Forgive the fact that mine is a symbolic mind, thus I tend to understand things through parable. However, given that this is a spiritual blog and it has no editor, I will indulge this tendency by relaying a quick little story that also serves as a summary reaction to Switzerland (which I visited for the first time for one of my oldest friend’s weddings).
Right next door to the remarkably picturesque Grand National Hotel — which I later learned also hosted Herman Hesse in 1947 — there was a casino. Given that the wedding was attended by a group of very old friends that have known each other since rowdier days, the casino ended up being a late night venue after one of the many joyful events planned for the wedding. Unlike American casinos, though, in Switzerland you’ve gotta appear neutral even when you’re gambling. In fact, if you make joyful whoops — even if you’ve got the hot hand in dice — you’re rather brusquely asked to remain composed. At one point, a member of our party became so animated about a big bet that the Swiss equivalent of a pit boss marched across the floor and removed a yellow card from his pocket, like a soccer referee, right in front of my friend’s face.
I could huff and puff about why this is an example of what I can’t help but love about America compared to European culture: Americans know that it ain’t winning if you can’t stunt a little bit. But the pit boss wasn’t wrong, either. It’s not like my friends were innocent. After being warned by the Swiss casino “muscle” to be quiet, there was a big show made of just how quiet they were being, with extra animated “shhhhhh” noises after big wins. It was rude, intentionally so. It was a casino, so it was a little difficult for any of us to take it too seriously when the Swiss got annoyed by some old-fashioned American hooting and hollering. Hell, if you jaywalk in Lucern people look at you like you just shot the Kaiser.
When Westerners act up like that in the developing world, it’s often the ultimate expression of white privilege. A way of flaunting that a culture’s rules don’t apply to you. But does it carry the same level of ignorance when directed back at a wealthy culture of exclusion? Say what you will about American racism — and boy oh boy have we got a lot of it — but as far as their politics go, the Swiss have opinions about immigration and Islam that would make even an American MAGA voter blush. Am I still supposed to be ashamed of my country’s history when I visit Switzerland? Or should I remind myself that I’m merely jealous of the infrastructure they were able to create while pretending Zurich had no culpability for the calamity of the 20th century?
After all, as the red crosses on the white sails of the boats rendered in centuries-old paintings on the hotel walls of Lucern remind you, this is in and of itself a pilgrimage for an American. My first ancestral relation in my American lineage is to an Anabaptist pilgrim, if genealogical records are to be believed. If Americans can now — given the acceptance of the horrors of colonization — accept that the Mayflower wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, is it really so hard to accept that the place they were fleeing may have also had some fucked up ideas that carry on into the present?
Maybe the people who yearn for a European style society are missing the point. The agony and ecstasy of Swiss efficiency is that everything operates as it should, but the public trash cans are over-engineered and have heavy closing mechanisms such that there are warning labels about losing a finger if overzealous about depositing your coffee cup. Still, it was nice to walk everywhere, and ride a train that ran on the honor system rather than watching an NYPD officer beat an unhoused person half to death for jumping a turnstile to take the subway. It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to be less violent, but if we’ve gotta get as serious as the Swiss to pull it off, America doesn’t have a chance. Our culture is too obstinate, for better and worse.
Over the course of my book project, I’ve met many kind people but perhaps none as kind as the skateboarders in Ethiopia that I regularly chat with. It started with me reaching out due to general curiosity — I wanted to know what it was like to street skate in Addis Ababa — and has evolved into conversations about the types of things that a reader of this blog can likely expect. Topics like His Majesty, Shashamane, the Derg, and the way young people think about Ethiopia’s glorious history, its tumultuous 20th century, and the cultural sensibilities of the largest remaining Christian nation on Earth.
[Blogger’s note: Russian Orthodoxy technically has more adherents than the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, but Russian Orthodoxy is Catholic, thus Ethiopia is still the larger Christian polity. It is pedantic and annoying, but true: Christianity is African, Catholicism is European, and they are not the same religion. In the 20th century, Haile Selassie I sought global cooperation with Christian churches for political purposes (reinforcing the illusion of global continuity), but theologically the traditions still have opposing views on the nature of the Christ. The only churches who dispute this plainly evident difference are from predominantly white societies that have a vested interest in positioning themselves as spiritual allies to a nation they’ve been trying to invade and conquer since the 15th century.]
