Personal life has a way of sneaking up on you. Often in unpleasant ways. Still, upon reading the news on the latest shooting that took place in the US, I felt that I had to write a few lines.
A few lines should be enough. There is little to say when a 20-year old man walks into his mother’s class and kills her and (at least) 25 other people, including 20 children. There is little to think. The very idea is mind-numbing.
So I won’t dwell so much on the tragic event itself, but rather on what it means. What it should tell us.
Tragedies of this kind are not just freak occurrences. Naturally, they will try yet again to blame videogames for this. After all, a young man of 20 years is a prime candidate for the homicidal gamer archetype which the yellowish side of the Press loves to sell whenever it can.
They will also try to blame lack of religious instruction in American schools. You see, God raises a mighty hand and stops bullets in places where His word is taught. Right?
Easy “solutions” are easy to sell and easy to swallow. No videogame ever, no matter how violent, can push a boy to murder little children, let alone his own mother. No religion has managed after thousands of years to end violence. Most of them actually encouraged it with great zeal.
Not even gun laws can be truly blamed. Of course, more restrictions in the sale of firearms would have made such incidents less common, but the gun itself is not responsible for the will that pulls the trigger. And if we truly wish to put an end to senseless violence, we should look for the root cause, and not just trim the branches.
No, there is no easy way out of this one. A mass shooting is always a sign of an ailing mind. And ailing minds is exactly what our wonderfully “advanced” society is mass producing.
Think of what we are being subjected to from our moment of birth, till the moment that we are pushed into the world as “fully functioning” members of society. If the world we witness every day is enough to seriously trouble a mostly sane mind, think of what it does to those that are troubled by nature.
So do not look for your answers and scapegoats in games, gods or guns. Look around you instead and consider what could help ease a troubled mind and what would help push it overboard. You will find that the scale tips decisively on the negative.
And that is what we have to fix.
Indebting Times 