God Without The Sacred
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLzo9pOXa
Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollars, we wouldn’t have any innocent bystanders.
Chris Rock
A gun represents power. Safety. Protection.
But even more than that, in America, it represents something far more valuable: A Right.
The right to bear arms. The right to choose when I should/should not protect myself.
The right to defend my property against someone else. The right to claim that: “What is mine, is mine, Goddamnit!”
Living in the UK has got me thinking a lot about the issue of gun control, and I want to make a claim here, not a revolutionary one, but one I think we forget because we’re used to it: Gun Control is an American issue. Don’t get me wrong, other countries have gun issues too. But this whole issue of it being tied into rights is strictly bound to the historical genetics of American history as comically demonstrated in the South Park clip above. And yes, socially speaking, I think its a ‘genetic’ issue. It’s hard-wired into the psyche of every American. |The Big Other in this instance, is not the government, not the individual demand for rights, but the piece of paper that was drafted and written over 200 years ago, promising utopia without the additives. It was the curse disguised as a blessing. Most when speaking of gun rights or control are haunted by this ‘right to bear arms’. A weapon. An object of power over another. In the most simple of Freudian analyses we are met with a subject (you and I) castrated. Filled with anxiety. Paranoid. Is this not what a gun gives the illusion of? Of power. Of ‘peace’. Even hope. Hope of safety.
Here’s the thing there are good arguments on both sides of the fence. I think there has to be a third pill. This whole ‘us and ‘them’ debate is a bit tired and worn out. Don’t we want to be remembered for doing something different, rather than having history think for us? I think the debate itself is a ‘mock macguffin’. You know, in film where the plot is centered around an object that they pursuers may or may not find? In the mock macguffin, the ‘thing’ they are chasing after is to keep them (and viewers) from ever really paying attention to the plot-behind-the-plot. Sure, I could lazily go with an overall attack on capitalism, and yes, I believe that capitalism is one of the culprits here. But I think even something much more fundamental to our becoming human has to do with it: Trust. We don’t trust one another. But even more primal then this, we don’t trust ourselves.
French Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan defines a ‘madman’ as one who over-identifies with their socio-symbolic self. The madman is the king who actually believes he is a king. Is not this the premise behind carrying a gun? That the bearer is one who over-identifies with their symbolic self (who they are in society). Ultimately, the gun represents the extension of this belief. It is the person shouting to the other who threatens their identity: ‘Don’t stand so close to me’ (Sting); ‘I am who I am, no matter what it costs you’, ‘I will defend me and my family at all costs against the dangers of the outside world’. Do I think there is ever a time when self-defense is necessary, yes, most assuredly. But this isn’t that article.
With all the recent shootings, let’s be honest, a lot of ‘idiots’ have been running around with toys they don’t know how to play with. If people have guns, then people need to be educated. People need to be aware. Like the damn atrocity that happened last night where one sibling killed another – how is this acceptable? What because a few men sat in a room and said we should have guns so we can justify the consumption of land in the name of racial rape & genocide? If we were extreme in our defense of human value – we could claim that (watch the above the video) that to hold a gun is even to be speciest, racist, anti-feminist, hierarchical, abusive and all-out hyper-individualistic. But people don’t like making those leaps, its too uncomfortable.
Like in the above video. The gun is an object to detour behaviors that might challenge our level and understanding of safety. It is to impose a certain way of being on another because they are not acting in a way we deem proper in accordance with our sense of spatial awareness (A VERY Western concept) and right. Isn’t it ironic that it is in our modern-day form of storytelling (the movie theater, cartoons, video games) that we can only honestly speak of the fears, dangers, and even stupidity of having guns? Don’t think I am against guns, no, I am against idiots having guns. I use the word ‘idiot’ in its Latin origin: one who is against the common good.
Is not a common good implies in the radical words of Jesus? That to follow him, we have to die to ourselves. Take up a cross. That our identity is the first thing we are going to have to relinquish. For what? Well, I think Paul finishes that sentence – that our identities will always keep us (…there is neither Jew/Greek, Male/Female and etc. – but all in: Christ) the furthest away from the common good (I call the common good, the communist spirit, or the humanity project – on our way to becoming human). That to maintain our individuality at the cost of the common good is always detrimental to this ongoing humanity project. But rather to relinquish our identity at the expense of ourselves for the benefit of the common good (and by implication, find our identity in the act of the common good) is to find value in the person standing before us no matter how dangerous they might appear.
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