The news yesterday was filled with up-to-the-minute reports about the tragic shooting in Binghamton, New York that ended with 14 people shot to death, including the apparent suicide of the gunman. Certainly, this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened; the list includes 3 senseless “killing sprees” last month alone.
Such actions by those who, for all intents and purposes, look like a regular person, just like our friends, neighbors – just like us – becomes fodder for tabloid speculation. What causes someone to open the door to that secret, inner place that would allow fellow humans to be hated so much that they become expendable things? Just what kind of pain do such actions attempt to assuage?
The truth is that we will never know. There have always been those whom we would define as mentally ill, there have always been those who become addicted to things that alter the brain’s chemistry and allow for the loosening of behavioral regulators. And the truth is that each of us is closer to this kind of “snapping” than we would ever admit.
Despair always plays a large part in the course of human events. For to reach the point of feeling utterly hopeless and unable to alter one’s circumstances can be met with only resignation or anger. I will argue that neither one is, in and of itself, a bad thing. There are times in our lives when we must meet our circumstances with resignation for there are things we cannot change, such as the death of a loved one. There are also times when we must become angry. A deep and righteous anger against tyranny is what founded this country.
In a news conference about the Binghamton shootings, New York Governor David Patterson voiced despair when he said, “When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and so rapid that we can’t even keep track of the incidents?”
The answer, Governor Patterson, is never. As long as there are humans living in groups, in the same way that there will always be prayer in schools as long as there are tests, there will always be sporadic outbreaks of violence. It is the nature of the beast, and as such, something over which we – the collective – really have no control. We must resign ourselves to the fact that we are one with Nature, a part of the circle of life, and subject to the same overriding rule of the survival of the fittest. The only difference between humans and other species is that we have tools that make inflicting deadly harm on one another much easier.
But that doesn’t put the anger of despair out of the picture. It is possible to address the circumstances that breed this kind of tragic action in response to despair, however, anger used simply in retaliation has never worked to solve anything. Knee-jerk reactions like banning guns, banning immigrants, or banning bonuses for that matter, is not the answer for the roots of the problem go much, much deeper, reaching right down into the collective mindset of American society.
It is this mindset that must be addressed but it can only be addressed at the level of the individual. It requires a collective awakening to the loss of basic values then those values must be recouped by individual action. You simply cannot legislate morality, despite the administration’s misguided attempts to do so as evidenced by the recent passing of legislation enhancing the “opportunity for “national service”. Personal goodness and actions consistent with the definitions of morals and ethics in behaviors all begin at home. They are learned from our parents, from our extended families, from our neighbors. They are reinforced by ethical and moral teachers, business owners, and others with whom we interact. Religion plays a part, but the ability to recite chapter and verse from some ancient book is not necessary to know that treating others fairly creates a world that contains more harmony than discord.
Life is all about choices, and I believe that too many people forget that regardless what happens, they always have a choice. We may choose to hand over our power to another person, but we can always make the choice to take it back. There are rules of engagement for everything we do, and though sometimes they may not seem very clear, they are there and we have the ability to learn them and to use them. If we so choose.
I’ve noticed, for whatever it may be worth, that many of the people “snapping” are those who were raised during or after that pendulum swing to “anything goes” that took hold in the late 1960s. Manifestation of the 60s ideologies of equality and sharing were long overdue, to be sure, but in the giddy aftermath of reaching them what can be termed blind liberalism resulted in a generations that have been raised with few, if any, real ethical or moral boundaries. Too much indulgence awarding a shameless materialistic mentality is now manifesting in an entitlement mentality as the reality, the natural law, if you will, that equal opportunity does not guarantee equal results continues to hold sway.
Without a strong moral compass, as it has been lately labeled, without an understanding of what it really means to live freely, we find ourselves staring at these blood-spattered messes, looking for someone to save us from ourselves. There are those, like the President and so many in Congress, who are more than happy to take our individual power and the rights inherent in them and use them for their own purposes. And they are doing just that – enslaving multiple future generations to a life beholden to paying off debts we cannot afford. They are willing to sell off America and her sovereignty to the rest of the world as an apology for the success of the truths upon which this country was founded, willing to extinguish the beacon of the light of Liberty to pacify some false, unnatural belief in entitlement.
This is wrong. No one can save us from ourselves but us. I grant you that the results of our placing our power and our faith in the hands of those who fail to see the beautiful truths contained in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and who refuse to uphold them is cause for despair. But I say that we can no longer afford to indulge in the resignation of despair. We must move to tightly grasp and then to act with the same righteous anger that moved the Founding Fathers to throw off the shackles of European monarchal slavery.
How? We have many choices. We will explore them in Part 2.
Very well written