...or is it more the other way around?
the thought of kali energy came to me a couple of nights ago, quite at random. i'd seen the new sydney sweeney film, the housemaid, and was thinking about how many movies and series made in recent years seem to come back to this feminist destructionism, this murderous, bare-breasted energy of wreaking havoc and taking vengeance on men. there is a strong element of that in the film, without spoiling it for you too much, and it's certainly not alone.
it seems a lot of our media comes back to this idea of women being kinda fed-up with toxic, dominant male energy (going unpunished). it seems we've taken it into our hands, at least metaphorically, to punish it ourselves.
i saw this clip the other day and thought how i would've liked to be there, but also about how this kind of music resonates with us. and why.
it's speaking to many women today, unfortunately, still. but it no longer speaks to all women. the music video itself is set in a past we share, where women really didn't have much alternative but to act as domestic labourers, unpaid and often unrecognized. and that's no longer the case.
i was thinking, like me, this girl is 27. she probably doesn't experience this reality. she perhaps never truly has. i turned to myself, i examined the lyrics, and thought, well that's not me either, really. i have the option of saying no, of independence, of freedom and all these marvelous things. i live a good life, and for better or worse, we're seeing changes in men which obviously shifts context a bit.
and yet. i recognize in me an energy so vibrant that it borders on the murderous. a simmering rage that broils just under my pleasant, smiling surface. a desire to punish, to burn down the principle of unchecked power and aggression that has so long fostered unsafe and unpleasant realities for women.
it is perhaps something that's deeper than just me. it is perhaps an energy that's ancestral. seeing all the many women who resonate with this kind of music, these kinds of plots, this kind of manifesto, i get the feeling i'm not alone in feeling that energy.
kali energy.
she that is death.
the necessary destruction and setting aflame before something new can begin. there is in many women today an energy of death, a destructive, all-consuming energy that will not spare. is it dangerous or just, by conventional standards, unbecoming? is the aggression principle in a woman the same as in a man?
and is it just a fallacy, the way we observe our own times and experiences as being more than? once you explain the basics of kali yuga, the final, shortest and most terrible of the yugas (ages of the earth) to someone, they'll probably be quick to recognize our modern predicaments: unreasonable rulers, impossible taxes, the rise of materialism and the death of spirituality and moral principle. many will say yes, we are here.
except... we have always been here. for as long as we in the west remember history, arguably, kali yuga has dogged our every step. is it then just a mirage to say that the evil of now is nothing like the evil of the 1500s?
are we at a particularly bad point, and should it frighten us that, according to the story, we're only just in the dawning of kali yuga? in other words, it only gets worse from here. i don't think we're adapted for thinking that. we're too small, too finite, too much wishing that the answers come quick so that we may yet enjoy them.
perhaps this warrants reframing. after all, i can see the good of individual, purely feminist kali energy. the destruction of what is damaging that can lead to rebirth. perhaps it can be the same with mankind more broadly. it may just be a long winter, but kali yuga has not always been so terrible. perhaps it doesn't come in one great big fire, but in smaller, cyclical fires. the singing of oppression and cruelty.
i have a feeling that the 'better' which is to come may not be 'better' by our standards, and that we might be trying to apply to the future an outdated paradigm.
i have a feeling that might not make sense to you, but then again, does most of our life?
