Meditation On Violence

 

Meditation On Violence

”And remember, the passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”

These are words uttered by an elderly character in one seminal cult-classic film titled Slacker, after expressing his rage against the systematic oppression of human potential by powers that be and their complacent populace.

But does the urge to rebel and protest an unsavory situation always have to result in destruction of property and life? And taking into cognizance the shared risk of public protests, can one deduce the destruction of property and life as force necessary for the creation of an alternative situation for the victim?

And while being fully aware that protestation is a humane reaction against the exploitation experienced by victims and that their persistent participation in emancipatory efforts that often turns violent is unavoidable, this video poem undertakes to further meditate on anonymity as a weapon in the hands of those engaged in violent protests.

Though anonymity may vary in many instances of such outbursts of violent protestation, I often wonder, what sociopolitical contexts affect protest participation and the psychology of protesters at any given time of the event?

There is an undeniable sense of anonymity that a crowd affords each protester, and various psychological impetuses that drive the urge to protest might be directly linked to the degree of oppression and discomfort experienced by each participant victim.

Others might opt for peaceful tactics of expressing their social discontent, collective vulnerability and palpable results of socio-economic inequality, and their methods can prove productive at times.

But it is often the spectacle of violence that inadvertently looms, in fact to entrench the memory of protests in the minds of many, while further providing a shared intensity of the profound impact of a collective responsibility.

Yet, extreme protest tactics, often conducted by a few, have continually painted even the most peaceful bystanders and observers with the same brush of brash activism, but I am left to wonder what fuels the rage of those few who eventually arouse an involuntary response from others in a contagion effect of sorts.

A climatic confrontation of opposing forces then ensues, and tensions culminate in a plethora of unprecedented vulgarities, which later stain the grand objectives of the protest. 

But, at the heart of it all, lingers turbulent strife unresolved by simmering tyres and smoke blackening urban skies, and demands for a better lot vanish with ashes trampled underfoot by times ceaseless trot.