A Time of Killing Panic
Jan. 11, 2018
Something that still gives me shivers years later—killing a mouse with a broom. The fear and murderousness that came over me—it was like demon possession, like some other personality jumping into me and taking control. The things I yelled seemed to come from someone else. But I know it wasn’t possession. It was all me. My courage and compassion, my sense of humor and perspective, all broke down at the same moment, and qualities I consider childish, ridiculous and sickening came to the surface.
I mean, I like mice. I think they’re cute. I admire their resourcefulness. I feel sorry that anything so tiny and soft-bellied and clever and dainty fingered has to live it’s life as a thief in the house of a giant. And I never try to solve a problem all at once, in a fit of emotion, much less violence.
But I did this time. The mouse ran towards me, I had the broom in my hand, and some other me emerged, quick as pulling a trigger.
I have it in me to be a selfish, panicked destroyer. So I’m not surprised that others do, too. I’ve seen the panick building for years. I wasn’t surprised that millions of us went out our minds, only that they went out of them so far and so fast. I’m ready to forgive them for it. But not while they’re still slamming away in their fit of screaming damnation. They need to reach their moment of humility, first. I need to see that look of, “What did I just do? What have I done?”
Michael Partney: “Civilization is but a thin veneer stretched across the passions of the human heart. And civilization doesn’t just happen; we have to make it happen.”Michael Partney: quote: bill moyers
Tom Beaver: I like that quote. Civilization is one of our better qualities, partly because it’s one we made for ourselves. It’s not inborn, but more like externalized DNA or instinct. It only exists in us collectively, and each person gets it by acquisition, same as we get math and slang. We’re born with raw fellow feeling and intelligence, which are not to be sniffed at, but those aren’t enough to guide us through all the choices that come up when living in a hive, especially a vast one. Every person recapitulates a hundred thousand or so years of mental advancement just by being around other modern people for a few years—much of it while still a child with just a few playmates, a dozen or so adults and a TV. It might have taken hundreds of centuries for people to build up an attitude of being patient and kind to little creatures, but once it was there, it became one more of the thousands of attitudes each person picked up as, “the way I should feel about things.” We feel such inherited decisions as being manifestations of our own intrinsic nature, but they are as much an acquired trait (and skill) as knowing that fire can be used for cooking. It doesn’t always take much provocation for tens of thousands of centuries of baked-in kill-or-be-killed responses to overpower the nicer, wiser ones we’ve acquired so recently they are basically just clothes we put on this morning. Would-be authoritarians like poking at us to arouse the thick old everlasting human reactions underneath. It’s amazing, though, how resilient our fine linen of civilization is. It’s easily torn and torn away, but it grows back. It’s lasted through all all the ice ages, disasters, wars, religions and tyrants. It seems to survive everything but extinction, and right after getting weaker in one place, gets stronger in another. I don’t think Trump will be the one to end its long run.
Camille Dinally: I think by writing your thoughts down make for a very good therapeutic session on freeing yourself as a mouse killer - Kem
Kathy Gavin: I can’t stand to think about killing mice. It truly hurts to think about it.
Kathy Gavin: ...simply thinking about this causes me to want to close my eyes and cringe like it just happened.
Tom Beaver: Me, too. it’s a dark memory for me.