In American neighborhoods, those quiet peaceful
neighborhoods, where common folk are continually shocked by the horror of
single acts of deep cruelty, the lessons learned are easily forgotten and
placed on the list of little murders by those not directly affected. The recent
grotesque acts in a Newtown, Connecticut school must force us not to forget but
to delve into the deeper social issues inflicting America. Perhaps theorizing
with Slavoj Zizek, Julia Kristeva, and Bell Hooks can awaken this surprise for
some but not all. Most would rather move on and forget.
In the 1971 film ‘Little Murders’ with actors Donald
Sutherland, Eliot Gould, and Alan Arkin; the film depicts a society on the
brink of chaos. Human values seem nearly nihilistic, and on a daily basis
unsolved murders take innocent lives, never following any 'pattern'. In the
French philosophers’, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guittari’s, ‘A Thousand
Plateaus’ the deep analysis, nearly intentionally incomprehensible at times,
dissects the nature of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: In the extreme
late-Capitalistic societies, such as the United States, humans have become so
alienated from one another that they can no longer relate or connect in a
socially interactive community. Due to economics and technology, the human mind
has discarded certain necessary traits that progressively allow people to interact in a healthy way. This can result at times
where those outcast alienated individuals take out their psychosis in psychopathic
ways. Schizophrenia is a loose term associated with numerous mental health
illnesses. Only in countries so advanced do individuals of certain economic
upbringings have the luxury to manifest a psychological neuroticism, be heavily
medicated, or lose the moral capacity at the slightest market instability.
The instability pattern in the Connecticut shooting, the Columbine
shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Batman premier shooting, the Arizona
congress woman shooting, and recent other similar atrocities reflect
individuals quite often who are not from poverty stricken families, or from
Third World communities, or low-income minority families. These all ‘male’,
typically white but not always, acts of aggression represent individuals from bourgeois
middle-class and have chosen no healthy outlets to externalize their internal
psychosis. Unlike the recent community organized protests in developing
nations, where frustrated individuals come together to protest their
governments, like in Egypt, Tunisia, Thailand, and Chile in the past few years;
in late-Capitalist nations, there rarely is any deeper sense of community until
tragedy or hurricane occur; but then within a short time passes, the alienation
returns. So most likely until the deeper failures of economic imbalance and
social bankruptcy are addressed, more singular acts of violence may continue.
It is very likely to continue since most people refrain from tackling the
deeper systematic failures of inclusion. Rather than addressing the core of
social failures, the superficial tactics of high lobbied politicians reflect a
real failure of irresponsible leadership.
Americans cannot wait for political leaders to address the issues but
need to take a citizen’s role of speaking out and speaking with one another on
all levels.
Several years ago, when breaking news covered a series of
individual acts of cruelty in China, when grown men frustrated and lonely went
into schools and hospitals shooting or stabbing children and strangers,
Americans were mortified and looked at China failing to socially address the
lack of support services for depressed and mentally ill individuals. American
media claimed it was due to a lack of freedom. Yet in America where the right
to choose is usually determined via consumer interests, this mirror is equally
violent, as seen recently in Connecticut. When angered and
frustrated individuals do not have support and constant inclusion, the pattern
reflects that they take their anger out at weaker or those individuals who
cannot protect themselves, like children; this is often similar to the
bully-syndrome, where a bully tends to bully because he cannot stand up to
those stronger than himself exploiting him, so he takes it out on those who he
feels he can overwhelm. This is a failure beyond the self. There is a larger
systematic failure in the Capitalist society that inevitably creates a society
of Haves and Have-nots (China in the 21st Century is a capitalist
society). The United States is a late-Capitalist society struggling to address
what is socially lacking that no matter how many products one consumes the
material gain won’t address the social lack.
In Slavoj Zizek’s ‘The Ticklish Subject’, the Slovenian
philosopher tackles the underlying problem between the ‘real, the symbolic, and
the lack’. The danger of normalcy as he puts it, is that those who are
essentially claiming to be ‘normal’ will not step away from their own selves to
realize that the act of madness in one isolated individual is a representative
failure of what ‘normal’ includes. Rather than the ability to think hard about
community values, individuals will blame others rather than deduce a discord
with what is overall lacking. The second consequence that Julia Kristeva
theorizes in her understanding of societies failure to revolt together in the
21st Century for a more inclusive system is that the “I” is
isolated. Her analysis notices that there is an erosion in the capacity to
rebel as a “sign of national depression” similar to “what the individual feels
in isolation” (Intimate Revolt). Tina Chanter reflects on Kristeva’s awareness
of the ‘weakness of law and the absence of responsibility’: “As this claim makes
clear, ‘the new maladies of the soul’ is not a retreat from the tasks of social
transformation but precisely a demonstration of the psychic consequences of
such a retreat.” America has clearly escaped responsibility from social
accountability in the Corporate practice of big business, to the Government
failures protecting public education, to the War Industrial Complex, to lack of
prison reform and gun-control laws, and this passes over to simple failures of
parents’ lacking the responsibility in giving necessary guidance to their own
children while they sit glued to their cell phones and drop the child for
endless hours in front of the television or computer.
For Bell Hooks in her essay ‘Talking Back’, talking back
meant daring to disagree from ‘normal’ acceptance, speaking when one is not
being spoken to as a courageous act, and sometimes just having an opinion
(Hooks). When people fear going deep and talking about the personal, “We have
to go that deep”; this overcoming of pain and degradation that Hooks talks
about is our struggle, a struggle of memory against forgetting (Hooks). A
dialogue is necessary, not only locally, but also internationally. If the
crimes of those who of low-income tend to be minor thefts from drugs, car
robberies, mugging, and individual alley shoot outs, and the crimes of isolated
middle-class alienated young men are to take guns to public areas and shoot at random
multiple people, the crimes of the rich involve large segments of populations
like U.S. led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, fracking oil in the central United
States, or the closing of a General Motors factory in Flint, Michigan. The
pattern of acceptance of ‘normalcy’ is out of control and social accountability
is absent.
A necessary dialogue is long overdue. The pain that American’s
feel is also uniquely connected to the pain that the Chinese feel. When
American clothes and dolls, like Barbie, are manufactured in Chinese factories,
the exploitation at home is directly connected to the exploitation abroad. When
protest and revolt occur in the Middle East, their pain and frustration is
directly connected to the pain and frustrations Americans feel, and at an
imbalance. When Americans are frustrated that the price of gasoline is getting
higher and they cannot drive their cars. The frustration of those in the Middle
East is ten-fold because our unaccountable corporations and government have
supported ruthless dictators for decade after decade. The oil giants of Exxon
and Mobile are greedy enough to manipulate the American system for so long
conditioning the belief that oil is a necessity to the American way of life.
But this is directly connected to the frustration and pain in the Middle East
not having a genuine outlet for democratic values. Such absence of social
accountability leads to increases in fundamentalism.
The false ‘normalcy’ that is so expected of fuel, clothes,
style, and technology is the very ‘lacking’ that comes from the overvaluing
economic principles and devaluing moral social values, and this creates
alienation. The pain at home is uniquely connected to the pain abroad. There is
a common failure. While the pain
abroad can collectively turn out and organize revolt, it seems that in the
extreme capitalist/consumer nations such as the United States, the system alienates
so many individuals that occasionally and what appears to be a growing concern
is that certain, mostly male characters cannot connect with their fellow human
beings, in an almost social autism, resulting in acts of unjustified
irresponsible violence in public space, as seen in Connecticut this week.
Americans must stop the political shallow discourse and delve into discussing
the systems overall failure, or these sorts of acts (little murders) will
continue.
