Over the last decades, there have been numerous academic discussions about the way that violent television, film, and video games (to name a few sources) are desensitizing American people by creating a culture of violence without consequence. These types of media, the arguments say, are disconnecting us from the real dangers of things like guns and murder. While I do believe that you are what you consume (food, news, literature, media, etc.), I simply can’t believe this is the whole story.
To desensitize means to make a person (or an entire society) gradually feel less shock, anguish, and distress at scenes of violence toward and suffering of others by continually exposing them to images and representations of this sort of cruelty, making such things commonplace. I don’t know about you, but recent events have done just the opposite to me. I cannot stop crying. I am not even sure how to begin to take action, because there is SO MUCH, and so much of it matters deeply and is going to be instrumental to how our society’s future unfolds.
Think about some of what we have witnessed in the last few months; lack of any kind of justice in the Freddie Gray trial, the bigoted slogans and misogynistic behavior of Donald Trump being accepted and rewarded, a heroin epidemic so out of control that cops have begun to carry the heroin “antidote” with them, Stanford rape victim’s letter and absolutely inadequate sentence for rapist, Davontae Sanford freed after 9 years of wrongful imprisonment, Orlando massacre, and this is just what comes to mind without really spending time to reflect, this is just what’s at the immediate surface. I don’t have the fortitude to spend time making a better, more complete list. I am not a weak person. I am a strong, righteous person of action, but the enormity of all of this fills me with such agonizing frustration. What is going on? What can I do? Why aren’t we better? Brothers and sisters, why aren’t we doing better?
Here is what I think is going on, and you are probably not going to like my opinion.
I began thinking about this yesterday before I learned about Alton Sterling and before the news of the shooting of Philando Castile. I was leaving my house and saw that someone dumped a dead animal, probably raccoon or groundhog, on my street. It was mostly covered in a plastic bag. Whoever did it, obviously thought it was just an animal and deserved no kind of burial or respect, that it deserved to be thrown on a random street in a plastic bag to rot in the sun. This got me thinking about how this same kind of thinking has been applied to all cultural others for time immemorial. Most significantly for us, in U.S., as a justification for massacring indigenous people and for the enslavement of African people, and continued mistreatment and subjugation of both. But, of course, it has happened on an ongoing basis for every new group entering this country from Irish to Muslim. This capacity that humans have to think of those who are different as somehow less important, and less human, is the basis of just about every problem we are now facing. Saying this is not a lack of patriotism. It is the very definition of patriotism. Sitting around feeling afraid that by extending equal rights to your fellow citizens (and refugees) because that might diminish your freedom, and thinking of them as less human as a way to justify this behavior, is a complete failure of patriotism. To hoard and withhold the freedom you claim to prize and mistreat those who have less power is an abuse of power. It is a failure to be a good American and worse still, it’s failure to be a good human. This scarcity thinking isn’t serving us, it is destroying us.
In the same way that a person’s psychological demons keep on coming back until they get resolved, the legacy of the inhumane treatment of other humans, upon which this country was built needs to be ACKNOWLEDGED and worked through or we are going to keep seeing the reverberations and they are going to increase in intensity and discomfort. We need to start discussing all of this. All these false hierarchies people erect are not going to protect them when the foundations upon which they are built crumble. Unless we start working toward a society where there is real equality for everyone, no one is going to be safe in any tower. Things are becoming so volatile and all of us who are others or allies are getting fed up. We want things to change, but instead, they appear to be regressing.
Humans need progress and when the tide of history moves backward, we band together and revolt- we fight for progress. That time is coming. One thing that seems to be a sign of this coming revolution is the opposite of desensitization. When I looked up antonyms, I found ideas like compassionate, humane, softhearted, sympathetic. There are all components of what I’ve been feeling, and what I imagine many of you are also experiencing, but I would call it more of an over-sensitization or a hyper-sensitization, a saturation of feelings that never really absorb because they don’t have time, they are flooding us. The rains of injustice keep coming and we don’t have anywhere to escape to. The status quo is no longer adequate. We all deserve better.
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