Guns & Roses



We have a dangerous love affair with guns.



A little digression - a side route if you will, from the road with no end. In two of my lectures this morning, I began to realize the extent of a 'gun' culture in our world. Specifically, I am referring to how much the mentality of violence is engrained within us. I say this for two reasons: the romanticization of gun-based violence and the subconscious acceptance of violence as a necessary tools. These are what I believe to be the reasons why 'disarmament' or 'anti-small arm proliferation' talk are merely pie in the sky talk - we have to strike at our very own roots and discard our implict glorification of arms and violence.

First, the romanticization of guns and weapons by the media, our conversations and social understandings. Make no mistake, I am not accusing anyone of being pro-guns or pro-violence. I will reserve my judgments on that matter here; instead, I am blaming our adventurous spirits and our need to be thrilled. The media placates our insatiable need for violence through increasingly elaborate action scenes in movies, news stories are geared towards capturing the sensation of gunshots, bombs etc. Obviously, in due course, the consumption of these movies normalizes violence.This of course, triggers a cataclysmic cycle of violence - our perverted desire for guns feeding an even more destructive force of real-life manifestations of violence.

Second, I am appalled at how many people view the Arab World Protests as great signs of change. I think we must stop to ponder the problems involved with using volatize methods to achieve change. Oh, how forgotten are Gandhian values! Where has the noble notion of Satyagraha gone? I am aware of the differences in social contexts, but still, we are endorsing ruthless violence to acheive better living conditions and governance. Here, I speak to those in universities, scholars, including myself. I must constantly remind myself of the words of Anton Chekhov, that if a gun is introduced in the first act of a play, it must be fired by the final act.

Therefore, we must really reevaluate our positions on violence as a necessary tool for revolution; we must de-glamourize our perceptions of revolution; we must de-romanticize the notions of guns.

Yes, I am preaching to the converted. Everything I have just said has been said a million times. Unfortunately, they have fallen on deaf ears. I think that we must make it our unwavering principle that guns have no place in our world.

That is not too idealistic to ask for, if we start practicing non-violence ourselves. What I mean by this, is that we tailor our aesthetic, intellectual and artistic appetites to critically analyze all sorts of violence and eventually develop a disdain for it. When we watch movies or TV shows, ask yourself what other avenues could have been chosen; what other methods of conflict resolution could have been possible. Maintain strict stances against gore, guts and guns. Remove our tacit compliance to this violent world order. I do not intend to sound like an over bearing mediator, but that is the role all of us have to play if we are to live in a gun-less world.

Let us unhang that pistol from the wall.