Plague Journal, May I Help You?
How about a fist in the face!
A friend recently relayed the story of a family member who works in retail. The point of his tale was the cascade of anti-social, loutish behavior suffered by a seasoned retail employee dedicated to helping customers, that was told to him. The disconcerting behavior took place during the course of the in-house quarantine which we’ve endured for the last few weeks. Things are in the process of opening up now, but the pent up anxiety/uncertainty continues to be expressed by aggression discharged in public.
This ABC News piece caught my eye. In this story a female, 17 year veteran of retail sales was punched in the face by an irate customer, when the customer was told that the last above ground pool had just been sold to someone else. If you’d like to read the story for yourself, CLICK HERE.
I was not there. I can imagine a Mad Max-Thunder Dome-like scene in a store crowded with agitated shoppers, some wearing masks, but not all. “Survival” of the most aggressive scenario, every man (woman) for him or herself. Extend this scenario down the road for a few years, or perhaps a few months, expanded geographically beyond the confines of a failed purchase transaction — what would we have?
I do not know what the future holds, and I am certainly no expert in human behavior. I am sure that kindness is the best response to disappointment. First step: be kind and patient with yourself. Second step: say a kind word, make a kind gesture to the person standing in front of you. Do we want to create a “might makes right” world in which to raise our children?
Anger
doesn’t go away by itself.
You have to
get rid of it.
Forgive.
Even a bastard?
Especially a bastard.
— anonymous
6 thoughts on “Plague Journal, May I Help You?”
Bust a deal, face the wheel !
Well ok. Not quite sure what that means…..
“Mad Max, Beyond the Thunderdome”. A line from Tina Turner who ran a dismal town of refuges from the apocalypse. Not holding up your end (or perception thereof) resulted in a battle in the Thunderdome , with the crowd shouting ; “Two men enter, one man leaves”. Mere disagreements were settled by the spinning of the ‘wheel’ with various nasty penalties – “Bust a deal, face the wheel “. The best produced movie in the trilogy. Especially Tina Turner.
Blessings
With your help the story line comes back. Makes me want to see the movie again! The raw, primal cause and effect of the society depicted, shows the range of human response and how fragile our psyche truly is. The scene you describe is the ultimate conservative (Trumpian) society. “Justice” meted out without mercy.
Our friend Nancy has made it fairly clear that she believes in an inherent better nature embodied in most of our species. Her thoughts on this were put forward in a discussion surrounding William Golding’s tale of the boys stranded on an island in his novel, Lord of the Flies, and the recent article about the real life Maori boys stranded for a year and a half in the South Pacific. My sense is that we are a malleable creature who can swing either way very easily, though some of our behavior is based on cultural influence. In this country it seems that it is easier to buy into an incendiary and reactionary mindset than to embrace one of kindness and mindfulness. Not that kind people don’t exist in the US of A, but when one lives in a culture where the number of guns owned by Americans comes to 120 for every 100 citizens, then we are set for conflict. The man who punched the retailer is just a drop in the proverbial bucket of how many of our fellow American react to anything that does not fit their sense of entitlement.
I agree. The Golding Tale should be required reading. Human beings become murderous if need be to protect their perceived rights, or privilege. We can also make common cause to create meaningful or beautiful expressions of our imagination which transform our society for the better.
I suspect that the capitalism which we practice, with its unrelenting competition, and resulting penury lies at the root of the American tendency toward violence, anti social behavior. The rare privilege of living in civilization ought to mean that owning a gun is irrelevant, irrational, and a totem of savagery which ought not to be allowed.