Arc I: Naming the Distortion (Yurugu is as Yurugu Does Pt. 2)

I did not plan this episode. I was on Threads sharing what I was reading when someone I follow responded. By Tuesday we were recording.JDaniel Richer is a philosopher and decolonization thinker who came to Yurugu: An Afrikan-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Marimba Ani, through a path I recognize even though it looks nothing like mine. Transracially adopted, raised by white parents in Rhode Island, having moved south and felt for the first time what it means to be seen as Black in the world. The decolonization path was already underway before he had the language for it.Neither of us was raised in the church, and that ended up being a real entry point into what Ani is doing in this text. My mother chose Buddhism when she was pregnant with me specifically because she was not going to follow a religion used to enslave our ancestors. That was her decision as a child, made under punishment. Once she told me that, I held it. That context lives in this conversation.Where this episode finds its footing is in what Cartesian dualism actually did; not as a philosophical abstraction, but as something institutionalized from childhood in every space we were taught to trust. Jay brought something into the conversation I had not heard before, and what emerged about the body, about what gets trained out of us, and about who that serves, is the kind of exchange I hoped this arc might eventually produce.This is Part 1. We ran an hour and had to stop before we got to objectivity. That conversation is still coming.Jay is on Threads at @JDwritesthefuture and on Substack at dharmaplusdescent.com.Keywords: Yurugu, Marimba Ani, Cartesian dualism, mind-body split, decolonization, African centered psychology, transracial adoption, extended self, Linda James Myers, We Been Knew, Arc I, Black philosophy Get full access to Seeds of WizDoom at muzabi.substack.com/subscribe