Friday, September 11, 2015

Looking Past the Window on 9/11

On a crisp morning in September my father summoned my brother and I to join him in the room where the TV was. We were both fairly certain we were in trouble--though neither of us knew why. Looking back now, I wished we were in the worst kind of trouble as opposed to why we were actually called over. It was the eleventh of September.


That was the day the world burned, the day the world changed. 
Or did it?
We think the world changed but the truth is that it was our perception of the world that changed. Unfortunately it seems that our perception has reverted and regressed in many ways, to the pre-9/11 state, despite those horrific events giving us a window by which to see the world.

For the last 6,000-10,000 years, world history has been covered in bloodshed. The campaigns of Alexander the Great, Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon and even the Second World War pale in comparison to many of the wars fought in Asia, where untold millions died in decades-long conflicts. The annihilation of towns, villages, peoples and cultures litters our text book pages now as it littered the fields with bodies and blood then. This is human history.
John Calvin thus argued that humans are depraved. Sigmund Freud quoted Plautus from centuries earlier when he said, "homo homini lupus est"--man is a wolf to man. Isaac Newton said chaos is the natural state of things. Plato said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war." 
Peace is unnatural, infrequent, and largely absent in the world. It's not because of arms trade, religion, government policy or greed. It's humans. That we blame inanimate objects or practices only reveals the furthest reaches of our evil--not only can we not face our evil, we must lie about it, even to ourselves.

The truth is, we've been lucky, or blessed if you will. America was started by a group of men who recognized human nature, and set up a system where men are free to work, deal and defend themselves from other men and governments, and they did so in what would prove to be the geographic cocoon of North America.
It's blessed us tremendously: there's been no state of true war on our continent our lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of our parents or grandparents. We live in a bubble, a bubble in time and a bubble of space in the world where we have enjoyed what most living humans would call a fantasy. 

The response to this truth should be then two fold: first to be thankful for the fantasy we live in, and second to recognize that for the rest of the world, September 11 is normal. Israel experiences events of proportional magnitude to 9/11 multiple times in every decade. It's citizens are experiencing the effects of PTSD on a daily basis, on all age and socio-economic levels.
For villages in Africa, Syria, and Iraq peace and safety are wild dreams that the scraps of humanity cling to, just to keep hope alive. These places are samples. They are indicative of the whole--the American sample is an anomaly the rest of the world envies.  9/11 gave us a glimpse into what humans do, what they are and what the rest of the world looks like--both bad and good.
We've forgotten that 9/11 wasn't a mural painted by radicals--it was a window opened by averages. Sooner or later the world's reality would find us, and in 2001 it did. 9/11 showed us a glimpse of the horror the world sees every day. But rather than gaze out the window of 9/11 and gain understanding, we've walked by that window and pretended there was nothing on the other side of the wall, a wall that is thin and crumbling. It's not that we forgot the event, it's that we missed the lesson. 9/11 is not so much the past as it is the present in a world we cannot bear to look upon. It is our world, and we must accept it. We are not in reality gazing through the window into an anomaly, we are in the anomaly and denying reality.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Politically Incorrect: The New Rape Culture

Rape Culture. Those delicious words tickling the tongue of the Tumblr generation who really have no idea what they mean outside of the context of a movement that rediscovered it’s purpose in demonization—as fart rape, and yes, that’s an accusation they’re making and taking seriously. But perhaps the phrase “rape culture” isn’t entirely useless.
What is it to rape? It’s to force oneself on another. It’s to place ones own needs for anger, rage, release, and catharsis above the needs of another human and to fulfill those needs by force. It’s to enslave a person for ones own use.
It is of note that when people talk about slavery that there are certain words that recur quite often: chains, capture, injustice, emancipation, freedom. There are also words much less used, and less associated with the idea of slavery than the aforementioned terms—wages, payment, money, compensation. Somehow it is understood quite clearly that the primary (not sole) issue with slavery is not whether or not one is paid, but whether or not one is free. Having control over one’s own self-determination trumps the wages of being an unwilling participant.
What then is the defense of a human against rape and slavery? It is the right of a human being to say one word: “no.” The Right to No is sacred. It dictates that every relationship (whether economic or personal) is voluntarily taken up and maintained. Ideally it is only forfeit when one violates another’s right to the same. “You must do this for me—you have no option” is the language of a slaver, and a rapist. If you want to see real rape culture, look around and see who forces whom, and who lacks the right to say “no”. Start with Aaron and Melissa Klein.