Mosques and Madness

They're talking about building a mosque just down the road from me.

Being that this country was founded on religious freedom, I have no strong objections to it. I would, of course, like to know first that the mosque was not comprised of radicals who have plans to destroy the infadels. Before you accuse me of shoot first, ask questions later, I just am a little uncertain about the state of Islam these days.

I am not advocating that Islam be banned from our shores. I am not advocating that Islamic citizens be held to a higher level of scrutiny.

I just want some more information. I don't want to come across as paranoid---just practical. Pardon my supicions--I know that most Muslims are law-abiding citizens-- but after the latest rounds of terrorist attacks, I am a little wary.

What concerns me is that of the latest UK bomb plot, all of the Muslim men were highly educated doctors. This flies in the face of the idea that Muslim terrorists are all comprised of disaffected, angry young men with nothing to lose. After watching a news report on CNN, I was informed that Saudi Arabia is breeding a virulent new form of Islam that is intolerant of anything other than itself, with no regard for Western laws. I wonder if the idea of what a terrorist is is itself an evolving concept. I do not wish for America to be a safe haven for Islamic fundamentalism as Britain has become.

I am reminded of just how intolerant a place the Middle East can be. It is no surprise that there is open conflict in that region of the world. Only mosques can exist in Saudi Arabia. There is no concept of a wealth of religious doctrines as exists in the Western world. Complete tolerance, like Democracy, is an idea seemingly foreign to the Middle Eastern mindset. We can argue that Israel is a liberal democracy, yet Israel will not allow Palestinians to co-exist peacefully and live within its borders. This flies in the face of American Democracy, being that American has not severely limited the migration of a people to such a degree as has Israel.

Are all Palestinians terrorists? Certainly not. But it becomes tough in such circumstances to separate friend from foe.

To expand the example further, I am not in support of Saudi Arabia because I know it is not a friend and is envious of what we have in this country. It enjoys our money and our support but I find it to be two-faced as hell.

I wonder if we have another 11 September, that a nuclear conflageration between ourselves and Radical Islam will not be a foregone conclusion. I am not arguing whether it would be right or wrong, I'm just stating what I feel may very well happen.

In Honor of Sicko

One recent visit to the Emergency Room cost $9,000. With insurance it cost $100.

$9,000 for one trip to the Emergency Room? That's totally inexcusable. And now that I don't have insurance anymore, even rudimentary health care isn't an option anymore. Clearly, we have got to have some sort of baseline universal health care and I don't care how many tax breaks we have to roll back.

I'm firmly in support of Mr. Obama in this respect.

Of Which We Often Lose Sight

Somewhere in the midst of high gas prices, a President with record low approval rating, an unpopular war, and massive dissatisfaction with the way our country is being run we lose sight of the bigger, underlying issues.

So let us put on the macro glasses for one fast instant and examine a crucial fact.

It is the year 2007. As of this instant, Planet Earth contains an astonishing 7 billion people. Let me spell it out with all the zeros for the sake of emphasis: 7,000,000,000,000. If that wasn't impressive enough, the rate at which this growth is festooning is exponential. It's off the chart.

In 40 years time we shall have 12 and 1/2 billion people on this Earth--each of us squabbling for an ever-increasing dearth of natural and unrenewable resources. Human beings are notoriously selfish beings just by inclination. I don't mean this in any moral sense, but merely a primevial one. We are programmed by God to care first and foremost about our own self-preservation as well as the self-preservation of our immediate offspring.

Thousands of years ago, people realized this and came up with a construct called religion. Religion was perpetuated as a means of control, yes, but it was also perpetuated as a way to counteract human selfishness.

I digress.

While I agree that this latest Iraq quagmire has led to high energy costs and prices at the pump, what often is not mentioned is that China, Russia, and India have, within a relatively short period of time, rapidly industrialized. Now everyone from Bejing to New Delhi to Moscow wants a car and a television set and an Iphone, and an assortment of consumer goods. They are to blame for high energy costs as well and they will keep energy costs high for the foreseeable future.

The developing world is consuming natural resources at a staggering rate. Countries like India, China, and Russia have begun their own industrial revolutions.

I need not mention to you that we are no longer in an industrial phase of development in the United States. We have transitioned to a service based economy, which puts us in an awkward position of needing other countries' natural resources to drive our selfish desires. Thus, it comes as no surprise to me that we are finding that products from China reaching our shores are not produced with the quality and safety we insist upon in this country.

