It took everything in my power to not think about what happened last week in Aurora. To do so would remind me of that April weekend in 1999 — the weekend after the Columbine shootings — quaking with fear and apprehension for my nephew who was in his first year of high school in northern California. His was a high school similar to the one in Colorado where the unthinkable took place: two young men planned and executed a mass shooting, killing themselves after killing eleven of their fellow students, two of their teachers, and wounding 21 others.
Aurora reminded me of how vulnerable we were in those days after Columbine. For my nephew going to a public high school and for his younger sister who would follow him soon after, they were now living in a world where this can happen.
I felt as though after everything we’ve done to make this world a better place for them, that we had somehow failed them. In the new reality of dealing with the unthinkable, you learn that even the fear of losing someone so deeply close to you is an emptying of the heart. How much worse is it when it actually happens?
Why haven’t we looked at the Aurora tragedy deeper than the usual ‘lone shooter; mentally unstable; random, senseless act’. Nothing done to curtail sales of weapons. Polite expression of regret but firmly adamant position from the NRA that they are not willing to back down. What have we learned? Twelve years since the Columbine event, 25 mass-killings (including Aurora) have happened. Here in America we have come to expect that this is a part of what happens when ‘life happens’. Columbine was the first and biggest breach of our expectations for ‘normal life’ in small town America where people go to live to be safe from the violence of the cities. It has not been the same since.
It is a new normal, fearing that one day soon an unexpected, unexplainable act of violence could take any one of us down anywhere and at any time. No matter how safe, how serene. Aurora is now another name of a town notched, with the names of other towns, campuses and malls alongside it, on a dark leather gun belt. It is part of our cultural conversation. The part that says we live in a dangerous world from which we need to do everything possible to stay safe. So, what do we do? We arm ourselves. We look to faster, bigger, badder weapons to make sure no one and nothing will get to us. And nobody, nobody, will take those guns away from us.
In 21st century America, our guns are not for safety. In America, they ARE safety. The killing machine is our security, and the conversations that have flowed from the events of last week in Aurora have reached the dam that, since Columbine, cannot be broken through. Not yet.
Not when individuals feel so powerless against forces larger than themselves that they need to ‘one-up’ with a semi-automatic weapon and 6,000 bullets. Not when we’ve been attacked by bigger forces in unspeakable acts perpetrated to create an even more fearful society than existed in those days of Columbine: perpetuating war abroad, creating even more terror of more random violence for others on an international scale. We’ve arrived at the place where we have updated Leviticus, taking the bible of Dirty Harry global: the cause (the weapon) is the cure. And we’re stuck.
Even after the events of Aurora, we’re stuck on the issue of gun control and no politician during this election year is going to go up against the NRA. Strike election year and replace with every year: our lawmakers fear the National Rifle Association worse than the meltdown of a local nuclear reactor. Let’s face it, given the way the second amendment of the Constitution has been broadly interpreted (or misinterpreted) over the years, people of all political stripes own guns, and no amount of legal restriction is going to stop guns from being purchased or used. Not now. So there will be no movement from government here or elsewhere.
But that is really not the point of this rant. The soul of our community and our country has accepted habitual violence and the ritualized, legalized culture of fear built in reaction to it. This fear is enabled by industries profiting from it, and it causes people to imagine that the only thing we can do in response to this dangerous world is to arm against it. That needs to be healed.
These days, I find myself hungry to engage in a conversation on the Aurora tragedy that doesn’t end with a feeling of resignation that this is the way things are and will be, at least not on the level of our hearts and souls. We need new verbs to create a different path, jumping off the cyclical one we’ve been following. We need new nouns to name what has happened to us so that we know where it comes from, what to do and how to stop it from happening to others. We need to alter the structure of our conversation and the stories that keep coming up about people and situations that find resolution through violence — which is not the answer to our social and economic problems, but a reaction.
Our hearts are capable of being bigger than this. I believe it will be our hearts and souls that will end the culture of fear. In the wake of the Aurora tragedy, can we imagine what a new cultural conversation would sound like, look like? I don’t have any answers yet, and I welcome your thoughts on this in your comments below.
charle:
I remember the DC sniper incidents very well. You shared the sense of shell-shock we’ve been exposed to over the decade. Thank you for choosing to recall, for sharing your story with us. Maybe we all can use this as a starting place to put the pieces together.
I did not want or choose to read all that is here on the horrific and sad incident in Colorado, but felt compelled to do so. Thank you all for everything you shared about your feelings, insight, and compassion to those whose lives were not only touched, but directly involved.
This brings back all that I felt and experienced while living in the WDC, Northern Virginia area – many years ago – for weeks on end it was terrifying to try to get gas for one’s auto, as an unknown sniper kept killing people at the gas pumps – one less than a mile from where I lived – and then when that was over, 9-11 came upon us, my windows shook as one plane crashed and blew up all the heliocopters a couple of miles from my home, people ran thru the streets screaming and police were everywhere. There was no where to go.
