Wednesday 20 July 2016

We don't see the world how it is, we see it how we are

It feels as though the world is so uncertain of itself these days. Like a celebrity who is famous for being famous the social planet feels lacking in introspection but burdened with a glut of self-confidence. Earth feels insecure. 
There has been so much violence reported in the media recently, mainstream and otherwise, that I could be mistaken for believing the world is increasing in aggressive tendencies every day. Rationally I know this not to be true (Steven Pinker's brilliant research on this exact topic, The Better Angels of our Nature, is well worth a read and explains the many ways the world is decreasing in violence) but there have been a number of spontaneous violent incidences recently, particularly in France but also USA where, even in 2016, attention still needs focusing onto racial equality. Amazingly, stupefyingly, in a day of 24 hour information, cameras on smartphones and immediate access to the international internet browsed by my five year old son and 100 year old granddads (moral arguments notwithstanding) many police remain oppressively authoritarian and disproportionally violent towards black people. 
And of course there is trouble elsewhere, where there is always trouble. Aleppo, where some of my refugee clients at work are from, is presently under siege from its dictator and under the international media radar. There is little food, clean water, sanitation and energy for the city and many people are expected to die from starvation, disease and violence in the next month or so in a country already traumatised from a brutal devil. 
Humans. These are humans, the ones suffering and the ones torturing. 

When I moved to Northern Ireland from London fifteen years ago I was shocked by the visceral openness with which acts of aggression were described- the tarring and feathering, the "punishment beatings", the "six-pack" shootings (The details are as horrific as you can imagine). There is a propensity to accept a level of violence as normal here that I am not inured to and don't want to be. Only this morning I discussed summer holidays with work colleagues who stabbed the conversation, freely and without irony, with stories of recent sexual assaults and limb dismemberment. They were unfazed, I was nauseous with the incongruity. I have no evidence that a tectonic societal shift towards discomfort with violence is happening but I hope and believe that it might be. 

There are more guns in America than  people. And it has a level of violent crime to match, without prejudice, that figure. Many other countries with large numbers of guns have very low levels of violent crime- Switzerland, all of Scandinavia, Iceland, etc. There is a disgusting ease with which America dismisses its self-harm and an equally disgusting ease it accepts violence as being stratified in its foundations. Every single day humans are shot and killed in America. Why is it so violent? Of course I have no real idea but I do know I am saddened about its violent cultural influences on the world and itself and I am worried for my sons future and the future of other young people if products like this are accepted as normal-
Holywoods' summer blockbuster this year, the movie of which it is demanded makes hundreds of millions of dollars, the movie which has been designed at the lowest common denominator and aimed at teenagers, the movie advertised on every bus passing through my home city for all to see is called "Suicide Squad". Its subject matter is diametrically opposed to suicide, most of the characters being comic book psychopaths whose primary thoughts are about self-preservation. The main character looks like a rock singer (cool) , the female character is, of course, sexy but child-like (cool) there are superpowers (fire from his hands? Cool). There appears to be no irony and no satire. It could have had a thousand alternative titles. 
We barely need not ask ourselves why young people regularly shoot other young people to death in a culture that beautifies conflict. 

I am not so ignorant or niaive that I believe there to be binary explanations for cruelty ("it's the media, it's the right-wingers, it's video games"). I have read research providing evidence that the world is getting more peaceful, that movies, games and heavy metal do not make people violent, that having guns does not necessarily mean more murders are committed. I know all these myths have been disproved again and again and still they persist. But I worry that a continuous feed of negative information can act as fuel, if not validation, for anti-social behaviour. 
I am making no grand statements, I am only sharing how I feel. It is the nature of depression, maybe it is the nature of grief, maybe it is just natural. I put so much psychic effort into maintaining a sense of wellness and trying to work through my grief that I tire at times. I then become too affected by perceived slights, injustice and cruelty. 
It doesn't last, it isn't my default. And then I return to the work of trying to be normal. 

"We don't see the world how it is, we see the world how we are" -Anais Nin