Dare to Look, Part 2

Wait a minute: maybe my revulsion is due in part to the fact that my daily environment, comfortable and manageable as it is, seems inevitable, natural, a circumstance to be taken for granted. Perhaps these photos make me suddenly aware that the absence of such perverted

2nd person actions in my daily experience has to do more with my good luck living in a place of social courtesies and legal protections, and less with the intrinsic impossibility of such horrors. 

I'm a privileged person, the heir of a long heritage of activism, political and educational, that has made forms of hospitality, friendship and exploration the institutional and cultural norms where I live. My risk is to imagine that this all is spontaneous and not the result of human determination; permanent and not in need of continual nurture; secure and not in need of protection. 

However, history assures me that in any particular place or time, these Other-oriented practices are not inevitable and not invulnerable. Champions are needed to encourage, enable, support and protect hospitality, friendship and exploration on the level of institutional policy or public perception. Policy and social habits are not necessarily encounters but can assist them.

At any moment, anywhere, each of us can risk these practices in our encounters, and to do so may be heroic. Such individual heroism is admirable; the ambition of God-in-love and the Beloved, however, is larger: a world where such practices are not isolated, but pervasive in the relationships of people with each other and the world. 

An encounter may champion hospitality, friendship and exploration locally by example or instruction. The concept of encounter does, however, also include engagement with the public to influence behavior and with decision makers to influence policies. Dealing with the public and policy-makers quickly brings us face-to-face with what is Not-us, with what we don't know, what we don't suspect we don't know, things that baffle, disappoint and delight us.

In short, being a deliberate champion of 2nd person practices will burst the bubble of ingenuousness engendered by our society with its wide-open shop doors, subway forbearances and lightning-fast search engines. Perhaps I don't have to contemplate those awful images (though I may), but I do need to join the long tradition and be actor and activist. 

There are many worthy endeavors to pursue. Perhaps going to the Ward 18 Democratic caucus this weekend is part of one. Let's see.