Collective Liberation Doesn’t Need a DNA Test
We are living in a spectacularly polarized moment in history. Everything is split into binaries: good vs. evil, oppressor vs. oppressed, awake vs. asleep, right vs. left, feminist vs. tradwife — pick a side, or one will be assigned to you. And ironically, this polarization is seeping into the very spiritual, activist, and decolonial circles that are supposed to be building bridges toward collective liberation.
I understand where it comes from. There’s justified anger in the air — a real, necessary call for accountability. People are tired of silence and complicity, and rightly so. The desire to hold individuals and systems accountable for the harm done to people and planet is absolutely unquestionable and necessary work.
But when the pendulum swings into purity-thinking, we’re no longer dismantling oppression — we’re just rearranging the hierarchy.
Lately, I’ve been witnessing some spiritual-activist folks doing something I find deeply problematic: fueling polarization under the banner of liberation. And to be very clear, I’m not talking about calling out oppression — if you’ve read my work with open eyes, you know that’s all I ever do. I’m absolutely for dismantling the systems that keep people and planet oppressed. For reparations, for social, racial, and economic justice — all of it.
What I’m referring to is the creation of a kind of purity of lineage — a cosmic border control where the amount of guilt you should carry is stamped and approved by the perceived purity of the people who came before you. It’s the spiritual version of a DNA test, except no one is swabbing cheeks.
And really, I find it deeply awkward to be saying this in 2025, but here we are: nobody has a “pure lineage.” (What does that even mean?!) This kind of thinking is not only absurd — it’s historically dangerous. Unless your family tree lived exclusively in a locked basement since the times of Adam and Eve (which… is another trauma entirely), your ancestry is a chaotic buffet of migrations, forbidden romances, wars, displacements, survival strategies, and the occasional scandal no one dares to mention.
Human history is messy. Very messy.
And so are we. No one has a pure lineage of angels behind them.
If we’re honest, none of us can confidently explain who our great-great-great-grandfather was sleeping with in 1825. Everyone with a known multicultural background knows that ancestry isn’t a straight line but a tangle. Every Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color with a white-passing child knows how quickly looks can change. So why are we acting like we’ve all got certified ancestry files stamped by the Universe?
Another thing that bothers me.
I once listened to a podcast by a spiritual teacher — white guy, late fifties or sixties, barefoot, bald, bear-tooth-necklace aesthetic, strong Southern U.S. accent. He explained, quite earnestly, that he’d had a dream, or download, or cosmic memory in which he was a Black enslaved boy running away from colonial violence and dying in the process. The attitude was pure “I’ve seen it all, I know it all.”
Every internal alarm went off. There were so many layers of awkward. But the core was this: even if you did experience all of this in a former life — (and who am I to police souls across timelines) — that doesn’t mean you get to bypass reality in this one. You don’t get to say, “I suffered too, once upon a lifetime,” while continuing to benefit from the very systems that cause suffering now — or stay silent about white supremacy, racism, and everything else that sustains it in this lifetime. Your “we are all one” isn’t helping anyone.
This spiritual loophole is just another form of privilege — a convenient escape hatch from accountability. It’s a way of bypassing the lived reality of people suffering today.
And it’s spreading. In these polarized times, where conversations about systemic failure are finally becoming more open, some use the past-life concept to claim that cultural appropriation isn’t real because “souls incarnate across cultures.” Well, that’s fantastic news for the British Museum, or for the German institutions still holding onto bones and artefacts stolen during colonial times. It’s considerably less fantastic for literally everyone else.
Accountability exists in the present tense. Because in this lifetime, you are this person — with this body, in this context — benefiting from these structures. Or not. No matter if Stefanie was a Geisha, a Mayan priestess, or a Pharaoh’s cat in her past life — she’s still white, middle-class, and living off the comfort of white and Western privilege in this one.
And on the flip side, telling someone their lineage is “inherently demonic” doesn’t dismantle systems either.
So maybe it’s time we get a little more grounded, and a little more scientifically correct, when talking about ancestry and soul history. Purity is a myth, and always has been. And historically, it’s a dangerous one. (We’ve seen how that ideology played out in Nazi Germany.)
Collective liberation doesn’t come from purifying bloodlines or policing cosmic passports. It comes from taking responsibility for the life you’re living right now. Here, in this timeline. With these privileges, these wounds, and this power to change what comes next.
If this resonated with you, moved you, or made you pause and reflect – consider this your cue. I’ve set up a virtual tip jar via Buy Me a Coffee. No monthly commitments, no strings, no memberships required.
Your sweet kindness helps keep the thoughts flowing, the energy exchange intact, and the glow of my inner goddess alive. It won’t fix capitalism, but it might buy me five minutes of joy (or at least a cortado).
Gracias. Thank you. Jërëjëf. Merci. Obrigada. Danke. Arigatō. Medaase. Grazie. Hvala. Tack. Asante. Shukran. Teşekkürler. Dziękuję.
