Father Agression

by Zoltan Tajti

Front matters

At the end of Lord of the Flies, Ralph breaks down in tears when saved along with the other islanders. He does not cry from joy; he cries in sorrow, grieving the passing of the private innocence a mere week prior believed civilisation had formed out of the art of the social and culture. He – they – are saved by gunmen, soldiers taking away by force what others presume to own.

Alan Sorkin’s Colonel Jessup stands guard on the perimeters of an already established society and state, of a working culture, and mourns the guarded one’s ignorance of their luxury; but Ralph’s mourning rips deeper: the aggression of humans also works from within, at the very onset of an individual becoming a value of member in the function of a group.

Some of us pride ourselves in exercising humility, showing camaraderie and compassion, in practising the first act of passing our personal judgements on law and morality – and some amongst us fail to grasp selective morality is pinned on the firmest foundation of naked violence. Belligerence, hostility have nowhere to go.

Examples

0.1 –

Some instances are prominent. Waging wars, murdering a fellow human, hunting for pleasure, beating up the spouse, the child, a friend, a stranger – all manifestations of the same vice, the prehuman heritage of physicality not yet oppressed by spirit and mind.

0.2 –

Other instances tend to be labelled social establishment, observable patterns claimed to form observable order. Subtle and hidden to the lazy, violence is thus realised as interruption in and hijacking of conversations, in non-negotiated division of spousal responsibilities, autocratic parenting, and autocratic leadership.

It is also realised and entwined in the fabric of verbal grooming as non-cooperative communication, abusive and prodding utterances, hijacking interactions, unbalanced listening times, unprompted opinion and advice, projected insecurities, transferred responsibilities, cynicism, sarcasm, and gaslighting.

The list goes on, covering what contemporary language tags as passive aggression, wrongly (it

is all but passive to actively overstep boundaries between parties, boundaries at equal distance from said parties); assuming to intrinsically know what and how other people think; communication through remarks and requesting by declaration.

0.3 –

Let’s label this one the aggression of finesse. Recall, the front above states the following:

(1) Ralph, who can be understood as the archetype of the meek is torn when realising his preconception of the foundation of human coexistence is not only unfounded but wrongly idealistic;

(2) Ralph’s concepts are the exact opposites of his own factual reality, his self-identity had been standing wrongly upside-down – the aggression he had been regarding as the result of the very basis of human existence being swiped from under their feet is actually the bare minimum human (i.e. shared) existence requires;

(3) The meek are also aggressive, doubly aggressive. On the one hand, meek is self-inflicted identity, always a well advertised one. On the other hand, more often than not meekness is not a state but a temporary product of progressive work; it is result manifested in practice. As such, the motivation for gaining it – continuously! – is the self-proclaimed meek’s moral imperative to become it

We, the meek – yours truly is at fault in constantly fighting the only ego I regard to possess – are conceited and arrogant in submitting to the inevitable, to purely cherry picked virtues. Virtues are always personal; almost ad-hoc, regardless of the density of social saturation one is lucky (or ill-fated) to along with others constitute.

Ralph was considerably lucky. It only took him fifteen months to come to terms with bearing the chip on his shoulders: Cain’s and also Jessup’s aggression, the original sin of humankind. An epilogue would have decided whether he – Ralph – could bear the burden of the arrogance of his own pomposity. From what I know, he would have.

Talk about aggression: do you guys know who Ralph and Jessup are? Right? Right.