A few months ago, some of my pals from Ethiopia had a mini skate tour of Europe, spending time in Paris and visiting European cities for the first time. After we joked a little bit about Ras Tafari’s analogous tour of Europe in 1924, my friend broke my heart with this little aside:
“I have to admit — and I’m a little embarrassed to say — I am jealous of Europe. I am a little jealous of the nice places, but mostly I am jealous of its safety. Europe and Westerns don’t have the same definition of safety when it comes to Africa.”
Now, I’m not stupid (far as I can tell), but this led to some rather interesting exchanges once I explained that most Americans don’t feel especially safe, either. Inherent safety is more of a Europe thing than a Western thing, as I’m 100% confident that guns were fired somewhere in Pittsburgh within the last 24 hours. We discussed that in plain terms: only a fool would think that Ethiopia is “safer” than America, but America also ain’t Europe. My children are required by the state to do drills at school to prepare them for the possibility of an active shooter. On the subject of day-to-day safety from violence, America has designed a a system that creates financial abundance while still accommodating sporadic, intense physical violence.
And while I can’t speak to the Ethiopian impression of Europe outside of what I’ve been told, I can certainly confirm that Europe is safe enough to make an American jealous. At one point I realized that most of the bitter muttering I was doing with my friends (about the trains, or the food, or the sharpness of the way Swiss people communicate) was rooted in cosmic annoyance that I didn’t have their shit.
It’s especially annoying being from Pittsburgh. Lucern is one of the most beautiful ancient cities I’ve ever seen, but it also kinda looked like parts of Pittsburgh mixed with Walt Disney World. They even have cable cars that drag people up the steep mountains like the Duquesne Incline in Mount Washington, designed by Swiss immigrants in the 19th century. The cable cars on both sides of the Atlantic were built for the same purpose: coal mining, and energy independence from the goddamned Catholic, Dutch Reformed, and Anglican hustlers making our ancestors pay a mark up on the same anthracite they were dying to extract. I love Pittsburgh and am equally adoring of and repulsed by its history (the real stuff, not the “Livable City” bullshit), and walking around Switzerland is a good way to observe what could’ve been.
But isn’t it also a good way to observe why it was always an illusion? While Pittsburgh shares the mountains, rivers, and racism of Lucern, unlike Lucern (the historically Catholic stronghold of Switzerland), Pittsburgh had a long cast list of religious denominations that were welcomed and allowed to generate wealth from the mines. Rather than all of it flowing upward directly to the Vatican, it was flowing to Scotland, or Ireland, or England, or staying right at home in hill country with whiskey and gun runners and Freemasons. The Polish, the Lithuanians, and Russians even got a piece of the action in Southwestern PA.
Switzerland is a lot like that, except culturally homogenous and without the fun part. It’s comfortable, and it’s peaceful, and it has many diverse presentations of European people, but it’s not fun. It’s a post card country; the source material for Walt Disney’s perverted framework for a utopia. I couldn’t leave fast enough. Also, not for nothing, but given how much time I spent on Twitter watching American urbanists cream their jeans about European public transportation, I was expecting a lot less cars. Bad news for the Twitter Yimbys who have convinced themselves light rail will solve American car culture: it won’t, and the train takers in Switzerland piss their pants about getting hit by cars, too. It’s a shame for all those brilliant, lively American intellectuals who dream of one day living in the Epcot Center.
On my last day I walked around Lucern and stopped in various Catholic Churches, took the wooden bridge to St. Peter’s Chapel, and generally farted around being awestruck by what beauty can be built when one is only focused on devotion to God. My favorite thing about the ancient Catholic cathedrals is that they also act as art museums, preserving the icons of Christ through history and the way His form has changed with the times. All of the oil paintings on the walls and ceilings showed the White Christ blessing his white European subjects, or the White Mother etc.
At the front of the church was a holy icon painted in the traditional Orthodox style that is only passed from monk to monk, and rarely (if ever) taught to outsiders. It was much older than the oil paintings. Mother Mary and the Son had brown skin.
