Sleepy & Hollow
This was originally the reply to a social media post about school shooting origins...
I never understood why we can't see the correlation between distance and school shootings. Not just the proverbial, but the social travel distance between folks.
You run across people who decide they're going to speak in gunpowder instead of being frustrated anymore. It never used to be like that. Especially where I grew up.
I remember people having gun racks in the trucks, right there, in the parking lot at school. But, that wasn't an issue because everybody knew everybody. We all said hello and we all had our good and bad vibes with each other. Even so, everybody didn't have to feel like they were special.
Entitlement is a popular word of the day... There's a theory- maybe that's it? Hell, I've known Harry Chapin's song "Sniper" nearly my entire life. There's even a lot of early evidence that the initial school shootings had a common theme of Stephen King's "Rage" and nearly all of the lockers or reading material of the perpetrator. Could it some book or song explains it?
Canada knows, and they don't put shooters in the media, because that make folks notorious and somewhat romanticizes the notoriety of violence. This is a way to circumvent the system. It's like OnlyFans with a firing pin.
All you have to do is get your hands on a weapon and you can become instantly noticeable. Unforgettable. You're acknowledged. Which is something that is a common theme all the way around.
Back in the old days when there weren't too many of us, when we weren't so tribal. When we didn't have so many lines drawn in the sand between us... You know when you weren't too good to wave to everybody and say hello and shake their hand; When you could name everybody in your class and you gave them all a valentine; You at least knew a little bit of something about each and every person.
Now it's about privacy, secrecy, and being special. Well, when you exclude someone, even just one person, you run the risk of that person being unwilling to accept silence. They will not endure the fate of anonymity.
Because people who have a social network, and I mean the physical protection of a safety net - those people have security. Not like white privileged / whatever condemnable nonsense language that vilifies protection, but the sort of confidence inside that it's going to be okay.
However, the doom and gloom atmosphere- that is one of many realities out there... That is the soil in the garden of evil. It's folks who are up to their neck and they're not going to drown alone. They reach up and drag someone, or maybe many others, down with them. We see that in the violence. Rarely is anyone killing their neighbors, friends, the social caste below them.
There is a point in aiming up. What they really
need is to be acknowledged. Sure, the world would benefit if we'd all be a lot
less greedy and a lot more understanding.
The debates about racial differences... Pride in your culture and having ethnic roots is wonderful. However, each person is not divided this way. We are collectively known as the human race. Because race signifies species. Notice a person and know they're on our team... Not the sort of divisional thinking that drives violence and animosity.
Because we've drawn lines in the sand and built social walls between one another: we've strangled universal friendship. Even directly. Who are your neighbors? Large numbers of people inhabit compact colonies. Human beings surround us and they're not familiar... So, why should they care...
That's the difference. Why should someone who is extremely frustrated and has a violent way to be acknowledged- care if they are doing harm to what are considered strangers?
Forrest Gump bridged the gap for so many shades of
Americana... He just acknowledged everyone. It's that simple? Yes.
That's the solution. Make it so we ain't strangers- no more. Say hello; wave to people; open the door. You don't have to cut your paycheck in half, but you don't have to kick people while they're down. Don't be discourteous.
Do not walk on by as if they are invisible. Even stray bullets have real consequences. Seeking laws to protect people who do not acknowledge one another. Protection from your neighbors that we've allow to publicly be put into solitary confinement...
Take away what so many have labeled mental health issues and
their fantasy, by treating everyone like a real person.