But I remind you that during our own industrial revolution, during the last half of the 19th Century into the early 20th century, we Americans were guilty of the same sorts of offenses. I remember reading Upton Sinclair's socialist novel The Jungle as a teenager and remarking at how vile and disgusting a practice meat processing was at the turn of the last century. Furthermore, I recall the human and environmental offenses committed at these facilities that would produce open outrage and scandal if they were to occur today.

A popular rhyme of the time read:

Mary had a little lamb

and when she saw it sicken

She shipped it off to Packing-town

And now it's labled "chicken".

There is a theory called transtudio emperii which states that the empires of the world rise and fall with the setting sun. We began in Asia with the Mongols, then came the Greeks, then the vaulted Romans, then we progressed to Europe and the British Empire, and then after World War II America became merely the lastest generation of Empire. Thus, according to this theory, China, India, Russia and the developing nations of the world will be the next empires.

This begs the question: what will we do about this? The burden of this problem falls upon the shoulders of my generation and I hope some enterprising soul will rise to the occasion. We need to understand that whether we believe it or not, we are our brother's keeper and sooner than later we won't be able to deny that fact much longer. Let us resolve to be stewards of the environment. Very shortly what is today someone else's problem will become tomorrow everyone's problem.

Confessions of an Ex-Unitarian Universalist

I have hesitated to post this for quite a while because I do not wish to be thought of as an angry wingnut. God knows there are enough angry wingnuts protesting a variety of causes out of their own sense of bitterness and betrayal.

Indeed, for a time I felt both--but both were inspired by a broken heart. Now as I have progressed through the stages of grief I find myself no long inclined towards Unitarian Universalism.

Two years ago, after the conclusion of a rather tumultuous C*UUYAN con, I was told rather unsubtly that I was wasting my time. These people are the consummate post-modernists and they'll never get it. Out of a combination of stubborness, a trait inherited from my father, as well as idealism, a trait inherited from youth, I persisted.

I feel that this post-modern construct--this philosophy of the disenfranchised that we term Unitarian Universalism is a lost cause. We are, at best, a loose confederation of misfits who have rejected traditional religion. I hasten to even call UUism a faith, a move calculated to both prevent an argument and set forth a point. It has some well-meaning postulates, to be sure, but in spite of the hard work of the well-intentioned, UUism is akin more to a social organization rather than a faith tradition. Even we grinningly blasphemous heathens know where the road to hell is paved.

For years, I took great offense to anyone who dared mention any an all criticism of my chosen crusade, but I have come to the sad conclusion that this is a lost cause. There is too much work to be done and accomplishing it satisfactorily is, I fear, a task akin to untying the Gordian knot.

We rarely agree on much of anything and what we agree on is often not what we hold dear but rather that which we deplore. When Jesus of Nazareth said "love your enemy" he did not mean "love the fact that you have enemies". Too often we are guilty of feeling a compulsion to rail against that which we fear and that which we are not. This has a peculiar way of unifying ourselves together, quite insufficiently. It is my humble opinion that we cannot exist simply as the antithesis of something. We are not anti-matter or negative integers. We know full well what we are not, but when all is said and done, what are we, really?

I see many people who identify themselves as Unitarians first and any other affiliation later. I see many people who limit themselves to friendships and relationships with only other Unitarians. I've seen the suffix UU deliberately adhered to screen names, live journal handles, and above all, senses of identity. It is if we are saying that only other Unitarians are fit for our interest and though we share much in common, this sort of identity is akin to a cult and not to a faith tradition.

After all, in the Christian community, I do not see people who limit themselves to interactions with only other Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and the like. I do not see evidence of this in Buddhism.

However, I do see evidence of this in Islam, Catholicism, Judiasm, Mormonism, Church of God, Penecostal, and other forms of Fundamentalist Christianity.

Doing so is, in my mind, a mistake. There is nothing more Unitarian that the idea of comparative religion. There is nothing more Unitarian than opening ourselves up to the idea that we are all the body of, if not Christ, some interdependent web of which we are all members. Why subdivide ourselves if subdivision is counterproductive?

Furthermore, we leave ourselves easy targets for the butt-end of Garrison Keiler's numerous jokes because we seek a sort of Utopia on earth. Anyone who has lived for some degree of time on earth knows that the constant of humanity is its messiness. It is imperfect; it will be imperfect; it shall be imperfect. Expecting less is expecting the impossible. As Keiler himself put it, Unitarians don't want Rapture, they want closure.

