Philosophical Issues in the House That We Live

House I Live in directed by Eugene Jarecki is a narrative documentary about the "war on drugs" and the collateral damage that is occurring with the ordinary lives of citizens often serving prison time for minor, drug-related offenses. "Jarecki asserts -- as he sifts through the data, weighs the evidence and checks in with those on both sides of the law -- a war that has led to mass incarcerations characterized by profound racial disparities and that ha he title of the documentary isn't purely metaphoric" (Dargis, 2012).

One of the most effective elements of the film is that Jarecki starts from personal experience: he grew up with a nanny named Ms. Jeter, who was like another mother to him, and he saw how her family overlapped with and how their worlds too became more like a Venn diagram. As Jarecki explains, as the members of Ms. Jeter's family got older, they became saddled with things like poverty, joblessness and crime. Jarecki was surprised at the simple answer this second mother gave him when he asked her what had gone wrong with her family members: she simply replied that it was drugs: Jarecki then uses the constructed rapport between him (as a white man) and his nanny as a child (a black woman) to develop a strong argument about drugs in America, and with it, race and class. As one critic acknowledges, by putting himself in the story, he takes a big rest, particularly the risk of seeming naive, but this risk actually gives the film a truly deeper sound of resonance.

One of the things that the film succeeds in doing is demonstrating how laughable the idea of "The War on Drugs" is as it costs lives, destroys families and essentially acts as a form of racial cleansing in America. "The film credits Richard Nixon with the contemporary beginnings of the charade (Mr. Nixon supposedly first coined the phrase in the media, and then the Reagans drove it home with a vengeance in the 1980s). The film then strategically shows us that nothing has changed since the streets are no safer and the drugs are still prevalent. The money is still spent with reckless abandon" (Beaver, 2012). The film address two important questions: how is it that our society has evolved into one where drugs are needs? The other question is, why is it that historically a pattern persists where an enemy will be pinpointed, and then discredits, with all rights seized and then effort is made to eradicate the rights of this enemy from the planet? The film asserts that "The War on Drugs" is nothing more than a slow Holocaust.

Examination of Philosophical Issues

One of the brilliant most outstanding philosophical issues that persists in the film is the mere title. The mere title suggests the complicity of all citizens in this major issue. Since the film treat "The Waron Drugs" in America as a holocaust, one can't help but recall America's own complicity with the Holocaust during World War Two (at least until the tail end of the war). Furthermore, "The House I Live in" as a song does have history as well for being used or referring to its own form of civil rights activism, so it's a fitting choice all around.

As alluded to in the earlier summary, the two questions that the film addresses are truly profound. The first asks why and how has our society evolved in such a manner that it becomes preferable and necessary that we use drugs? Our world has evolved in such a manner that an altered state of consciousness is seen as relaxing or entertaining or even a necessity in the world today. This is indeed a disturbing question, as the mere question alone points to a loneliness and a disconnect with human emotion and spirituality that has left human beings out searching to find it elsewhere. The fact that drug use persists today in such numbers and the fact that certain drugs are so popular (such as drugs that provide feelings of happiness through a release of dopamine) make disturbing psychological suggestions about the state of our nation and our world. These facts suggests that there is something about the way we live which has made happiness and peace more elusive and unhappiness and injustice more pervasive.