So, two guys tried to jump me the other night while i was walking home from a friend’s house. Although the whole episode only lasted about a minute and I managed to get away unharmed and with all my possessions, I’ve noticed some changes in my thoughts and behavior. I’m going to use this blog as an outlet, I suppose.
I woke up from a bad dream last night only to have another one during the next cycle. Both involved criminals trying to harm me or my friends. Pretty action packed, but I wasn’t watching a movie…at the time, it felt like reality. terrorized. it was worse then what happened in reality. with the amount of work i have ahead of me, i may just skip a night of sleep…it’s rare that i have a justification for doing so.
A friend of mine was recently wronged by a black person and has been liberal with his use of the n-word and i’ve objected to it every time, telling him not to let one person distort his view of an entire race…and if you can’t resist this urge, why not let Barack Obama distort your view?
anyway, i don’t like being preachy, but i’m comfortable making statements that ultimately guide one’s own behavior by making use of the motivation that MOST people have, which is to AVOID being a hypocrite. so, to all my friends who i’ve gotten onto for smoking, or saying the N-word, or littering…just let me continue. i’d love for you to stop, but i’m most concerned with helping myself, i think.
Anyhow, I took a cab home after the episode and after hearing my story the cab driver made a racist remark that normally would make one cringe…and while i didn’t vocalize his sentiments or agree with him, i noticed my cringe was absent. this is not good. i also noticed increased racial profiling on my trip to the grocery store just a few hours ago.
I normally go when my hunger becomes unbearable…tonight i left early and without an appetite…reasoning that 11:30pm was safer than 2:30am. I consider this a positive change in behavior.
I also took much more notice of the police cars and security guards that I walked past and came close to expressing my gratitude for their presence (maybe another time). I consider this a positive change, as well. However, this change is a part of a broader change…that of increased attentiveness…which sounds good…but it can take on the feeling of terror.
and while some of the accompanying thoughts can be positive like the example above (”Man, these guys are great. Sure glad they’re here”), others were pretty negative and shaming. and its these thoughts that…well they don’t even creep in…they jump into your consciousness.
i’m not really worried that this will be a lingering problem…i think my mind is just trying to integrate this experience and adapt my behavior to serve the goal that all creatures’ ancestors have had.
it’s just that the experience is still recent and is strongly weighted…(and yes, i’m just guessing at how this works…if any cogsci people come across this post, i would love to be enlightened)…with time i’ll feel like my old self, with a software mindware patch.
the negative change i have just become aware of is that this incident is preventing me from completing my project. so i will stop now. but there are a couple of things i intend to blog about soon.
i have been thinking alot about a mugging experience that happened to me about 4 years ago…the aftermath was more traumatic…and the perpetrator was a 40-something white guy. but i can’t recall any quasi-instinctual racial profiling afterwards. i’ll explore this in my next post.
another thing i’ve been thinking about is all the times i imagined what i’d do if something like this were to occur, and i can’t say i followed any kind of premeditated plan. in hindsight, i could say i made the optimal decision…(more optimal may have been to take the cab just to the subway and not ALL the way home)…which was to run through the street towards a cab i saw at a redlight a block and a half away. But my information is/was limited…i wasn’t proposing situational factors and considering different options…i had to fucking act. “fight or flight” is a very fitting phrase. if anyone is reading this…what would you do? maybe some comments will give me something to write about.
and other things i’ve thought more about:
-the right to bear arms and whether or not having a firearm makes a situation more dangerous
-whether martial arts is worth the effort
-the death penalty
-the psychology of someone who robs people and how it’s even possible to behave that way, you stupid pieces of shit (yes, quite a bit of anger still)
-LEAVING THE CITY I LIVE IN BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH CRIME, or is there?
-and whether or not having worn an obama tshirt would’ve made me less of a target.
and one more thing: i’ve met a few racists in my day, and people who try to justify their use of the n-word*….and when i’ve asked them to explain their reasoning, i have not found their answers compelling or even remotely reasonable. most of the time, its just stupidity, ignorance, or “the way i was raised (stupid AND ignorant)”. but we are not always reasonable creatures. while my experience was relatively tame, i wonder what a much more traumatic experience might do to someone’s racial prejudices. from an evopsych perspective, its easy to understand how xenophobia could’ve once served a purpose. But a lot has been done towards making this emotion/prejudice obsolete. it just sucks that, seemingly, one misguided person can make the xenophobic monster rear its ugly head in another.
*i am guilty of this myself. i now think it foolish, but i once thought that if everybody said it to everyone all the time, it would lose its power as a hateful word. that may be true, akin to how some african-americans use it amongst themselves, but everyone/all the time would never happen. what’s more likely is you run around pissing people off while always having to explain your unattainable goal.
