Contents of I:
When we talk about inhumanity and cruelty, we tend to focus on individual
acts and their individual perpetrators - the murderer, the molester, the
batterer. The news is full of horror stories, all depicting the deviance of a
few members of society who do exceptionally cruel and inhumane things. Seeing,
reading and hearing about these events-masked-as-news, we tend to become focused
on the individual: what it is about ćthese individualsä that make them so
inhumane, what punishment we should dole out to those convicted of crimes, and
the steps we should all take to avoid becoming the next ćvictimä of such an
act. Weāve been heading down this road at an ever-quickening pace, as
murder-news fosters greater public mistrust and paranoia, fuels calls for
increased policing, and leads to the construction and increased use of prisons
as a solution to ćcrime problemsä. None of these steps have changed the
level of crime; in fact, crime seems to peak and ebb in response to a very
different set of variables.
We have made our world; this construction isnāt always intentional, but
increasingly we control the outcome of our society through our institutional
creations. Ridiculous statistics emerge from the things we have created; for
example, more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day, not due
to any innate biological function but because, presumably, Monday is a
high-pressure day. Obviously a ćMondayä is a human-created phenomenon, one
of our many institutions which have forced human beings to conform to rather
arbitrary conditions which we now call normal.
Crime is institutionally maintained. While we focus on the genetic and
psychological profile of criminals, we seal their fate with the institutions we
create. The educational systems we maintain, the social safety net we provide,
the social services we make available, and the system of taxation we enforce
have far greater influence on the rates of crime than the ćpersonalitiesä of
the criminals.
I believe that we miss the point when we focus on individual acts of
inhumanity. As horrible as individual acts of cruelty are, there is something
particularly evil about institutional brutality; silent and sanctioned, our laws
and policies wreak more havoc than any accumulation of lone inhumane acts ever
could.
For almost the entire time Iāve lived in New York City Iāve felt
intimidated. Intimidated by its size, its abundant nature, its acceptance of all
forms and the possibility of all things under the sun existing right here.
Mostly though itās been intimidation by people.
Adrienne Rich writes about the objectification of women (specifically
women students) in ćTaking Women Students Seriouslyä.11
Part of what she argues is that for
women, the ability to study, for example, is weakened by the constant threat of
physical violence, ćIf it is dangerous for me to walk home late of an evening
in the library, because I am a woman and can be raped, how self possessed, how
exuberant can I feel as I sit working in that library? How much of my working
energy is drained by the subliminal knowledge that, as a woman, I test my
physical right to exist each time I go out alone?ä This is the conflation of
human with object and what is perhaps most terrifying about this is the lack of
control over whether one is considered an object or a human.
To be viewed as a human by other humans implies a certain respect (or
should anyway). This respect need not stretch any further than the respect for
anotherās right to live, unharmed and unhampered so long as one equally
respects this right in others. It can almost be broken down into a ćdo unto
others...ä scenario. The overwhelming majority of humans are interested in
living a long life so it makes sense to assume that others feel the same way.
With this in mind one may try not to end or damage anotherās life in the hopes
that oneās own will remain intact. Clearly this is a simple way of viewing
human nature but sometimes (most of the time?) this is all one needs.
An object, in contrast to humans, has none of these concerns. We need not
treat a ball with respect because the ball cannot disrespect us. Of course a
history of disrespecting objects will not only cause harm to the objects but may
lead one to carry a similar attitude into oneās human dealings. However,
assuming that this does not occur, that no negative comes from mistreating an
object, there really is no way to mistreat an object. If one is unconcerned with
the well being of a record, one is not mistreating it to throw it in the
broiler. Mistreatment only exists when someone perceives the outcome of the
treatment as negative.
When Adrienne Rich leaves the library and another person decides that
he/she is unconcerned with the state of Adrienne Rich then one can easily
justify the act of rape because Adrienne Rich is no better than a punching bag
or pillow. Unless, of course, you are Adrienne Rich. That, obviously, is the
key. Adrienne Rich is clearly not an object because she perceives the
outcome of the treatment as negative. A rapist could not possibly consider her a
human, or at least as human as the rapist considers him or herself to be.
Although Richās essay addresses a form of intimidation which is
experienced uniquely by women, these principals of intimidation are applicable
to both women and men. In other words, the experience of intimidation, to
varying degrees, restricts oneās capacity to function freely in this society.
Iām not going to argue for a second that women donāt experience a greater
degree of intimidation than men, but the experience of intimidation is not
exclusive. And, although mensā concerns for safety are dissimilar to
womenās concerns (which ought to be our concerns as well) Iām still scared
for my life whenever I step outdoors in NYC.
As previously mentioned, I feel constantly intimidated here. Largely this
is because many of the cultures of the people that surround me focus a great
deal on an intimidate or be intimidated paradigm. Thereās an unspoken but well
understood code that you canāt look at people too long, you canāt make eye
contact, you canāt draw any attention to yourself because if you donāt exist
you canāt be fucked with. So Iām scared to look people in the eye here
because anyone could be carrying a gun in their bag, anyone could be the crazy
person that you donāt want to piss off. Or anyone could be the person that
doesnāt understand that they are conflating human with object when they pull
that trigger.
This sort of thinking does not preoccupy me much and it never scares me into inaction but Richās analysis is accurate; how much can we concentrate on our work or play when our humanity can be interrupted or ended by someone else in the blink of an eye (or worse)? What makes this most frightening is that this can happen at the blink of an eye, at the hands of someone else, beyond our control. When intimidation is the cultural rule, those of us who arenāt interested in that game or donāt play it well are fucked.