“Oh, blast all this discussion! What good are words? I’m sick of words. Hang the repercussions and the responsibility! If I fail, I’m responsible. Leave the cell door open. Let him escape. Let him! It’s our only chance! Let them threaten me with the bottom pits of hell and still I insist! This obscenity must be destroyed! Do you hear me? Destroyed!”
– Edward G. Robinson as Mr. Wilson, “The Stranger” (1949)
Every time I watch this movie, I can feel the desperation in Mr. Wilson’s voice as he realizes the chance is growing slimmer to stop unremitting evil from escaping and creating a rebirth of the movement that caused the murder of millions of innocents.
I often feel this way when I watch how our species approaches hunger, disease, global climate change, violence, and hatred. I feel it as we press ourselves, full steam ahead, headlong into the abyss from which there is no return, not for us. Words. Words, words, words. It’s all I have, and it feels so inadequate. Words and feelings, desires to do something to save every life, to protect every innocent.
I do what I can with action, but from my position it is so difficult to engage in any kind of direct action. Like Mr. Wilson, too, I will do whatever it takes to put my ethics into operation, to turn words and ideas into practical solutions. “Let them threaten me with the bottom pits of hell and still I insist!” says Mr. Wilson, knowing that if Konrad Meinike, Franz Kindler’s right hand man of the Nazi party gets away, any hope of recovery will be nearly impossible, and he will have to answer to his superiors as to why he believed his choice was the right one.
Mr. Wilson is a man of principle, one who want to protect the world, to move humanity in a direction that eschews war, bloodshed, violence, hatred, and misery. Mr. Wilson believes he can remove the stench of death from their present history if only he can act. That he can ensure future generations will not have to once again become embattled with forces of hatred.
Edward G. Robinson plays him with such aplomb, and such conviction. It is one of my favorite performances from an actor who so often played the villain. This time around, he’s here to stop violence, to end the spilling of blood. Every time I watch him, I cannot help but be moved. Mr. Wilson is a man of nuance, of reason. He philosophizes, and he reflects. He’s not a gun toting action hero thinking that he can make things right again with a witty one liner or the firing of a gun.
I identify with the character of Mr. Wilson in many ways, and even where I don’t agree, where we part ways in thoughts and ideas, I still understand his reasoning, though I might not share it.
Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated with how our system works. I sometimes feel we’ve lost our ability to actually connect with other people. Our police officers, our judges, our representatives, even our peers. We see everyone as the other, as someone who is like us, but not us, who cannot receive the same consideration as us because we believe ourselves to be special exceptions to every rule, while the other must not be allowed that good grace.
It’s one of the reasons why I become disheartened when I watch conversations de-evolve into shouting matches and condemnations. The slightest disagreement in opinion, in point of view, has become enough to separate entire families. We have become insulated, insular, incessantly self-satisfying in our desire to only allow in what we believe to be worthy knowledge, that which we can agree with as long as it supports our worldview.
Like Mr. Wilson, I am sick and tired of words. People talk about how they want to help, how they want to see an end to violence, an end to hunger, an end to the exploitation of human beings, but it rarely goes beyond words.
I believe in taking action, even at the risk of my own neck, because if people are only going to talk about it, then what good does it serve? Awareness works only to a point, because there has to be a jumping off position where action is taken, rather then merely batted about as an idea, a concept that spends years in development only to languish as people suffer and die needlessly.
Be that person when someone says “I think we need to end hunger,” ask them what they’re going to do about it. Press them on it. Otherwise, all people will do is talk and talk and talk. How many of you have seen the film “The Grapes of Wrath,” and have heard Tommy, or Ma Joad, or Jim Casy speak about injustices that we are still fighting today, some 80 years later?
We need to be sick of words. We need to take action. There has to be more to humanity than its ability to talk itself into a stupor and allow travesties to continue unchecked because we haven’t yet discussed every nuance of the matter, because not every nuance needs to be discussed, and we also live in an age where nuance is no longer seen as necessary to understand.
So we go back to square one, where we have useless governments, distracted populations, and a land of plenty that denies the most basic of needs to the desperately hungry, ill, and exploited. We hand out thoughts and prayers, but we seem to lack the ability to turn those thoughts and prayers into action, and I’m sick of it. We need to act. Hang the repercussions and the responsibility! If we fail, we’re responsible, and honestly, if we fail, at least we failed while trying to make something wrong right again. That is worth more than all of the thoughts and prayers combined that were ever uttered.
Be sick of words, too. Take action. If you don’t know what to do, let me offer you some suggestions:
Feed the hungry. It doesn’t matter what others say, it doesn’t matter how it looks, just do it. Feed hungry people.
Comfort the downhearted. Reach out and actually connect with other people. Don’t just offer thoughts and prayers. We have way too many fucking thoughts and prayers. We have a surplus of thoughts and prayers, what we need is humanity. Reach out. Hold someone, comfort them, give them a shoulder to cry on. Be a person, goddammit.
Heal the sick. You don’t have to be Jesus H. Christ to find ways to help heal the sick. Medicine, rides to treatment centers, even using a first aid kit is a great place to start. Show compassion, and take note of someone’s pain. Help them heal it. Don’t just stand there, do something good.
Clothe the naked. This one should be obvious. Still, let’s make it a bit meta by also adding that you can clothe the nakedness of their souls. Protect them from harm, stand up for them when they are accused by authority. Defy that authority if you have to, because what is legal is not always moral, sometimes it is the most immoral thing put to the books. Shove it aside when necessary, when you believe someone’s life hangs in the balance.
Be sick of words with me, and hang the repercussions. Be human beings, be real, genuine human beings. Do good, reach out to others, and don’t ask for anything in return, because we’re all human beings, and if we’re going to survive, if we’re going to work through the coming storm of ecological and sociological changes, we’re going to have to hold fast to one another.
I love you, you are loved, don’t forget it.
♥