Aargh …
… Came that amorphous sound, (technically termed ‘onomatopoeia’, and classified by the English dictionary as an interjection, which above all expresses frustration) in all of its gravelly glory from deep within the uncharted recesses of her perpetually agitated subconscious mind, the moment she was brought to closely scrutinize a couple of smug and self-righteous assertions, at first glance inarguably hypnotizing by virtue of their sheer literary prowess, and yet teeming with sermons, sanctimony and a jingoistic call to arms against one or another type of injustice or enemy, often almost entirely imaginary, or at the very least self-limiting should it not be labelled, armed and leveraged to begin with …
… It had forced her to re-visit the aspects of human nature captured in two powerful aphorisms, the first that ‘human nature pursues strife’ and second more obvious but equally lamentable, that ‘misery loves company’, the former never before, perhaps, as vividly incoherent in conjuring up an object of conflict, competition or struggle, as it is today.
The catalyst for her most recent ruminations had been a combination of two news items, the first the Henry Nowak incident in the UK, which had so clearly illustrated the appalling consequences of unilaterally weaponizing minorities in relation to allegations of racial bias, the second, the fact of the Gisele Pelicot story being transformed into a documentary series by an Oscar winning producer, the initiative not only patently devoid of any and all reason or purpose aside from profit for Pelicot herself and all those involved, but also likely to inspire, and thus perpetuate the very same crime for which it was pretending, or even deluding itself into believing it was somehow prescribing a ‘preventive’ antidote.
Over the years, literature and the arts have slowly and steadily been polluted by ‘social objectives’, form and narrative increasingly motivated by personal-branding, underpinned by an invariably false display of superior moral rectitude that is all at once insincere, pompous, shallow and combative, as demonstrated by the aforementioned assertions belonging to two well-known authors, each one subjectively decrying the practices of ‘forgetting’ and ‘habituating’, when mere survival often depends on one or the other or both …
… It has frequently been said about famous 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, that he was far more effective at eliciting the kind of sentiment that is needed to bring about social change when he wrote spontaneously and creatively, rather than ‘post-conversion’, when he decided that the ‘pursuit of art for art’s sake was self-indulgent’, his work thereafter driven, contaminated and gradually even undermined by the inflexible and somewhat sour directives of ‘social responsibility’ …
… Since human nature is at the heart of all the rot, surely the only real antidote to the endless epidemic of injustice in the world, the capacity for which resides in each and every human being, is to neutralize or smother it with compassion, beauty, dignity and/or a compelling counter argument that stands on its own merit, rather than to engage with equal aggression and fashion an identity singularly by way of opposition, usually upon the vastly unconvincing claim of principled action, most apparent and farcical in the arena of politics that is more and more defined by ‘fall guys and false narratives’ …
… It was only recently that she had watched herself reflexively shudder at the sound and expressions of triumph issuing from those who had led and supported the student uprising in New Delhi, with respect to the young protesters at the receiving end of police brutality, for it helped buttress their opposition to the government in power; the outrage was phony, real empathy altogether absent, revealing an ugliness of sentiment similar to that of the offenders …
… From men to menopause, gender, race, identity, aging, addiction, and so on and so forth, anything and everything, it appears, is fair game, so long as it shows potential for some type of profit …
… After all, why “let the truth get in the way of a good story”, and I might add, dollar bills!