Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around... For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human humbleness and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better...
~ Vaclav Havel, president of Czechoslovakia, 1990. Address to the Joint Session of the U.S. Congress
In the context of tragedy, all polite behavior is a form of self-denial... The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues... The courtesies of order, of unruly forms pursued from a heart of rage or terror or grief defame the the truth of every human crisis. And that, indeed, is the plan: To defuse and to deform the motivating truth of critical human response to pain ... But the lobby for polite behavior is fairly inescapable. most often the people who ca least afford to further efface an deny the truth of what they experience, the people whose very existence is most endangered and, therefore, most in need of vigilantly truthful affirmation, these are the people - the poor & children - who are punished most severely for departures from the civilities that grease oppression. ~June Jordan, Civil Wars
I have been watching movies lately. I don’t think I’ve watched so many since that harrowing second term at Cambridge when I was desperately searching for a way to stay afloat, to avoid being submerged, again, in loneliness that felt very much like failure, because I was the one who had, quite knowingly, placed myself in the fire.
Last night, I watched John Q. Denzel Washington’s portrayal of a father taking desperate – no, extreme – measures to insure that his child would be placed on a donor list for a new heart. He found himself in a state of desperation after a series of seemingly disconnected misfortunes left him without the coverage necessary to cover the cost of surgery. The movie opens with his wife’s car being repossessed; he’d chosen to pay rent over the car note. That choice made because he’d been dropped down to only 20 hours at the factory where he’d worked for years; work, they told him, was slow. He searched diligently for another job – whatever leads he found pouring over the daily paper – mainly to be told, as his friend had predicted: you certainly have the experience, you may be overqualified (read: we’d have to pay you what you’re actually worth), but we’ll keep your application on file, should anything open up.
Bills were due; he was trying to stay afloat, to take care of family, to provide, to be a father, a husband, a man. Then his son collapsed on the field as he attempted to steal second base.
The predicament from there is fairly predictable – the boy, Mike, is rushed to the ER by his mother & father in their pick-up truck, there is no time to wait for an ambulance. They rush in the hospital, call out for help, “He’s not breathing,” the boy’s small body hanging limp in Washington’s arms. The doctors work on him, the mother cries as she pleads for him to live, all while trying to answer questions about allergies & medical problems. The parents are rushed out and stand clinging to one another. They cling & cleave to each other again as the cardiologist reports in undecipherable jargon that their child is in heart failure – his heart is 3 times too big … and the administrator reports that their insurance won’t cover it, they must pay the quarter of a million dollars themselves.
There is insufficient insurance because John’s hours have been chopped in half – a full time employee considered to be part time by the HMO, because insurance coverage is based on actual hours worked – not official employment status or the amount paid to the insurance company for full coverage. Criminal. $75,000 must be paid to the hospital front. John is eligible for the full $20,000 for part time employees the insurance rep informs him. When he points out the inconsistency of the policy – the rep notes, “That’s why we’ll actually give you all of it.”
Uncovered/partially covered patients must pay 30% of a surgery’s cost up front - because they’re uncovered, most often because they lack the money to pay for insurance. Criminal.
John raises nearly half the down payment in a few days and delivers it to the hospital; they process discharge papers for his son. They say: We can make him comfortable; you have to accept without this surgery your son will die and we cannot help you with this surgery. There is nothing we can/will do. Criminal.
And so John takes the surgeon hostage, along with everyone else in the ER. Criminal? Not so sure. I'm uncertain not because John let in the man who arrived at the door of the ER with EMT’s with gunshot wounds; not because he commanded the cardiologist (who kept protesting he couldn’t) to operate. Nor because he released the mother going into labor with her baby turned breech and the Hispanic woman, who spoke little English, so that she could get help for her distraught baby. Not because he handled the abuser who’d brought his girlfriend in with a broken arm. Not because his son’s condition had probably gone undetected for years because the HMO that rejected his claim for full coverage likely had a dubious relationship with doctors so that when they did note a symptom or inconsistency, they quietly neglected to give the boy the needed tests in order to get kickbacks from the insurance giants. Not even because the gun he carried had always been unloaded and on safety because he had only eve intended to kill one person, the one who he knew was unequivocally a match for his son – himself.
No, I have a problem judging the behavior, John Q’s desperate actions, as criminal because his acts strike me as so very appropriate.
“Extremity,” June Jordan tells us, “demands, and justifies, extreme response... less than the absolute cessation of normal even in the lock of abnormal duress is a lie and, worse than that, it is a blasphemous ridicule of the self.” Jordan reminds us that it is insufficient to concede that at times desperate times suggest a need for desperate measures. No - violence and unnatural duress and suffering and oppression demand an impolite and equally extreme response. There must be a response that is equal to the action that called it forth.
And yet in writing those words, in which I wholeheartedly believe – even though my actions fall all too often on the side of lying and complicit politesse that helps perpetuate the extremity to which I object – in acknowledging the normalcy of ceasing to go along and offering an extreme response, I can already hear the objections mounting: you’re suggesting anarchy, inciting violence, laying the groundwork for terror and hate and... To which, if I am honest, I can only respond: perhaps. The incitement to violence or terror or anarchy may well be the outcome that arrives at the door if we accept, and I think we should accept, that there should be an equal and opposite force to the maintenance of duress and oppression and warfare. It may be. But, I contend that I am not insisting that the response be in kind: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Rather, I maintain the magnitude of response must be equal to that action that called it forth, the form that action takes must be wrestled with in every individual soul (John Q raised his hand to pull the trigger, to give his boy his heart – talk about magnitude!). I am not advocating any particular action or specific response – you will find here no call to arms. Nor am I denying that words, my words, these words could be interpreted as a call for actions that I might not take myself when standing on the precipice of the imposition of incomprehensible pain and violence and injustice (though perhaps, one day I too may be brave).
No, I am willing to take responsibility for issuing the reminder that what is natural and appropriate in the face of pain - over the call (or demand) to manage others’ discomfort, spare others’ feelings, to silence and conceal our terror and rage and grief from the very ones that have caused it, in the name of manners, dignity, courtesy or cooperation - is to offer an extreme response. For you see, this is a call to abolish that form of martyrdom – so I will take responsibility for asking that the rage and grief and terror that emerge from injustice, violence, and other terror-filled acts be concealed no longer. I will take responsibility for whatever actions come about as a result of the hearing of these words – but only if you who protest take responsibility for the fact that it was the mounting number of unjust actions that you chose that set the conditions to make this call to respond necessary. For without those acts of oppression, there never would have been a need for a response at all.
JJB: August 2010
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