So I ask again, what are we, really? To the best of my knowledge we are comprised of odd, eccentric individuals who have never felt a sense of belonging anywhere. To the best of my knowledge we are a tribe of loners and assorted malcontents. The rates of social dysfunction, mental illness, and personality disorders amongst UUs is exceeding high and this is no great surprise to me.

My other deep criticism is of the way we treat newcomers to our gathering. Rather than surrounding each other with love and attempting to be on our own best behavior (no matter how hypocritical this is in reality), we instead insist all newcomers must prove themselves worthy of our attention. This country club mentality is prevalent in life. I, for one, am looking for a break from it in religious fellowship. Common courtesy, a welcoming attitude towards visitors, and the occasional get-well card in the mail are friendly gestures that are sadly lacking in our little tribe of hyper-individualists. And in this very hyper-individualism we lose sight of the fact that faith groups exist as loving communities rather than as competitive fraternities. If the world is competitive, rough around the edges, and often mean-spirited, then these are the last things I want on Sunday morning.

Surely I am not telling you all anything you are not inundated with from the pulpits of your own home congregation. We have identified the problem well. The question remains: why haven't things changed? Have we opened ourselves up to the possibility that they merely cannot?

I speak only on behalf of myself and speak not out of malice. There are, and let me underscore this--many courageous, idealistic, brilliant souls out there who I know will continue to fight the good fight. I am merely the latest to realize that the quantum leap UUism needs cannot accomplished because of its formulation. It is fundamentally flawed and cannot be redeemed by a combination of masterful rhetoric, constant reminders, good intentions, and eloquent prose. If it is to survive as more than a small niche group of often radical leftists, it must take on precepts other than the highly nebulous, highly abstract principles that serve as guilt window dressing full, as Shakespeare noted, of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I feel as though I have hit my head against a brick wall for nine years and accomplished absolutely nothing in the process. To show for my efforts, I have only a broken heart and two nervous breakdowns.

I believed once--I honestly did. But those days are through and I have found solace in Christianity. When we detached ourselves from that great religion we did a grave disservice to all of us who bear the chalice. When we detached ourselves from concrete realities (yes, even dogmas) only to leave behind the flimsiest of abstract principles we began to wither away to nothingness.

Read this as only my heartfelt opinion. In true Unitarian fashion I seek only to state how I feel, not convert or change minds.

I recognize I am not the first person to come to this conclusion, nor will I be the last. For those of you who will, in your own way, carry on the crusade, I wish you luck though I feel that at some point in the future you too may reach the same impasse that I have.

In love and peace,

Comrade Kevin.

On Suffering

I'm sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I've been ailing and have recovered enough to set these words down onto the keyboard.

It has been my nature to suffer throughout my life and I try to accept the Buddhist tenet that without suffering there is no growth. I've always been a questioning soul. But I've drifted more towards Christianity during my illness.

I've decided to help build up a new church. We only meet once a month now, which isn't really the way I'd like it to be. I need more, but I'm willing to be patient. I feel that God has tested me--tested my patience, because as I like to say, patience is a virtue and I don't have it.

I feel that my energy is best spent building anew. The roots of the church are Methodist, but the general spirit could be described as progressive and post-Christian, particularly with its emphasis that church ought to be about evolution of purpose rather than stagnation.

I've visited a lot of churches in the past several months and I have witnessed several that are dying from within. Without a strong youth and young adult program, churches are withering away. Whether they recognize it or not is a matter of debate.

UUs have "Mind the Gap" in place to remedy this situation, but I really question whether it's working. Church membership all over the place is shrinking and it seems as though this society has evolved to the point that people only return to church when they are experiencing some crisis in their lives, or they're trying to fill this void within themselves. This is not to say that such motivations are bad, but I really regret that we have drifted away from this idea that the church was for life and not for need. Various people have addressed that concept in a variety of ways.

Need is not a bad reason to belong, but it shouldn't be the end all, be all. The worst relationships I've been in, interpersonally, have been when I've been trying to plug the gap in someone else. When I've been privy to someone else's ulterior motive, I've never felt satisfied. I suppose I'm just looking for a loving community of people who will step outside their hyper-individualistic selves long enough to love and have compassion for their fellow being.

I've never found that in UU circles. Instead I've found a bunch of fellow seekers, who've felt out of sorts and end up belonging together because they feel as though they don't fit in anywhere else. The emphasis was on the I, not on the we. Some months ago I went through a financial crunch in my life and solicited the current minister for some work to make ends meet--not a handout. His immediate impulse was to think I was some slick panhandler. We don't do that here were the first words out of his mouth.

