Friday, December 21, 2012
Thoughts on Newtown- Sandy Hook
With the recent horrific mass murder at an elementary school in Newtown, CT, Americans are wondering just what exactly IS going on in our country, hoping that this latest tragedy is not a mere preliminary apex of a horrible trend that could get even worse. Well, I certainly cannot identify precisely what is going on, but I can certainly point out some existing conditions, in no particular order, that create a climate where these events are more likely to occur.
There's a devaluation of life, both in the celebration of the hunting of innocent animals for "sport" and in the legalization of the murder of the unborn.
There's the NRA, an organization that has bastardized the Second Amendment to the extent of allowing the general public access to high-powered, rapid-firing weapons.
There are pro-Choice advocates, who defend a woman's "right-to-choose," some of whom even bemoan occasions when the number of abortions trend downward.
We have a culture of extremism, where video games, various forms of entertainment (music, movies, TV, porn), sports, etc are becoming more violent, more graphic, more sexual, and more permissive under the guise of Free Speech (AKA-making a buck) for a unsatiated nation eager for an even more intense level of absolute crap. (A point I cannot resist making, although it does not really fit into the theme of this blog: notice how conservatives who attack 1st Amendment Free Speech rights and liberals who attack the 2nd Amendment state how the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen the weaponry or the forms of mass media that would be invented when drafting the U.S. Constitution but point to the Fathers' wisdom when the amendment validates their interests?)
It's a culture that values our worth based on being "somebody," with fatuous definitions of what it truly means, as a philosophical friend asks, to be good and to be happy.
It's a culture which demonstrates with increasing frequency that the line between celebrity and notoriety gets weaker and weaker, and that pathways to fame require not superior skill honed by hard work or by making a positive contribution to the greater good of society, but through boorish, stupid, and/or extreme behavior.
It's the deemphasis of the sense of us as a united nation, of community, and of patriotism, a trend that began in the late 1960's, and accelerated rapidly by the Internet, social media, and political extremism. We are now encouraged to highlight what makes us "unique" at the expense of what binds us together, at least until a tragedy such as 9/11 or Newtown "reminds" us that, hey, we are all in this thing.
It's the deemphasis of God in society. Whether those who believe God is as real as Kris Kringle care to admit it or not, learning about Jesus Christ's teachings and the Ten Commandments serves as a wonderful exemplar of thinking morally. Empathy and the Golden Rule are also exemplars.
It's many not being taught to think of each individual as someone who has value, who's capable of love, with feelings and goals and dreams and families who they love and who love them (and how sad it is if they do not have this)- instead converted nowadays to faceless casualities of the collaterial damage of war and faceless statistics of laid-off workers of the collateral damage of a heartless, out-of-whack economy based on what your stock is worth.
It's the decline of the family, it's living in a country that LOVES its guns (the recent Black Friday period saw 283,000+ guns sold, a record for Black Fridays), it's where a large portion of the population believes the solution to preventing violence is more guns, despite the statistics showing that guns are a mere solution to violence (note difference), it's, it's,...it seems as if, instead of attempting to find THE reason why extreme events such as Newtown occur, I decided to use the tragedy as an excuse to list some gripes. However, when extreme events occur, they seem to occur mostly in our increasingly extreme country, and when I read the solution of many for preventing further Newtowns is to arm school personnel, I know not a damned thing has been learned.
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I agree with you on many points, although I think that your issue with abortion is actually that abortions implicitly places an individual’s freedom (read: hedonism) above a potential life, and that in turn helps one devalue the life of others. And the devaluation of life is certainly the central issue; we live in a country where a majority of its citizens (or perhaps I should say the corporations that basically run our lives) place products and money ahead of people while playing upon the myth of the individual’s worth. [It’s really quite ingenious when you think about it.] The NRA and their constituents are a perfect example of that. They have placed their “right” to guns above the general citizenry predicated upon the myth that individuals are more important than society, which is in fact as it should be, for .01% of the population. If gun owners want to rely upon a 200 year old document for the right to bear arms, perhaps those arms should be 200 years old as well. (Interestingly, how one can say the Founding Father’s couldn’t have foreseen our current situation AND maintain that you still have the right to modern guns and not laugh is laughable.)
ReplyDeleteI do not agree that a de-emphasis on God is really a key point, as many agnostics and/or atheists would probably tell you their morality is derived from or is perfectly in line with Humanist principles, which share many features with theistic morality but without a deity. I would actually argue that in some quarter, there is too much of an emphasis upon God, which immediately shuts down any conversation on matters of importance.
I might also add that this appears to be the first mass shooting tragedy in which we did not, as a country, feel like we “we are all in this together.” Any sense of community and patriotism that once bound us has been shuffled aside in favor of the afore mentioned individual, who of course is special because they are unique, like the rest of whatever group they belong to. The fact that there is no more community was recently highlighted this week by a Libertarian blogger here http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/17/there-s-little-we-can-do-to-prevent-another-massacre.html who argues that since what happened is too complex to figure out that it’s not even worth trying. Wow. It appears we are not even jaded anymore; some of us simply don’t care which really, is just asking for more.
I, too, was a bit jaded about the Sandy Hook incident at first, but the more I think about it, the less acceptable it becomes, especially in light of both the Left and the Right’s reaction. But I suppose even Rome fell. It appears The United States will be joining them soon enough.
I appreciate your well thought-out response, and here are some of my reactions:
ReplyDelete* One day, I will delineate in a blog my thoughts on abortion, some of which I have already divulged to you. For the purpose of my blog's theme, I just want to re-emphasize that, yes, pregnancy means that a life has been created and that (to me, anyway) ultimately irrelevant arguments are served up by the pro-Choicers to rationalize what is, essentially, a practical decision to eliminate an inconvenience.
*Your line "playing upon the myth of the individual's worth" is spot-on. Bravo! To which I would add, "playing upon the myth of the American's worth." My blog did not include the destruction of the environment in the name of "jobs" (read: profits) because I had to streamline myself somewhat, but the non-discussion of environmental issues in the last election, despite the encroaching dangers of Global Warming, ultimately indicates that we are being told that, no, our overuse of natural resources is not our fault and, no, we should not be forced to undergo any inconveniences in the name of saving our planet, to which we contribue BY FAR the most damage.
*Not sure if I agree with your "200 year-old document" idea. The premise behind the 2nd Amendment, as I recall, was the right to bear arms to be able to revolt against a government should it become tyrannical, and there's a tenuous logic in having more sophisticated weaponry to keep up. However, this hypothetical tyrannical government will always have SUCH a more powerful arsenal than the populace that such a rationalization for owning high-powered weaponry becomes superfluous.
*One argument I did not bring up was the notion that, shucks, mass murders like this just did not happen "back in the day." Is it because America really has become more extreme, or is it only because the people now have easier access to more high-powered weaponry, and that we always had this "potential"? Food for thought.
*I also did not bring up the indiscriminate bombing our country conducts.
*Regarding your predictable take on the deemphasis of God, I said "(an) exemplar", not "the exemplar," and I mentioned other underemphasized moral exemplars. Again, for the purposes of streamlining, I did not include how identifying oneself as a Christian insulates many from one's own faults and from objective self-analysis, among other things, which I'm guilty of myself.