It’s around midnight, Saturday. As I walk down the crowded, bustling Brunswick Street, the noise from hooting cabs, screaming adolescents, and the low-frequency tones, emanating from nightclubs – dissipate into a profound silence.
Sometimes, very rarely, after a few drinks – reality and non-reality intertwine into an unrecognisable blur, which in effect creates a new plane of existence, which offers unquestionable conviction and clarity of thought.
Overall, the night’s atmosphere is hostile, unwelcoming. There is an innate sense of urgency and nervousness about. People are brushing impatiently past each other – perhaps to reach new night clubs, or perhaps for taxis. Staying around in one spot is less than optimal. Violence, drug abuse, exposed walls with graffiti, loathsome alley-ways – foreshadow the discourse of urban decline, where societal degradation is prominent, and inescapable. While some individuals seem to be gleaming with glow sticks filled with hydrogen peroxide, they are also regrettably, glowing with an immense sense of apathy to what is happening around them. Something reminds me of Huxley’s Brave New World.
“By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
Except instead of friendly smiles, more often than not, there is hostility and anger, fuelled by alcohol, narcotics, and an immeasurable amount of ego. I was forcefully ushered to the police wagon; soon to be released – following an officer’s realisation – that my specious apprehension was a case of mistaken identity. Decisively, I chose to learn why this had ever happened. Indeed, my inquisition turned out to be the catalyst for the night’s course of events. Every step I took thereafter – would bring me closer to the police station. My intention was to find an answer, not conjure a problem. The result of my actions was nothing but ironic.
Throughout history, authority has always been challenged, it’s methods – questioned. Some opposing chose passive resistance, some succumbed to physical violence. In the essay Shooting an Elephant (1936) Orwell writes that when man turns tyrant – it is his own freedom that he destroys.
I was asked to leave the station, yet I refused – naively, as I felt it was necessary to tell someone, – someone with responsibility. I felt that I was refusing, not only on my behalf, but on behalf of so many that were mistreated.
In general, the police seem threatened the most. As I was escorted out, I understood the futility of authority’s dominion on the street. They feel a thousand wills pressing them – to take charge, to portray power and control, – and thus when their authority is questioned – they become intimidated, and have to act, righteously, or not. I then grasped the hollowness of it all. The uniforms, the police station, the door men, – provide a delusional sense of safety and security, while the late-evening Valley streets provide nothing but a transient display of societal attrition. Morality? Ethics? Justice? Virtuous, principled behaviour? – All, but an illusion, – one that many sadly remain comfortable with.
And there I was, amongst it all. It was nearing seven-and-a-half hours that I have spent here. My eventual destination that night was unmistakably the product of an abusive system, one which is undoubtedly also abused from the outside as much as from the inside. Indeed, it was this system which has put me in a two-by-five meter cell, alongside a bunch of (in Woody Allen’s terms) ..undesirables. But no body is perfect.
For speaking out – am I part of the problem, or the solution? Perhaps it does not matter, – as, if no one can perceive what I see, then it does not exist at all. A contemporary philosopher said once that: “If you believe in something, no proof is necessary, if you don’t believe, no proof is possible.” ♦
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(Disclaimer: All published material on kinaev.wordpress.com is of a fictional nature, and is not suggestive of real-life occurences, or situations.)
