We knew this would happen, this violence that is becoming normal. Really, looking at the long procession that is man's walk from the dark years of our past to this wonderfully civilized society we are building, we should expect this. But we- we grow forgetful. It is only in the last 800 years, exactly, that Europeans gave up the "Might makes right" view of justice.
In 1215 King John of England authored the Magna Carta. Before then, it was really of no consequence if someone killed you, killed your whole village, raped you, subjugated you- reasons didn't really matter, what mattered was that they had a sword and the people they wanted to kill didn't. We had that system for roughly two hundred thousand years before John gave us that first breath of hope for a better future.
We've run ahead of our vision.
That vision warped forward into our future upon the signing of that document. It's like a bow wave of hope that spreads out before us as we sail into what lies before us.
We have this vision, all of us, of a world, no, not world because it won't be long until we step beyond this cradle of a world- of a race that can live without violence. Yes, we do, it's a vision! Some of us love it, others, oh man, they fear it.
They fear it because the violence they can do defines them, it gives them what they can't get through any other means.
Power.
It isn't the power to shape a rock that a patient stone carver owns, no. It is not the power to shape a mind that a poet, a teacher, a parent or hero has.
Nor is it the power to shape our world for the better. I haven't seen the media characterizing any of those people who have killed massive amounts of other people as... yes, intellectuals.
No, no my friends, they aren't the sort of people that would cause you to stop and say with regret "Damn, he could have been useful at NASA or in a research lab finding a cure for cancer!"
And they are aware of that fact too, violence gives them what their other abilities will never bring them, a feeling of competence, of strength. As they kill, knowingly or not, an as yet unknown Einstein or Goethe, Carver or Tesla- they feel as worthy as the genius they are killing.
Their worst nightmare is a world where no one will call them good, proud and brave for killing other people.
Where they will be pariah for killing.
So, we are shocked when our vision hits this wall of reality, aghast where our not too distant ancestors would have been resigned. That in itself is proof of progress.
But we won't make it this century because those people who just have to have weapons and the ability to commit violence, justified or not, they are still being born and we aren't doing a very good job of teaching those newborns a better way.
Debtor's prisons are a thing of the past and infant mortality has come a million light years from where it was when King John penned his Great Charter.
We live better, we eat better, we travel and have access to information at the flick of a finger that would have put the library at Alexandria to shame. Our ancestors would stare slack jawed at how far we've come. At what we've become.
But they would ask us, I'm sure of it, "Why do you still keep killing each other, where is the need?" They, who had death visited upon them by too many people just because they couldn't defend themselves or were of a class without any right to justice, they'd ask us "What the fuck is WRONG with you, our children? Didn't you learn from our lives and suffering? Are you DAFT?"
And yes, yes, we are daft, as a race, I hope we get past it at some point. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, or to put a Teutonic flavor to the whole concept, "Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt!"
So, we knew it would be a long road, that we would not get there fast.
But we forget what we were, where we come from, and we lose sight of how long the road is before us. Our ancestors had a vested interest in reigning in the violent among them. They were dying. Look at us, fourteen dead there, seventeen there. For most of us, it's just an incredibly terrible news report. For those who put our feet on the path to more peace so long ago, it was a visceral and personal experience that happened too damned often!
We'll get there, I believe that firmly, or we'd not have made it to here!
But we have to get set for a hard road, we must be willing to taste and hear, see, feel and be drenched in hate and anger.
Because too many of us don't want a life without violence and hate.
But I do, and I who was a man of violence in my youth, before I matured and garnered a little wisdom, maybe, will not stop trying to reach that goal. I won't let the mass shooter's and those who idolize and support them stop me. They can't, to achieve our common vision, all I have to do, all any of us have to do, is not be what they are.
Am I a pacifist? No, if one of them were trying to shoot me or anyone, I'd be trying to stop them. But I dream that all of our great, great grandchildren can be- pacifists with no need for bullet resistant vests. I don't care how many weapons they have, they cannot make me stop hoping for that or working toward it however I can.
And that is power...
Without a sword or gun.
Be well my friends.
Kelly