“Wash’em out ya heart & ya mind,
Why would you worship a shrine?
Really it’s the blind leading the blind,
Praise YAH before you run outta time,
American Idols.“During the 25 years i was wrongfully incarcerated in Indiana, 10 consecutive years of which i spent in solitary confinement, i became more serious about my thinking and practice of spirituality. Since my exoneration March 9, 2023 i have come to see many spiritual and existential truths underlining many of our today’s personal, social, & political issues. While peering at society from a prison-cell window, one of the issues i observed in awe was the underpinning spiritual and psychological warfare of the proposed removal of historically racist statues, symbols, and flags from public domain.
When reflecting back i recall four key events that finally compelled many city and state officials around the U.$. to remove these images and symbols from public display. Although precipitated by many other prior events, starting in 2015 with the Charleston, South Carolina church massacre, an anti-Black mass shooting and hate crime that left nine people dead, and one injured, during a Bible study. This occurred at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the Southern United States. One of the church’s founders in 1822, was a free Black man by the name of Denmark Vesey, who was implicated in a slave revolt plot.
Second, in 2017 the Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. Protestors included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. These groups chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the Valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus vult crosses, and other racist symbols. The organizers were trying to unify the American white nationalist movement by opposing the removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville’s former Lee Park. The rally’s violence resulted in one death and 30 others being injured while also sparking a national debate over Confederate iconography, racial violence, and white supremacy.
Third, in 2020 the covid pandemic had the world in a hysteria. And finally, weeks later and after the brutal murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it sparked one of biggest national and multicultural protests in U.$. history. These protests only amplified the demands made by anti-racist groups like the Black Lives Matter Movement to remove all historically racist symbols & statues from public domain, specifically from government, educational, & entertainment institutions.
Of course this came with huge opposition not only from the extreme right wing conservatives, but from seemingly regular white folk and even from then U.$. President, Donald Trump.
From my perspective this was more of a spiritual struggle than a political one. From a spiritual and psychological lens it all makes sense to me. Maybe you will agree after reading further.
By those racist symbols from American’s dark colonial past, whether statues, flags, or images, continually being displayed by today’s most prestigious U.$. government, educational, religious, and public institutes; these institutions are inherently legitimizing the inhumanity of the slavery of Africans & the genocide of Native Americans. In turn, this purposeful or blind endorsement by these institutes of power only gives others the permission to be racist and perpetuate spiritual and psychological trauma to the present day Native & African Americans; which by proxy leaves many white people traumatized too.
Biblical Origins of Idols
Ironically, since this country’s founding was deeply shaped by Biblical values, let’s look deeper at the first two of the Ten Commandments found in Torah, the first five books of the Holy Bible:
“I AM Yahweh your Elohim, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. Thou shall have no other EL (gods) before me; Thou shall make no graven images…” — Exodus 20:26
History reveals that while many of U.$. founding fathers had strong Christianity backgrounds, they did not adhere to these and many other principles from the Bible, due to different forms of deism. While deism taught that all people can know and believe in a Supreme Being, the primary mover of all things, merely through rational thought and reason. It also brought on a world view of survival of the fittest as a means to justify immoral behaviors and ideas like slavery, colonialism, misogyny, and greed as natural law. This thinking played a huge role in the ideology of manifest destiny, where white settlers thought themselves ordained by the Creator to expand their colonialism to the west coast of North America. Which resulted in the genocide of millions of Native Americans.
This hypocrisy was apparent in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 when Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” but owned slaves and allowed slavery to continue and freedoms to be taken away from marginalized groups such as women, Africans, and native Americans. The Declaration of Independence only benefited white men like the founding fathers at the time. Today this trend still persists.
Common sense tells us that before people commit to bowing to worship any idol or object, that it has to be an idea in their minds first. Let’s take a deeper look at what the words idol, idle, idea, and ideal really mean. First, since the Torah was originally written in the ancient Hebrew we must observe what the word idol originally meant:
Elil (אֱלִיל) — also “false god”, “worthless” (e.g. Leviticus 26:1)
Masekha (מַסֵּכָה) — also “molten idol”, “molten image”, “molten god” (e.g. Deuteronomy 27:15)
Above we read that the ancients referred to idols as an image whether that image was carved, graven, or molten. Either way idols are images that started from people’s own imaginations or influenced by the thoughts of others. Now we are back to the idea. Here are root meanings of the words idea, ideal and idle:
The aforementioned reveals the obvious intention by the Hebrew-Israelite Creator, Yahweh, according to the authors of the Torah, who knew that the children of Israel needed their minds clear from idle (vain) and ideas that would distract them or cause them to sin (which means straying or missing the mark from universal law). It’s funny to me that phonetically idle and idol are pronounced the same.
While i understand the modern meaning of the word idol can include someone of great influence and admiration from others, whether good or bad. Such influential people can become a role model for others to follow. I am the first to say that there is nothing wrong with modeling yourself after another person whose success and positivity are apparent, but it’s a whole other issue to worship them. From my observations, to prevent such thinking I believe that this was the very reason why the first two commandments were given before the all others in the Bible.
