oppresion through self directed violence
november 14, 2024The most insidious form of oppression operates through the violence one is forced to inflict upon oneself as a direct result of their position within the system. Violence is a vast phenomenon, inclusive of much more than the dramatic physical and mental attacks we typically associate as violent in nature. And when the system cannot provide us the tools or resources to treat ourselves kindly and holistically, we cannot as easily provide holistic kindness to others.
It is violent to consume foods and substances that damage our cells. It is violent to sentence our bodies to stillness in front of a screen for 8 hours each day. It is violent to provide and serve vices to our communities. It is violent to reduce oneself to mere numbers, to consider oneself as a figure worth $100,000 that walks 10,000 steps and consumes 2,500 calories and receives 200 likes on average. It is violent to deprive our bodies of their natural rhythms and movements. It is violent to ignore one’s basic needs due to constraints placed upon us by our work or lack of resources. It is violent to speak sourly or lie to oneself and others, to keep our heads down and keep pushing along towards some abstract illusory ideal we will never reach.
The system’s power is not based upon its military and arms, although they do signify a country’s power in relation to the rest of the globe. The system’s main source of power lies in its ability to dehumanize its members, and the more that its members can dehumanize each other, the stronger the system grows. We begin to see other humans as their job and interact with them as though they were a machine that will respond exactly as it is prompted when you tell it to make you a cappuccino instead of as a human steaming milk who really needs to pee but is not able to do so until they have completed their algorithm. It leads down a long chain of slight tensions that compound into bigger problems over time.
This is how the system inherently forces us to succumb to self directed violence and maintains its power over us, even if we are fully aware of the damage we inflict. These small acts we commit to ourselves create knots and tears in the threads connecting us to each other. If one submits to the violences born of their systematic positioning, they are given a valid reason to justify any violence they project onto others. The system treats me like a dog, why be surprised when I act like one? Humans tend to behave the way they are treated.
Violence upon oneself also may be a form of complacency and distraction. Precious energy that could be used to make change is misdirected towards superficial norms that compel us to spend our time on meaningless pursuits whose ends are but trivial rewards for the individual’s ego. Rather than creating spaces with resources our communities desperately need, people prefer to destroy their bodies in the gym for hours to look a certain way, or spend money on products produced by modern slaves to stay in style, or use their voices to transmit hateful speech, or a myriad of other empty activities.
The system promises deliverance from the aches of our actions in the form of further violences disguised as reliefs. Give me a beer and a cig after a long day, some wine to rid my headache, give me fast food to feed my hungry kids, give me more toys to distract myself from all the noise, all the silence. It places handcuffs on us at birth, leads us to believe we were the ones who put them on and are responsible for finding the keys hidden somewhere within the higher ranking positions of the system to unlock ourselves. What we don’t see, however, are the additional chains picked up along that journey to the top, chains tying us up and more chains to tie up those below. Give me more ways to destroy myself because I am in pain and my wrists are already tied up anyway, I cannot free others if I am not free myself.
And yet all this raises a question that I have asked many and none seem to have an answer to; is violence a necessary and unavoidable piece of evolutionary life and human societies? Have we come to conceptualize violence so much so that we cannot recognize its neutrality? The question is not whether violence is good or bad, these are just concepts that cause hindrances in the flow of the universe. Wood must be destroyed for the fire to burn. These tears in our lives may rip us apart, true, but is that not how our muscles get stronger also? Violence is spoken of as an entity too dangerous for humans to engage with. It is a skill that we have not yet wielded with the right intentions. We are beings of destruction and creation, as are the earth and sun and all of the elements abound in space. There is great power in realizing one’s capabilities of violence, it is a matter of learning how and when to direct violent actions in beneficial ways.
America is complacent not because it is lazy, America is complacent because our energy is directed into silly cycles of delusion and false deliverance. We are herded down paths that feed the ego and starve our souls. We paint new names over the same broken buildings. We are afraid to destroy and forgot how to build. We must realize our inherent abilities to create change, we must communicate with one another as fellow humans and redirect our everyday actions so that our energy is not leaking through the tears or getting blocked by the knots in that great fabric of threads connecting us all.
love you,
kara