overlooked at home or in school by others unless he acted out. The temporary vindication they feel when anyone agrees and the reward of being the center of attention by belittling others becomes like a drug. This attention gives a short-term sense of belonging, reinforcement of their beliefs, and helps to elevate self worth. It can then escalate until their self-concept has risen to a delusional superiority over all others. They hold out the worst venom, not for those who may truly exhibit inferior intellect or moral or social inadequacies, but for those whose presence, demeanor and wisdom expose their own most deeply feared frailty. Their maladapted manner of life and self-concept has made them a part of the weakest link in humanity and the most widely detested of all.

Serenity that isn’t easily shaken comes from cognizance of human frailty and foible, self-knowledge and acceptance of the kinship of all humanity. It carries no fear that you’re going to be exposed as less than perfect. Some of the most dangerous dogs are “fear biters” and some of the most dangerous humans behave that way, too.
Copyright © 2000 mama_pajama_1
http://www.teachingtolerance.org
Shalom y'all