When did we become God?
This weekend I went with some friends to watch “A Girl on a Train” for free in the Indiana Memorial Union. The theatre was surprisingly packed full of students and soda and popcorn.
The movie follows a woman with a drinking problem that ruins her marriage, which causes her to ride a train every day past her old home. Eventually she happens upon her ex-husband killing a neighbor he was having an affair with, but she was too drunk to remember the events of the night all that clearly.
The rest of the movie is her discovering her ex-husband is an adulterous murderer, which results in her stabbing him in the throat with a corkscrew in self-defense.
The ex-husband’s second wife proceeds to push the corkscrew deep into the dying man’s neck.
When his second wife dug the corkscrew deep into the incapacitated man’s neck, the crowd around me erupted in applause, cheers and laughter.
The crowd’s response to this act of violence is disturbing. And if it is representative of a prevalent opinion among IU students, this is an issue.
We have decided injustice is okay if it is being done to someone who deserves it. Do you see the problem in that statement? We decide who does and doesn’t deserve injustice.
Certain people have the right to and are praised when they commit violent acts of hatred on those who have oppressed them at our discretion.
At what point did we, 18-23 year-old know- nothings, get to draw the line between good and bad injustice?
When did we become God?
If the chalking around campus are any indication, there are many people on this campus and beyond who believe putting a bullet in President Trump’s head would be justice.
Of course there were many who believed the same thing about basically every leader there has ever been. So what distinguishes our opinion today from any other group of people who has claimed to have the best handle on justice and morality?
Be careful what you answer. Is it based on an innate morality we all share?
Two hundred years ago the great majority of people’s innate morality claimed women and Africans alike were no more than property.
Is it based on certain unalienable rights? What are those rights exactly, and what happens when a group of people challenges the definition of those rights?
Is it based on equality for all humans? How do you treat an oppressor equally and still stop the oppression?
What we believe is so right and obvious today was not 100 or even 50 years ago, and what people fought for 100 years ago was not obvious 200 years ago.
So what we believe now may be totally wrong by 2067’s standards.
At no point does some injustice justify another. At no point we get to play God.
sbreinoe@umail.iu.edu