I can tolerate and expect that from the rest of the world, but I don't need it in my church community.

Someone Else's War

We can add a new list of atrocities to the Iraq War.

I just finished watching a documentary entitled Someone Else's War.

In addition to outsourcing torture, we have also outsourced manual labor jobs for the US military. These jobs have been filtered through a convoluted system of military contractors and subcontractors, all of which fall under the responsibility of a company you may be familiar with--Halliburton.

Poor migrant workers, primarily from India and the Philippines have forced into essentially indentured servitude, providing basic services like housekeeping and food service for American troops. These are tantamount to slave labor: wages on which no American could survive. They've been promised grand sums of money such as $1000 American dollars for their efforts, but, in fact, forced to pawn off their few possessions to raise the money merely to be employed. The military's grunt work is done primarily by these migrant workers who live in hastily constructed shanty-towns that no civilized person would consider neither sanitary nor humane.

I've always wondered how we could fight this ill-fated war with such a relatively light tax burden and now I understand why. Halliburton has acted like every other American corporation--outsourcing jobs it can have performed much cheaper elsewhere. Yet, through a convoluted system of network, Halliburton itself can claim to not be accountable for the actions of its subsidiaries.

Halliburton's self-serving promotional commercials feature a parade of actors, all of whom are American. The company thus tries to justify its existence, directly denying that it is neglecting to hire American workers. The reality is that of the 40,000 workers Halliburton employs in Iraq, only 20% are American.

This sort of trickery is further emphasized by the way in which a Philippine man was told he was going to be sent to work in Kuwait. Then, after he arrived in Kuwait, he was told he was going to work in Iraq, instead.

If this happened to ordinary American citizens, there would be a public outcry surrounding the proceedings but since this happens to the poorest of the poor, no one bats an eyelash.

Within the framework of the documentary is a direct accusation of the minimal amount of tax we pay, while whining and bitching about it, while the rest of the world bears a much higher tax burden than we do. It may be human nature to complain about taxation. Rest assured, I pay around 30% of my wages in tax but at what cost?

It also begs the question. How are jobs evolving in this country? As more and more corporations realize the cost benefits in outsourcing jobs overseas, where they are obligated to pay only a fraction of the wages to employ Americans and certainly without being obligated to provide basic health services---what jobs will be left for Americans?


For more information: Someone Else's War.

Thanks Be

To Cee Jay, who nominated me for a Thinking Blog Award.

I seem to be out of profundities at the moment, but life has been slow here in the Chrestomathy. Don't worry. I'll be full of fire at something soon.

Dearth

I seem to be out of opinions for once in my life.

I mean, how many different ways can you say

• We need to be out of Iraq
• President Bush is a moron
• We really really need to be Iraq

Don't worry. It's just a slow time in the lefty blogosphere and with your humble narrator for right now. All will pick up soon.

The World According to John McCain

Yes Sir, no Sir
Where do I go Sir
What do I do Sir
What do I say
Yes Sir, no Sir

Where do I go Sir
What do I do Sir
How do I behave
Yes Sir, no Sir
Permission to speak Sir
Permission to breathe Sir
What do I say, how do I behave, what do I say

So you think that you've got ambition
Stop your dreaming and your idle wishing
You're outside and there ain't no admission
To our play

Pack up your ambition in your old kit bag
Soon you'll be happy with a packet of fags
Chest out stomach in

Do what I say, do what I say
Yes right away
Yes Sir, no Sir
Where do I go Sir
What do I do Sir
What do I say
Yes Sir, no Sir

Permission to speak Sir
Permission to breathe Sir
What do I say, how do I behave, what do I say
Doesn't matter who you are

You're there and there you are
Everything Is in its place
Authority must be maintained
And then we know exactly where we are

Let them feel that they're important to the cause
But let them know that they are fighting for their homes
Just be sure that they're contributing their all
Give the scum a gun and make the bugger fight
And be sure to have deserters shot on sight
If he dies we'll send a medal to his wife

Yes Sir, no Sir
Please let me die Sir
I think this life is affecting my brain
Yes Sir, no Sir
Three bags full Sir
What do I do Sir, what do I say
What do I say, how do I behave, what do I say

History Repeats Itself

I've been recently reading Barbara W. Tuchman's book The Guns of August, which in great detail mentions the frantic month of orders, counter-orders, and downright lunacy which characterized the start of World War I.

