Whose Fault?

I’m working on another post, a much lighter, happier and fun post than this one. This one is important though, I think.

Yesterday, a man walked into a university auditorium and began shooting. He killed at least five others, wounded many more, and then killed himself. It was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy. Each time I hear of such events I am, of course, saddened for the victims and their families, even saddened that society and human nature is such that these kinds of things occur. I stop when I hear of such events and pray for the victims and their families.

Then there is this other side of me, the side that empathizes with the person who became so [insert strong emotion of your choice here] that he (yes, generally it’s a male so I’ll use the male pronoun here but please understand I do not mean to exclude females here) resorted to drastic action to make a drastic statement. As a society, do we not run roughshod over people’s feelings much too often? Do we not tell people to “buck up” and “deal with it” when there is injustice in the world? Do we not basically go around expecting that life to a certain degree is going to suck? And why the hell is that okay with us? Every so often one of us loses control, been beaten down just enough, kicked in the gut once too often, and goes on a rampage. Should society not wake up and learn something from these incidents? Oh sure, we learn to lock down, lock out, lock up, but do we learn anything about treating everyone with fairness, honesty, and justice in everything we do so that people wouldn’t feel so disenfranchised that they feel the need to utilize such violent means of getting our attention?

It is so very much easier for us to sit back and smugly point the finger at how off balance such people are who would do such horrible things than for us to look at how we may have contributed to the problem. Do we go about our day to day lives grabbing for everything we can get for ourselves without regard for the damage it may cause others? Do we remember to deal with others with compassion in all situations? Do we look out for others or just for ME? Do we hold responsibility when one of our own loses it and strikes out in a socially unacceptable way?

“Buck up.” “Get a grip.” “Deal with it.” Okay, some will buck up, get a grip and deal with it by going out and buying a bunch of ammo and shooting up the joint, and if they lived to answer questions from the victims families I dare say they would give them this advice: “Buck up. Get a grip. Deal with it.”