A Climate of Angst

Another week, another multiple homicide. This time again, it is at a school. Gunman opens fire on a crowded lecture hall full of geology students at Northern Illinois. Five dead. Candlelight services. Makeshift memorials. The brief outcry for more gun control. The standard NRA response: "well, if the teachers were packing, this wouldn't have happened." Things will die down for a little while, then we'll get to do it all again. We are getting to know the drill.

According to some articles I've read, there is a growing tendency towards resignation. People are just starting to accept that there is nothing that can be done to make this kind of thing go away, so they just start watching over their shoulders and look for it to happen at any time and in any place.

Everybody has their own theories about what there is to blame. You see, we are a nation of fixers. We want to single out the cause of a problem and fix it. What I think is happening is a realization that the cause of this problem may not be any one thing, but a combination of a number of things. It's not the violence in video games and movies, it's not the economy, it's not the complexity of life in our society, it is not the fatigue of being mired in an unpopular war. It's all of these things combined with many others I didn't mention. They swirl around and create individuals who act out of perceived desperation.

It seems that every generation thinks they have had it worse than every other. I remember having conversations with my mother about how incredibly complex and stressful life is getting. She would say oh, this is nothing. We had the Great Depression to get through. You want to talk about having it rough. Well, I would still like to nominate the here and now as being pretty darned nasty.

It is the incredible amount of complexity that modern life holds. Here in this information age, we seem to hold all said information very dear. Yet, so much of what we receive is contradictory, misleading, or downright deceptive. We live in a society that is bloated, laced with red tape, and choking on its own success. We now have the ability to be lied to at the speed of light. Look at the past several elections--nearly statistical dead heats. It is as if we have resorted as a nation to flipping a coin; since everything looks too similar to make a distinction. Gone is the possibility of a landslide victory in anything, because everything is the same.

It also seems that everyone has at least one thing in their life that weighs heavily upon them on a daily basis. It may be taxes, it may be job (in)security, looming house foreclosure, bankruptcy, child support, divorce, bad grades, or whatever. Our nation has been invaded by 800 pound gorillas, and it is causing its sons and daughters to turn on each other in random, desperate acts. I believe that this has been how all the great empires have fallen throughout history. Not by direct and massive invasion from without, but from the thousands of tiny invasions and decays from within.

My mom did make a concession once not long before she passed away. She and I were watching the news on TV, and she said she was afraid for me and for the future that would be mine and not hers. She was concerned for where the country was heading, and she felt she had to apologize to me for it. I remember that weighed heavily on me at the time, and to this day it haunts me. I fear we must find our hearts, else all is lost.