MUTSA

Every week something new reveals itself as we push deeper into the unexplored heart of Stall 13. There will be things that you like, things that catch your fancy, and other things that will cause you to look around in horror as you contemplate on just how monstrous this place can be. I hope for all these things and more – each post must make you feel something but I understand that as times progress, fighting indifference becomes a harder thing to do.

Perhaps it is just a symptom of growing up, but I think that is only part of it. With the booming emergence of the internet, as we were made privy to the sensation that is online shopping (God bless America), so too was our exposure to the horrors of the world exponentially increased (Thanks again, America). The media has always been in the business of broadcasting bad news because frankly, that’s what we want. Our humanity is scarred with a most perverse fascination with misery and destruction and this hunger is difficult to stifle and overcome. And so we feed it and demand more, and our wishes are so graciously granted.

I cannot begin to tell you of how privileged and blessed I am (I speak of privilege in the traditional sense – indulge me and remove the liberal lens for now). That in my lifetime I have not had to take up arms and be made to fight in the war of other men (and women) is a most wonderful thing, and I could not imagine what it must be to kill another person, all in the name of an idea that probably is not yours. Bear in mind that as you are, this would likely be a person with hopes and dreams and friends and family. What must it do to your psyche for that to be what your life is, for any number of years? Is it too much to assume that for all those whose horror and revulsion at violence must grow, there is at least someone for whom said revulsion would fade until such a lifestyle became some kind of caricature of normality? I do not know.

Let me add now that I assign no shame to one who feels they must dampen their feelings to be able to stomach their daily lives – my only concern is that the true nature of things (true being as subjective as you want it to be) becomes increasingly lost in a most dangerous sense. It is a generational fault, I think, that we are blinded to the true nature of many things, and the resulting hypocrisy that develops over how we live and how we want everyone else to live. There is a certain callous disrespect that underlines how we handle those who we deem to be at fault and those who have been hurt. But I am being unfair – this isn’t simply a generational phenomenon.

I’m not simply proposing something so simple that as we are, we feel less and so that creates a coldness in how we react to different situations. It seems to me that there is a performative nature to how we react, and again this might be an inevitability to growing up (or perhaps a symptom of my pessimistic optimism). No, it is very sad because it seems to me that we react now, not because we feel something, but how we should feel, and so it becomes a matter of going through the motions, and what that means is that we are not being genuine, and as much as we are lying to others, we are most certainly deceiving ourselves.

Disclaimer: The nature of stall 13 is that in this week as I implore that we feel more, I will at some point talk about how these very same feelings govern too much of what we do. This is in order and does not create any kind of contradiction – you will see what I mean.

As it so often does when I’m concerned, the matter comes back to the greater creature of society, and how we work to please this beast. There are a great many terrible things that happen everyday in this world and I feel that it is most disrespectful to the victims of these goings-on to blanket them with a practiced pity – a sadness that stems from a written code rather than our hearts. I understand that it is a terrible thing to feel (sometimes), and when we really explore feeling and empathy, the truth of it is that there is empathy to be found for the murderer as there is for the bereaved. This is the unwanted but undeniable truth of living, and life.

And so we resort to pills and spliffs and bottles to smother our hearts, if even only for a moment, and in doing so, stamp upon some of our very humanity. We must work to feel more. Only then can we see the truth (as far as can be seen) of what is happening, and in extension, the truth of who we are, and that is never a bad thing. Above all, before I would wish you happiness even, I would only want freedom for you and yours, of the kind that makes cowardice a most dishonourable choice. We must be better than we are now – for the world as much as for ourselves. Covfefe.