Why do I reiterate these scenes? Because I will never forget all the wars and devastation I have seen in my lifetime.
What can we do? Meditate, pray, and ask for the conciousness of these people,( who plan and perform these acts), to be raised, for the highest good of all. Ask that our leaders become more aware and that their consciousness be raised for the good of all. Ask for THE MOST BENEVOLENT OUTCOME. Ask that our planet be healed. ………….WE CAN DO THIS…..ONE BY ONE
My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones and those who are suffering from this and all other traumas of a like kind.
Many blessings to all……….charle
Fe, you tell it like it is, so well. You and your voice are irreplaceable.
Thank you.
@mystes: :>)
+_+
PansWood,
thank you for your words.
Here in Denver/Aurora/Colorado, the gun conversation is far from my thoughts. It’s not what we’re dealing with here; it’s the physical, earthly reality of what has actually happened, which hit me hard that Friday morning when I heard a request on the radio for blood donations. Yesterday I heard about the person who’s job it was to finally tell the mother (shot in the throat, possibly paralyzed, who’s been in and out of a coma) that her 6 yr old daughter was dead. With my own family visiting from out of town I put off looking at the paper on Saturday and Sunday, then thought the better of it. What if I knew one of the victims? How terrifying. We are become a community of mourners. All the flags at half mast, ever a reminder. Like Columbine, soon everyone will know someone who knew someone who was there. As do I. No one I knew, but one was a friend of my friend.
Wish there was a like button here. Deep bow to all.
Patty,
I so agree with your method about violent games and violent entertainment, even though my nephew and niece go watch these films. But they have also been raised to respect life and are very aware people. Maybe they are not as affected because they learned through both parents (mother is a teacher, father is a computer geek and musician) about the value of family and life.
I think the violence in our culture — arts and music — is most dangerous when it is consumed by minds not allowed to express, by people who cannot express what they feel or who are afraid of what they feel for whatever reason. And who are isolated by that inability to express. This creates loners who need approval and attention — as was the case of Columbine, and another cycle of lose-lose that leads to more loss.
Come to think of it, there is now a whole industry of anti-bullying seminars in the school district where I work. In the SF Bay Area, its not hard to find alot of kids coming out and alot of fearful, violent bullies waiting to go after them. I am relieved it is happening, though I wish the seminars would rag some parents into the same room. That generation who missed out on this information may need follow-up attention as well.
Dear Greenstar,
There is a *reason* children incarnate with certain (kinds of) parents. You know this, right? Though it seems as though the Death-mongers are prevailing, I beseech you to tread lightly in the cave of your mourning.
Our —especially our children are first and foremost people who have slipped into certain family zones because the tribal behavior matches their innate propensities. Ex: I have a wicked temper, and used it to no small effect for 80+ years in the lifetime just before this one. I took the 20-year vacation between lifetimes, then incarnated into a family that demonstrated vividly the long-term, generational effects of anger. Since my 40s I’ve been working with a mentor whose primary talent is to reintegrate the energy that becomes distorted through the anger band.
Now looking back over the Records, the fury that accompanied me is pretty understandable, but still had to be built-up before it could be reintegrated. I was never a perpetrator of cruelty, but I wanted to zoom in close enough to see how it was *matched* internally by its victims… and therein lay the seed what you *can* do next. (This leads to a long, somewhat metaphysical discussion that will no doubt trigger the gong up in francisville).
The short form is understand this: there has been a worldwave of violent behavior for some 3 millennium now. The burnoff is speeding up to incredible velocities, and it behooves (that’s a joke, son) to understand that some of the ‘victims’ were just, hours ago, sitting in their mansions, sucking on an oxygentube and giving the order to burn another 100 hectares of rain forest.
Have compassion for all of it, but do not doubt Justice. She rules.
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Green-Star Gazer:
While reading your comment, I found myself slapping my hand on the table, crying and calling out. We all have the same feeling of horrific exasperation over how far we’ve gone off the rails. This is, as you, and Eric, and all of us have expressed elsewhere in other topics here on this blog and in our communities — worship of death enthralls us. I think we worship it because we’re so afraid of it.
Look at all our other cultural expressions — especially the ones used in business: ‘going in for the kill’, ‘obliterate the competition’, ‘winning at all costs’, and even the no holds barred ‘we-don’t give-a-shit-about-the-rest-of-the-economy — AS LONG AS I HAVE MINE, everyone else can eat shit and die’.
The cultural conversation is about more than just words. It’s our cultural and social mindset. This merry-go-round we’re on is really a mad centrifuge where those who survive the relentless accelerated spinning after everyone else has been thrown off end up owning the whole damn wheel and all the toys.
