"I felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.”
This is one of the descriptive passages in Officer Darren Wilson’s account of his shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown. It puts a sharp mental image into the mind of the listener: a small child trying to restrain the celebrity wrestler. It tells us nothing about Michael Brown, but only conveys what Darren Wilson felt about himself in comparison.
It’s a subjective description, meaning it is “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.” Some synonyms include: personal, individual, emotional, instinctive, intuitive
It does not convey knowledge about reality.
More about reality, subjectivity and how we convey emotion below the flourish.
In reality, Mike Brown and Darren Wilson are about the same height—6 foot 3 or 4. There is a 72 pound difference in weight between the two men (Wilson gives his weight as 210, Mike Brown’s is given as 292). One man is a trained law enforcement professional and armed; the other is much younger—a teenager who has just graduated from high school—and is unarmed.
These are important facts, and they convey objective knowledge about reality, though they are not nearly as emotionally engaging as that image of a five-year-old confronting Hulk Hogan. They fail to stick in the mind the way that simple picture does of a small, defenseless child trying to control a hulking, powerful foe.
In further testimony, Officer Wilson commented that: "At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I'm shooting at him. And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn't even there, I wasn't even anything in his way.”
Again, this is subjective, not factual. “It looked like” Brown meant to run through the shots. “It looked like” being shot at was making Brown mad rather than scared. It was Wilson’s impression that Brown was “looking straight through” him. These are all subjective impressions that tell us nothing about what Mike Brown actually did—something that witnesses do not agree on.
Finally, Officer Wilson offers a vivid description of Michael Brown as something less or more than human: "During the grand jury proceedings, Wilson also elaborates on the "intense aggressive" face Brown made at him, telling the Assistant District Attorney, "The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked.” Later, in response to a question, he would say, “I just felt the immense power that he had.”
Was Michael Brown "a demon" in possession of “immense power”? Of course not, and the fact that Darren Wilson’s bullets killed him is proof of that. But the impression hangs in the air like a hologram overlaying and blurring the reality that Michael Brown was a large young man whose battle prowess didn’t even run to martial arts training and who, at the point Wilson fired the lethal shot, was weakening from loss of blood.
In writing workshops, I often advise aspiring writers not to pen descriptions like this for the simple reason that no one knows what a demon looks like or what a demonic expression entails. Writers use descriptions like this not to convey facts about the characters or to allow the reader to visualize settings and events, but to evoke emotions. To overlay or coat reality with emotion. The emotional component is not enough to tell the reader what actually happened, but only how the point-of-view character feels about it.
Demons are creatures of our imaginations; personifications of our fears. The word is evocative and calls upon a deep-seated terror of beings so powerful they cannot be stopped by mere mortals—not even with bullets. The problem is that the word doesn’t tell us what the expression on Mike Brown’s face is. It only tells us how Darren Wilson responded emotionally to seeing it.
If you watch the security footage of Brown's theft of the cigarillos, something may stand out for you as it did for me. That was the shop clerk’s response to the same face that so terrified Darren Wilson. Granted, this is someone who arguably knows Michael Brown at least as a customer, but though he is a much smaller man, he shows no fear of Brown whatever. More telling is the fact that he seems to be unafraid of Brown even after the teen shoves him into a display rack (described evocatively as throwing him "like a rag doll”). The clerk regains his balance and pursues Brown out onto the sidewalk.
What would a factual description of Mike Brown look like? It would answer questions like these: Were his brows furrowed? Had he bared his teeth? Were his eyes wide or narrowed? Were his arms close to his body or held out or up in front of him?
Only Michael Brown, ultimately, knew whether his grimace was one of rage, as Wilson suggests, or was a grimace of fear and pain, or a grimace of blind, reactive panic. How easy is it to tell the difference at a distance of as far as 100 feet? We hear Officer Wilson’s words and form impressions of Mike Brown based on how they make us feel. I think most of us have had a friend or acquaintance tell us that when they met us they interpreted our facial expressions or body language in ways that surprised us. When I was in college a close friend told me that when she first met me she thought I was aloof and snobby until she got to know me and realized I was merely painfully shy.
