Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 20, 1995 TAG: 9504200107
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DETINE L. BOWERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Is this a computerized system or our human system?
Recently, in my hometown of Fredericksburg, a small historic community, Americans saw a glimpse of "system shutdown" when they heard reports about six people who watched a youth beat a clerk in a convenience store and did nothing to stop it or report it.
We can look to those customers and ask a condescending moral question, e.g., "What could they have been thinking?" as if this could never happen to any one of us.
But the business of individual circuit-shutdown is becoming an all-too-frequent occurrence in America, when we can sit by and watch violence and human destruction, and reason that it's somebody else's problem. As long as we tolerate human abuse in America by waiting for the next person to act, as long as we passively watch violence, then we can count on the fact that all of our human circuits will go berserk.
Can it be that our responses to one another are so wrapped up in political, social and economic jargon that we can no longer find ourselves?
In a compelling story about Australian Aborigines called "Mutant Message Down Under," Marlo Morgan explains why those who adhere to ancient beliefs in that culture consider Westerners to be mutants, so out of tune with their senses that they are no longer "real people."
I ask, have we become walking robots, overstressed, overworked, in such a rush that we fail to stop our cars for pedestrians, to listen to people while they are speaking, to engage in something as awkwardly "touching" as a smile when someone enters our personal space? Are we so preoccupied with being right and making someone else wrong through debate that we cannot harmonize? Just shoot me with ad hominem attacks based on your belief system, and kill my character. But do any of really win while engaging in such behaviors? Are the views and belief system of the other person all that wrong? Will we wake up in time to save ourselves from ourselves, to reach for what connects all of human life in a way that is beyond the rational program we have bought into - a system we either refuse to question, or cannot see? Perhaps we will, once we recognize that there is something functionally awry with our human circuits, high-level human stress induced by models and institutional structures that are beating down the human spirit, cutting off biologically normal human responses to overload.
Until each of us asks, "What am I busy doing?" and can respond with something individually and socially fulfilling, then we may be defeating our desire for human purpose.
I am optimistic about our revival out of this program or existence by reaching out to hear how others have found sources of hope and inspiration. This Friday and Saturday, Virginia Tech is kicking off a fund-raising campaign to preserve the rich heritage of Christiansburg Institute, a black school that served Southwest Virginia from 1866 to 1966.
The school's story is one of African-American resilience, a demonstration of how a population resisted human conditioning that functioned to destroy their belief system and human spirit. It is a story of how that population gained strength through human bonding and spiritual connection as it worked outside mainstream institutional structures - structures that can inherently contribute to a whole group of people feeling the worst about themselves.
Stories such as that of the Christiansburg Institute are our salvation, the wake-up call to rebuild our humanity and our civility. Such stories are examples of how Americans found strength in humanity, how mental and biological health were revitalized during some of the most trying moments of life.
We all need lessons in resilience and hope at a time when inhumanity is in vogue, before all of our human circuits shut down.
Detine L. Bowers is an assistant professor in communications studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB