Enemies of the people
Hello in the Dioxin Dorms and Beyond,
Last week I was wondering where the rage is. I was wondering how a state college can poison thousands of students, and people on the campus dismiss the reality; parents seem to not care; activists do nothing that will actually get them any attention.
I think I found it the rage. I found it in a discussion with a friend, who was confided in by another (younger) friend (and aspiring PCB activist) earlier this year, that she thought I was a little crazy. Crazy for being so passionate about the issue; and perceived as crazy by others; a nut case. Someone you must distance yourself from a little (which explains the distance). The only reason this offended me was because I thought the younger friend was more intelligent than that. But intelligence does not always determine your freedom from mass psychology.
To understand what is happening on the New Paltz campus, and anywhere there is an environmental issue (which boils down to Planet Earth, at the moment), we need to understand the sociology; the social dynamics involved. The person who blows the whistle is always called crazy. I have seen this many places, and experienced it the entire duration of my work on this particular issue. Lois Gibbs, a hero of said younger friend, was called insane and hated by her neighbors when she tried to evacuate Love Canal in the late 1970s. Lois persisted, and had 700 families moved to safety.
Now people kiss her feet. They should, particularly if they ever decreed her a nut because the State Health Department said your home was safe — even as they said you should not go in your basement for more than one minute and 50 seconds.
My editors, usually hip to what truth-tellers go through, have even had to take shit from SUNY administrators who have insisted that I am a nut. Laughable as it is, this must get filed under “sad but true.”
Students, parents and community members who join that perception (that the whistleblower is a nut), however slightly, are basically joining a) the polluters’ fundamental worldview and b) joining the mass of those who are rolling over or suppressing reality so that they don’t personally have to cope with the reality or pain of the situation. We call this denial, but it’s a special kind of denial.
It is simpler to say the person who points out the obvious is a nut and go on with your day. Heck, it’s easy, and there is no personal risk on the social level. You keep your friends. And there is lots of proof! After all, the nut is saying something that nobody really believes.
By being silent, by refusing to express one’s own rage, or take solid, effective action that gets them noticed, one is protecting oneself from being accused of being crazy or irrational because intuitively we know some or many people will see us that way — which most people cannot bear. People have a profound need to be viewed as socially acceptable, so it’s best not to scream or speak too loud.
It’s not that people don’t care about the dioxin dorms — it’s that they care about something else more, which is being seen as a sane person. To speak up, you have to risk getting dismissed on the basis of irrationality. I don’t blame anyone for not doing so — it hurts. At the end of the day, all we really have is our ability to be a participant in our culture, and if one is deemed crazy, that can be difficult — if you take it on. It hurts to be labeled. It hurts to be called unacceptable. Everyone knows this.
Because I have been confronted by actual mental illness in one form or another for many years, mainly through my family and (among other things) living less than a block away from King’s County Hospital’s psych ward as a child, I am not ignorant. I know what crazy is, and how painful it is; so if I’m called a nut case for being willing to speak up about dioxin, I can brush it off.
If you’re young, if you’re uncertain about yourself, if you’re uncomfortable in your skin, if you’re not feeling too stable, or if this is all too much; or if you need to be a “popular person,” you have another problem. You’re likely to go along with a lie on one or more levels just so that your friends don’t think you’re too weird. And this can cost you your life, or your conscience.
This is an old issue. A play was written in 1882, called An Enemy of the People. It was written more than 125 years ago — i.e., before chlorine; before the car; before the industrial revolution was understood. Here is the plot summary. I learned about this play from my old lawyer, Alan Sussman, who represented me when I prosecuted the campus for banning me after I attempted to interview the college president.
It is true: if you speak up, they will call you nuts.
If you’re not strong, you may believe it.
Take care of yourself, and hey, don’t take any shit.
Catch you soon…
e
– Eric Francis, Kingston, NY
Plot Summary: An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
Dr. Stockmann is the popular citizen of a small coastal town in Norway. The town has recently invested a large amount of public and private money towards the development of baths, a project led by Dr. Stockmann and his brother, the Mayor. The town is expecting a surge in tourism and prosperity from the new baths, said to be of great medicinal value and as such, the baths are the pride of the town. However, as the baths are starting to succeed, Dr. Stockmann discovers that waste products from the town’s tannery are contaminating the baths causing serious illness among the tourists. He expects this important discovery to be his greatest achievement, and promptly sends a detailed report to the Mayor, which includes a proposed solution, which would come at a considerable cost to the town.
But to his surprise, Stockmann finds it difficult to get through to the authorities. They seem unable to appreciate the seriousness of the issue and unwilling to publicly acknowledge and address the problem because it could mean financial ruin for the town. As the conflict ensues, the Mayor warns his brother that he should “acquiesce in subordinating himself to the community”. Stockmann refuses to accept this, and rents a hall in order to hold a town meeting and convince the people to close the baths.
The townspeople - eagerly awaiting the prosperity that the baths are believed will bring - refuse to accept Stockmann’s claims, as his friends and allies, who had explicitly given support for his campaign, turn against him en masse. He is taunted and denounced as a lunatic, an “Enemy of the People.” In a scathing rebuke of both the Victorian notion of community and the principles of democracy, Dr. Stockmann proclaims that in matters of right and wrong, the individual is superior to the multitude, who are easily led by self-advancing demagogues. Stockmann sums up Ibsen’s denunciation of the masses, with the memorable quote “…the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.”
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