Protecting Bliss

I was only two when the Riots began in Detroit. At that time and in my own little world, my biggest problem was trying not to stub my toe when I rode my bike because I was too impatient to put my shoes on. At the end of the driveway was a patch of torn concrete curbing that had been chipped away to allow street traffic into the drive. It was rough, jagged and I always stubbed my toe running too fast across this danger zone. What I knew of danger zones was so small.

The US Army didn't have convoys patrolling in our little city. None of the buildings in my neighborhood looked like third-world war zones. The tension level wasn't palpable. But I knew they and these conditions existed in places my family could and did travel to get to in a short time. In the neighborhood my grandparents lived in. For as much as they tried to accept diversity, my parents were simply more comfortable in their isolated suburban community.

It's sad really. But ignorance has provided us with the bliss we so hope for when contests happens within our proximity. If ignorance is bliss then the converse, 'knowledge is hell' must be true. It is, seeing people fighting, getting injured and being suppressed or oppressed hurts even when you're just two. You know something is wrong because everyone is tense. Nothing is easy and people don't spend time doing anything except being at home. They can't even remember to put shoes on their children's feet.

Growing up in Detroit, we learned very quickly and from a very young age that people can say one thing and believe another entirely. "People are all the same - but you stay on your side - or we'll make you." It was so wrong. Everyone worked so hard to protect the bliss that they worked so hard to establish. Would it be so hard to agree to disagree? But this is nothing new. Detroit certainly didn't have patent rights on sectarian beliefs or ethnic division and the corresponding attempts to maintain it. These type of fights have been happening throughout history. Detroit was just another mark on the racial timeline. But it was the first mark on my timeline.

I still don't understand why it happened. I don't understand the level of hubris that would be necessary to support the belief that it would ever be okay to dis acknowledge one rational person's beliefs for another based on the outward ramifications of tiny alterations in DNA.

My Bliss doesn't look anything like this picture. I don't understand how any one's definition of bliss can look like this.