I don’t know what to do either, but we present ourselves with the problem being so vast when maybe we can start looking at manageable chunks in our personal circles. We have tools of communication that go viral. It may need to begin with the gentlest of touch with each other. Watching the victims of the Aurora shooting forgive the shooter is a profound lesson of love-in-action. I pray their words and actions grow louder inside all of us.
I attended an NRA convention several years ago, with our living history group (1880s). We were set up between the Thompson Machine Gun company and an expeditionary outfitters group that sponsored hunts starting at around 5,000. I’d never seen or felt such power in my life, as movers and shakers of the world walked through and ordered a fortune in products. It’s definitely about commerce, but seems like more than that. If I could put a name on it, I’d call it satanic – the lure of power over life (hate), not life-giving power (love), which is what Jesus taught, or tried to teach (my perspective is always going to be Christian). I believe the market area is open free to the public and it’s well worth a look, but leave the teenagers at home. In fact, if I had youngsters at home, I’d banish all video games. Our children weren’t allowed to watch violence on TV or in movies when they were growing up, and they seem quite stable. We now have a couple of generations of those who have grown up with violent entertainment, and THAT is a problem. Even the music is violent. My husband always said that a lot of the boys in Viet Nam were killed because they couldn’t pull the trigger. Our generation was not raised to kill, but the weapons industry of which Lyndon Johnson was a part, forced it on us.
Dear Greenstar, I really feel for you. I’m so sorry about your niece. I really recommend the film I mentioned (see link below), it doesn’t answer your questions directly, but it is a hymn to the strength and resourcefulness of women, and how to deal with violence through working as a community, and refusing to be beaten by it. Maybe as your niece grows older she’ll learn to find her own way through, and she’ll have you by her side to help her.
Dear Fe and Everyone, (warning, long rant ahead)
I will join you in this need to have a conversation about the Death Spiral we seem to be weaving for ourselves. This whole thing is hitting me personally but from a sideways angle. I have a niece that I am (was?) very close to, astrologically and emotionally. She is an early teenager and an early Aries but with a chart full of oppositions. I was horrified when I heard that she was going to see the Hunger Games movie….that she had read the books- without either parent knowing what the book was about. (When did children killing children for a kind of sport become OK?) Now she’s got her own real gun (given to her by her father – also an Aries) and she’s taken up killing small animals. This breaks my heart in ways I cannot even begin to put words around.
This child used to be devastated when we’d run over a frog in the road….or a bug went splat on the windshield….and now she is doling out Death herself to small, innocent creatures that her father has convinced her are “vermin”. They have killed so many of these “vermin” and buried them around the yard that the property literally stinks of Death….and the father and the daughter think all this is just great. He beams with pride at his tough little girl…she beams with pride that her Daddy is so pleased with her prowess… and all of this is coming on right when she is beginning to have her moon cycles. I see so clearly how the broken male in this story, afraid of the growing , natural power of the Feminine is using the seductive power of Death and violence to cover over his own lack of power. It is all twisted and corrupt and it is a microcosm fractal of a macrocosm mess.
To me this whole issue is WAY bigger than guns. It is the ultimate crystallization of our worship of Death over the worship of Life. I see this so clearly in my niece’s seduction to the dark side….that the wounded male, so cut off from his own abilities to feel much of anything anymore (culturally and literally) is unable to grasp how destructive his worship of Death has become. We have Death cults everywhere now, especially in the media from every angle you care to look. Everywhere the message is put onto the children by adults who are themselves no longer connected to Life in a meaningful way: the world is bad, it is full of “vermin”, it’s OK to kill….in video games, in music, in the way we treat one another, in the movies, in business – oh yes- especially in business, in print….killing is not only OK, it is admired….it is a show of strength, it is held up as the Ultimate triumph of the competition model….kill everything else and be the last one standing, then you are powerful…and others will fear you. This is the myth that our culture (and other cultures across this globe) have adopted and have promoted as what is “real”, as what “Life is all about” and it extends not only to our fellow humans but to the entire friggin planet and it is a total and complete lie. We have to “grok” it that we are all colluding in its continual perpetration because we’ve been staying comfortably asleep for so very long, and because we’ve all agreed in this experiment called “Patriarchy” But the verdict is now in and it is painfully clear, this thing we thought was so great…this worship of the Power of Death…it is killing us, in every way imaginable.
