Fresh is a 12 year-old boy who lives with his Aunt and 11 cousins in a crowded ghetto apartment. He goes to a school where they learn that the Manifest Destiny is about robbing native peoples of their land. His playground is the streets. At the basketball court, a full-grown man shoots a kid because the kid is better than the man at hoops. As the bullets spray, a little girl is hit and bleeds to death. The murderer walks away.

"Fresh" was Boaz Yakin's movie about a kid who outsmarts the ghetto. The young protagonist is Michael who goes by the nickname, Fresh. Fresh's father lives in the trailer and is an alcoholic. He is also a speed chess wiz. His father teaches him the game, but Fresh learns more than chess. He learns to play life like a game of chess. He is very clever.

Cleverly, Fresh preys on the suspicions and irrational passions of the drug lords. One by one, he takes the players out of the game: the killer at the basket ball court, his sister's pimp, and the drug lord for whom he ran drugs. The first two are killed over suspicions and jealousies. The last, he frames with drugs and murder evidence.

It is an incredible story-- and incredulous. Fresh is a brilliant boy and he plays a deadly game with a cool hand. There doesn't even seem to be a moral to the story. Nonetheless, there is a good guy, and the good guy wins.

The problem is that the good guy is only 12 years old, and none of the adults have sense enough to change the world they live in. Kids are getting shot, drugs are all over the streets, and no one has any bright ideas-- except for young Fresh. It should anger us to think that there so lacks courage and intelligence in a neighborhood that a child has to clean up the streets. While superheroes such as Batman or the Punisher may not live in Fresh's world, it saddens to think there are not even ordinary heroes in Fresh's world.

The problem is that Fresh lives in a world just a little too much like the one in which we live. The problem is that every ghetto needs a miracle or a 12-year old strategist to solve its problems. The problem is that we shouldn't be waiting for a miracle or a young Fresh to do what we ought to have done a long time ago.

As if we have entered into a Darwinian nightmare, the law that gives justice has been replaced by the law of the strong in young Fresh's world. Indeed, just laws are no longer effective when they are neither enforced nor forceful to the people to whom they are given. In the aftermath, survival is more important than life-- though survival be lifeless.

The human spirit has been crushed. Isn't that how it is in places like Los Angeles' Compton or Washington, D.C.'s South East? Yes and no. There are good people in every inner city. Everyday, they are trying to change the world in which they live. If the streets be lawless, they do not lack for the lion-hearted. The problem in our world is that there is also room for one more-- and the invitation is often unanswered.

There is yet a want for courage in this world. Unlike rashness and cowardice, there can never be enough courage. Certainly, the need is obvious. But the call is not for 12 year-olds-- not even young Fresh. It is a call for men and women who are certain about what is right and wrong. It is a call for those who do not believe that living is about the survival of those who mind their own business.

I wonder if we will remember these first things in a post Y2K world.

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (info@giglobal.com), August 27, 1999

Answers

Stan:

Sorry, but I'm confused. Is this a movie? a book? a news report?

Sounds like the basic plot from John Ross's UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.

-- Anita Evangelista (ale@townsqr.com), August 27, 1999.

Okay, double sorry. I see that it's a movie.

-- Anita Evangelista (ale@townsqr.com), August 27, 1999.

If you consult Maslov's pyramid of self-actualization,survival comes first.So life is about more than merely surviving only once survival is a given.Until then,it IS all about survival

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), August 28, 1999.

Zoobie,

I have read Abraham Maslow (all of his books including his published journals). Yes, the most primary instinctoid is to survive. However, I would argue that Maslow had no interest in those people who might only survive when things were tough; he was more interested in people who acted upon greater instinctoids even during tough times. On the other hand, Maslow's ideas are of limited use for understanding personality and human nature. At best, it may be a nice idea for undergraduates to consider... get them to open up their minds and start thinking a bit.

I'm sorry if I come off flippant on Maslow. In many ways, I got bored with him and moved on. Perhaps, I had once hoped that Maslow's ideas promised more if someone could take it another step. In fact, I took Maslow's ideas as far as they could go in my thesis-epic, "Finis Humanevitae." I wrote an interesting chapter that synthesizes neural science with humanistic psychology. If you ever find yourself in Los Angeles before TEOTWAWKI, you might look it up at the main library at the University of Southern California.

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (info@giglobal.com), August 28, 1999.

I find it interesting that people seem less interested in ethical and moral questions in the face of the possibility of hard times. Not that people are very interested in ethical and moral questions when times are good, but there is a tendency to dispense with the charade that moral and ethical questions are meaningful to us... when we imagine the worst. So you may ultimately be right, Zoobie. In a manner of speaking. I'll do what I have to... to survive: this does seem to be the overwhelming attitude I see here and elsewhere. However, this attitude does not provide a fertile ground for cooperation, trust, and freedom. Perhaps, we are unfit as a species and as individuals to continue in our madness.

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (info@giglobal.com), August 30, 1999.

I believe that in the long term, ethics and a spiritual attitude are extremely important, and especially so in hard times. If you are running a small (or even a large) business (selling eggs or vegetables, for example), you may cheat your customers in the short term...but in the long term, you will lose the good will of those customers. If communications are cut, you will be even more dependent upon the good will of those living in close proximity. We have a similar situation living on a relatively small island.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), August 30, 1999.

