What they did to Tyre Nichols was terrible. The footage is so painful to watch because it’s just a beating, it’s just five men using their feet, fists, and batons to murder another man who isn’t fighting back. And the men doing it are police, and it’s so much worse because they’re police. They don’t just have weapons and superior numbers, they also have
Thank you for this compassionate, measured view of a seemingly intractable problem. Your insights and suggestions are, in my mind, right on. I'll probably sound old when I say this, but... there was a time when police officers WERE part of the community, back before the militarization of so many forces. Officers knew the neighborhoods they patrolled, on foot, and they gained the trust of those area's inhabitants.
Now we've got specialized, armed-to-the-teeth individuals who have no personal connection to the neighborhoods, riding around in cars with the windows rolled up. "Scorpion?" Really?? What do we expect?
Yeah, it seems to have gone the same way as everything else - towards greater specialization and therefore greater disconnect from the whole. Everything was far more naturally cohesive back in the day - communities, families - and now everything is moving farther apart and we have to figure out the right bridges to build in order to keep things together. It's a good task. I'm glad for it. It means we have to make social life conscious, which is painful, but it's the next step on the journey...
I'm glad the ideas in the article resonated. They're still quite new to me - I have certain pictures about the work of government that are quite clear in me, but there's so much that's still unclear, so it's definitely a work in progress. Thanks for reading and responding and trying to work with the ideas as well :) All the best.
Well said. And important to say. 'Community policing' reframed as the community policing ITSELF. We can feel galling contempt when someone we see as lower than us is not being deferential to our superior self-anointed status. It's available to all of us to act on - even as parents and teachers it is possible to misappropriate our power under the cover of 'discipline' when we feel a child is being insubordinate. I believe that our sense that we have the right to don a 'uniform and gun' attitude to enforce uniformity on others is the shadow side of our appropriate sense of self and human worth. I can find it in myself and believe its a shared but potentially transformable flaw of human (inhuman?) nature.. Your suggestions are a start,. Thank you.
Hey Joan, these are great observations. It's so important to focus in on the insecurity that you're describing, the lack of an "appropriate sense of self and human worth," to try to see it in ourselves and get to the root of it. Everyone knows the desire for one-up-manship, to be 'better than.' And it is the desire for uniformity, as you say, to make others like you so you know you're right. It's just amazing how strong the impulse to be right is. How strong must be our inner work so that we're not shaken when someone has a different point of view that negates or questions our own, or when they actively try to belittle or disrespect us.
Thank you for this compassionate, measured view of a seemingly intractable problem. Your insights and suggestions are, in my mind, right on. I'll probably sound old when I say this, but... there was a time when police officers WERE part of the community, back before the militarization of so many forces. Officers knew the neighborhoods they patrolled, on foot, and they gained the trust of those area's inhabitants.
Now we've got specialized, armed-to-the-teeth individuals who have no personal connection to the neighborhoods, riding around in cars with the windows rolled up. "Scorpion?" Really?? What do we expect?
Yeah, it seems to have gone the same way as everything else - towards greater specialization and therefore greater disconnect from the whole. Everything was far more naturally cohesive back in the day - communities, families - and now everything is moving farther apart and we have to figure out the right bridges to build in order to keep things together. It's a good task. I'm glad for it. It means we have to make social life conscious, which is painful, but it's the next step on the journey...
I'm glad the ideas in the article resonated. They're still quite new to me - I have certain pictures about the work of government that are quite clear in me, but there's so much that's still unclear, so it's definitely a work in progress. Thanks for reading and responding and trying to work with the ideas as well :) All the best.
Yes! The right bridges, indeed. And being aware of the dire need for them is such a good first step. Thanks for raising that awareness!
Well said. And important to say. 'Community policing' reframed as the community policing ITSELF. We can feel galling contempt when someone we see as lower than us is not being deferential to our superior self-anointed status. It's available to all of us to act on - even as parents and teachers it is possible to misappropriate our power under the cover of 'discipline' when we feel a child is being insubordinate. I believe that our sense that we have the right to don a 'uniform and gun' attitude to enforce uniformity on others is the shadow side of our appropriate sense of self and human worth. I can find it in myself and believe its a shared but potentially transformable flaw of human (inhuman?) nature.. Your suggestions are a start,. Thank you.
Hey Joan, these are great observations. It's so important to focus in on the insecurity that you're describing, the lack of an "appropriate sense of self and human worth," to try to see it in ourselves and get to the root of it. Everyone knows the desire for one-up-manship, to be 'better than.' And it is the desire for uniformity, as you say, to make others like you so you know you're right. It's just amazing how strong the impulse to be right is. How strong must be our inner work so that we're not shaken when someone has a different point of view that negates or questions our own, or when they actively try to belittle or disrespect us.