The past is a dead end.
In 1975 the movie Jaws was released. It is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. On the off chance you don’t know about it, the premise is that a great white shark begins attacking and killing people at a resort town, and the heroes team up to hunt it down and kill it. Jaws was a critical and financial blockbuster. After its release, thousands of sharks were killed in shark-fishing tournaments, and relatively few people now are interested in the preservation of a species they now view as a movie monster.
This was one movie.
This is one data point.
Now, consider alongside this one data point all the movies, games, TV shows you’ve probably seen where the only black people on screen are servants or criminals. Consider alongside this one data point all the movies, games, TV shows where all police are heroes by definition, and are shown to always do collective good in their community, to be ready and waiting to prevent crime. Consider how your worldview has been manufactured, whether intentionally or by happenstance, and who it serves, who it protects, to frame things this way.
It is seldom considered controversial to suggest that Jaws has impacted the way we view and react to sharks. Suggesting the same when it comes to the way we regard human beings, though, tends to produce a lot of people saying that obviously they know the difference between fantasy and reality. Knowing the difference between real events and what is a fictional ones, though, is very different from knowing the difference between the world as we believe it ought to function and the world as it does function – and, while we may know that the events portrayed in art didn’t literally happen, that doesn’t mean that we believe they are implausible. What art does is shape what we view as rare or common, aberration or expectation – even as stories are made to highlight the extraordinary, they can only manage this by giving them a context of the ordinary, and by so doing they form subtle arguments about what our world is and how it behaves.
We are particularly vulnerable to stories about our glorious past, whether these stories are nostalgic throwbacks or are classics of the era. We pretend that every ugly problem we face now is new, even as they lurked just out of frame in every shot of our glory days. Nostalgia is doing us dirty. Things seemed to be better in the past, but that was only because we have always prioritized short term gains over long-term consequence, and over time the cracks just get bigger. If you want a return to normalcy, remember that normalcy was the state that brought us here. If you want people to stop causing problems, remember that each problem is the consequence of a preceding state, that some problems only exist to prompt solutions.
The dysfunction is growing. The system works for the benefit of fewer and fewer people, and it feeds back in on itself, growing stronger and more monstrous over time. Minor reforms are like trying to push the river away with a paddle. Only fundamentally rebuilding these murderous structures can save us now.
The past is a dead end.
If you’re looking to make a positive difference, consider being active in anti-racist and anti-capitalist community organizing and/or donating to bail funds or one of many mutual aid funds.