Protesters, Cops and Pepper Spray.

This is from an email written to me regarding the pepperspraying of the protesters at UC Davis. This was sent after the author viewed multiple videos from the incident and not just the first brief clip that went viral.

"I'm glad I didn't watch this last night (a longer video showing events prior to the spraying). I wouldn't have been able to sleep. I really felt for the officers in this situation. These are the same guys whose job it is to keep these same kids safe. I think they did EVERTHING to NOT use the pepper spray and they may even have left if they could have. This wasn't Kent State.

We have to remember that hatred, injustice, tragedy of all kinds are always with us. It can be overwhelming when it affects us directly but in one sense it is never personal. Ignorance and violence are simply there. They surround us, like those hundreds of students surrounded those few officers, but it is a force behind it all that it out of control and all the individuals in various degrees of danger in this situation are caught up in the storm. We have to try not to take anything personally. It's the only way to have any peace of mind.

Here are some thoughts of Carl Jung's which I think relate to the reaction I am trying to have.

"Touching evil brings with it the grave peril of succumbing to it. We must, therefore, no longer succumb to anything at all, not even to good. A so-called good to which we succumb loses its ethical character. Not there there is anything bad in it on that score, but to have succumbed to it may breed trouble. Every form of addiction is bad, not matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites. The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while so-called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both halves of a paradoxical whole.

...As a rule, however, the individual is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity. Aside from general human inadequacy, a good deal of the blame for this rests with education, which promulgates the old generalizations and says nothing about the secrets of private experience. Thus, every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct which people know in their hearts they can never live up to, and such ideals are preached by officials who know that they themselves have never lived up to these high standards and never will. What is more , nobody ever questions the value of this kind of teaching.

Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, of SELF-KNOWLEDGE, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish-as he ought- to live without self-deception or self-delusion."

I have been looking for a particular quote stating that an individual's level of elevated or clear or ethical thought drops precipitously as soon as enters any group and continues to drop drastically as the size of the group increases. He knew what mass hysteria was having endured the horrors of his Nazi neighbors.

One of the hardest things for me in this situation my sense that the police officers at Davis were not necessarily there because they wanted to be. The students chose, for whatever reasons, misguided or otherwise, to go there. The officers do, through a choice to become police officers, take orders. Some of them may well have thought, "I don't want to do this but I'm going to have to go out there". This makes the officer's commitment, and yours, really hard. I don't like to think of you in situations like this but for the sake of others in the situation I would certainly like to have people with heart, like you, there.

Anyway I have been trying to work through my very upset state of mind by looking through Jung. There aren't clear answers. It's really bad that so many people only saw the short version of the video. After watching the longer version my heart was aching for the officers."

Thanks for taking a look.

Dana