As early as 2007 i heard another prisoner yell from their cage while we were held in the same solitary confinement unit, “A man’s highest ideal is his god.”
This made me think. I personally don’t know anyone who really saw the Creator of the universe. Therefore, i have come to believe that the Creator is an ideal. And one of the highest ideals of the Creator is love. While i have never seen the Creator in the literal sense, i have witnessed the highest ideal of love shown by that of loving Mothers.
As a practicing Israelite my highest ideal is Yah/Creator (the sublime, undescribed beauty, & entirety of the Universe). We were all made in Yahweh’s image & likeness (Gen. 2:7). If we are already considered gods (EL) according to the book of Psalm 82, what sense does it make to worship created things and ideas, or even other humans?
Practically this applies to anyone beyond my spirituality. Because true spirituality is always a journey within, not without. If you want to know the Creator do not look to the sky, underground, or across seas, but inside yourself. We are creators, but we must not fall into the trap of worshiping others or our own creations.
Idolatry of Ideals
“They changed the truth of Elohim into a lie & worshiped & served created things, rather than Yahweh — who is blessed forever.” —Romans 1:25–26
This scripture relates to the political resistance not to remove historically racist statues & symbols from the public domain, as a form of idolatry and pygmalionism. Which leads me to a fascinating story from Greek mythology:
The king of Cyprus, Pygmalion, sculpted a female statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it. He prayed to the gods to bring it to life. His prayers were answered, the statue was brought to life & he named her Galatea. They went on to marry & have a child.
Mythology should not be taken literally, but rather seen for its universal & spiritual truths laced within the metaphor of the ancient art of storytelling. From the Pygmalion myth is derived modern psychological & social terms. One of those terms is called Pygmalionism which is defined as “1. A sexual attraction to statues, dummies, or any symbol of human form & 2. Falling in love with one’s own creation.” i want to put an emphasis on one falling in love with their own created ideas and ideals going forward.
In Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson’s book entitled Pygmalion in the Classroom (1968) their social experiments showed how the expectations of supervisors or teachers affect the performance of their subordinates or students. Their groundbreaking work extended far beyond class rooms and work environments, but throughout social life. Rosenthal and Jacobson’s work highlighted the phenomena of self-fulfilling prophecy, the idea that self-held beliefs can come true in reality. The two dynamics behind this self-fulfilling prophecy are termed:
Pygmalion Effect — is when a person behaves through a self-fulfilling prophecy based on the positive expectations of others.
Golem Effect — is when a person behaves through a self-fulfilling prophecy based on the negative expectations of others.
The ideas of positivity and negativity are the driving forces behind these so-called self-fulfilling prophecies. Observing the negative side of the coin, in modern times Golem is defined as “an automated object or robot.” Basically Golem is an android. Going further into history, in Yiddish–mythology:
The golem were a mass of clay that were brought to life by magic to serve its creators by doing tasks assigned to it which included protecting the community from. However, the moral of the story always ended in the tragedy of golem becoming violent and turning on its own creators.
Golem is but one of the origin stories that many historians believe inspired the late English author, Mary Shelly’s 1818 classic novel “Frankenstein”, which is based on the fictional character Victor Frankenstein whose creation turned on him. Today, the so-called monster is now known as Frankenstein. Many people lose sight that the real monster was the one who created such a thing.
Let’s put the golem effect in context of those who have socially engineered the monsters of ideas, graven images and the idols of negativity and destruction. Here are some of their creations: misogyny (bitch, whore, slut, etc.,), racism (niggers, spiks, chinks, gingers, engines, etc.,), consumers, workers, criminals (thugs, super predators, drug dealers, terrorists, etc.,) and even artificial intelligence.
The golem effect can be viewed as generations of American people being brainwashed by those who socially engineered self fulfilling prophecies that were destructive, because it worked in the interest of those who created such expectations. The historical root of many of these creations started long before the founding of the United States, which can be traced back to the earliest practices of patriarchy.
Patriarchy is the manifestation and institutionalization of male domination over women, children, the poor, and the undesirables (xenophobia, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc.,).
In addition, according to an Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance’s (2017) resource packet entitled “Challenging Patriarchy & Sexism.” Patriarchy (male supremacy) is supported by the following intersecting systems, or pillars:
Gender Binary: A system that defines and makes room for two and only two distinct, natural, and opposite genders (i.e., male and female).
Misogyny: The hatred of women, girls, and femininity. This manifests in many ways, such as violence against women, violence against feminine men, rape culture, the devaluing of traditionally feminized work, etc.
Heterosexism: The idea that heterosexuality and only heterosexuality is natural, normal, superior, and required. This can refer to any institution or belief system that excludes lesbian, non-labeling, bisexual, transgender, queer, and gay people. Heterosexism is deeply rooted in the culture and institutions in our society. Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia all stem from and are supported by heterosexism.
White Supremacy: A historically-based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.
Capitalism: An economic and social system in which the means of production are largely in private or corporate hands, and the main incentive of economic activity is the accumulation of profits. This often results in class divisions, and exploitation of workers for the purposes of increasing profits.
