FRANKENSTEIN 1- THE ANATOMY OF MY AFFLICTION
FRANKENSTEIN 1
THE ANATOMY OF MY AFFLICTION
The Death Penalty is a Frankenstein; a hideous thing made in the image of the dark, unconscious part of the human personality. This thing has existence. It has demonic strength. “Death Row” and the “murder (execution) chamber” are mere illusions since death does not only occur in the murder chamber. The whole process must be seen as Death birthing itself into a still-birth. The appellant system, death row, and murder chamber are manipulative names that actually describe portions of Frankenstein’s body.
It possesses me, literally. I can feel it. It tortures me with its presence. It and I are in a perpetual battle, most of it which it wins in various different ways. Its most common form of victory is silence. It succeeds in silencing me to the point, regardless of my zealousness, I fail to express what I desire to. It’s as if those faculties that transform thought into word (spoken or written) are strapped into a straight jacket. Struggling against it only intensifies despair.
Other times, I’m possessed with the feeling of being in a place so dark I can’t see my hand if I held it to my face while some evil phantom of a presence creeps, closer, closer, and closer to me. Yet I can’t run.
I can feel it intensifying.
I want to be strong for those that believe in me as well as those that feed this thing that clings to me and feast upon my being, with their hatred, ignorance and repressed psychic energy. And though our movement is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, I must also testify to this inner struggle; one for equilibrium; one for some kind of rest.
B.F. Skinner said that the human personality is nothing more than a repertoire of behavior acquired under certain “contingencies of reinforcement” (circumstances in which certain behavior has reinforcing consequences), and where there are conflicting contingencies of reinforcement, there will also be conflicting repertoires of behavior. With this said, socio-political and economic class conflict, hence conflicting societal norms are the antecedents to America’s social psychosis, which exists in its most toxic form as the Death Penalty System.
Further, are not self-preservation and self-determination inherent in our humanity? How can a man, which I have now become not by physical maturity but by the maturity of my consciousness (understanding of SELF, thus community-self and the historical position thereof), be convinced that he is unworthy to live? How can a man subjugate himself to that which he not only opposes instinctually but also by principle? He can’t. He won’t. And I shall not.
The interesting thing is I’m being torn asunder by an entity I was suppose to have helped create.
Footnotes:
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For deeper insight see “From the Black Hole”
Comrade and Brother
Reginald “Omari Huduma” Blanton
Myspace.com/127854441