Peacebots and Other Arcane Devices

Peacebots and Other Arcane Devices - DG

Greetings from Brooklyn! I intended to write a more ambitious, anachronistically stylized entry involving the late-Victorian misadventures of certain Dr. Horatio Danville Gregoire this week, but decided to pare it down a bit, and focus on my reflection on mass media and Peace our theme for the month.                

When I consider the ways that violence seems to surround us in the present day, it can feel like drowning in a relentless sea of the stuff. There is violence in all the media we consume, and it comes as an endless stream of destruction, hurt, separations and sorrow, much of it wasteful and unnecessary. I think that the media also consumes us in a way, constantly chipping away, perhaps dissolving bits and pieces of our worth and dignity. What can we do to stay afloat and retain our integrity?

This line of thinking occurred to me most distressingly as I sat through a recent screening of Django – Unchained with friends in New York City. Peace seems ever-fleeting, on a horizon we can’t ever get to; while, violence is the ever present star of the show.

My friends and I had various responses to the overlong, derivative (a ’la 1970s era Blaxploitation genre) and anachronistic film, ranging from disgust to delight. Django was probably meant to be many things for the viewing audience, and I would hazard a guess that none of those things had to do with historical accuracy, racial empowerment or physiological realism. So, it is hardly fair to judge the film on those accounts. And, I won’t.

What impressed me most had little to do with the film itself and more to do with my response to it. I was proud that I was disgusted by the film, and, more importantly proud that I have retained the ability to be disgusted by the absurdity of heroic violence, no matter how it is cleverly disguised. I was not amused, or jaded or even morbidly curious (which I imagine is the desired response of media elites) but fundamentally revolted. (Hooray for humanity!)

It is increasingly evident to me, and perhaps you have been seeing it too—that there is a concerted effort underway to eliminate our sensitivity to violence. I believe that the de-sensitization project is an ancient enterprise beginning in the earliest settled, agricultural societies, but has it has accelerated with the proliferation of lightweight, portable gadgets that do everything short of beaming the violent imagery directly into our neo-cortex (although, I am sure the folks at Google and Amazon [perhaps Facebook] are working on just such a sub-cranial device as I write this entry). This civilizational program of desensitization has worked for some people, and its effectiveness is evident in the responses to the super saturation of violence in film, print and electronic media. I think violence does breed more violence or the equally deadly apathy to violence.

Media elites are turning violence into a commonplace place thing that can unite friends, family and neighbors bringing them together in the warm glow of destruction, as entertainment. People yawn, dismiss it, ignore it, cheer it or laugh about! But, in all cases they are glued to their plush theater seats.

And, I am complicit in this vicious (sticky) project, we all are. I did buy a ticket to the film after all. If you haven’t seen the film, perhaps you will now wait for it to come out on Netflix and stream it into your home soon. I am not advising against doing that.

What is your response to the constant stream of easy to access violence? I hope it is never helplessness? I hope we don’t ever throw our hands in the air with frustration. (Heavens forefend!)

I hope we can join together in re-making ourselves and our communities, as Sites of Resistance, to use a term that pops up in liberation theology. That means becoming a place where we can voice our feelings of disgust and our sense of revolt to the violence, and develop plans of action to change the world, or at least change ourselves. I might remake myself into a person of resistance after seeing Django—Unchained, by researching stories of actual slave revolts, including the only successful one that occurred in my ancestral homeland –Haiti. I might continue my reading of the Battle Cry for Freedom by James McPherson. I might also continue to engage in compassion meditation and encourage others to do the same. Do something, don’t just sit there.

Resist! Desensitization every day and become an instrument for peace, a peacebot.

[With robotic voice-repeat]  I am a Peacebot—over.

Warning this is Not a Peacebot - but you get the idea.