Now that the golem and pygmalion effects are more apparent. The modern practitioners of patriarchy, invented white supremacy and capitalism, and are in fact the true monsters of their own negative ideals (gangsters, niggers, homophobia, cheap labor, whores, AI, and fascism). Let’s hold the social mirror up to the faces of the real monsters and allow them to see themselves. Surely this would be too much of a shock for the true engineers of madness.
Which draws us to my next point. Over time this pathological, collective-consciousness has fallen in love with its own corrupt ideas. This is the equivalence of someone creating a fake God as a means to control the masses, but in time ended up worshiping their own lie. That’s a twist of irony. Naturally after decades and centuries of such prevailing ideas, they will get watered down and lose their original contextual luster.
Presently, it can be seen by not only the American ruling class, but throughout its global ruling network, the obsession with the bodies of women and people of color; the obsession with Black and Brown culture; the obsession with technology; and the obsession with queer culture; the obsession with social status and materialism; and finally, the obsession with racist ideas and symbols.
Sociologist Pete Simi calls this latter obsession an addiction. In Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists (2023) Dr. Simi and colleagues wrote, “Addiction, on the other hand, can be defined as thoughts, emotions, bodily experiences, and unwanted behavior of a chronic, relapsing, and compulsive nature that occur despite negative consequences and are characterized by episodes where people feel they have lost control.” Basically, the process of leaving deeply meaningful and embodied identities, such as the ideas of white supremacy, can be experienced as a struggle against addiction, with continuing cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses that are involuntary, unwanted, and triggered by environmental factors.
Simi’s point hits home when we see a withdrawal response in the fear of losing the idolatry of the ideology of obsessive resistance (mainly white males) to the removal and destruction of confederate flags, statues and other derogatory images, symbols and objects from public domain. Even the former U.$. President Trump begged for support to stop the removal of such racist symbols on July 4, 2020 at the Mount Rushmore monument:
“We believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honor our history, and respect our great American flag. (Applause.) We stand tall, we stand proud, and we only kneel to Almighty God. (Applause.) This is who we are. This is what we believe. And these are the values that will guide us as we strive to build an even better and greater future.
Those who seek to erase our heritage want Americans to forget our pride and our great dignity, so that we can no longer understand ourselves or America’s destiny. In toppling the heroes of 1776, they seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country, and that we feel for each other. Their goal is not a better America, their goal is the end of America.”
These words coming from the mouth of one of America’s highest and most powerful government official only confirms that addiction to the ideology, symbols, and statues of white supremacy as a powerful form of idolatry. This is especially true and outright dangerous when it is legitimized through the justification by the U.$. President.
Spiritual Paradigm Shift
“You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place.”– Deuteronomy 12:2–3
According to The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) between 2015–2020 there were 168 racist statues and symbols removed from public display nationally. Evenmore, the SPLC went on to document that 94 of the Confederate symbols removed in 2020 were monuments, compared to 54 monuments removed between 2015–19. The SPLC also found that 2,100 public Confederate symbols remain, 704 of them monuments.
While it was a great start in removing these symbols, I believe that as long as the 2,100 others remain, the national healing will not be complete. Also worth mentioning, the initiation process of tearing these idols only highlights the spiritual paradigm shift that is occurring throughout the world. It is wise to look back to our ancestors for guidance. Torah warned us of the seduction of idolatry, which is practically filling our minds with poisonous ideas. We as a nation of people (all cultures) can no longer allow ourselves or the generations after to be misled by the twilight of disappearing and shattered American Idols.
In addition, we should not miss the fact that other more fleshly American Idols are falling from grace faster than the statues. Whether it’s Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Michael Richards, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, or Harvey Weinstein to name a few. These occurrences seem to be taking place everyday. There seems to be a major shift in the gatekeeping community. The idols of old are being toppled due to the transparency the information age has provided to the public.
Therefore, please take the time to examine yourself and your highest ideals, and if they are falling short of love, freedom, truth, unity, and justice. And if they are then “Wash’em out your heart and your mind”. Spirituality is the deep and righteous acts of thinking and living in the most harmonious way with yourself, others, and nature.
It matters little how many more racist idols are shattered and removed, if such ideas are not first removed from our hearts and minds. i read somewhere that when we change our thoughts, then our actions change; when we change our actions, then our character changes; when our character changes, then our destiny changes.
i want to share one more inspiring and revealing Bible scripture where i discovered that we are all gods (Psalm 82) and that the LAW of the YAHWEH is already inside each of us:
“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ but the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” –Deuteronomy 30:11–14
Now that we are amid the 2024 U.$. Presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the above rings even more true. All the power is inside the people, not officials or celebrities. Therefore, by protecting our minds, we won’t allow the ideas of idolatry to have us chasing and accepting nonsense. When the real beauty has always been within each of us. Never bow to anyone or anything other than truth. Selah.
Featured photo: A fallen idol in front of the shop houses. Singapore, Singapore, February 2007. Credit: Brian Jeffery Beggerly.