I used to believe that those in power pandered only to their overarching interests, like say for instance, the military-industrial-complex but I'm beginning to understand how individual personalities shape a war. The Kaiser of Germany's inflexibility, both in his character and in his war plan directly lead to the defeat of Germany in the First Battle of the Marne.

It never ceases to amaze me the ways in which human folly, ego, and petty rivalries, tied together in one neat package become the undoing of humanity over and over again. The successes of World War I were successes in deed only, and the the winner ended up with the person who made the least mistakes or at least the least mistakes at the least critical time.

I don't know how much more I can write about this Iraq quandary. I just see examples through history that prove what short term memories human beings have. We get so preoccupied with our own lives that we fail to see when the wool has been pulled over our eyes yet again.

Poem

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of their guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid fire
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

-Wilfred Owen

Why I Don't Like Slam

A score or so
of decidedly
hackneyed

morality plays
life lessons
divorces
jail sentences

each speaker
legends in
their own minds

all churned out
to the same metronomic
beat

that seems to
suffice for
dramatic emphasis.

am
I missing
the point?

When Catastrophy Strikes

Everytime I learn about some new means by which the Patriot Act has wormed its way into our every day lives, I think about this passage.

Everytime I think about the means of control by which the inevitable tragdies such as Blacksburg and Columbine, I fear for the means by which our human rights will be controlled under the guise of protection.

O'Brien smiled faintly. ‘You are no metaphysician, Winston,’ he said. ‘Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?’
‘No.’
‘Then where does the past exist, if at all?’
‘In records. It is written down.’
‘In records. And—?’
‘In the mind. In human memories.’
‘In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?’
‘But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ‘It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’
O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

-George Orwell, 1984

Is Unitarian Universalism a Cult?

No, but it certainly resembles a social organization more than it does an actual faith tradition.

Those who comprise its ranks have rejected traditional Christianity, usually, as a result of feeling out-of-sorts and disenfranchised. Thus, its ranks are often full of people with low self-esteem.

Those who comprise its ranks are often loners. Thus, it's difficult to find a lot of commonality between membership.

It's also difficult to network between individual congregations as each congregation has its own dynamic. I've found that, despite my disagreements with Traditional Christianity--at least Traditional Christianity has more of a communal mindset than a hyper-individual mindset. If I missed a service in the Non-Denominational Christian church I attended, I received a card wondering where I've been. In every Unitarian church I have attended, I have received no word at all from others.

I wonder if removing the Christianity from our faith tradition has done us more harm than good. We have so much work to do and all I end up doing is beating my head against a brick wall. Existentialist philosophy, which is what Unitarianism has defined itself is, only creates a fortress mentality with a bunch of fellow lost souls all desperately seeking to find common purpose with a bunch of other seekers.

Every Unitarian church is a blue oasis of souls who feel as though the only people who can understand them are them. Ask any Unitarian what pulls us all together and you'll be greeted a variety of answers, most of which are I'm not quite sure. I just didn't feel as though I belonged anywhere else. Unitarian churches tend to be a hodgepodge of people with issues.

Many of us have identified the problems, but I wonder without any sort of coherent faith doctrines besides some nebulous principles and statements of faith if we will ever accomplish our goal. Unitarian churches are hotbeds for activism and statements of overt political banter but should that really be the focus of any church? If we're a social organization, then let's call a spade a spade.

I attended a church where the circle of lights was hijacked for every two-bit activists' personal grievance.

I attended a church where I was summarily asked to take a leave of absence for six months, while my harasser was allowed to attend--this because she had been a member longer than I and had given more money to the church. Aren't churches places of inclusion rather than exclusion.

And I don't think I need to point out how suspicious we are out of outsiders. It is as if we have to prove that they are worthy of our attention before we acknowledge them as one of us. This stems from our own inherent insecurity. But I think we must formulate a coherent doctrine and stray from our fear of creedal requirements and dogma.

This may be my own personal experience, but I have found that Unitarians are groundless without faith doctrine. The more I question Unitarianism, the less I find it appealing, and the more I find it alienating.

My Experience

The inevitable comparison has been made between the Virginia Tech shootings and Columbine.

I graduated high school the year Columbine occured. The obligatory copycat threat was made by our classes' resident bad boy, which only stirred up an already frightened administration and student body. The threat proved bogus, as I suspected. He was summarily expelled.

They did take the precaution of making us walk through metal detectors and I unzipped my cheaply made black robe to ensure that I wasn't carrying a concealed weapon. I suppose it made everyone feel safer.

