Sameer Abraham Thomas is an independent researcher based in New Delhi. He has taught Writing and Oral Communication (WOC) and Literature and the Arts (LAA) at Krea University since 2019. In the past, he has written about academic writing, education, fine art, and the legacy of Partition. He is also a freelance editor, reviewer and content writer.
I believe that there is some danger in characterising certain ideological groups and political alignments on the basis of our encounters with their loudest, most obnoxious representatives. When I read criticism along the lines of “Vegans are aggressive and insulting to meat-eaters”, I think of the vegetarians in my life who have never forced others to abide by their dietary preferences, whether those preferences are motivated by preference or ethics. These people have been loth to impose their views on the people around them, but they get lumped in with your radical PETA activists and pedestrian assholes.
What does it do to you when you hear generalisations about people like yourself? For me, it provokes a defensive knee-jerk response. I’m more likely to essentialise my identity, play it up, and attack the corresponding identity of the person in front me. I’ve gotten better at noticing these tendencies in myself and nipping them in the bud. Most of the time, in my experience, people make such generalisations because they are, in some way, aggrieved.
Much as we would like to be reasonable actors all the time, there are moments when we need to let loose and say or do things we repress most of the time. Whether it’s swearing, punching the table in front of you, or making generalisations with a weary, frustrated groan.
“Why do men/HIndus/women/vegetarians/meat-eaters/savarnas/Dalits/liberals/sanghis/Muslims/students/teachers/parents/children etc. always…”
They don’t. Well, they don’t always. Sometimes some of them do. Maybe a lot of them, maybe a lot of the time. But very rarely is it a case of all of the people in a group doing something irritating all of the time.
We know that. Really, we do. But we just need to say it out loud because we’ve encountered something that infuriates us at a moment when we have the least patience for it. It just has to come out and come out it will.
I think of this. I try to be empathetic. I try to listen to their complaints. I try to ask them more about it. Sometimes, it helps to lend an ear. But there are times when frustration meets frustration and sets off a chain-reaction of broad strokes and snide comments.
The word “triggered” has been ridiculed and belittled of late. But I genuinely feel like it’s the best word to describe this response sometimes. For a brief instant, we are transformed into a weapon, an explosive. We are complex systems set up and vulnerable to minor stimuli. Systems that, through the magic of cause-and-effect, will result in an explosion. It could be a spark to a fuse, a bit too much pressure, the right word in the wrong context. Such a tiny thing; such a big reaction.
Disproportionate, we think. But the bomb doesn’t detonate because someone flips the switch.
It detonates because someone built the bomb.
When a bomb explodes, we respond, we react, but, eventually, we look for reasons, for causes, for terrorist organizations and vulnerable, radicalised people. I fear that we rarely do the same when people are triggered. We let the explosion light our own fuse, hasten our own countdowns. Retaliation is necessary when life and safety are at risk, but they rarely are in a casual conversation. I know that. I do. But in the heat of the moment, I forget sometimes. I react. Knee-jerk. Triggered.
The conversation doesn’t need to end there. As mature, responsible, kind individuals, we can take the time to notice our own response and dial it back without repressing it. We don’t tamp it down because the time and place are not appropriate to release our righteous anger. That’s repression. We check our response because we recognize the potential for disaster. We negotiate, reassure, apologize, and listen because it is by listening that we can transfer our attention away from our anger to those of others.
What if this decision leads to dangerous, hate-filled rhetoric to spread unchecked? I do worry about this. I don’t have a clear answer.
My hope is that there is power in a calm, responsive interlocutor who clearly isn’t out to demonize you. That, when face-to-face with someone who empathizes with you and yet calmly disagrees with you, the ideas you reject acquire a human face. Our ideas are dangerous to the people who oppose us. But we who espouse them do not need to be. Will that be enough to cut through the pendulum of reaction? Perhaps.
I take solace in the example of Daryl Davis, an African-American musician and activist who deradicalises KKK members and other white nationalists by befriending them, disagreeing with them, arguing with them even as he attends their barbecue parties. Davis has a room in his house filled with robes that once belonged to these hateful, racist men. They gave them to him when, after years of knowing him, their humanity showed them that leaving these organizations was the right thing to do. They then work to redeem others like themselves.
A new cycle can be created. Slower—much slower—than a bomb. This cycle is more like the way water circulates on our planet, or how the dead feed the living through decomposition, fertilisation, germination and—ultimately and inevitably—new life and sustenance.
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