I was reminded of my time earlier this year in Rasta Yard with Dr. Jahlani Niaah, or Bongo Niaah as his preferred honorarium. We were talking about the aspects of Rastafari that are timeless and reasoning about the aspects I morally reject — a 30 minute reluctant interview became a 4 hour exchange. I was reminded of something he posited while viewing the linear evolution of skin color in Swiss Catholic icons — something I had initially noted as plausible if somewhat fantastical — and felt it increasingly irrefutable.
“Your kings invented the white Gods so that their subjects would morally accept Black slaves.”
Switzerland was bliss, but bliss was with my oldest friends. It seems important to make time in a blog post dedicated to lampooning Europhiles and the “herby derby” culture they admire to clarify that the trip was quite enjoyable. It seemed like people who drink had more fun than I did, but there was plenty in Switzerland for people that don’t drink alcohol. There was chocolate, for example. The pretzels were better, too. The rest of the food tasted like what you’d expect at a family restaurant in St. Louis.
I’m not sure how people who have experienced spiritual death process these kinds of things, but for me, any amount of time spent with old friends is an expression of divinity. I met babies born of the men I’ve known since we were boys. I heard jokes I hadn’t heard, and fell into rhythm with a wit and shorthand that I was almost sure I’d forgotten. An old spiritual kinship is as much muscle memory as it is socializing; a complete sensory experience as the new bodies produce the same voices and laughs while emanating added world weariness.
Switzerland was merely a surreal backdrop, and the kind of thing that I also know counts as bragging by even mentioning my attendance. I would’ve felt the same joy anywhere on the planet, and perhaps even more acutely in Pittsburgh where we all first met, aesthetically shitty as it remains. But I wanted to be wherever my friends were, and my current annoyance at Eurocentrism couldn’t taint the sight of the Alps. Like I said when I first saw the Blue Mountains in Jamaica, it’s easy to see why people fell in love with God in their shadow.
I spent the weekend outside Lucern in Kriens, a charming village or town or whatever they call it over there. It’s really none of my business. Everyone was very kind, so I decided to go ahead and look up their politics just so I could ruin everything, and it turned out that Kriens was really supportive of a right wing party that hates immigrants (did I mention Kriens is Catholic?). Their big victory in Switzerland this century was a populist movement to make sure that Muslims in Switzerland weren’t allowed to build minarets on their mosques for the call to prayer. Swiss peacefulness is all illusory; the Western icon of freedom and neutrality a snakepit for anti-Arab racism.
And that neutrality is all bullshit, anyway. One of the funniest exchanges on the whole trip was when the crew discussed why the Swiss weren’t on the Euro, and remembered that their economy was just fine during World War II. Hell, it got better! They were neutral, but more specifically, they were the neutral gun store willing to sell to the Nazis and the Fash. Pawn shop style arms sales to the consensus bad guys, yet the Swiss reputation remains intact. No wonder Americans love the Swiss Mythos so much.
Switzerland, like America, appears to be a culture of industrialized alchemy; the perfect confluence of natural abundance, folkloric utopian non-accountability, and boozy treats to create the learned helplessness culture that urbanists dream of. The appeal of such a culture is rather obvious, but it’s hard to ignore the seemingly subjective line between how people view “freedom” and “rigid consensus routine.” If the root of true freedom is a liberated consciousness, then it also seems inevitable that “consensus” is impossible in a free society. How the hell is one meant to corral 300+ million liberated minds and get them all on the same routine for the same purpose? It’s not possible. Saint Augustine was a perverted moron.
Perhaps we can start over again. Pile the alcoholics and the hedonists into an explorer’s vessel and have them chart a course for the island forming in the Pacific from the plastics and glass left behind by our odious American lifestyle. Plant a flag in the pile of lithium batteries assembled via minerals mined by Africans at the behest of some Western financial institution. Pitch a tent by the processed foods that never mold or disintegrate, even after years in the ocean / our intestines. Once they figure out how to make booze from ocean water and rotting fruit, the Newer World will look just as good as the one they left.
His Majesty asks us to transcend the horrors we observe rather than rationalize them; to consider material reality and spirituality as one river rather than many streams. Nobody else is coming to help. Someone already tried.