Awful Things

In the wake of the recent shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, a co-worker observed that: "Mental health is an awful thing, and worse when you have a gun."

I offered instead that a culture that views violence as a viable response to problems (personal, sociopolitical or public order) is an awful thing and worse when mental health issues are added to the mix. (I've seen enough of what people can do with machetes to understand that guns are not needed.)

When violence against "the enemy" is seen as strong and heroic while refraining from violence is often seen as weakness, people are going to turn to violence and be motivated to see their targets (even their neighbors) as deserving of what happens to them. And when people are only motivated to see the perpetrators of violence as people a) whose politics they disagree with or b) can be written off as "crazy," it undermines the collective will to advance the social mores that would reduce violence, because everyone can tell themselves that since they're neither evil, stupid or crazy, they're not part of the problem.

And perhaps this is the root of the problem; it's too easy for any given individual to believe that they don't have a direct one-on-one role to play. Advocating for new legislation or regulations is easy. Opposing them is perhaps even easier. But being a part of a deliberate social change is hard, especially when the stakes are high.