Equilibrium and Social Safety
Tzvetan Todorov has a narrative theory of equilibrium/disequilibrium. Very basically, it says that stories begin with a state of balance before being thrown into chaos — either when an event happens that changes the initial state (like when Snow White’s mother dies and her father remarries), or something happens that reveals the initial state to be toxic or oppressive (like how many realised how powerful right-wing rhetoric is when Trump was voted in).
After the narrative conflict is resolved, the world returns to equilibrium, but it is a new, changed one. This makes sense, in stories and real life. People who have genuinely learned and grown would not willingly go back to a harmful start. They are careful to know the difference between nostalgia and regression.
It’s smoky and cold in Chinatown. You’re rugged up in about four layers of jacket and jumper, so you’re warm enough to hover and watch chefs quickly press their fingerprints onto soft white dumplings. As you turn away from the window, a chunk of saliva splatters near your feet. A white man stands a few feet away from you, his hands balled up.
“FUCK OFF, ASIAN,” he booms.
This is Chinatown, you think.
I was supposed to be safe here.
Equilibrium, disequilibrium. Is this default state toxic and oppressive, or is the problem you?
When you try to figure this out, your first thought is that children are clumsy. Their hand-eye coordination sucks, their motor skills are still developing and their bodily proportions aren’t designed for intricate movements. They haven’t learned subtlety or moderation yet, so their motions tend to be in extremes.
Their emotions are like this too. They feel a lot, violently at times, and have no idea how to regulate. Their reactions are commonly disproportionate — too big, confusing, inappropriate, wrong. Children are taught what to do physically (one foot in front of the other, go slowly, don’t look at your feet when you pedal)but emotionally it seems more common to tell them what not to do (don’t shout, don’t cry, don’t sulk, how dare you slam the door?) without giving a recipe of alternative actions. What do you do with messy emotions? What are you supposed to do when you are in pain and your guardian doesn’t help you understand it? What are boundaries? What is unhealthy? Hurtful? Toxic? Why should anyone care about any of this? If clumsy children aren’t helped, they grow into clumsy teenagers and then clumsy adults, doing their best but inevitably crashing into one another, flailing, pushing and hurting, almost always with good intentions, always wondering why their efforts aren’t working. This gets even harder when a child’s emotional and social education isn’t just influenced by parents, but is a result of popular media and toxic cultural narratives.
The above is a nice explantion for why people hurt you sometimes, because it allows you to believe that everyone is not all bad. Everyone has their own fears, goodnesses, things to protect. Everyone thinks they’re on the right side of history. But isn’t this a little too neat? Sure, everyone has their own motivational fears and anxieties, but not all fears are equal. Fearing rejection vs. fear of mutilation, stalking or death, for example — not at all comparable. Thinking about the intentions of people in a given space isn’t enough. We have to also consider all of the balances of power in play — financial, social, racial, physical, etc.
You love Russian Formalism, because it makes stories formulaic and therefore easier to think about. There are 31 narrative functions. 7 character archetypes. There are clear, plain ingredients and predictable patterns. Stories are broken into abstractions, condensed down so you can understand their parts. This is the same reason you’re interested in laws — they make life, and therefore your own choices, predictable by reducing chaos. There are legal and social incentives to do and not do, and these are powerful enough to form a reliable social contract. You will not hurt anyone and in turn, you won’t be hurt. You won’t steal and you won’t be short-changed. If you wait at a pedestrian crossing, you can be confident you won’t be hit by a car.
But here’s the thing: this removal of chaos is convenient but inaccurate. Abstracting stories means important details are missed. Social contracts don’t cover everyone and social incentives shift. Formulas might be useful, but these inputs are so dynamic and ever-changing that the result is just not reliable enough to bet your wellbeing on. People with social power and safety (so, those who are actually covered by their country’s social contract) automatically have that chaos removed for them so they never knew turbulence in the first place, making it easy to be suspicious of the comprehensive suffering of others. In general, they have no reason to fear police or to be worried that someone will think their children are kidnapped minors. Anxieties that are everyday worries for many have never occurred to them, turning their power into an insulating bubble (made even worse by social media) rather than an empowering force for others who need it.
In reality, you might not hurt anyone, but it’s likely you’ll experience well-meaning microaggressions. You won’t steal, but you still won’t be paid the same amount as another for your labour.
So — when Covid hits and anyone who looks even vaguely East Asian is blamed and another white man throws a bottle at you that bounces near your ankles, you are not that surprised.
You know that to navigate space safely, predictability and social code aren’t enough. You need power too.
