"Nobodiness"
and a hunger for "somebodiness"! He is
talking of alienation--our contemporary anomie, a sense of purposelessness that
pervades our mass-media-consumerist world. We need only look around us to find a world
more technologically "connected" than ever, but increasingly segregated by
class; access to power; religious and political ideologies; a continuous
struggle for resources and wealth.
Simultaneously, it's a world fatally united with xenophobia--a sense of
"us against them."
"You're
with us, or you're with the terrorists," cowboy Bush declared, using the
tragedy of 9/11 to justify killing and displacing over a million Muslims in
Iraq. And, ballasting our fracked
economy with our endless "war on terror," ("Bomb-Bomb-Iran" McCain has called
for a 100 years' war!), we and our allies can devastate Libya, occupy
Palestine, threaten Iran with nuclear extirpation, seed civil war in Syria, and
on and on, without a moment's pause!
(Can we really suppose they "hate us for our freedoms," and overlook the
fact that we are killing, maiming, torturing, and occupying where they live?)
"Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever," King
warned in his letter; and even Samuel P. Huntington, who, in the 1990s, laid
the academic/intellectual foundations for a "clash of civilizations" warned:
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or
religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact,
non-Westerners never do."
King wrote of the "constructive, nonviolent tension"
necessary for growth" and "a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise
from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative
analysis and objective appraisal."
Again, he wrote that "Any law that uplifts human personality is
just. Any law that degrades human
personality is unjust."
Again, on the need for creative tension: "We see the need
for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension " that will help men rise
from the dark depths of prejudice to the majestic heights of understanding and
brotherhood."
King challenged; he alerted; he upheld conscience and
truth; he urged reason and fairness. He
actualized our highest principles. He
pointed a way.
Gary
Corseri has posted/published his work at
hundreds of websites and publications worldwide. His books include novels and
poetry collections. His dramas have been produced on Atlanta-PBS and elsewhere,
and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. He
can be contacted at Email address removed .
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