Bystanders in the Hands of an Angry Social Activist
That was a mouthful.
[I was inspired by Jonathan Edwards's sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' A bit of background on the man is that Edwards was an influential preacher from the colonial times' Puritan societies and preached during the Great Awakening. He used an emotional approach to implant fear and realization into the hearts of his listeners by giving vivid descriptions of hell and emphasizing God's wrath. And yes, he was in fact, influential, although I don't understand how.]
This post is not about religion, or God however. I simply want to touch on a few points I have been wrecking myself over because as much as I'd like to believe in us, as humanity, history is as determined to punch me in the face and kick me back into the black pit of misanthropy I have been trying to climb out of.
History – we tell ourselves – repeats itself because we don't learn from it, but how long have we known that? Since 200 BC. We have realized that historic recurrence is a phenomena and then, in a cold-blooded frenzy we've made it such a generic thing that nobody really cares anymore about what it implies and how it relates to us. We simply use it to guide us through millennia and pick out the bolded similarities.
Currently I am taking a US History class and the more I learn, the more my fascination with humanity grows (although it grows side by side with my disgust). We just finished our unit on the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era, and I am at a loss.
Take a look at slavery. We had a civil war because half the nation (south) wanted to keep slavery while the other (north) wanted to end it. And here, we think – hey, at least there were people willing to fight to abolish slavery. But no. That came later. The north wasn't fighting to free the slaves, the north was fighting to keep slavery from spreading to the west because white men needed equality in economic opportunity and having slaves would hinder that. Two years of bloodshed and then we decided that if we didn't send off moral and righteous vibes we wouldn't get foreign support so we emancipated the slaves in the south (which didn't actually liberate anyone until the war was over because the emancipation applied to the southern states – which were rebelling and trying to become their own country).
Of course, there are those who had good intentions, but the people with good intentions are rarely in positions of power. Just the concept of slavery makes me flinch. !People wanted other people to be seen as property. !People wanted to believe that some people were destined to be slaves because of their skin color. !People tried justifying enslaving other people through religion. !People wanted to purchase other people because who else was going to work their overambitious lands?
Of course, there are those who had good intentions but the people with good intentions are rarely brave enough to speak up. And thus, bringing me to my second ranting point. These
two
videos. Long 7 minutes short, two pseudo-social-experiments to see how the public reacts towards the 'Muslims are terrorists' stereotype and the hijab as an identity.
I will start out with the shorter video. The content itself is upsetting and eye-opening, and could have been more influential if done under a more professional light. However my focus is not on the video, it's on the comments. Many people are trying to justify the guy's rejection of the hijabi with the very base and stupid reason that she wasn't his type.
This would have been a completely logical reason for rejecting a girl IF she was asking to get into intimate relations with the guy. However, she is asking for help but because she doesn't present any potential to the guy for later relations he rejects her requests for help. When have we become a race of beings that help others based on their looks?
This would have been a completely logical reason for rejecting a girl IF she was asking to get into intimate relations with the guy. However, she is asking for help but because she doesn't present any potential to the guy for later relations he rejects her requests for help. When have we become a race of beings that help others based on their looks?
I mean, if this is supposed to be the case, then I should talk to only a handful of people in the world who all happen to be actors living miles and miles away from me. Can you imagine how horrendous and appalling we would become if our conversations went along the lines of:
Person: Hey, excuse me, I am looking for a way to get to the regional library, do you know how I can do that?
Me:
WOW! You have brown eyes? How dare you talk to me!? You know I am married, right? I am married, you shouldn't even come close to me, in fact my husband is gonna come and beat you up because you don't have green eyes. G
o back to your continent or something. You are an abomination, with your disgusting brown eyes and black hair. I cannot believe you even dreamed of me helping you. DO I LOOK LIKE A BROWN EYES AND BLACK HAIR GIRL TO YOU?
We don't not talk to people just because they aren't visually appealing to us. How shallow is that? And really, this isn't a pick and choose females world. It's more about – wait for it – respect, oh yeah. We respect and help people for heir humanity. It doesn't get simpler.
And the second video. The whole world watches while a man calls a hijabi a terrorist in the middle of the street. The whole world also laughs, encourages, ignores or agrees with the man, thus leaving the girl very much alone and at the mercy of only a few people who dare to try and put a stop to what the man is doing. In the comments section of this video you will see multiple debates. One is that people aren't interfering because they are afraid of the man hurting them. This should not be an excuse in this scenario because the whole thing is happening in a crowded and public place, and anyone could have flipped a phone and dialed 911 to scare him.
This is how distant we are, and how apathetic. Some people argued that if a woman wearing a mini-skirt was being scolded in an extremist Islamic country, people would be just as ignorant. See, the problem isn't about Muslims. It's about people. It's about humanity. And yes, you could identify me as a fuzzy headed idealist, because we need to change as a species and I believe that we do have the potential. We just need to start realizing what we are doing wrong and have a clear sense of direction as to where we want to go as humans. If we keep feeding out greed and selfishness, we'll die out earlier than we anticipated.
Lots of sighs,
∆ Belle