Another massacre
of innocent life took place in the US recently.
The knee-jerk political action is to consider changes to gun control
legislation. Tragic as these events were
I think you are choosing to live in denial if you think gun control is the answer. There have now been many somewhat similar
incidents, usually perpetrated by young or middle-aged men, and ending up with
many dead. While the circumstances of
each have been different it’s a reasonable generalisation to state that none of
the perpetrators were in a particularly happy state of mind when they carried
out these awful acts.
It’s also
reasonable to assume there are probably thousands more people in a very unhappy
state that manage to control their unhappiness and frustration and avoid taking
innocent life in a trail of carnage. Indeed
suicide is a shockingly high cause of death in young men generally. You may need to look a bit deeper than gun
control and challenge the whole structure of society and your present approach
to living if you are going to actually address this issue.
Arguably, the so
called ‘war on terror’ is not an unrelated problem, yes there was a religious
and nationalistic element to the Sept 11 attacks, whereas other shootings have
been more local. However in all cases
you tend to have isolated and marginalised usually young men that think they
are facing a bleak future and so they can either be persuaded or decide
themselves to carry out these acts.
The Universe may
well be deterministic and consequently all these events may have been
unavoidable since the beginning of time.
However the time has now come to change approach and you need to set a
new agenda to be fair and reasonable to every member of society and seek to
ensure everyone who wants to be is accepted and well integrated into your social
groups. You also need to look at sharing
work, wealth and leisure such that everyone gets a reasonable amount of each. While in general free markets help with
linking effort and results there is clear evidence that this is not entirely
working at present. You should look at
introduction of some group decision making software to agree what you think the
best approach to dealing with this is.
Do not be in any doubt this is an issue and it needs to be addressed
now. There are many very clever people
on your planet, however the plain fact remains that the collective result of
all their endeavours is not actually particularly clever. Recognition of this fact is the first step on
the road to fixing it. Other planets
have managed why can’t this one?
