I take words that agitate me and let them burn my thoughts, grind against my morals, weigh on my principles. It is that beautiful agitation. The agitation that feels like God just woke me at 5:15 a.m., nearing a winter dawn and asks me to go for a run. It is cold, mind you, its January. The kind of beautiful that inspires just enough anger to be grumpy, but enough love to be meaningful. The word Homeostasis does that for me.
Homeostasis has entered my mind through conversations about what is normal, and in particular what is acceptable behavior. Normal and stable are often used as calibration tools. Normal carries a stigma for being what is accepted.
I have grown to embrace the unique. Even further the radical. Naturally radical is even more seductive for me. Technologically radical would be an opposite extreme and un-favored for its mutative tendency. Technology has shown me a divisive quality in the colonial world. I see it as becoming luxury. Luxury in my opinion is not natural. So homeostasis in nature carries over for me in behavior.
I have grown to embrace the unique. Even further the radical. Naturally radical is even more seductive for me. Technologically radical would be an opposite extreme and un-favored for its mutative tendency. Technology has shown me a divisive quality in the colonial world. I see it as becoming luxury. Luxury in my opinion is not natural. So homeostasis in nature carries over for me in behavior.
When I think of homeostasis, I think of it as an orientation towards or away from a state. I can also see it as a condition. It can also be dangerous when it becomes a perspective. It is surely not a position. It is the state when my wits, effects, or faculties are moving into or near active recovery. Active recovery being borrowed from the fitness nomenclature, as the bodies search for readiness. I think of it as if life is telling me, things will be alright. It is a feeling where I am not exhausted. I am not indolent. I am not bored. I might not be primed for exhilaration. It's the brief existence when I am least fearful. It may be a time when my aspiration could be pictured as relaxing.
I am symbiotic and alive when nearing homeostasis. Being a New Mexican, Chicano, a brown man inspires me to think about the homeostasis of a culture. If it is, than my Latin derived culture's homeostasis is illusive. Homeostasis when it comes to behavior seems to be heavily subjective, but bounded by the construct of equilibrium. It gives me the image as if my existence hears the wild call from symbiosis. But being a brown man, doesn't make homeostasis convenient for racial, economic, and social factors.
Identifying as a Chicano makes explaining homeostasis interesting. Bluntly, and possibly unwarranted, I observe my culture is diseased, or maybe infected. Surely my culture is not completely unhealthy. I'll explain this perspective in depth soon, but for now I just need to begin with the fact that I see its dysfunction. It makes me understand the need to surround myself with symbiotic systems in order to facilitate personal homeostasis, while I watch my culture moving away from cultural homeostasis.
I see outsiders looking in trying to understand us, describing the New Mexican lifestyle's dysfunctional aspects as potentially being a unique form of homeostasis. It made me cringe to think how people might consider that our version of the Latin culture is acceptable. This comes to mind in the realm of machismo, violence, education, apathy, and cynicism. I am beginning to believe that my New Mexican lifestyle isn't it's healthiest and in denial, being allowed to call itself stable.
I see outsiders looking in trying to understand us, describing the New Mexican lifestyle's dysfunctional aspects as potentially being a unique form of homeostasis. It made me cringe to think how people might consider that our version of the Latin culture is acceptable. This comes to mind in the realm of machismo, violence, education, apathy, and cynicism. I am beginning to believe that my New Mexican lifestyle isn't it's healthiest and in denial, being allowed to call itself stable.
So as I look from the outside, as drift further away from the lifestyle of a typical New Mexican Chicano, I evaluate my communities with a cultured lens. I hesitantly but assertively recognize my communities appear naive to conscious progress, a portion seem unaware of the utility for intellect, and enough display attitudes that are uninspired.
I picture my culture with sadness because we appear to admire and cling to our dysfunctions. Maybe it is the only thing we can own. It is the only thing that we can contribute to without being doubted or marginalized. It might be the only thing that keeps us from being white washed. Clinging to our cultural toxicity seems to keep us from being seen as powerless. I cling to my cultural toxicity because I don't know where I belong when I let it go.
I picture my culture with sadness because we appear to admire and cling to our dysfunctions. Maybe it is the only thing we can own. It is the only thing that we can contribute to without being doubted or marginalized. It might be the only thing that keeps us from being white washed. Clinging to our cultural toxicity seems to keep us from being seen as powerless. I cling to my cultural toxicity because I don't know where I belong when I let it go.
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Next post will describe what I see as Toxic Culture. And yes I will approach homeostasis by also describing the healthy aspects of the New Mexican Chicano, because critical thought requires symbiotic perspectives and homeostasis is my orientation.
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| Albuquerque Street Artist Unknown |