I wrote this letter saturday night. I have been sending it out to news organizations.
I would like to express my profound disgust over your coverage of the Newtown event. In a situation where there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of something there is the inclination to fill the void which is often composed of gibberish and nonsense. However, your reporting on this story as with your reporting on most of your stories demonstrates a lack of understanding of what the point is, what the story is, and where your focus should be. I am not surprised as your reports consistently are superficial and clearly lack any true understanding of the story or its implications.
I am appalled by the focus on the guns which always happens in these events. The justifications for it may be whatever you like, but they are wrong. The guns are incidental and receive an excessive amount of attention. I expect that it is to sell the story on a hot button issue. The guns and gun control are cheap and easy stories in cases such as these. Making lazy and convenient choices is not good journalism and if you believe you are good journalists serving the public good. These are not the options to be choosing.
The community is lost. It is as superficial and fraudulent as all of the cursing and wailing over the Newtown shooting. It is so easy to point fingers and place blame on any easy target after something happens. I would like to know where the understanding, love and action was when it could have stopped this and almost every single one of the previous events from happening? You can demonize a young man who had a lot more going on inside of him than you will ever understand. You can demonize firearms and pass all the laws you want to trick yourselves into believing that you are safe from evil. Or you can change your minds and awareness and reach out to each other. Laws and finger pointing will not do anything to solve the real problem. Reclaiming your humanity and your community for more than seventy-two hours will make a dramatic difference in the occurrence of these incidents as well as solve a myriad of other problems than everyone else finds it so difficult to solve.
The failure in this latest school shooting was not a failure of gun laws. It was a failure of love. There is all of this demonstrative outpouring of emotion now, but what about tomorrow? What about before this happened? Community is so important for so many reasons. There are obvious reasons of communication and affection. Community is about bonding and understanding. It is also about awareness and responsibility. It is about taking care of each other. It is about reaching out to people who need help, especially when they may not know that they need help.
I have lost someone that I have loved. It took me a year before I could think about it without tears, let alone speak about it. I know that pain. For those individuals not directly involved in these events I feel their emotions are selfish, misguided, and misguiding. The expressed sympathy is fraudulent as those feelings are really thoughts of that could have been me. Whenever these things happen I am upset over the displays and behavior that are just gaudy and offensive. There are so many people seeking to paint this and other situations in the simplest of black and white terms. When that starts, there is never any shortage of followers and supporters. Easy answers are everyones favorites. I have already heard the situation referred to as evil visiting Newtown.
There is no such thing as evil. Evil does not exist. Evil is a word people use when they do not want to understand and instead seek to lazily apply a label and forget everything else. This situation was not a matter of evil rising from the darkness. It was not caused by a lack of god in the schools. If christians want to apply labels, then it was a failure of them being good legitimate christians. What failed here first and foremost was community. People use that word but all that I see is selfishness.
To leave a human being alone is torture. To isolate a human is cruelty. Humans are social apes. Without their society, they break down. Humanity in advanced countries are living far from the world they grew up in. When scientists studied chimpanzees in zoos, the scientists were surprised to find that all of them showed some amount of mental illness. All of humanity living away from the world and ways they were born to will exhibit some amounts of mental illness, just like animals at the zoo.
Those outliers in society are just stronger signals. If a signal is hidden by the background static. That doesnt mean that it isnt there. It means that you have to pay more attention and apply more care to understanding what is going on. The signal hidden in the static is from the breakdown of community that is in human/ape nature. Community does not necessarily stop all of those stronger signals from becoming a disturbance to the community. It does reduce the likelihood that a problem will occur. Community is what we are predicated to and the loss of it has placed us in a selfish and irresponsible mindspace. All of the I am not my brothers keeper thought is dangerous and poisonous to humanity. It not only includes situations like this but broader issues of public health and social cohesion. It creates a world where people are isolated and can feel like no one else cares. You have continuous bullying and suicides. You have people applauding the idea of letting other people die because they cannot afford health care. You have people angrily declaring all the time that they refuse to allow their work to contribute to the public well being. So here we are. With a massive loss of community. A massive loss of love, respect, consideration, responsibility, thoughtfulness, and attention.
The whole story on this latest individual has not come to light. However, when you look at past situations it is quite obvious how a lack of community failed those individuals before they picked up their guns. Before they made their plans. Before they ended up on the news. Where was all of this care and attention that we see plastered all over our screens in supposed sympathy for this event when it could have made a difference? Where were these supposed community members when they could have prevented this? For that matter where is the care and action for all of those people who are mentally ill wandering homeless on the streets? Where is the mental health screening and counseling for teenagers? Where is the real guidance and love? Where is the real care? How many children are sitting in their minds in utter hell right now feeling all alone? How many children who will not lash out and become a public disturbance? How many will just kill themselves because they feel hopeless, alone and unloved? How many people died yesterday because they could not eat? How many children died in the United States because they could not eat, or were not allowed medical care? How many in the world die every single day? How many children? How many adults? Where is the action and sympathy for them? Where is the demonstrative outpouring of love that shows everyone else what a good person you are? Where is the love, sympathy and action for all of the slaves? All of the sex slaves that die? All of the women and children that are used up until they die. Where is the grand public attention? What about the non sex slaves used in other countries to subsidize the comfort and luxury of our modern lifestyle? Where are the communities acting as one to solve that problem?
It is easy to dismiss this letter. You can half read it and throw it away. You can say that I do not know what I am talking about. I am not one of your prepackaged experts you use to say the same things over and over again that everyone wants to hear. No one wants to think that they failed and that they did anything wrong. No one wants to accept responsibility for things they see as outside of them. Yet if they did then that would be the one true thing to stop these tragedies and just about every single other human tragedy that happens in this world.
