Two Terrors
The issue of lockdowns, checkpoints, roadblocks, civil liberties and rights has been prominent lately in Guam (and in other places as well). I was looking at my bookshelf for different books and discussions on this sort of issue, wanting to just put some structure to the ways that people were talking about stricter measures to save lives, but others trying forcefully to argue that their rights were more important than the public health concerns. There were alot of ways to approach something like this, since it brings in philosophy, political science/theory, sociology, legal theory, etc. As I was scanning my bookshelf though, I saw a book I hadn't read in a while, but has one passage which I thought of as being relevant in the sort of "looking awry" way I like my critical analysis, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" by Mark Twain. In it, there is the passage on the two "Reigns of Terror."
One in which violence is abhorred and socio-political arguments are made based on allegedly manifest evidence, "common sense" assertions about what is felt and seen. The other in which violence is accepted or tolerated since its impacts are more diffuse, difficult to understand, and represent the potential for a multitude of implications across all sectors of society. One relies on indignation and moral assumptions that are based on a clear spectacle, where there is a rupture of the "regular" order of things, where there is no need for real thought or understanding. Like a bomb being set off in a neighborhood killing a number of people.
The other runs alongside the structure of society, but contains the same levels of violence, but like something out of the Matrix, the terrifying numbers code to our eyes instead as everyday images and everyday life. It is violence that does not appear as violence because it doesn't break the regular order in the same way. It moves in slower ways, it poisons and rends humanity in quieter and less visible ways. Like a chemical company poisoning that neighborhood or business and governing choking opportunity out of that same neighborhood. The biggest difference is that for the first Terror, culprits are easily identified and blame easily assigned and the story quickly turned into a Netflix series. For the second one, it is messier, because it is not a break in the order we can all see and point at, it is often violence and harm the order doesn't just tolerate, but requires, it channels. It is not a blast or burst, but is something like a web stretches throughout society and we may even be included in some way in the line up of the culpable suspects.
This type of dynamic is one that I've long been fascinated with, since it has implications for us in Guam. We are most likely to see the social spectacle in our societies and assign easy blame to individuals or groups or classes, rather than probe deeper to the structure of it all. This is true for all societies probably, but on the same hand we are also a colony that many feel isn't violent or suffering enough to meet the definition of colonialism. I had a few chapters of my dissertation that played around with this idea.
I also see this connected to the discussion on pandemics and what types of actions are appropriate in terms of prevention. The mental connection between that and this quote came about because of the recent article that GovGuam is preparing more grave in case of the pandemic getting worse and the projections of Public Health being true. It reminded me of Twain's phrasing about a city cemetery.
"There were two "Reigns of Terror" if we would remember it and consider it; the one wrought in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak, whereas what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror, that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror, which none of us have been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. (64)"
One in which violence is abhorred and socio-political arguments are made based on allegedly manifest evidence, "common sense" assertions about what is felt and seen. The other in which violence is accepted or tolerated since its impacts are more diffuse, difficult to understand, and represent the potential for a multitude of implications across all sectors of society. One relies on indignation and moral assumptions that are based on a clear spectacle, where there is a rupture of the "regular" order of things, where there is no need for real thought or understanding. Like a bomb being set off in a neighborhood killing a number of people.
The other runs alongside the structure of society, but contains the same levels of violence, but like something out of the Matrix, the terrifying numbers code to our eyes instead as everyday images and everyday life. It is violence that does not appear as violence because it doesn't break the regular order in the same way. It moves in slower ways, it poisons and rends humanity in quieter and less visible ways. Like a chemical company poisoning that neighborhood or business and governing choking opportunity out of that same neighborhood. The biggest difference is that for the first Terror, culprits are easily identified and blame easily assigned and the story quickly turned into a Netflix series. For the second one, it is messier, because it is not a break in the order we can all see and point at, it is often violence and harm the order doesn't just tolerate, but requires, it channels. It is not a blast or burst, but is something like a web stretches throughout society and we may even be included in some way in the line up of the culpable suspects.
This type of dynamic is one that I've long been fascinated with, since it has implications for us in Guam. We are most likely to see the social spectacle in our societies and assign easy blame to individuals or groups or classes, rather than probe deeper to the structure of it all. This is true for all societies probably, but on the same hand we are also a colony that many feel isn't violent or suffering enough to meet the definition of colonialism. I had a few chapters of my dissertation that played around with this idea.
I also see this connected to the discussion on pandemics and what types of actions are appropriate in terms of prevention. The mental connection between that and this quote came about because of the recent article that GovGuam is preparing more grave in case of the pandemic getting worse and the projections of Public Health being true. It reminded me of Twain's phrasing about a city cemetery.
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