CHOICES

Self Portrait project by Ethan Hale

Self Portrait

Flash Fiction

Pull The Trigger

It has been a long time since you’ve held it; Grandpa’s rifle. Ever since he passed, you haven’t felt the same; and touching his rifle again feels alien. It is loaded with 25 .22 long rifle casings, it is nothing more than a varmint rifle. The scope is sighted into 100 yards, you are scoped in 4 notches up in your scope for 400 yards. You throw the bolt back to put a casing into the action and throw it forward again to load the casing into the barrel; your finger is ready to pull the trigger. You take a deep breath in and exhale slowly, but you can’t do it. You can’t pull the trigger. Your entire life has led to this moment. From the day you were born you were bred to shoot, you’ve spent thousands of hours at the range earing your bars as a distinguished expert in three calibers. Boy Scouts taught a hard day’s work and how to live off what you have, while fighting kept you alive; you have been bred to be a soldier. However, in this moment you can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger. You look over at the safety glasses laying next to your AR-15, grandpa would kill me for not wearing those, you tell yourself; it is safer to just stick to what you know and wear them. But you know you can see more clearly without the blinding tint of the glasses. Your finger is on the trigger and briefly a picture of her flashes through your head, and a tear rolls down your cheek. It all boils down to a choice in your head: Do you gather the strength to forget about her and pull that trigger? Or do you pull the bolt back, eject the casing and be with her forever? Now that you can see more clearly, you realize that you can never pull the trigger; no matter how badly grandpa would want you to. Now your soul will weigh heavy with the regret of not doing what you were bred to do; but the weight is lighter than if you were to forget about her.

Author's Note

In my picture I incorporated various aspects such as my use of a filter called “antique”. I used this filter to speak about my grandpa who passed away, and he represented an older generation. I also placed the AR-15 in the photo to show how I shoot newer rifles and have a newer outlook on life as to my grandpa had a more traditional and conservative outlook. I placed the safety glasses to use as a metaphor. When I state, “You look over at the safety glasses lying next to your AR-15, grandpa would kill me for not wearing those, you tell yourself; it is safer to just stick to what you know and wear them. But you know you can see more clearly without the blinding tint of the glasses.” I am literally meaning I can shoot better without them, but I also mean that when they are on and fogged up, they act as a lens on my life, that everything I knew was perfect and put in place and I planned on enlisting in the military with no questions asked. However, when I take them off I see that there are so many more aspects to my life that contribute to my decision to leave everything behind or not.

I also set a blur that started clear in the center and gradually got more intense on the outsides. This is meant to represent how I have no true idea of what I want for myself. The big picture is no longer clear and the only thing I am sure of is who I am now (hence why my face is clear) I do not know who I want to be in the future anymore. I am looking down the scope of a rifle in this picture and this is meant to represent how I have my end goals in sight but I am not able to “pull the trigger” and execute my plans. Finally I included my own quote which says “My soul weighs heavy with two choices: the one I will make and the one I will not.” This is meant to show how I have the choice to “pull the trigger” and follow through with my plan to be active duty in the military or my choice to stay home with those I care about and build a comfortable life for myself.

Reflection

The majority of American’s tend to believe that they have little to no bias on any given topic, when in fact almost all of them have what is known as an unconscious bias. They think this because they are afraid that if they are known to have a bias, they think they will not be able to do anything about it or they will be scared of people verbally attacking them for being biased. I personally believe that nearly everyone is guilty of some sort of unconscious bias, and that the majority of it is what is known as conformation bias; or the interpretation of new information to confirm one’s existing beliefs or ideas. People do this because they never take the time to step outside of their comfort zone and actually involve themselves in different communities but rather see things through the news or other media that aids them in their conformation bias. This in turn plants that same unconscious bias deep inside their minds to the point where they aren’t even capable of realizing it.

In the TED Talk “How to Overcome Bias”  Verna Meyers speaks about how we as a society need to work towards breaking our own biases now so that the future generation of  children are able to pick up where we left off in hopes that  one day racial bias and all other bias will become nonexistent. She speaks about how everyone is taught some sort of bias based on the environment they grew up in and that people will only blend with each other by first stepping out of their comfort zones. In the video Verna Meyers is on an airplane when she thinks about the pilot being a woman and that she hopes she is safe with her flying the plane: “I leaned on a bias I didn’t even know I had”  (Meyers).  This is significant because she is describing how she has a bias of woman drivers which being worse, and that she feels more comfortable with a man flying her plane.

In another source, “Why you think you’re right even when you’re wrong” Julia Galef talks about how to have a valid point; you must look at both sides objectively. She goes on to say that it is virtuous to test your own beliefs and gather more information on both sides of the fence. Julia Galef states, “Making good judgement and accurate predictions as well as good decisions is mostly about what mindset you’re in” (Galef). What she means by this is that in order to accurately judge someone or something, you must know them well enough to do so. However with this, we don’t know the majority of people in which we have a bias against. So it is not our place to have a bias against them yet we still do. That being said, we need to once again step out of our comfort zone and break our biases.

I personally believe that we all have an unconscious bias which is most definitely caused by a greater confirmation bias. In class we took a series of implicit association tests (IATs), which allowed me to discover bias I did not even know I had. An example of one such IAT is my result that states, “Your data suggests a slight automatic association for harmless objects with white Americans and weapons with black Americans”. Before this, I honestly believed that I associated weapons with white Americans! However I now know that I need to get out of my comfort zone and break my bias. I guess in my own experience at the gun range I always thought to associate white people with weapons because that was primarily who was there; however the media logically glorifies that 35.3% of gang violence is tied to African Americans, while only 11.5% is tied to white Americans according to a 2011 study of demographics (National Gang Center). I believe these ties my personal experience to show that I myself am part of the majority of Americans who have an unconscious bias and should work on it. In conclusion, we are all guilty of unconscious/confirmation bias and should put ourselves in situations that will allow us to break those same biases.