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case, ethics, florida, Genealogy of Morality, George, George Zimmerman, Iain McGilchrist, Jury, Lateralization of brain function, Levinas, Martin, master and his emissary, murder, Nietzsche, philosophy, Sociology of race and ethnic relations, Trayvon, trayvon martin shooting, United States, Western world, Zimmerman
After 10 hours of deliberating, the jury assigned to the George Zimmerman murder trial finds George Zimmerman not guilty. Watching the trial closely, I see how this could have happened because in all honesty I still hold some doubt as to Zimmerman being guilty. I think that the defense did a fine job in presenting its case while the prosecution did a poor job presenting its case. I question the decision to not bring GZ to the witness stand among other questions I have as to how the case was handled. Granted, a part of me feels that this was deliberate and the whole purpose of the trial in itself was because of public outcry, a shame trial if you will, which to me in itself presents a glimpse into a larger problem in our society. However I admit, I am no legal expert.
Some of you are probably expecting me to say that this problem that we face is race and its negative relation between the members of our larger American community, but no, this is not the larger issue that I see. Actually I see negative race relations as only being a small symptom of this growing threat that I perceive and the threat is actually that of a complete and willful disregard for human life. This disregard I believe actually stems from a burgeoning contemporary tendency of Western society not being able to see things, objects or instruments as anything other than “that which helps me get what I want or is a barrier to me getting what I want”. Handy objects, whether people, relationships, ideals and constructs are not nuisances such as everything else is which cannot be used to my benefit. This is especially dangerous because essentially, that which cannot be “seen” to have any use is than discarded and it fails to be seen how this thing might actually have had use after all. Now at this point Nietzsche would probably be warning me that I am in danger or purporting what he would call “slave morality”. Essentially trying to save the hides of those that are not seen to have any visible power or influence by suggesting that they do indeed have both but that it remains to be seen. In his book “On the Genealogy of Morality”, Nietzsche was referring to the Jews who he said engendered a great disservice to humanity when they orchestrated the Great “Slave Revolt”! Claiming so says Nietzsche, that all that the Jews do they claim is the good, and what should be is what we ourselves do, meek! That’s us! and this is good! Poor! That’s us and this is good! Downtrodden! This is us and this is good! Rejected! That’s us and this is the good! Namely saying, maybe you can’t see our value now, but it is there because our value lies within itself which is so embedded within the framework of our makeup this makes it difficult to ascertain. “So take my word for it Nietzsche hears from my lips”, the essence of goodness is the essence of my being; slave morality.
But I truly mean this, just not in the way Nietzsche would hear it for what I am proposing is that value is not always apparent and this is why it is important to value life and the unknown. Disregarding something because the value of which is not immediately visualizable is akin to shunning the unknown and abstract, which I feel is a real danger to which our community is headed towards. This particular argument is not my original argument and it is something that I was only able to know because of a particular book written by Psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist called “The Master and His Emissary”. The book details how current studies are reporting findings of how the mind perceives the world around us, which is by way of two contradictory and competing points of view afforded by way of the two hemispheres of our brains. The right, says McGilchrist, has always been the hemisphere that was most responsible for shaping the way we see things, “it is concerned with finer discriminations between things, whether living or non-living” (p.52). The right hemisphere in other words is capable and responsible to see the “whole” of things, making them what they are as individual things, big picture essentially. “In keeping with this, despite the well-known right-hemisphere advantage in dealing with the visuospatial, the left hemisphere is superior at identifying simple shapes and figures, which are easily categorized, whereas complex figures, being less typical, more individual, are better processed by the right hemisphere” (52). According to McGilchrist, Western society is graduating toward a more left-hemisphere approach to how we view the world, categorization and objectification are the words of the day, therefore those items that cannot be categorized or conceptualized are then disregarded, vilified even. He warns that there would be a rise in intolerance and inflexibility (432) since reason would be replaced by the rational. This is to say that that which works to my advantage whether an ideal that is completely non-sensical or action that is downright deplorable will engender the action because it is the most rational, reason has no part in my decision making. The left-hemisphere also prefers the impersonal to the personal (431), the personal requires regarding things, objects and people as individuals. It would require us to see the thing for what it is, not how it can be used. “Exploitation rather than co-operation would be, explicitly or not, the default relationship between human individuals, and between humanity and the rest of the world” (431).
This is the drama that I believe is being played out in regards to the George Zimmerman trial. The media sees the death of Martin as a media blitz, a story, a headline. The rest of see it as further justification for us to hold onto our various points of view and the result will be a society where the above video becomes a common story, a fragmented and disjointed society where all of us, view all others, regardless of race nationality or creed no more as separate and individual entities but as conceptions as merely useful or non useful. While society is arguing about race and what’s being done to “me” or “them”, death, along with vice is becoming a non-issue. Murder and hate is not about ethnic group versus ethnic group or race versus race but is about a devaluing of the infinite which is the human person, the infinity of the Other (concept derived from Levinas – Ethics and the Face). As the above video shows, violence is a real possibility anywhere and anytime people, animals and things lose their individual value, when the unknown is discarded for the thing that is assumed to have been perceived. Race? Race is the non-sequitur.