It's just me smoking a mental cigarette. Mental, because I don't smoke and could never take it up, ever as keen as I was to receive the feedback from smokers that it helps you to relax and practically dissipates the problem. My smoker friends would exhale through focussed and rounded lips, their eyes and nose all waiting to exhale and let go, and I'd almost feel the "relaxation" hitting me but would get the smoke instead which I hated. So I think it's a good analogy. I would exhale, believe in this huge logic system of relaxing, and the end product could be welcome or not depending on where or who they are hitting.
Problems. Nope I don't have problems but some incidents which keep gnawing and clawing even when you are drinking coffee and just gazing out. There are others who are not your friends or family and definitely not enemies to have that close thoughts on them. But they deserve one more casual glance in our upright and uptight busy schedules.
So one night, I heard sirens and we hear sirens now and then, in this street as ambulances and fire-engines speed across the city. But it was around 3:30 in the night that I heard them and I wished they would go away but they felt they had entered right into my room and they kept blaring. And then I heard some sounds of digging on the ground, of the concrete breaking and drilling. So I had to get up. Looked out of the window and saw some vehicles with flashing lights just right across the street, which unfortunately were unable to drive home the message as to what had happened exactly.
4 hours later, somebody knocked. It was the Toronto police and they were asking people if they have seen something. I just saw their cars and that's what I told them. "err....What happened?" The officer replied, "Nothing...we are currently investigating the incident in the Jamaican Consulate; something happened there".
And I didn't know that a consulate even existed in this neighbourhood.
What I found out later is that even though Google can't find your keys, it can definitely replace the need for a signboard and what you could find about people in your neighbourhood. Though I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just better to gulp it down, like instant coffee, or forget it over like a case in a statistical dataset. Either way, they reflect a pattern.
And then there have been incidents when I wish we wouldn't think according to the pattern.
Like her who was filling in a form, sitting on a park bench. It was rather, a lawn bench so to speak.....it was just an adjacent children playground area in front of an apartment. She was filling in a form on sexual harassment which asked "What could you have done to avoid this incident?", as well as "Do you think this incident could have been avoided on a different time of the day?"
She was my colleague. And according to the work policy, if she couldn't work over there, some of us would have to continue working there; there = an apartment where we were interviewing people, and where the incident happened on an elevator.
Without going into the whole Victimology and Penology debate, the irrelevance of the whole procedure was quite comprehensible. My colleague was shaken up, and even after that, she continued to work. She drove home from work that day and also drove to work for the usual two hours the next day. As part of getting this job, we all were checked for any criminal records. Nobody bothered to do it on the other side of the fence.
Although the company policy and the high end people told her that she could go to the police, she did not. And although we knew the risks, nobody showed the panic. So much for risk society and creating moral panic, eh? [Is it there only in theory classes?]
And then, people got busy once again. Everybody comes to work, works and then goes back home. We all work hard and party harder. Or try to. "That's the way it is". The surveillance society keeps on working hard as we look around, see people, identify and relate to some of them and yet, we do nothing. Our backs take up all our power of surveillance, thank you.
The perpetrator in my colleague's case would most likely go on in his daily gleeful living, and some of us would probably even meet and shake hands with this guy, sit beside him in the TTC or hold the door for him. With whatever information we have right now, like the building and apartment number, we could still identify the person as well as talk to his wife, which we believe would do little than shaming the perpetrator. This man might not be a psychopath as some colleagues suggested, but someone who "grabbed an opportunity in a situation", opportunity coming in the shape of a female body.
But instead of drawing on personal characteristics, like easy-breezy psychopathy for example, we would always characterize a person based on their ascriptive qualities. It helps to pigeon-hole them, I suppose; draw upon their characters, based on some deductive, ethno-cultural logic. Like almost every good paid cook is supposed to be Oriya in West Bengal, good non-Bengali businessman must be Marwari and taxi drivers must always be Sikhs or Biharis if the first option doesn't work out. Stereotypes are easy comfort cushions to fall back on and pin-hole our frustrations and/or manifold "instincts" when we can't make sense of the booming, buzzing confusion called reality.
My colleague is only human. She also did the same. She said the person had Arabic writings in his home, that probably he is from the Middle-east, and that she also saw a green flag. She mentioned these details when she was still shaken up, before she even filled in that form.
Talking about psychopaths, I was watching this documentary in CBC. Turned out really interesting, as according to the criteria of psychopaths, I happen to know one, though I'm so glad that I'm not in touch with him anymore. And I rather wish that I hadn't met him as a friend. Diagnosing a psychopath who is otherwise quite successful and appears to be normal, the documentary said that a psychopath is someone who has too much of narcissism to start with; he believes in the ultimate supremacy of his talent (if he has one, that is...) and has a grand sense of self-worth. Quite far from prison cells, he could be much closer than you think. Experts believe their number to be as high as one in a hundred. Most of them function incognito in high-powered professions...all the way to the very top. They are found to be very likeable, charming, intelligent, alert, confidence inspiring and a great success with the ladies. They appear to have a self-destructive streak, which is often used to as a tool to gain sympathy from others. They are unable to feel prolonged grief and do not have a sense of responsibility. They lack remorse, guilt, and empathy and need continuous stimulation to counter boredom. They also need consistent and high doses of ego-boosts for successful relationship with others. They always rationalize hurting or mistreating others.
Anyway, as I was saying, that perpetrator of the crime was not known to be a psychopath. And the little conversation and interaction my colleague had with that man, is not enough to characterize him as a psychopath. But it was enough to characterize him as a sexual offender, if nothing else.
But it would always be the "East Indian" landlord, the "Black" woman in the bank, the "European" (meaning non-English speaking have-nots) neighbour.
The other. And demonizing the other.
And saying it as "Hell is other people". When the lens is so twisted, when our mental capacities are this limited to contain our perspectives, "other" people have no other category than be vitriolic.
"Hell is other people".
