(Written post El Paso mass shooting pre Ohio mass shooting, without news input other than headlines on another shooting- unedited)
We have learned our way into new norms leading us to be desensitized, dulled down, disillusioned.
Another long line and pat down at the TSA, another cancer, another denigrating, derogatory, divisive act from the most powerful position in the world.
Another mass shooting.
Protective gates and screening machines don’t get to the roots that motivate a want of destruction – that want comes from a primary need to connect, contribute, create, communicate – “I exist”, “I belong”, “I matter”, and will show itself in one way or another – in a work of art or a terrorist’s plot.
This seems now to be like a new ‘cancer’, the proliferation of ‘cells’ that suffocate a sustainable living system. There is no pink ribbon here to honor our affiliation, and all those ribbons dulled us into a complacency to accept somehow that a cancerous breast is a presumed rite of passage, when it should be a rallying cry and metric of a chemical industry seeping into every nook and cranny of our environment, which we consume and consumes us. A billion-dollar industry – cancer and chemicals, but we miss the call.
Will we miss the call in this national and humanistic crisis found in the breakage of our integrity – "the clear line of inner values aligning an outer action toward interdependent differentiated systems"? This breakage is the same as proliferating cells that wipe out life-giving force. A leader that does not link us to the vital need for difference as our survival, is that cancer. Yet each tweet, each ignorance ignited and spread like wild fire limits our ability to breathe – no longer inspired, we take the smoke-filled air to be a typical atmosphere.
Twenty people dead today due to another contorted mind traveling on the speed of a bullet. I read the news and I am struck at how dazedly dull I feel. This is expected news and should not be. I know what next will happen:
The news will feed us every last detail as a diet of distracted entertainment, and like the false energy of caffeine, create a pseudo aliveness, until we become bored, readied, with mouths open, for the next headline. Politicians will jump on another bandwagon to fight the good fight for gun control or protection of gun rights. The shooter most likely will be categorized as affiliated with some radicalized notions or simply ‘mentally ill’. We will hear, ‘our prayers are with you’, ad nauseam.
The cycle continues, yet, 20 more people remain dead, those that love them devastated, we all changed forever.
We have a symptom, what is the root illness?
As we explore, we can clearly state that the one who leads determines whether or not we exacerbate the symptom – violent reactive communication – via gun or tongue, distracting us from addressing underlying causes.
As with any illness we need to enhance and protect the system’s functioning to fortify an ability to fight the ‘organisms’ causing the infection. We can’t continue to inflame or we only contribute to a chronic condition.
This condition correlated to the current infectious contagion in our culture - lives unsupported and actively incapacitated from ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ when we direct each mind’s attention repeatedly in a way that does not protect, but only proliferates an induced physiological threat reaction.
What we have learned we can unlearn.
If we have an original innate human need to be seen, heard, and recognized, how might we contribute to that cause to cultivate healthy integrative minds that make up a society?
Ask what each mind consumes as repeated focus and you will find the shape of a brain shaping behavior.
This is not a politician’s platform to pontificate, this is ours.
To wake up is not to intellectualize a linear conceptual knowledge of the issues, but to know what it means to be human, what causes contribute to the best in us, and how can we protect this natural resource.
