Culture & Society

We Are Better Than Leap Frogs

The Unintended Fallout from the Lack of Seeking Illumination

[Note: Major movie spoilers ahead if you’ve never watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Last King of Scotland and wish to remain in movie-plot-ignorant bliss.]

The Frog Reference

Depending on who you talk to, frogs can be slimy and offensive (perhaps why it is also sometimes used abominably as racist slang), interesting pets, purveyor of hind delicacies, even a pet of a pet! (Who knew frogs were so valuable for tarantulas! I couldn’t help digging a little bit more on frogs and came to this — but I digress!)

It is for the same reason, in cuisine and in nature for which frogs are best characterized by their leap from which we have taken their greatest feature for that, their legs (!), and, with those same limbs, that we’ve created grenouille dishes as well as memorable games such as Frogger, an old arcade classic that requires you to leap to safety across lanes of street and river traffic, and Leap Frog, a children’s game of collective sequential vaulting akin to this very amphibian creature. ‘Leaping’ is precisely the attribute we take to describe the metaphoric main action of human progression of thoughts: ‘Leaping or jumping to a conclusion’.

The word ‘leap’ implies a kind of far reach, a full extension with explosive propulsion, the kind in which the goal is to clear a wide distance or gap and anything in-between is immaterial in so far as it doesn’t keep us from sticking our landing or reaching our conclusion.

Leaping To Conclusions

Haven’t we all been guilty at some point of reaching foregone conclusions too prematurely or detrimentally to be recovered? (The devastating aftermath In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, when Luke Skywalker fails as a teacher and presumes Ben Solo has already turned dark which gives direct rise to Kylo Ren, comes to mind. Sure, sometimes it is relatively harmless, like mere movie plot points, or more like personal preferences, such as avoiding family gatherings with ‘always-drunk’ Uncle Geoffrey in Bridget Jones’s Diary).

But this mental power we have in making far-reaching judgments without all the facts or due diligence is the same basis, when applied in greater crises, from which catholic racism becomes rampant and wars ignite. The US closed its borders to predominantly Muslims in 2017 arising from the Syrian refugees crisis and after 9/11 when many Americans must have misjudged between Sik turbans and the Arab Keffiyeh and beyond, xenophobic killings against American-Indians ensued, and historically, major American wars which began on a falsity were sold to the public, deceitfully, to endorse war action unquestionably.

When we don’t fully understand motives, intention or advice, or about certain people’s behaviors, or about subjects, and we don’t care to take the time to learn more about them from all points of view, including from professional experts and trustworthy sources, and instead psychologically assassinate the matter without another pause for alternative possibility, that’s when it can really matter and truly be a matter of life or death, not just literally, but of existence and extinction, ultimate rejection or acceptance of ideas, beliefs, solutions, understanding, and appreciation of anything different from our hard-wired thinking and from what we have not yet completely discerned.

Many times it can seem harmless to come to a final deduction so quickly about people or situations when it comes to something like socializing with ill-favored extended family members, but the biggest consequence is when we stop listening to each other, to opposing or different views, our mutual gradual apathy can lead to hard-lined opinions, shaping our every action, reaction, and ultimate unwillingness to engage, grossly distrusting of one another, and the ever presumption that we are always right.

Recent ‘Leaps’ with Fatal Results

This is exactly, of course, what would happen if we disregarded factual science during this COVID-19 pandemic: impulsively inject ourselves with cleaning chemicals, ingest hydroxychloroquine, or rebuff social distancing measures, which each of these would have lethal consequences for ourselves and/or for others.

When it comes to social issues, and I am guilty as anyone, there is sometimes the risky attitude, roughly characterized by our cultural mentality, of ‘keeping things status quo’ or ‘live and let live’. A situation can be complex or overwhelming, and, not knowing how else to address it nor wanting to deal with it, this can become a regrettable resorted-to living principle. There is an urban saying for parents who want to teach their children how to think for themselves and argue, ‘If everyone jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge, does that mean you should too?’