I would like to express my profound disgust over your coverage of the Newtown event. In a situation where there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of something there is the inclination to fill the void which is often composed of gibberish and nonsense. However, your reporting on this story as with your reporting on most of your stories demonstrates a lack of understanding of what the point is, what the story is, and where your focus should be. I am not surprised as your reports consistently are superficial and clearly lack any true understanding of the story or its implications.
I am appalled by the focus on the guns which always happens in these events. The justifications for it may be whatever you like, but they are wrong. The guns are incidental and receive an excessive amount of attention. I expect that it is to sell the story on a hot button issue. The guns and gun control are cheap and easy stories in cases such as these. Making lazy and convenient choices is not good journalism and if you believe you are good journalists serving the public good. These are not the options to be choosing.
The community is lost. It is as superficial and fraudulent as all of the cursing and wailing over the Newtown shooting. It is so easy to point fingers and place blame on any easy target after something happens. I would like to know where the understanding, love and action was when it could have stopped this and almost every single one of the previous events from happening? You can demonize a young man who had a lot more going on inside of him than you will ever understand. You can demonize firearms and pass all the laws you want to trick yourselves into believing that you are safe from evil. Or you can change your minds and awareness and reach out to each other. Laws and finger pointing will not do anything to solve the real problem. Reclaiming your humanity and your community for more than seventy-two hours will make a dramatic difference in the occurrence of these incidents as well as solve a myriad of other problems than everyone else finds it so difficult to solve.
The failure in this latest school shooting was not a failure of gun laws. It was a failure of love. There is all of this demonstrative outpouring of emotion now, but what about tomorrow? What about before this happened? Community is so important for so many reasons. There are obvious reasons of communication and affection. Community is about bonding and understanding. It is also about awareness and responsibility. It is about taking care of each other. It is about reaching out to people who need help, especially when they may not know that they need help.
I have lost someone that I have loved. It took me a year before I could think about it without tears, let alone speak about it. I know that pain. For those individuals not directly involved in these events I feel their emotions are selfish, misguided, and misguiding. The expressed sympathy is fraudulent as those feelings are really thoughts of that could have been me. Whenever these things happen I am upset over the displays and behavior that are just gaudy and offensive. There are so many people seeking to paint this and other situations in the simplest of black and white terms. When that starts, there is never any shortage of followers and supporters. Easy answers are everyones favorites. I have already heard the situation referred to as evil visiting Newtown.
There is no such thing as evil. Evil does not exist. Evil is a word people use when they do not want to understand and instead seek to lazily apply a label and forget everything else. This situation was not a matter of evil rising from the darkness. It was not caused by a lack of god in the schools. If christians want to apply labels, then it was a failure of them being good legitimate christians. What failed here first and foremost was community. People use that word but all that I see is selfishness.
To leave a human being alone is torture. To isolate a human is cruelty. Humans are social apes. Without their society, they break down. Humanity in advanced countries are living far from the world they grew up in. When scientists studied chimpanzees in zoos, the scientists were surprised to find that all of them showed some amount of mental illness. All of humanity living away from the world and ways they were born to will exhibit some amounts of mental illness, just like animals at the zoo.
Those outliers in society are just stronger signals. If a signal is hidden by the background static. That doesnt mean that it isnt there. It means that you have to pay more attention and apply more care to understanding what is going on. The signal hidden in the static is from the breakdown of community that is in human/ape nature. Community does not necessarily stop all of those stronger signals from becoming a disturbance to the community. It does reduce the likelihood that a problem will occur. Community is what we are predicated to and the loss of it has placed us in a selfish and irresponsible mindspace. All of the I am not my brothers keeper thought is dangerous and poisonous to humanity. It not only includes situations like this but broader issues of public health and social cohesion. It creates a world where people are isolated and can feel like no one else cares. You have continuous bullying and suicides. You have people applauding the idea of letting other people die because they cannot afford health care. You have people angrily declaring all the time that they refuse to allow their work to contribute to the public well being. So here we are. With a massive loss of community. A massive loss of love, respect, consideration, responsibility, thoughtfulness, and attention.
The whole story on this latest individual has not come to light. However, when you look at past situations it is quite obvious how a lack of community failed those individuals before they picked up their guns. Before they made their plans. Before they ended up on the news. Where was all of this care and attention that we see plastered all over our screens in supposed sympathy for this event when it could have made a difference? Where were these supposed community members when they could have prevented this? For that matter where is the care and action for all of those people who are mentally ill wandering homeless on the streets? Where is the mental health screening and counseling for teenagers? Where is the real guidance and love? Where is the real care? How many children are sitting in their minds in utter hell right now feeling all alone? How many children who will not lash out and become a public disturbance? How many will just kill themselves because they feel hopeless, alone and unloved? How many people died yesterday because they could not eat? How many children died in the United States because they could not eat, or were not allowed medical care? How many in the world die every single day? How many children? How many adults? Where is the action and sympathy for them? Where is the demonstrative outpouring of love that shows everyone else what a good person you are? Where is the love, sympathy and action for all of the slaves? All of the sex slaves that die? All of the women and children that are used up until they die. Where is the grand public attention? What about the non sex slaves used in other countries to subsidize the comfort and luxury of our modern lifestyle? Where are the communities acting as one to solve that problem?
It is easy to dismiss this letter. You can half read it and throw it away. You can say that I do not know what I am talking about. I am not one of your prepackaged experts you use to say the same things over and over again that everyone wants to hear. No one wants to think that they failed and that they did anything wrong. No one wants to accept responsibility for things they see as outside of them. Yet if they did then that would be the one true thing to stop these tragedies and just about every single other human tragedy that happens in this world.
robotsatemyhair:
*slow clap*