Catastrophes like this happen and people search for answers. Again, I hope that no one makes a hasty, knee-jerk reaction that will only make things worse in the end. There is some sort of poision that I notice in my own generation--some kind of hate. I speculate it is that we have been exposed to so many images at so young an age. We've grown up with violent acts on television and in assorted media. We've been aware of sex at younger and younger ages.

Can we distinguish properly between fantasy and reality at such young ages?

Can the human mind truly process these things correctly? Is their some virtue to innocence? Studies have shown that the human brain does not finish developing until the early twenties and yet we are exposed to more images in a day than our grandparents and great-great parents experienced in a lifetime.

Take a look at television, for example. Notice that the pace of television has picked up considerably over the years. Instead of slow framing of shots and gradual pacing, we're subjected to jump cuts, rapid fire editing, and constant stimulation. No wonder our attention spans are not where they need to be. Has our technology evolved faster than we are capable of responding to it?

I pose only questions and I have no answers to them. I wish I did.

Maxim of the Day

One day, Roger came home from work very upset.

"I can't go on!" he cried, to anyone who would listen.

"I can't go on! I can't go on!"

The next day was Thursday. Roger woke up, put his pants on, and went to work.

Processing the Virgina Tech Shootings

Over the next several days, columnists, bloggers, and talking heads alike will be pointing fingers towards causes of random acts of mass violence.

We want to know why. The usual suspects will be cited: environmental factors such as impurities in food, pollution, a hyper-violent society, particularly on television and on video games. Some will delve into the psyche of a killer: want to know whether these accusations of molestation were true or were, in fact, the rambling of a deranged psychotic.

I have to say that I slightly disagree with the majority of my lefty bloggers. This is not to say that I think gun control isn't an important issues, just that it's a facet of a larger problem that we in society have yet to confront. This country has had a history of violence, no matter how we've tried to obscure it in fantasy and mythology.

We fought for our independence. We fought and killed off a race of indigenous peoples. We fought and enslaved another race of people instead. We fought between North and South. We fought for land and conquest and money many times over.

I've been watching D.W. Griffith's silent masterpiece, Broken Blossoms. The plot is inconsequential to this post, but one inter-title struck me. It mentioned how the older Asian religions had long since shunned overt violence, but the Western Anglo-Saxons were brutish figures, violent and aggressive--apparently born that way.

How ironic, then, that the native shooter is a native of the seemingly non-violent Orient: talk about irony.

I do mirror some of the comments made by fellow bloggers. We must confront an epidemic of mental illness that runs rampant in this society and raise more money to find its cause and treatment. We must remove the veil of shame that, despite having been muted over the years, still stigmatizes those who suffer. We must forgive the killer for his evil actions, knowing how troubled he must have been. It is the least we can do.

Massacres and The State of Things

Here's what concerns me most about the Virgina Tech shootings. (I hasten to call it a massacre. It was no more a massacre than the Boston Massacre. I try to avoid hyperbole in all forms).

In Iraq, more than 33 innocent people have been killed in car bombings or sectarian violence and it we've become so desensitized to it that no one thinks twice. Any time any human life is lost is tragic and ought to grab our attention. Yet, we are so insulated (we think) in this country that it takes a random act of violence to snag our attention.

What concerns me even more is how we judge chaos by mere body count alone. Had this been 1 or 2 people killed rather than 33, then it would be a one day story, not a three or four day story. If 1 American soldiers dies in Iraq, we scarcely bat an eyelash. If ten die, then it's somehow newsworthy.

Some talking heads have taken this tragedy to begin talking about gun control again. My own feelings are deeply ambivalent. I doubt the effectiveness of true gun control. It has worked, to some degree in some countries, but ours is a country where people metaphorically laminate the Second Amendment and stick it in their wallets, displaying it in front of strangers like pictures of their children. Violence, particularly gun violence, is so endemic to our society that I doubt anyone would willingly trade in his or her shotgun .

What we ought to question is why we are so violent a society. What we ought to question is what we can really do to ensure that our lives are not taken by the act of madmen. What we ought to question is what about our society causes people to break down into lunatics.

Hatred and Violence

The Virgina Tech shooting reveals a deep scar within this society.

What has caused such anger? What must be done to heal the wounds that go far beyond someone willing to kill 25 + people?

We've always been a violent people but clearly something is making certain people snap. Are they the miner's canary, predicting more violence?

What are the roots of this anger? How do we stop it?

The answer lies in love, not in hate. That's one of the oldest cliches in the book, but it applies to this situation.

My Thoughts Exactly