Humanity Restored

Yesterday a received an email from Facebook saying they would reinstate my profile. They had me review the conditions for posting nudity and showed me the picture they found objectionable that caused the shut down in the first place. Surprisingly, it really didn’t have to do with the blog or my Facebook, but an image I had posted to a closed group I had joined some time back. The funny thing is that many of the images on that sight are full erections or hard-core images of men having sex. The image I posted was actually quite tame by comparison. It was the picture of Ian sitting in a big chair, with his junk exposed but not erect. I used this image for the post Has Porn Become Homogenized? This leads me to the assumption now that someone on that closed sight actually turned the image in as being offensive, it was traced back to my account as being the original poster and in turn my account was deactivated. Gianni originally suggested this might be the case and it turns out he was right. So folks beware of even posting your images on what may seem to be a private group because you never know who might want to intentionally harm you.

I was ecstatic that my account was restored because, since the beginning of this project, I have begun an amazing network of artists and other supporters of my sort of work all around the world. I did not back up any of that information and all those contacts I thought would be lost. It had taken me three months to make many of the connections and, though I have a lot of friends, I have had some kind of correspondence to most everyone in my profile. In a sense Facebook in and of itself became an individual’s own work of art, exposing our identities to those we befriend. I learned from my friend Gilbert the importance of archiving who we are and I think I am fairly good at keeping a record of who I am and what I am doing, part of which you are becoming privy to by following these ramblings. I do not know if any of it is or will ever be of value to the future, but I definitely have a feeling that somehow keeping a record of it is essential. I know I have lived a remarkable life. Not all of it good and not all of it bad either. It is my core nature to explore my identity and plot how I have grown as a human being. I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way and have a lot to share with the next generation. I feel that my life has extended over a period of time that has seen remarkable changes in gay culture and humanity in general. In many ways I feel like I have lived in oblivion not always aware of my surroundings in the social/political climate. I do know when I was growing up gay is completely different than growing up gay for this generation. To me it’s important to understand the history of our roots. I remember seeing a movie years ago when I was a film student called Night and Fog about what was actually happened in the Nazi concentration camps. It left me with the feeling that those who do not know the reality of history are doomed to repeat such atrocities. On the other hand I am a dreamer of a future from the Star Trek movies, where we live to better ourselves, where knowledge rules supreme. To me Facebook is sort of out portal into achieving that sort of humanity. It is a place where we can coexist with people of any kind of culture, race, religion or sexual orientation. Granted it is not perfected yet, but we are on the brink of something so extraordinary that evolving though our access to all this technology. This is why I tell my story and history and to put this time I live into some sort of perspective. One of the drawbacks to so much technology is that we can so easily loose an identity of ourselves. I have lived my life filled with passion and followed my heart and this is what I bring to the humanity of my story; to quantify the value and beauty of that existence. Facebook is a vital piece of that journey I thought I lost; this is why I am ever so grateful to have it restored.

View Full Image: Lucas #364