In contrast to Darren Wilson, other witnesses described Mike Brown’s actions in more physical detail. Even the one who said that: "He stopped. He did turn, he did some sort of body gesture” before adding, "it was not in a surrendering motion.” Which begs the question of what a surrendering motion looks like to this witness, or to you or to me. Other witness describe the same "body gesture" as Brown raising his hands.
Even when Officer Wilson describes Mike Brown’s behavior, he injects his opinion about what motivated it: "He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he's coming back towards me.” In another context, he describes it this way: "When [Brown] stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person."
The sound that Wilson describes as grunting could represent a wide array of emotions: surprise, fear, pain, and, yes, anger or aggravation. But in this context, to interpret the sound as having a singular meaning is to depart from facts and delve into subjective interpretation. How many listeners, I have to wonder, are aware of the distinction?
While the Mike Brown that his friend, Dorian Johnson, describes is a flawed, very human teenager, the one Darren Wilson describes is a superhuman or inhuman monster. This is not a unique circumstance—this attribution of non-human or super-human characteristics to a perceived adversary. Years ago, some of you may recall, a man named Rodney King was beaten severely by police officers. The language Officer Stacey Koon used to describe King was eerily similar to the way Darren Wilson describes Mike Brown. ''The look that he gave me was that he looks at you and looks right through you,'’ Koon said. ''It's a bizarre look. On the street I had seen it many times before in drug suspects.’’ Koon also described King as “a monster-like figure akin to a Tasmanian Devil.”
Is this manipulation of the listening or reading audience evidence of intentional hatred and bigotry? Not necessarily. All human beings, from the beginning of life, begin writing their own narratives. Watch any small child confronted with the prospect of disgrace or censure and you’ll see it in action: “I didn’t mean to break the lamp. The dog growled at me and I had to go around him and I wiggled the table. The lamp just fell off.” Or “I didn’t mean to slam the door in your face. You startled me.” Or even, “I didn’t mean to call you a name, but you made me mad.”
I had no choice; you made me do it.
We see this dynamic in many aspects of our culture: In incidents as minor as children arguing who escalated an argument over a toy (“I broke it because you stuck your tongue out at me.”) to domestic abuse (“I hit you because you egged me on / disrespected me / disobeyed me.”) to sexual assault (“I did it because of the way she was dressed / looked at me / didn’t look at me.”)
Consider your own impulses when you are confronted with the horrific prospect of being “wrong” about something. We humans are artful dodgers nonpareil. Being caught in a moment of weakness or ignorance or carelessness grips us with the icy hand of embarrassment, which we read as potential humiliation, and to avoid that humiliation, we will reflexively feint, parry, thrust and attack whatever and whoever we identify in that moment as the cause of our potential humiliation.
In Mike Brown and Darren Wilson we had a teenager who has done something he knows to be wrong, confronted by a man with a preconceived notion about the environment in which the two met. Wilson testified of the neighborhood he encountered Brown in that "There’s a lot of gangs that reside or associate with that area. There’s a lot of violence in that area, there’s a lot of gun activity, drug activity; it is just not a very well-liked community. That community doesn’t like the police.”
It is in this context that the violence leading up to Michael Brown’s death occurs. Into this context place two young men, each with something to protect and something to fear.
The bad news is that we are programmed by nature to reflexively protect ourselves. That impulse to shield ourselves from unpleasantness by placing blame then attacking the blameworthy (whether mentally or physically) becomes especially dangerous in a creature that is increasingly more a being of intellect than of instinct and whose connections go far beyond an immediate family, clan or tribal group. The good news is that we have evolved to a point that we are, in large part, responsible for that evolution. We can guide it.