It breaks my heart and soul to see my niece get taken into this nightmare. I have done everything I could to provide a counterweight to this toxic way of living….not to “save” her….heaven’s no, no one can do that….but, to give her the awareness that she does have a choice in where to put her heart….and sadly, the toxic, seductive destructive, out-of-balance Yang energies that are so strong in this world of Fear, now, today have been seducing her more and more and she is slipping away. And so it goes with all of us…. we are loosing our ability to honour and cherish Life because we are seduced by the illusory powers that Death promises us. We wage war on ourselves, our neighbors, our spouses, our families, our children, our planet because we have all decided to agree that Death must be more powerful than Life. Life is weak, fragile….too vulnerable….too under-powered to survive against the awesome, hideous Power that Death can wield….so we worship Death because we believe that IT is the ultimate winner, when all is said and done.
I think too that sex is bound up in this worship of Death. I know that this forum is a place where healthy sexuality is promoted, and I agree that this is much healing is needed today and that what constitutes healthy beliefs and practises around sexuality are changing now, some for the better- really and truly. However, the way our culture USES sex in the media and in all the ways that assault our senses, is very much like the way an addict “uses”. This addiction is part of the cult of Death worship because to be so overly exposed to toxic messages about sex inevitably numbs our ability to FEEL what it is to be loving and vulnerable and soft with ourselves, with one another and with Life in all its forms. After all, both sex and Death are parked in the same part of our collective’s cosmic “sky”, in the land of the Scorpion. This is no accident. The worship of Death, violence and dysfunctional sex are all bound together with our unhealed sense of Self. We no longer value Life, so how can we value ourselves anymore? How can we possibly save our world, or the future for the children if we continue to worship Death as the ultimate winner in the collective dream/fantasy/nightmare that has us convinced that competition is the only way to survive…..and if ultimately our opponent is Death, and we worship it, then indeed we loose it all…our Souls, the children, the future and the planet.
Perhaps, this string of incidents, from 9-11, thru the horrendous wars in the Middle East, from Columbine, thru Virginia Tech, and Norway and now, back to Colorado (to say nothing of Fukushima, Libya, Syria and the great drought of 2012)….maybe the purpose of all these dramas is to ultimately bring us around so that we stop worshiping Death and start upholding Life….start embracing Life (and I’m not talking Roe v. Wade here, but LIFE as in the Feminine power to bestow form and give Spirit a vessel/vehicle to inhabit , in a vast and complex web of co-operation interdependent mystery) ….in our own hearts and in our communities and in the way we conduct our commerce. We have to get over the competitor/dominator model where there is only a winner and the rest are losers, because in that model, Death is the Ultimate and only winner and we will be the losers. We must stop worshiping Death…stop “buying” Death, stop supporting Death and stop trying to survive Fear. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to help my niece see that killing animals is not the way to feel powerful….I don’t see how this can be done when this culture that surrounds her/us seems OK with its own destruction. I don’t know how to do this anymore.
I so recommend this film, to anyone who hasn’t seen it, Where do we go now? – directed by a Lebanese woman, about a remote Lebanese village, wracked by violence, whose women hatch a plan to put a stop to the violence and get rid of all the weapons in the village. It’s a sad, funny, life-affirming film. I first saw it at the cinema some months ago when it came out, and watched it again on DVD last weekend. I wanted my friends to see it, but I only realise now just how (unconsciously) pertinent my choice was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBGuk2lfZdc
“This fear is enabled by industries profiting from it, and it causes people to imagine that the only thing we can do in response to this dangerous world is to arm against it. That needs to be healed.” Thank you for this wonderful piece, Fe. It expresses so much how I feel that I felt comforted as I read it. Was thinking, also after reading Len’s great comment, about how war, fear, violence, keep certain people very rich, how arms traffic is a huge business – and that, as always, money and power run the show.
Len:
Beautiful and so well said.
Fe, Thank you for beginning the 6,001st conversation at PW.
Len, thank you for your insightful, passionate add-on to Fe’s new beginning.
Fe: Thank you. It’s a rare warm day here in Seattle and your words brought chills. Chills because, as with you, young people i care for are at risk. Chills because you really did start the conversation, like Kant did, with undeniable observations and irrefutable reasoning. The United States has always had a proliferation of small arms. When hunting was necessary for survival, it was understandable. When civilian state citizen militias actually existed, it was to be expected. Now, however, the vast majority of gun purchases represent an express intent to kill another human being. As much as that intent may be denied by those living in frontier fantasy or suppressed by ludicrous claims of “exercising freedom” or “defense”, there is no other reason for the gun-toting majority who do not hunt, are not adequately trained in firearm use, and rarely exercise the freedom to even vote. A verbal threat to kill can still bring legal sanction, but expressing the same intent by purchasing a weapon is somehow okay because those who profit from the domestic arms trade want to protect profits and investments by encouraging flaccid reasons to own their product. Commerce over life. It happened with automobiles, tobacco, and alcohol as the merchants of same have encouraged us to indulge fantasy and imagine freedom while callously ignoring the cost in human life. How can we be surprised that guns would be any different? More dangerous, yes, but no different.
6,001.
Here we go.