The system of intelligent life uses logic and sanity to make sense of a grim existence where humans of all backgrounds and categories are slain in the streets where they work and play.
Last week, moreover, will stick in America’s consciousness as a week of profound ugliness, not only because men, women and otherwise were killed by gunfire from a police officer, or even because some officers themselves lost their lives, but because for all of the uprisings and all the chatter and all the social media posts, no one human in history seems to have a practical answer to quell the madness.
Sorrow, misery, confusion, angst: these ideas and more flooded mobile phones, radios and television screens. As one side chewed, another and another followed. Most acts of violence follow this pattern.
However, because of the changing landscape of consumption and media and the growing population of humans spreading their wings of ideas and thoughts, the field is, in all honesty, extremely cluttered.
In short, opinions of all kinds are sure to unsettle.
Nonetheless, violence, and complex reactions to violence, is not a new problem for the human condition. History, for humans at least, says life will expand and violence will always be an issue, meaning, in the end, that as everything seems to change, even more of it will seem to stay the same.
One thing that has not stayed the same is the misuse of rhetoric to make claims and insert beliefs. For African-Americans, or any other classification of ethnic or racial background, creed or color, gender or sexual preference, occupation or interest, completely healthy or with disability, it is not and should not be an expectation to rally statehouses and law enforcement to end oppressive circumstances.
To “matter” does not mean “only.” To “matter,” in this and all circumstances, for humans of any background who face various histories of overt and covert injustice, is to have significance and dignity under the eyes of equitable laws and under the eyes of their fellow human citizens, nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
But even that idea has the potential to unsettle, like all other ideas similar and different before it. Once again, as the concern flows, what is in question for mankind as of this moment is where to go next and how folks ought to get there. Rhetoric alone is simply not enough.
Still, ideas can be the powerful seeds that eventually bridge gaps in communication. To listen is just as important as consuming. And when this is done with respect as respective sides deem it respectable, open dialogue can turn into legislation, and, more importantly, an improvement from yesterday.
In the coming weeks, the Recorder will display and publish various thoughts from people, ordinary people who live in this world, experience this world, exist, and, without question, matter.
These people, like all other people, view life through their own points of view, their own biases, their own senses of wisdom, of justice, their own ideas of pain and their own sets of experience. Some offer general thoughts. Some offer solutions. But, in the end, as the world continues to turn, these statements conclude that the strength and resolve of ordinary people will always be the epicenter of the future to come.