It was discouraging to read recent news of poor presumptive behaviors of citizens or police forces that resulted in an unnecessary killings or overly brutal injuries.

The Georgia murder case of Ahmaud Arbery is especially disturbing because it’s apparently racially influenced whose defendants assumed the victim’s guilt without any tangible evidence but based purely on their own fears and personal judgments of the victim’s outfit and behavior of which they didn’t understand.

The messy Kentucky case of the killed 26 year old EMT technician who was shot 8 times as a result of what appears to be a fumbled police drug raid which came out with wrongful suspects and no drugs.

The Missouri case of the mother and son at a Sam’s Club also again illustrates the profound effects of unfortunate assumptions that allegedly because the duo’s TV appliance purchase, among so many other items, did not fit into their car, the son asked the store to allow him to pick up the already paid TV later, which upon coming back to do so was apparently met by a different employee than who knew of the arrangement and thereby gave the public the impression that the customer was stealing the TV, and such was the intense situation, that the mother and son then felt compelled, for fear they would be mistaken as thieves, to just return the bought TV for a refund, which could clear their names presumably. But this was unfortunately too late, before a police force brutally arrested them, severely injuring them in the process.

Film References with Dire Consequences

What do these say to us? Perhaps, Black language and conduct is grandly mistaken as belligerent. On the other hand, remember those scenes in The Last King of Scotland when James McAvoy’s character, Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, himself a foreigner and by his own mistaken reading of the situation, foolishly suggests to Dictator Amin of Uganda that Jonah Wasswa, the appointed minister of the Government of Health for Amin’s new government, played by Stephen Rwangyezi, simply looked suspicious having drinks with another foreigner, which on the contrary based on British intelligence was a humble meeting to improve Uganda’s healthcare position in acquiring needed antibiotics. Dr. Garrigan’s character was subsequently directly responsible for the minister’s murder as Dictator Amin insanely feared any disloyalty. Additionally, it was Dr. Garrigan’s outright rejection of British friendship during his employment in Uganda that was largely the cause of his own ultimate reputational and hierarchical downfall and the encumbrance of his narrow escape for his life.

Sure, there are many people doing good and asking the hard questions. In 2019, take the successful white businessman in San Francisco who selflessly welcomed a homeless black couple into his home to get them off the streets, and it is an ever evolving relationship and a learning process from it.

But even from this good deed, and fictitious plots in movies, the one major flaw when confronted with an unknown subject or people or situation seems to be the lack of dialogue or conversation about the subject and/or with the necessary parties. Neighbors of the businessman in San Francisco didn’t appear to speak to the homeless couple before calling the police on them for just being seen in their neighborhood, and the businessman-homeowner finally had meaningful conversations directly with the homeless couple months later to understand from their point of view what their challenges were in not being able to easily take on a job while living in his home; Luke Skywalker didn’t talk with Ben Solo to work out his dark feelings to help lead him away from temptation of the Dark Force before immediately skipping to his personal determination to just exterminate him; Dr. Garrigan didn’t speak to the Ugandan health minister, Wasswa, at all nor consulted with, as he had not befriended, the British diplomat, Nigel Stone, played by Simon McBurney, before naïvely suggesting Wasswa’s guilt to the corrupt dictator, and thereby, not only irresponsibly indirectly had Wasswa murdered by Ugandan leader Amin, but also facilitated his own near demise as a consequence.

Last Thoughts

There are indeed repercussions and ripple effects to what we believe, question, or assume. Rather, we can keep educating ourselves, ask more questions, ask the ‘why’, look deeper, and more importantly discuss and participate in conversations with each other about the uncomfortable questions to appreciate opposing points of views. Sometimes, with such mutually respectful dialogue, clarification, brainstorming, better ideas, consensus or even kinship can be forged to solve the greater issues together at hand.

In a long line of jumping over each other just because everyone else is doing the same thing through the frenzy of phobias, ignorance, and indifference, we can refuse to do the same because we are better than just leap frogs.

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