Dear Every Human Being Everywhere (But Particularly Human Beings That Reside In and Around Milwaukee, Wisconsin),
I understand that it's natural to be scared of scary things. Fear is a completely normal response to things that are scary. Uncertainty. Violence. The possibility of death or dismemberment. Fear is biology's way of keeping us out of harm's way.
But we don't always give in to fear, do we? People do brave things all the time. People face down other people threatening them. People jump off of bridges and out of airplanes. People go to war.
We are more than capable of over-riding our natural fearfulness.
So let's all do that, ok? Let's let go of being afraid, and add a very small smidgeon of basic compassion, and let's stop talking about carrying guns and possibly shooting other people in crowded public spaces. Let's stop calling other human beings "animals."
There's a great deal of racial tension in my beloved city. This I know. It is known. I've known since I was just a wee tot, often the only white girl in my classes at a public school. So yes, let's all stop pretending that it's not there. It is. And it can be ugly. It is human nature to be hostile to that which is different from you. That cuts across pretty much every demographic line we in the modern age can come up with. Race, age, gender, income, education level, whatever: if whoever you're looking at is different from you in some way, your initial reaction will be one of fearfulness and hostility.
Don't bother arguing with me about that. It's true.
Now the good news! We can tame those impulses. All of us. We have the capacity to conquer our fear and see that different, weird "other" as another human being. All it takes is a little courage and a little compassion. People perform this emotional alchemy EVERY DAY because, hey, guess what? NO ONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOU.
Of course, the more percieved danger there is, the harder it is to practice the courage necessary to overcome the first impulse toward hostility. The more percieved strangeness there is, the more difficult it is to realize that the person you are looking at is, in fact, a person.
So when incidents like the one after the fireworks last month in Riverwest, or the one last night at State Fair, occur, they are generally seized upon by cowardly people as an excuse not to excercise that courage that is required of anyone that's going to function in society.
Similarly, the perpetrators of these actions have declared themselves too cowardly and without compassion to bother viewing the people they hurt as people like themselves.
But hey. EVERYONE. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
We're all human beings.
I know that we all have vastly different ways of looking at the world. I know that our experiences of the world and how it works and what we've learned from it are really, really disparate.
But we're all people. We can agree on that, right? So let's start by cutting out the nasty name-calling and the use of words like "animals" and "swine" when we're discussing this? We really should be discussing it, because there is a lot of racial and class-based tension in this city, but we need to discuss it constructively. And that's just not helpful. It's really not.
And hey, people beating other people up? Those are people you're hurting. They hurt and cry and bleed like you. They have problems, too. Making them hurt and cry and bleed is not going to solve your problems. It's not going to make the schools in Milwaukee better and it's not going to make your [parental unit] care about you. It's not going to get you a job. I PROMISE. So you might want to think of another route to accomplishing some of those goals.
Hell, you might want to set a few goals. Really. You can do that. I have absolute faith in your ability to look at your life and set yourself some goals. Why do I have that faith? Because I know you're human beings. You know it, too. So act like it.
Likewise, one-liners about how concealed-carry will solve all our problems is not helpful. Guns don't solve problems. They kill people.
I'm going to say that again, a little slower.
Guns don't solve problems. They kill people.
The subtext here is that killing people doesn't solve problems. Which is absolutely, positively 100% true. Killing people is a cowards way out. Killing people sweeps a problem under a rug, or sticks it into a hole in the ground. A really big, deep, dark hole. But that's not a solution, it's a burial. It doesn't do anything to address the fundamental things that allowed a problem to grow in the first place, and so there's always the chance that some other person or set of people will come along and have the same set of issues and then there will be no template for resolving them other than putting someone in the ground, and that's not a solution because it might happen again.
To solve a problem, you need to make it go away forever, not just for a little while.
So this is for EVERYONE: Shooting people isn't a solution. Beating people up isn't a solution. And fear is not a solution.
Being afraid is a natural response. I get that. Being afraid of the "other" out there is what we're hardwired to do. But we are none of us animals, and we can all of us exercise a little courage. And a smidgeon of compassion.
Going through life afraid and alone is no way to live. For anyone.
With sincere hopes,
Ryan
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