Aliens, alienation and alien-being
an essay around etymology
If the definition of being an alien is to "belong to a foreign country or nation", why is it considered a bad thing to be an "alien"? Why is it said as an insult? Perhaps, the country to which you feel you belong to is outside your family, your city, country or even the human realm. That is in itself not wrong, nor does it have any moral or ethical implications.
Create your own home, your own sense of identity that is outside the common grounds you share with others. A group is traditionally a number of people who are connected by a shared belief, interest or quality. Who is it to say that a group created from a sense of non-belonging does not also have subsistence? Does belonging to a group predicated on a shared belief system also negate one's self-being, or force one to compromise on certain values or qualities?
I believe that it is important to honour one's own self's desires and inclinations. The neglected self will fester over time till it creates a shadow realm independent from the conscious mind. After awhile, the night time and day realms of the self will inevitably conflate, causing some not-so-pleasant implications for one's day-to-day life.
That it is why to honour one's alienness, to not sacrifice the soul self to fit into an external structure or belief system. The belief system is not in itself a bad thing, but the belief that one has to change one's self to fit into it while compromising one's deeper impulses is damaging. Everything is material for transformation; everything is a tool one can use to build one's world. Create your own reality making your surrounds benefit you in order to arrive at a new level of consciousness. We are the universe trying to understand itself. By coming back to ourselves, we learn how to wield our own power (the being of human), and we also bring ourselves into the world in order to change it.
Think of this as a game. You are the builder of a world, your entire self-being! You are given a set of circumstances, a cultural ethos you are born into, ethical frameworks to consider, philosophical lineages to draw back upon. How do you plan to use your avatar to create the desired result, at the end? The process is in itself a creative process. Do you have obstacles to overcomes, levels to surpass, dragons to destroy? They are all part of the process of being human, of integrating into the fabric and contributing your own unique viewpoint into the tapestry that is the universe.
This is what it is to be alien.
