Blood and Sand

Madame,

Well said about the importance of width and breadth in one’s relationships.  Readers would do well to heed your wise words.

That is not the first time I have said that.

It will likely not be the last.

The tragedy in Connecticut has had many words these past few days.  Words that show we, MAYBE, are FAINTLY beginning to make some connections to the similarities and repetitiveness.  Making us look at ourselves, perhaps.

That will be a good thing.

More barriers, more restrictions, more guards, more surveillance, more guns?  I’m not sure that is the answer, especially because it’s not sustainable fiscally, emotionally, or societally.  If a disconnected culture like ours becomes gun-toting every day, most everyone will eventually be a victim, even if people manage the stress, which is doubtful (and as if this culture needed any more stress).

And we already have enough distance in our relationships, enough disconnection in this society.  Ours is a cultural disease, one born of income disparity, yes, but also from what the culture values in reality—or doesn’t.  It isn’t just that someone is 19 times more likely to die in a mass shooting in the US than anywhere else in the industrialized world, it’s also that the chance doesn’t change, but only gets worse.  It might happen once or twice in a developed country elsewhere, but it happens with horrific regularity here.  Not primarily just because we’re bigger, but because we sensationalize things and make copycats want to one up what’s been done previously.  But more to the point, we breed—and discard—growing legions of loners and semi-loners who are either empty inside or feel that there is no place for them, or even that there is no place worth being.

We sew distrust and despair and lay seeds for mental illness and perpetuate too often a culture of violence and other symptoms of societal breakdown.  We might have wide ranges of social media “connections,” but they are often atomizing and fragile.  The local connections are often missing, and life feels too cheap despite our blustering words.  Instead of being our biggest strength, our biggest fear becomes other people. 

We need expansive discussions about all this,  not simplistic ones about guns/no guns.

As a closing thought for this post, I have a question about the tragedy in Connecticut.  Where were the men? And especially, where were the trained men (ex-military and ex-police)?

Food for thought about the gender silo that elementary education in particular has become.  The teaching career has not only become a poor woman’s path of service, but has become over-feminized along the way.

Connecting more dots.