Be Sumbmissive

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” (Ellison, 468)



“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied”, (Ellison, 572)

Although not proven to be an overarching theme in the text, I believe a choice in resignation is a major aspect in the self-proclamation of invisibility. To plainly "give up" sells a little piece of ones soul, integrity and psychological stamina each time we concede to the pressures of expectation and coping with a lack of empathy. There is no consolation prize to the resignation of our presence but the sad truth that no one is interested. The hunt for human compassion has likely become a widely more inconclusive search as we each become more occupied wither preserving truths we choose to acknowledge; leaving the question: is being invisible a sign of defeat? Today we have become oddly okay with submission, we are giving up on a humanity that could care less that you too are equal, have abundant opinions to contest, and are not too different from you and me because we are for whatever reason blindly bound to ideological limitations. This case begs the question: why be seen when they are already too frugal to give the chance to be heard?

Be Stereotyped

"One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at him seized his coat lapels and demanded he apologize. he was a tall blond man, as a my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me.. and in my outrage I got out a knife an prepared to slit his throat , right there beneath  the lamplight and in the deserted street, holding him by the collar and opening my knife with my teeth– when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me..." (Ellison, 4)

As "hinted" upon in my last post, people are inclined to see what they want to see in the world. Harsh truths revealing injustice, violence or scary things like unfeeling people are meant to be brushed under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind, they say. This perception as applied to specific groups has brought up on of the greatest failures of humane truth: the stereotype. There are a lot of people in this world, give or take 7 billion. Many of us have taken the short-cut in getting know them by treating people like slabs of meat, slapping a label on them and shipping off to the regions of our brain where emotional responses to those types of people is determined appropriate by societal standards. Yet, while we are all quite familiar with the age old saying, " Don't judge a book by it's cover", we perpetuate the same injustice we turn a blind eye of disgust to the rest of the world. Somehow, because we stereotype so instinctively and can't help but blame human nature, upon sight being of African decent makes you illiterate and "ghetto" while being a man who takes to grooming and enjoys a good show tune makes you gay. A blind spot for instantaneous lack in human compassion and understating has arrived this day in age all because it takes to long to get to know someone for who they are, making it easiest to categorize them for our own mental sustenance.

Be Blind

"A matter to the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality", ( Ellison, 1).




We all at one point question, whether admittedly or not, what life would be like blind. While the actual disability of blindness should never be wished upon anyone, there is some truth to the fact that we all share a blind spot or at least translucent gage in what and how we perceive our surroundings. Everyone sees through different lenses, these being the guise we build throughout out lives as influenced per our upbringing, religious authorities, family situation, friend groups, personal interest, travel experiences or prescription bifocals. In many cases, we are geared to only see what we wish to see, a theory founded on these clouded perceptions of reality, and not necessarily the truths of matter.  By all means, we are entitled to assert our beliefs, but at what cost do we allow those ideas to impede on the lives of others. When does a thoughtless comment about her Hispanic housekeeper become racist? When does a disinterest in better funding for women's athletics become sexist? While our human instinct to turn a blind eye to truth in order for our own convictions to subsist is likely cause for mutual dissent, at what point does a blind spot detour its foundation toward ignorance and violence?

Be Invisible

"And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man",  (Ellison, 573).


Feeling invisible or being invisible is hardly a foreign concept upon the minds of today's logically inclined audience. But this debate begs the obvious: which is real? And better yet, how do we approach this mental state in incessant deterioration of our self-worth and our assumed value as transfixed by the outside world? In many instances it is our weakened drive to be known, to be credited, to be cared about. When natural forces of purely mean and ignorant habit act on our psyche, it is likely that a resignation to the whimsy of invisibility in response to that source of disinterest can occur. But does the transparent lens we imagine others look upon us with reflective of what they might actually see? We likely project what we want the world to view us as but it's a rare find that these perceptions may coincide with what the world might really take you to be. Such skewed mental complexities are capable of taking affect in our reality, but then could one belief in the outside perception of a person as unworthy of a glance drive one to believe that they are quite literally transparent?

Transparenthesis

"I am invisible simply because people refuse to see me" ( Ellison, 1).

             

This quote from the third sentence of first paragraph of the first page of Ralph Ellison's historically reveered novel Invisble Man, truly struck me. In it's understated truth, burgeoning applicability and how much sense such a simple statement can make. There are several major themes in Ellison's novel that speak to both a time of extreme racial tensions and the modern strife today. The noel highlights and entertains the audience with real world struggle as general beings to asses our valued, to be noticed or even equal among a crowd who has ascertained ones existence as unworthy or unamusing. In the following posts I hope to divulge upon the reality of the causes, consequences and possible advantages of being a ghost of your own existence in a world who is too busy making their own way to shed even a tear of false compassion.