milkman

“Perceptions are reality”, they say. Start a new narrative / gossip about a person, on hearsay, driven by jealousy, intention to take revenge for one’s hurt ego, or upon violating someone’s preconceived notions about how someone should be. Keep finding new reasons to strengthen that narrative, anything could cement it further. Keep building the crescendo, the germ transferred to other minds, multiples and feeds on itself. It could lead to bringing someone down, that’s when the new imaginary monster unleashed gets satisfied. 

In its wake, boundaries of what is true and what is false gets blurred. No one is able to decide and separate out fact from fiction. Eventually the victim might start believing it herself. Any one acting out of ordinary will be turned a freak and that makes it easier to discount their view which may be the truth. Create narrower divisions of us vs them, draw crisscrossing lines to block off people like pawns in a chess board, create symbols and micro ideologies to keep the smaller groups tighter and closed off from others. Are there masterminds to these games or once started these are independent monsters who cannot be controlled? If there is an overall master mind, in spite of the evil and danger he poses, it must be mind blowing strategy.

How do one get out this maze? Reacting and kicking out will drag one down like a quicksand. Blocking out will also not make it go away. How do one fight an imaginary hydra? Do an individual have any way out once caught in this? Resign to the fate is the only option? How to device a counter attack that has a chance of success? How to keep the sanity? How to not become another pawn in the game?

- After reading Milkman, by Anna Burns.