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The End of Victimhood

Intersectionality is the abstract idea 
That all that’s distinctive about us,
Specifically all we feel uncomfortable with,
Our lack of belonging or opportunity
Which might make us feel the victim,
Is multiplicative.
Meaning if you have five victim categories
In your identity bucket
It’s more like you score 120 on the victim scale
Than a mere additive score of 5.
But the effect isn’t you resolve your sense of victimhood,
Instead it just magnifies.
Which might elevate you 
To the top of the victim pyramid
But it won’t end your suffering,
In fact it’ll do the opposite.

The only way to end your suffering,
Whether you have five or five hundred
Exponents in your intersectional equation,
Is to add some insight and direct experience
Of your true nature.
In this way the whole string of grievances
Is multiplied by zero and so rendered a total sum
Of zero.

What is this zero point?
Buddhist’s call it sunyata, or emptiness,
Empty not in the sense of an empty bowl
But empty of any true identity
The way a table is only a label attached
To a collection of parts and processes.
Such inherent lack of identity or thingness
Is like garlic to a vampire for an identity huckster
You know, the kind who tells you to add up
And multiply all your intersectional qualities.
Once the emptiness of self and other 
Is directly realized, victimhood is no long an option.

So why isn’t this taught
In school and corporate trainings on DEI?
Because those trainers don’t want you free
Of your suffering, anxiety and fear
With the wisdom of our interdependence,
They want you to dependently pay, and pay and pay,
Pay them and their cause
Not just as a loyal customer victim,
But as a slave, bound forever 
To their master class of hucksters.

So just remember the next time
You start to feel overwhelmed
Or someone tries to lay a trip on you
About how bad you are as an oppressor
Or how bad life is for them as an oppressed,
At the core of this whole house of cards
Is sunyata,
The interdependence of everything
Not a solid immovable thing or a mere nothing,
But a process of becoming
Entangled or disentangled, 
Depending on us.

(9/19/25)

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