"I find it interesting that people seem less interested in ethical and moral questions in the face of the possibility of hard times. Not that people are very interested in ethical and moral questions when times are good, but there is a tendency to dispense with the charade that moral and ethical questions are meaningful to us... when we imagine the worst. So you may ultimately be right, Zoobie. In a manner of speaking. I'll do what I have to... to survive: this does seem to be the overwhelming attitude I see here and elsewhere. However, this attitude does not provide a fertile ground for cooperation, trust, and freedom. Perhaps, we are unfit as a species and as individuals to continue in our madness. " Sincerely, Stan Faryna

Stan,

People become interested in what is ethical and moral only when there is some incentive for them to. In the united States, it used to be Christianity that provided that incentive. Now that we have had multiple generations of a secular government teaching that such things are not needed, we are reaping the consequences: none considers the moral or the ethical as an inviting way of life.

George

-- George Valentine (georgevalentine@usa.net), August 30, 1999.

I sometimes wonder how much Ed is reading all of these threads.

In light of the book concept on rebuilding it might be interesting to consider the inner city ghetto as a comparison.

It is a bit unfortunate that a lot of people who never experienced ghettos have such singular attitudes about them. Sure, people are poor, sure there is more crime, sure this sounds bad. On the other hand, people there have been finding ways to bootstrap themselves into something better.

What life in the ghetto can tell us is that just because people are poor and there is crime, it doesn't mean that all human decency is lost. You could walk down a suburban street every day for 10 years and never see a miracle.

If we are truly souls who choose our destiny, how much more courageous were the souls who chose to take on a life in a ghetto, to accept the hardship and endure through it.

There are a few millionaires alive today who were Jewish children who were taken to Nazi concentration camps, survived years in that desolate life, came to America and built great businesses. There are CEOs of young vibrant companies who were born in Ghettos.

Americans sometimes complain that the Welfare State supports too many people in the Ghetto. If y2k brings hardship to all, then those who didn't have as much may have learned how to get through hard times. To think that Ghettos will be the worst of all places is to forget all the hardship training that these people face day to day.

-- Thom Gilligan (thomgill@eznet.net), August 30, 1999.

The problem with Maslow's theory about the hierarchy of needs is that it doesn't really pan out when people are in scenarios where death is all around. In nazi Germany, Corrie ten Boom, a Christian who was arrested by the SS for hiding Jews, wrote that beauty became very important for her and others, even though food was not available. She wrote of using the red threads from a towel to embroider on her clothes, and to remind herself that there was more to life than survival. In the book of Habakkuk (Bible), the prophet Habakkuk writes, "Though the fig tree does not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Chap. 3, v. 17-18)

-- Ann M. (hismckids@aol.com), August 31, 1999.

Stan said, "I find it interesting that people seem less interested in ethical and moral questions in the face of the possibility of hard times."

Actually then, I must be in the minority because I am _more_ interested in the ethical/moral dimensions. I wrote a novel in 1981 (unpublished) primarily as a way for me to think through the ethical issues of survival. I postulated a period of social and economic collapse set in the near future and then tracked the doings of a group of people living in a former meditation retreat center in rural Vermont (where I was living at the time). I wanted to think through how people on a spiritual path might respond under trying, even dangerous, conditions. How they could manage to survive while still acting with compassion and integrity.

If things do get bad then I think a lot of us may be struggling for real with similar issues in the months ahead. Actually, I think people are already struggling with it -- look at all of the discussions about how to handle people coming to the door looking for food, whether or not to publically promote community preparedness, and what to do about self-defense.

I think the answer will lie in finding the middle way between naive goodness and cynical disregard. I think it will be in pragmatically doing what the situation requires but doing it with as much compassion, concern and restraint as posssible. If harsh action is absolutely necessary then it would probably be much better (karmically) if it were taken with genuine regret, sadness and due deliberation than with pleasure. It disturbs me to hear people speaking with glee of the damage they intend to inflict on others if the occassion arises.

I for one would like to not only come through this O.K. but to also feel good about how I handled myself, the situation and the needs of others.

-- dhg (dhgold@pacbell.net), September 03, 1999.

I sense that there is, at some level, the desire to romanticize the modus vivendi of the inner-city ghetto (pardon my latin). Who that has contributed to this thread has experienced the ghetto except vicariously? Yes, I grant that in desperate circumstances arises a capacity for hardship and a resiliency that is lacking in milder climes. The other side of the river is the predatory instinct that one often develops in such severe circumstances. At the same time, in most cases, life is lived or experienced at such a primitive dimension as to seem absent of meaning beyond physical and material pleasures. Perhaps it is in the rare case where individuals are able to escape the inner-city and reflect on their experiences that the above-mentioned capacity and resiliency are practiced, and not merely developed. I resonate with your appreciation for ethical living and identify with your lament for its loss in recent times. Perhaps Y2K is just what the doctor ordered.

-- Razsn Robinsun (robinsun@netscape.net), November 11, 1999.