It was yesterday, November 26th, at around 11:30am, that I had woken up in a bit of what in the wise words of Crack Smoking Mayor Rob Ford liked to call, a "stooper." I had gone out with a few friends the night before to have a few drinks, inconspicuously celebrating my departure from New York City to my new found home here in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Waking up, fogged and confused, I turned on my American serviced smart phone turned useless mobile data vampire to see the BBC headline, "Ferguson riots 'at their worst'." Curious, I clicked the BBC Video summary play button, and witnessed a full scale riot taking place back home in the states. Simultaneously, protests were breaking out all over the country- from Los Angeles, to New York, several large American cities were seeing demonstrations about racial discrimination and police brutality, the kind unseen since the 60's and 70's.
All I could think to myself was "holy shit." That was it, really. I sat in a buffet style restaurant in the middle of an Eastern European city, witnessing my world back home going up in flames via my useless mobile data vampire, supported by a pair of junky, half-broken headphones.
So I did what every responsible, concerned, and active citizen would do in such a situation. I took to Facebook- to let the world know, that I care just enough, to post a status. The fog-head-induced rant looked something like this.
It was only after I had received some attention for this seemingly esoteric rant about the underpinnings of violence in American culture, did I start to think more deeply into the consequence of fear on group psychology. How it has seeped into our political arena, how it has stained our national consciousness, how it has made its way into our everyday lives, into our language, our culture, and our socialization.
Fear is more powerful than any human emotion. Fear can succumb any other mental ability to its will- from motivation, to desire, to love, to hate, to need, all can be thrown to the waste side if one is fearful enough.
Think of love for a moment. If one is fearful enough, one won't act upon one of the greatest and most intense emotions; love. Fear strangles their desire to love, their need to express their love openly and without condition to another person, or for that matter, a particular thing or place. You want so badly to say the words "I love you," but fear, will have your heart pumping, your hands shaking, your throat clenched, before the mind can even rationalize the realistic result of simply speaking one's mind. As the saying goes, they aren't going to bite your head off. The world isn't going to come to an end, and that person isn't going to laugh in your face. More than likely, they will appreciate the honesty.
But, this is never the case. I am not independent, nor is anyone else, who is defined as a human being, of this primordial reaction; this gut defense reflex to being forthright, to extending your hand for something you want, to be more human in the face of another human- it is inescapable.
And this is where the facts of human psychology take us. To Ferguson, Missouri, where a middle-aged white police officer took the life of an unarmed black teenager. Something that is, tragically enough, all too common, and as per this analysis, not surprising.
When one is conditioned to fear, as most humans are, they react like a caged animal in a corner. These impulses are natural, as survival is instinct, and without instinct, our species would have never survived the onslaught of predators and dangers found in nature.
But when this instinct is infused with the 21st century man, man is no better than apes with iPhones, no less tied to the menace that is fear.
That being said, as an industrialized, and purportedly civilized nation, we do our damnedest to ensure that this emotion doesn't get the best of us. It's why there are laws against privacy invasion, against theft, against physical force, against discrimination. Beyond the material loss, bodily harm, and monetary damage that is inflicted by these crimes, above all, these laws are put in place to make us feel secure. To mitigate fear, to minimize insecurity, to dispel all of the inconceivably horrific ideas and monsters that creep and fight in the back of all of our heads; the thoughts passed down to us by the collective conscious of the human race, the collective conscious that tells its great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandchildren- "The World Is A Scary Place. Watch Out."
And while we should all thank our forefathers for not only surviving and passing on this completely necessary instinct of fear, we should also curse them, for they have enslaved us to the will of the jungle, where the good intentions of man are poisoned, and the progress of civilized people everywhere sullied.
Now back to Ferguson. Race is much less the issue. Race is the face we put to our fears. Race is the boogeyman of our insecurities, the proverbial monster under the bed. It is the literal embodiment of our fear to be human with one another. Instead, we comfortably sit behind glass and judge, secure ourselves at the expense of another human's security. Nothing is more secure than when someone other than yourself is thrown to the lions, as is the nature of the jungle.
This white police officer, Mr. Wilson, while I can not speak on his behalf as an individual, I can say that he was not acting purely out of racist intent. He did not put his boots on that morning and say to himself, "I can't wait to shoot dead a person of color today." Leys say, even for the sake of argument, he did think those exact thoughts. Even if he did, he is only a product of fear, of mass conditioning, of human depravity in the face of the "unknown."
And while he is an officer of the law, he is, of course, sworn to protect and serve. Unfortunately, as his duty suggests, he protects and serves, and for the sake of this argument, he protects and serves the jungle- man's jungle of fears and insecurity. It is his job, above anyone else's, to dispose of the impulse of fear, and to quell the fears and insecurity being exacerbated by those carnal individuals who have given into their primordial fear by molesting or robbing or assaulting another individual.
But as we see with war, being exposed to such conditions does little to improve one's tolerance or control of fear. More often than not, it aggravates this impulse, intensifying the instinct of fear, hastening its appearance, and sometimes, with deadly consequence, amplifies the response.
And the same applies to Michael Brown. His fear of being subjugated by an overly aggressive police force, his experience as the average black male in an impoverished neighborhood, could only magnify the intense feeling of fear he and his community must feel. His reaction, while it is still unclear whether there was or wasn't a struggle, while not justifiable, is digestible, given the uglier demons of man's nature in regards to fear.
So in the end, their fear of one another killed them both. It took Michael Brown's mortal life, and has taken Officer Wilson's life and reputation. It also killed their community, it killed their identity, and has killed our nation.
Along with it, fear has killed the American dream. Fear has been present in every aspect of American life, from its founding with the pillage of native Americans, to the intense scrutiny of Ellis Island immigration services, to the piling of impoverished people in bloated prison systems, to the refusal of embracing and accepting new ideas into our culture and politics. Fear has killed the American idea of freedom, tolerance, and progress.
And while this fear does not justify, or abdicate a person's prejudice, it does provide an insight into why we act the way we do. Why racism exists. Why people murder, and fight, and steal, and oppress. Because they are scared, and when people are scared, they crave power to abate that fear, thus, prolonging the inevitable insecurity that death brings to us all.
At the risk of sounding like a hippie, or some zoinked out idealist, 'love' is what could conquer all. But, at the risk of sounding like an eternal pessimist, such a concept could never come into fruition, as long as fear has the better angels of man's nature under its guise.
The case in Ferguson will happen again. And when it does, 'race' s we like to think of it, will not be the reason.
All we should remember is, is that Race is the excuse, the face, the embodiment, but Fear, is the reason.
-JtPolitik
@JtPolitik
No comments:
Post a Comment