 It began with my reading the morning paper before worship service last week, discovering that two individuals, not far from where I live were murdered the night before.
The news alone, while tragic, has become somewhat emotionally numbing. Outside of the recent unprovoked attack in downtown Oakland that ended the life of a 59-year old man, seldom am I shocked by the violence that transpires. We’ve come to expect such stories in Oakland and the surrounding areas. And if we are fortunate enough to not be directly involved, we have the luxury of lamenting the tragic circumstances in which a person’s life has come to a violent and premature end without any real involvement. But on this particular occasion my phone rang over and over again after worship service; it was from the same church member. It doesn’t take much to know when a member calls that frequently it usually indicates a serious problem. Sure enough, one of the individuals murdered the night before was no longer a nameless face in an article, part of Oakland’s growing murder statistics, but rather a son, a father, grandson, nephew, and a cousin to many. Another senseless tragedy that will ultimately serve only as a footnote in a larger document entitled, “Urban Nihilism.” I have long opined that urban violence is reflected in nihilistic behavior whereby one lives life void of an objective meaning, value or intrinsic purpose. Princeton professor Cornel West suggests “The self-fulfilling prophecies of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future” Urban nihilism is a social disease, once thought to specifically impact African American, but is now far more inclusive in the areas it permeates. Part of its power lays in its ability to infiltrate so many aspects of our contemporary culture. The glamorization of the street/gangster life, enhanced by certain forms of music, the absence of parental guidance, violent movies, mind numbing TV shows, along with the lack of quality education in public schools have been touted as the usual suspects, but there is something more. If we simply reverse the aforementioned trends, would we eliminate urban nihilism? As the have/have not divide becomes starker, has the urban nihilism that we attribute to one sector of society, been seductively working both sides of the equation with equal effectiveness? We have enacted so-called tough on crime measures that have proven effective for winning elections, but are very costly, almost unsustainably so, while doing little to curb the existing culture. The state, under budget constraints, will again cut resources for foster care, and it does not require the prognostication of Nostradamus to know what the outcome of that decision will be. California has one of the toughest three strikes laws in the nation. Where has that gotten us beyond contributing to prison overcrowding? The state has proven itself to be better at creating bigger, meaner, and more nihilistic individuals coming out of prison than when they entered. But this nihilism is not simply reflected in our public policies. My colleague, Tammerlin Drummond, recently asked in her column: “Why are so many people beyond hysterics over the killing of a deer? Yet nary a peep over the more than 100 human beings who are murdered in Oakland every year?”
Moreover, the sports that many of us watch for entertainment and a momentary escape is also rife with nihilism from spoiled narcissistic athletes to megalomaniac owners. Thank goodness, Dave Newhouse, writes his “Good Neighbor” column for the Bay Area News Group, lest we might be led to believe that nihilism is all encompassing in our society.
In the final analysis, it may not be so much that we’re living under the cloud of urban nihilism. It is difficult to conceive that one can live life without meaning, but perhaps the meaning, value, or intrinsic purpose has changed.
Without any official notification, an inverted order may have been was created that placed the dominant culture on the defensive moving it closer to the values attributed to the counterculture.
No one has a definitive answer to the problems that plague urban America. All we really know, is that week after week an irreplaceable void is left in too many families, and reactionary policies are crafted that merely exacerbate the problem.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Post a Comment. 
