Steven D recently wrote an article here titled Shootings: Omen, Infotainment or Tragedy? It was an examination of last weekend’s surge of violence in the United States. At the end of the piece he wrote the following:

Now go back and look at the title to this post and tell me how you would answer the question it raises. My answer: All of the above.

I disagree.

My own answer?

None of the above.

It’s all accident.

All of it.

All and everything.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Read on for more…or less…or don’t.

As you must.

You are an accident too, as are we all.

Not an accident waiting to happen…an ongoing one.

Deal wid it.
I live, work and travel in a mixed-race, largely working/lower class subset of New York City (The Bronx, the subways, the mixed-race dance and jazz venues, etc.), and I work at night as often as I do during the day. I can smell when things are going to get rough.

I recently republished an article that I had written at the beginning of the summer called War + Revolution as Earthbound, Traveling Infections. Again. In it I wrote:

G. I. Gurdjieff on “war.”

What is war? It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years. It seems to them at the time that they hate one another; or perhaps that they have to slaughter each other for some exalted purposes; or that they must defend somebody or something and that it is a very noble thing to do; or something else of the same kind. They fail to realize to what an extent they are mere pawns in the game. They think they signify something; they think they can move about as they like; they think they can decide to do this or that. But in reality all their movements, all their actions, are the result of planetary influences. And they themselves signify literally nothing. …It must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, nor parliaments, signify anything or can do anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws.

Further:

As I have said before, man’s chief delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him – all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.

Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels – all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything. It all happens.

To establish this fact for oneself, to understand it, to be convinced of its truth, means getting rid of a thousand illusions about man, about his being creative and consciously organizing his own life, and so on. There is nothing of this kind. Everything happens – popular movements, wars, revolutions, changes of government, all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as everything happens in the life of individual man. Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes books, not as he wants to, but as it happens. Everything happens. Man does not love, hate, desire – all this happens.

Wake the fuck up.

It is on, baby.

On.

Watch.

The infection must be allowed to run its course.

Thanks, Doc.

I feel better already.

Really.

Ummmmmm…you sure about that?

The operation was a success, but the patient died.

Oh.

So it goes, eh Doc?

So it goes.

I was on the street at night all of this weekend. I didn’t watch any TV news and I didn’t read much news either, but when I found out that there had been 48 shootings in the city over the Labor Day weekend I was not in the least bit surprised. The violence quotient has been going up here since just before hurricane Irene hit. I saw more openly expressed interpersonal anger on Friday, Aug. 26th than I have seen in NYC for decades. It was everywhere, from gypsy cab drivers blowing their horns if cars in front of them hesitated for a split second when a light turned green right on through traffic situations where people got out of their cars and banged on other’s windows and accidental pedestrian bumps on the sidewalks/in the subways turned immediately confrontational. It was so tense here that I left town the day before the hurricane was supposed to hit…not from fear of the storm itself as as much as worry over whether the population of the city would be able to handle the stress.

Luckily the storm spared NYC to a great degree. But the tension and heightened potential for violence remains.

Why?

Gurdjieff’s explanation is as good as any other.

It must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, nor parliaments, signify anything or can do anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws.

The ongoing attempt to “blame” anyone or anything for this sort of occurrence is totally empty. It just happens. There were no more guns in NYC this past weekend than there have been for the past several years of weekends, yet gun violence peaked.

Why?

Call it what you will.

Accident.

Planetary influences.

An accumulation of tensions due to the recession.

The coming tenth anniversary of 9/11.

A spike in the drugs used to feed McDonald’s farm animals.

The Chinese or Al Qaeda or little men from outer space put something in the water supply.

The truth of the matter?

It’s just the way it is. It cannot be “figured.” Deal with it.

Politicians will use this to their own ends, just as they always do. So-called “liberals” will try to get better gun control and so-called “conservatives” will make the argument that if everyone was armed to the teeth no one would dare start shooting, but that’s all empty bullshit. If there had been no guns in the entire city this past weekend people would have been hitting each other upside the head with baseball bats and tire irons. Bet on it. The argument that “the crime rate has been going down” is equally empty, both because the true “crime rate” goes up or down quite randomly over long periods pf time and also because said “crime rate” is a fiction produced by politicians. police and the media for their own purposes. If the following passage from “The Graduate” were to be written today…

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

…a much more apropos word than “Plastics” would be “Security.” It’s a cop world in America now, and it has been so since 9/11/01.

Get used to it.

It will change eventually, but almost no one will understand why it changes.

So that goes as well.

Just as it has always been.

Just as it has always been.

Kurt Vonnegut knew.

The opening words of his masterpiece “Slaughterhouse-Five” were “”All this happened, more or less.”

Yup.

So it goes.

Deal wid it.

As Winston Churchill once said about the rigors of old age, “The alternative is totally unacceptable.”

Deal wid it.

AG

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