In light of the recent LAPD homicide of Skid Row resident Brother Africa, another DTLA resident asserted that to try to hold law enforcement to a higher standard of ethical practices, and to insist on evaluating environmental influences and prejudicial bias against those who exhibit “criminal” patterning, is nothing more than a dependency on "good vs. evil determinism”
So, I decided to take a closer look at so-called Determinism as a means of excusing ourselves from the duty of maintaining ethical integrity on a societal level, and here is what I arrived at. This was originally posted in "DTLA" to the person waging the claim. I realize not everyone may come to similar conclusions, and that’s fine. If my thoughts merely serve as a springboard for your own narrations, then I have accomplished something. Thanks for reading.
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Determinism, in essence, is: the absence of freewill to the extent that it excuses one from any moral responsibility. For starters, such a concept as an absolute is farcical because it is impossible for Africa to escape the responsibility of what he did. He is dead. He has shouldered the ultimate responsibility for swinging at cops, and (possibly/possibly not) grabbing something from a cop's holster; something some feel was a very foolish thing to do with the LAPD, as things presently stand in our culture. This is what a lot of DTLA residents are responding to on a visceral level; this need to see one take complete responsibility for one's actions. But, there is already inherent consequential responsibility for every action we take, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is built into the physics of our universe: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This can be applied both philosophically and psychologically, as well. As operatives of freewill, however, we can choose how to either contribute to, ignore or redirect, to greater or lesser degrees, that original, equal and opposite reaction to, say, Africa’s action, in this case. Let’s say he did grab the gun: Africa made a “push,” the cops felt an impetus to “pull,” but the cops can characterize the manifestation of that “pull” in a variety of different ways, away from the initial impetus even, which may have been to desperately protect themselves. Africa made his choice and they made theirs. But, arguably, they all could have chosen differently. Regardless of training or inculcation. At the same time, I am calling attention to the fact that Africa himself was reacting to actions done to him; a lifetime of actions, whether genetic arrangement, which led to his impaired mental health, rendering him ill-equipped to make sound decisions, or the repetitive invalidity of racism and class oppression. We are not without the receipt of profound and correlated influence. No one exists in a vacuum. And some of those influences are insidiously widespread, at times invisible, and already imbued with a fuck of a lot of misplaced authority and power. Because this isn’t an either/or: Freewill vs. Determinism. That would be forcing a binary on a multi-faceted situation. There is dialectic, yes, but it is otherwise reductive to the complexities involved to continue to push narratives of so-called reality acceptance upon victims of violence that justify some people's fear of change and improvement. But, perhaps it is more efficient instead to say, if some think activists are applying determinism to Africa, then it would appear as though some are applying determinism to police response. They are accusing activists of what they themselves are personifying.
Put yet another way: fight or flight; either course, the physiological impetus to respond to stimulus is real. Yet our conditioning serves to color the likelihood or tendency to respond more one way or another. Most of us do not have to strictly accept this bias, however long ingrained, but it can be harder than hell to altar its path, and that needs to be respected. Freewill affords us the responsibility to choose differently. Better. But, it applies to everyone, even long-standing institutions that have the groundswell of mainstream majority condoning their actions.
Thus, a focus on creating paradigmatic shifts within law enforcement and correctional facilities has erupted because attention to “correcting,” fixing and curing the coping mechanisms (fight or flight) of POC, the mentally ill and chemically dependent civilian populations have heretofore been the only discussions mainstream America legitimizes, to the exclusion of substantive, unapologetic critique of law enforcement practices (particularly the increasingly militarized). The narrative has been disproportionate in relation to the vast array of factors creating these perfect storms.
