In terms of the 'state of mankind' - it is, but statistically, it's no different than 40 years ago. The bigger tragedy is that 15,000 people die every year, not from mass shootings, but single-victim homicides - and no one seems to notice.
I have two grown children, but even though my 25 year old son could kick my ass, they are both still small vulnerable innocents in my subconscious. My heart broke when I heard this story. In fact, I woke up so sad this morning. But then I thought of the 'casual' violence perpetrated every day by our country as a whole - the drone strikes that kill innocent women and children - scores, HUNDREDS killed by remote operators in snug places in Nevada, unable to hear the screams, smell the blood and excrement - violence in the name of peace. In the name of a 'culture of life' - it is pervasive. It is everywhere - terrorists, lone lunatics, massive countries with huge militaries, like ours, the largest arms dealer on earth, often selling to both sides in a conflict.
I got to thinking of all of this, and all of the photos of seen of Iraqi, Afghani, Palestinian children, blown to bits with our weaponry. We are all complicit. We are all part of a culture pervaded with violence.
I do not know why a crazy person would want to destroy all those innocents instead of just killing themselves. it beggars belief.
But the institutional violence we all pay taxes for, the violence done in our name daily, in far away lands, to 'foreign' children - it haunts me more, because we all accept it as necessary, as if war is ever moral. It is not.
And I think of all the individual murders that take place in this country. I think of the fact that there are more places to buy guns in the USA alone than all the Starbucks coffee houses in the world, and I think - there is something very wrong here. I own guns. I hunt with a bow and a rifle. But the American veneration of guns, of violence, our Hollywood culture of Rambos and The Replacements and all of the other juvenile shoot-em-ups cheapens and coarsens us spiritually. Yes, I like action movies too - but that doesn't meant they don't pollute the soul - I think they do.
I pray for the parents, the siblings, the aunt and uncles and cousins and friends of all the dead in Ct., and around the world.
Einstein said something like this: We need to evolve empathetically as highly as we have technically, or we are doomed as a species. But we do not tech empathy, non-violence, or conflict resolution and mediation in our schools. We teach mostly competition. Until we can feel the tragedy of the afghani farmer's dead daughter, killed in one of our daily airstrikes a keenly as we can those children in CT, we will be severely limited spiritually. We are all connected. But we are born that way, and then we progressively forget. The 'other' becomes an abstraction - but these people, around the world, are not abstractions. They love their children as we do, and hope for their future as we do. Someday, God/Godess willing, we will learn this as a species.
