Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Evil Needs No Why

A sick feeling came over me last week as I watched the initial reports about the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.  A similar wave of nausea I remember having when I watched the second plane hit the second tower back on 9/11.  Each evil incident unique in how it played out, yet both made me feel helpless and useless in the face of the absolute insanity and needless waste of innocent lives.  Only this time I have not tried to understand why.  Evil needs no why.  Evil just needs to figure out how.  And the perfect vessel for Evil is insanity.

I have stopped trying to understand the reasoning, the objectives, the point low life's use initiate such ghastly acts.  I have also stopped trying to find convenient labels that might offer excuses as to why these losers do what they do.  At some point, their reasons mean nothing once they enact their twisted perspectives into real action.  They stop being human and become something else.  Something evil inside a human vessel.  Any shred of humanity is gone once they have drawn down on their targets.  Any hope of saving them from themselves or saving us from them is gone as soon as their insane perspective becomes physical action.  Then it is time to clean up after them.

As a parent myself, I cannot fathom the depths of grief the parents of the 20 children killed are feeling right now.  I feel somewhat guilty that I hope I never do know those depths.  I do understand the need to find something to blame besides the perpetrator.  And because firearms were used, they become the convenient "other evil" in this scenario.  Unfortunately focusing all the attention on guns does nothing to address the core problem.  The core problem of mental illness.  For too long this country has been focused on controlling the tools of violence and not focusing on the user of those tools.  We are a reactive society, not a proactive one.

Maybe in addition to cleaning up some gun issues, maybe our leaders will also give mental illness and the damage it causes the attention it deserves.  We do that even half assed successfully and I imagine it will have a more positive impact than trying to control the stupid number of guns in this country.

This perspective from a mother of another troubled youth.

Later..................................
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Image "The Grief Knot"  from The Hungry Tiger and Wikipedia

5 comments:

Randal Graves said...

Head of nails and such. Look, we're never going to deal with mental illness right -- how many more cases are diagnosed now than say 100, 150 years ago? I don't think one can simply chalk that all up to better psychiatric skillsets. The world's a vastly different place, and meds aren't always a miracle cure, but another way for the pharmaceutical industry to make some extra coin -- but something is better than nothing.

BBC said...

I guess I've lived too long, while things like this bother me I mostly just see them as interesting things that happened during my life.

And Newtown isn't a Norman Rockwell place like the press makes it seem to be. One of their own friends and neighbors owned the guns that did the dirty work.

I'm pretty sure that many in Newtown own guns like they are suddenly against, not that they are going to tell you they have them.

What is that old saying? Oh, yeah, may you live in interesting times.

BBC said...

Didn't pay any attention to the picture of the knot on my first visit, this visit I said, "Hey, that's not a square knot."

MRMacrum said...

Randal Graves - Ultimately I guess, remaining sane enough to continue is about all we can really hope for. The extreme personality disorders that seem to be popping up on a more frequent basis indicate to me that our society as a whole is not that mentally healthy. Whole cultures and societies seem determined to practice mass insanity of one type or another.

BBC - No place is a Norman Rockwell painting. Nor should they be. Life would be pretty damn boring living the idealized and fictional life portrayed in his Saturday Evening Post illustrations. And you are right, the "grief knot" is a granny knot. Not sure why.

BBC said...

I was putting some things off hoping I wouldn't have to do them. Fucking Mayan's.