US Race Riots: The Crux of the Problem

We tend to view riots, such as those taking place across America at this moment, in terms of their primary causes; in this instance, there's the case of George Floyd, an African-American man suffocated by a police officer during an arrest in Minneapolis last week. Generally speaking, commentators and even participants take the surface level approach that the primary cause of such unrest is police brutality. They may even go as far as to reference something more broad, like institutionalised racism or the prevailing social attitudes of that which they are against. It's symptomatic of the world today that we can't steel ourselves to delve deeper into these events and diagnose the real sickness, instead preferring sources that give us someone tangible to blame.

The commonality running through the protests right now, and other protests with a racial bent in America over the years, as well as Britain and other places east of the Atlantic, is a sense of powerlessness felt by particularly ethnic minority members of those societies. It's not any one action of the police, per se, nor is it any one policy, but a sense that the states in which they live are not designed to their specifications or even to provide them with a voice with which to shape them.

They're not alone.

People of European descent, both here in their native homelands and across the pond on the American continent, feel exactly the same way. Indeed, this disconnect between the rational mind of the individual and the construction of the modern state apparatus is a feeling that those of all races have in common, regardless of where we live. No one group, even those in their native homelands, enjoys self-determination in the truest sense of the term. Our countries are subject to special interests, both national and international, public and private, profitable and not-for-profit. They are built to maintain a particular, unnatural mode of economic activity and the industrialised trappings that are married to it. Their God is money and their gospel consumerism. In this system, elections and political opinion are channelled through a narrow passage of "acceptable viewpoints" that give an illusion of choice and the certainty that nothing will ever really change.

And the fact that this sentiment is, for all intents and purposes, universal, is well-evidenced by the malaise of modern society. Europeans may not engage in crude acts of protestation like looting department stores or burning vehicles, but the rates of anti-depressant consumption and suicide amongst that population is simply a more refined, but no less serious manifestation of the same problem. Europeans are no more evolved than other race to live within sprawling concrete jungles ruled over by an alien elite to whom they cannot relate or empathise with. Neither are they any better equipped to deal with rampant technocracy and soul-destroying employment that amounts, fundamentally, to little more than high-tech, corporate feudalism.

These societal structures are, by accident or design, made to ensure the individual, the tribe, the community and so on, are effectively powerless to effect meaningful change outside of the usual vanity projects embarked on to appease the prols. That's good for nobody, black or white.

The solution to this problem is not more platitudes to give the police a facade of harmlessness, or media coverage to highlight the virtues of African-American music - the sheer pretence! Such efforts will provide nothing but distraction, until the next time the real underlying cause manifests itself. This is a fantasy proposal, of course, but the correct course of action would be to invite communities, races and religions to design the sort of society they wish to live in. An authentic world should be built based on true self-determination, as opposed to the whims of self-appointed community representatives whose real interests are industrial and profit-driven.

Most crucially, a world should be built which ensures that those inhabiting its various societies have genuine and tangible power over the process so they may choose where they live, how they live, who they live with and who represents them to govern. It may emerge that certain tribes and races don't wish to live together, or maybe some do and some do not. It may happen that true self-determination is only felt when people who look like you make and enforce the rules. It may. These are uncomfortable confrontations that presently prevent these questions being asked, but true authenticity can only be gathered by asking them, and true authenticity is a recipe for peace and fulfilment.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Depersonalism and Industrialism

Climate Change: A Flawed Perception