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In the Beginning...
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
“The Lord God said, ‘Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever. So the Lord God sent him [mankind] away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.”
This is the story of an architect and a discontented project manager. The architect creates a form (in his own image) and ascribes a function to that form. The architect, one, but many – a community of sovereignty – implementing change upon that which fails to possess form, becomes a city. The city functions as designed until there is greed.
This is the story of a nation at war – a nation divided – where community is disrupted and the people, pitted against one another, fight to the death for sovereignty when in fact their place in this war is only that of a pawn. Their arbitrarity, unbeknownst to them, is not the fight at all, but rather an aftershock in this larger war of possession, dispossession, and control.
This is a story of unity, community, and disruption. There was once a unified group, a kingdom. There is an error of thought, a lie told; an uprising at play. There are other communities affected by one community's inability to choose peace. There is death. There is war until death. There is perpetual death and destruction, and deception, so that there is no peace.
There is a God, and a serpent trying to be a god, and a man, who is like a god; made in the image of a God, who does not want the man to think that he is a God, while also maintaining a submissive status of a god in this microcosm of a kingdom (possibly a territory?). All of these god-like beings and creatures and even spirits, perhaps, possess one unifying quality: The knowledge of good and evil.
But no matter how much knowledge of good or evil is possessed, all parties seek to satisfy themselves because they all possess god-like qualities. Ironically, only one of them is God.
You might be wondering what this analysis of this Biblical Genesis story has to do with architecture, or intersectionality, or blackness. Or you may be catching on about how this origin story of possession and dispossession of land and territory is one of our present moment and every moment prior. Perhaps it is the only story ever to be told, modified only by its cast of characters.
Perhaps the beginning is the end, and the present is somewhere pinpointed on either end.
How does your knowledge of good and evil affect the way you justify possession and dispossession of land and territory? How does your knowledge of good and evil affect the way you impose will and control? How does your knowledge of good and evil affect the way you justify social actions that determine personhood or validate who can take up space and where they take up space?
Which character are you in this story? Are you the God, the serpent trying to be a god, or a man, who is like a god bound within a microcosm of a kingdom… or even a territory? I doubt that you are God. No matter how much knowledge of good and evil you think you possess.
So where do we go from here?
Until next month,
stay BAD.d