Wait, you might say, that’s the good news?
Here, I've found the teachings of religion to be profoundly beneficial. I’m not talking about displays of ritual or belief in miracles. I’m talking about the essentials of capital R Religion: the Golden Rule, the commandment to seek knowledge (especially self-knowledge), the exhortation to work hard at being truly human.
Gautama Buddha taught: "This indeed is the Way—there is no other—for the purification of one's vision. Follow this way. It leads to Mara's confusion. Following this Path you will put an end to suffering. I have taught you the Way after realising the removal of the arrow myself. Making the effort is your affair." — Dhammapada vs. 274-276
Likewise, Christ counsels His audience: "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets… Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ...
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ...But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” — Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:12, 21-26
Bahá’u’lláh, Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, wrote: “Be united in counsel, be one in thought. Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday. Man’s merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the pageantry of wealth and riches. Take heed that your words be purged from idle fancies and worldly desires and your deeds be cleansed from craftiness and suspicion. ... Guard against idleness and sloth, and cling unto that which profiteth mankind, whether young or old, whether high or low. Beware lest ye sow tares of dissension among men or plant thorns of doubt in pure and radiant hearts.” (LAWḤ-I-HIKMAT—Tablet of Wisdom)
His son, Abdu’l-Bahá, expanding on this theme, said in a talk given in Evanston, IL in 1912: "We must strive with energies of heart, soul and mind to develop and manifest the perfections and virtues latent within the realities of the phenomenal world, for the human reality may be compared to a seed. If we sow the seed, a mighty tree appears from it. ...All these virtues were hidden and potential in the seed. Through the blessing and bounty of cultivation these virtues became apparent. Similarly, the merciful God, our Creator, has deposited within human realities certain latent and potential virtues. Through education and culture these virtues deposited by the loving God will become apparent in the human reality, even as the unfoldment of the tree from within the germinating seed."
We are, to large extent, in control of our own destinies and responsible for the cultivation of our own individual (and hence, our collective) virtues. This is an uncomfortable reality. Uncomfortable because it makes us culpable for our own ignorance, our unreasoning rage and fear, our own hurt and hurtfulness, our biases, our prejudices, our sometimes irrational expectations of ourselves and others. When we tell ourselves that it is simply human nature to behave in a particular way—violently, carelessly, defensively, etc.—we lie.
This may seem like a venial, inconsequential lie, but it is not. It is a profoundly devastating lie because it strikes at the very core of what it means to be human. It tells us that we are merely powerless victims of biology, physics, and animal nature. If we choose to believe this lie in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we buy into the greatest, most debilitating lie of all: that this is the way we are, that we will always be this way, that nothing can be done.
Artful dodging, that. But it is a dodge that is discredited, again, by the essential tenets of religion.
“Dost thou think thyself only a puny form, when the universe is folded up within thee?” (The Imam Ali, quoted by Abdu’l-Bahá in The Secret of Divine Civilization)
Bahá’u’lláh echoes and amplifies on Ali’s question:
'Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is a direct evidence of the revelation within it of the attributes and names of God, inasmuch as within every atom are enshrined the signs that bear eloquent testimony to the revelation of that Most Great Light. ...To a supreme degree is this true of man, who, among all created things, hath been invested with the robe of such gifts, and hath been singled out for the glory of such distinction. For in him are potentially revealed all the attributes and names of God to a degree that no other created being hath excelled or surpassed. All these names and attributes are applicable to him. ... Even as He hath revealed: “We will surely show them Our signs in the world and within themselves.” Again He saith: “And also in your own selves: will ye not, then, behold the signs of God?” And yet again He revealeth: “And be ye not like those who forget God, and whom He hath therefore caused to forget their own selves.” In this connection, He Who is the eternal King—may the souls of all that dwell within the mystic Tabernacle be a sacrifice unto Him—hath spoken: “He hath known God who hath known himself.”’ (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings XC)