This post is prompted by yesterday's (12-14-12) massacre of 20 elementary school children and 6 adults in Sandy Hook, New Town, Connecticut.
I begin by stipulating that I am not an expert, but I think the experts are very wrong in their approach to understanding and responding to this kind of insanity which appears to be growing toward ubiquity of late, especially in the United States.
Ultimately, I am convinced that people who commit these senseless acts of violence do so out of a conviction and feeling of powerlessness. Essentially, the root of these feelings arise from various and sundry perceived “injustices” buried somewhere in the lives of those who erupt into madness. Some of those perceived “injustices” may be legitimate, and some are no doubt absurd misperceptions, but the point is that these people have, at some time in their lives, felt “wrongness,” and have been unable to express those feelings in a way they can feel they've been heard and understood. They feel powerless, alone, and unheard. Ironically, perhaps, it is only because they actually care -- perhaps compulsively, but they do care as opposed to succumbing to apathy -- that they end up going mad.
Sadly, public responses invariably include attempts to further limit power. Clearly, the public wants to prevent such actions, and that's more than reasonable. But making more restrictions -- essentially putting more stops to expression, and belittling feelings of fear and injustice -- is worse than useless; it merely adds to the real root cause of the problem. One common idea is that, if such people didn't have access to guns, they couldn't commit such acts. Sensible. We're not talking about “sport” weapons here. Theae weapons are not good for hunting, and not necessary for target shooting. They are weapons of war, designed to shoot humans, and serve no other purpose.
But, as long as war is waged, or as long as there is threat of such, war weapons will be built, and will be accessible, legally or otherwise. Of course, such weapons have no purpose in the hands of non-warriors, and it seems reasonable to do anything possible to keep them out of non-warrior hands. But taking them out of the hands of those who feel they need them only serves to threaten those people and to leave them with even more fear than they already have. To them. it seems unjust. They are "different." They have done nothing wrong. It seems to me that we have to ask, “Why do people, especially American people, want such weapons in the first place?” What kind of fear would motivate someone to desire such a weapon “under her/his pillow or in her/his nightstand?
I contend that it is fear, legitimate or not, that they might, someday, be threatened, whether by a government, a random insane person, a thief, or any of a dozen other possible sources. In other words, people fear to become powerless; exactly the same problem as lies at the root of the senseless shootings.
I further believe that the only way to resolve the problem is to reduce such fears, real or imagined. Why are so many people so afraid? I could write a litany. Ultimately, individual “reasons” don't matter. I think we need to approach this positively. Fear, and desire for access to weapons, will exist, no matter what. If we want to make inroads to a solution, we need to replace fear with communication -- caring and honest communication, -- responsibility, and accountability. We must become worthy of trust.
We need to actually listen and care when someone reports injustice. We need to practice listening and caring on an individual level with each other. We don't necessarily have to agree with the complainant, but we do need to acknowledge it's real for the one(s) reporting it. We absolutely cannot institutionalize our responsibility, nor can we dismiss it with drugs! That's the problem, or perhaps I should say, it's a root cause of the problem.
We, as individuals, attempt more and more to give responsibility for accounting and justice to institutions. We rely on teachers and schools to “teach” our children proper behavior, for Pete's sake! We insist more and more that problems be “provable” legally before we will deign to pay attention to them. We plead “busy” when someone tries to tell us their problem(s).
Someone tells us something horrid -- horrid in their eyes, at least -- and we simply refuse to hear it. It's “unacceptable,” so we try to deny it, try to justify it, or try to argue it away rather than hearing the pain of the person telling us about it. Certainly, the person may be misperceiving things. Certainly, we listeners may feel impotent to change things even if we believe them, but the point is to hear and care about the feelings of the person talking with us. That person is telling us something that is currently true -- for them -- and that has to matter. Listen first, and care! Earn their trust.
After feelings subside, we may or may not be able to find solutions, but it's a part of caring, and it's vitally important to think about it, to talk about it, and to at least try to find solutions. We must stop ignoring such communication, and we must stop sending the complainant to some faceless institution or other. Such people don't need to be "handled," they need to be heard and inderstood. That, I believe, will reduce the school shooting problem. It will also reduce the desire for and subsequent availability of war weapons. In short, we must become able to trust one another.
Likewise, we must recognize that institutions do not and can not care. There is no such thing as “corporate responsibility!” We must cease trying to give responsibility to institutions, and we must cease blaming them when things go wrong. For instance, BP did not spill oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn't just an anonymous engineering problem, either. People -- individual, responsible people -- were involved and should be held accountable. The New England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass. didn't make drugs that caused fungal meningitis, people at that facility did (not intending to pick on one company in particular; I mean any manufacturer of any faulty product).
Conversely, President Obama didn't cause the Libyan ambassador to be killed recently, though he may or may not have had a role. Neither did Joe Paterno, at Penn State University, allow children be sexually assaulted, though he may or may not have had a role. Responsibility and accountability are difficult to assign -- especially in the face of lies and “corporate spin.” Yet, I contend that lies and spin are at the root of our desire to have war weapons available for use, and, on a “local” level, are at the root of actions like the school shootings.
The current situation is unacceptable! It would be convenient to deny responsibility; to turn it over to the “experts.” We'd like to put it aside, and move on with our lives. Hey! We need to know who's leading in the Steelers-Bengals game, don't we? We've got text messages to answer, right?
But that's exactly the problem. We, each of us, has a role in solving this; a role in making a better world for ourselves and our children. No one of us can solve it on her/his own. No one of us should try to assume it's all her/his personal fault nor her/his personal responsibility to "fix." You can't “save the world,” and neither can I. For that matter, neither can Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed or Obama or Romney or any other individual solve it. We're all in this together, and no matter how good we get at solving things, someone, somewhere will “prove” us inadequate. However, each of us does have responsibility, and each of us can contribute to the solution. Over time, and with a bit of effort, things can change.
Life is sacred! People are important! Listen and care! Take time! Make time! Work for something positive. Adding restriction on top of restriction, negative on top of negative, only makes us all more impotent, and exacerbates the problem. We can make a difference! It takes work, and it takes time.
For the sake of our sanity, forgo a little inconvenience, and make a better world. If it's not important enough to be worth that, then accept the consequences. No amount of Ritalin or Prozac is going to fix things. If we continue to make life into a spectator sport, the human race is doomed. Many have said that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in December of this year. Well, it won't end in cataclysm, but if we refuse to invest time and caring in each other, it will have ended for all intent and purpose.
To those in Connecticut, and to all the others, in the U.S., in Norway, and all nations everywhere, who have lost loved ones to this insanity, my heart goes out to you! I cannot change things done; I can only hear your cries of anger and anguish, but I do hear them, and I care! You matter! Inadequate as it is, I am only one, and it's what I can do. Added to the above, I can only hope it makes a difference in your future lives, and those of all our children, mine included.
