Ways of Seeing
I picked up a copy of Ways of Seeing written by John Berger. Years ago, a girlfriend turned me on to his brilliant book titled About Looking and reading it infused me with fresh ideas about how to look at myself, others, dogs, and things I had never really looked at before but were all around me.
For some reason, I never followed up About Looking and then a few days ago in my local bookstore, there was Ways of Seeing stashed where it had no business being stashed. I bought this slim volume for $6 and started reading it right there on the sidewalk in front of the store.
In the opening paragraphs of Ways of Seeing Berger writes:
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words: we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.
When I read these lines it instantly occurred to me that they described precisely what I am doing with the homeless issue. I see a homeless person or persons or an encampment, and then I try to explain it with words, but what I know or think I know is never settled.
I must ask myself? Who I am to be seeing, looking at these people, or trying to settle something in my mind or for readers.
It is as evident as clouds in the sky that many of the homeless people I see are insane. The insanity isn't called insanity anymore by the social service professionals. I am beginning to think this
The other day I saw a young shirtless man prancing down the sidewalk, in billowing orange pants similar to that of a cartoon genie. He carried a six-foot long staff and twirled it in the manner of a marital arts master. A scabbard was fastened around his waist. I saw a knife with a black handle.
He wore makeup and eyeliner and was talking to himself and the demons around him. The man passed me as I sat outside a tavern and drank a beer. I saw his eyes. He was insane or high or both at the same time.
I saw him. I think I know what I saw. It was unsettling.
Are there more insane American today per capita than there were in the heyday of insane asylums? Is our culture of meat grinder-capitalism producing more?
Berger writes about seeing the sun set, but his explanation “never quite fits the sight.”
That is what I think about seeing the genie with the staff and knife.
The last paragraph of Ways of Seeing
reads:
Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is