The Tattered Rag We Call Our Social Fabric
December 1, 2015
Here we go again. Another mass shooting incident. And,
also again, here go the usual calls to ban this or that firearm or enact
more hoops to jump through to buy one. I said in a previous article
here that the reason these mass murder events take place is because
violence is taught to society as a solution for any problem. I stand by
that observation. I say it is being proven each time one of these events
takes place.
First of all, the social fabric is coming unraveled. Now, by social fabric, I mean a set of values and morals that guide the society into what is right and what is good. Further to that is a set of taboos that tell a society what is wrong and what is bad. No society on the face of this planet could survive for long without these precepts for behavior. Or, they did not survive for long once these precepts were discarded or annulled or compromised. This walks hand-in-hand with the fact that our society teaches violence as a solution. Why? Because instead of being a taboo, as it once was in the past, senseless violence has now become a positive social value. What? You haven’t noticed that?
Allow me to explain. In the past, violence in entertainment venues was always conducted along certain parameters such as “good guy” and “bad guy”. The “good guy” used only as much violence as was necessary to subdue the “bad guy” and then restrained himself. He did not fly over the city the “bad guy” lived in and carpet bomb the entire population to get that one guy. But now we have seen the rise in the so-called “anti-hero” where the lines between “good guys” and “bad guys” are not just blurred, but virtually indistinguishable. The heroes in today’s entertainment media can be drug dealers, hitmen, serial killers, dirty cops, and war criminals. Also, other formerly taboo things such as adultery, lying, stealing, and fraud are now entering into being social values that are applauded provided one gets away with them. It isn’t that our society is amoral, it is that our society is reversing morality.
Enter into this equation the government. There is a reason that throughout history, “leaders” are called “leaders”. They often set the ethical tone for an entire nation. Hence, you had events such as Nazi Germany where an entire nation went along with the false morality presented by one man that was their leader. Therefore, what happens when the United States government does the following: Starts wars based on lies and fraud. Bombs and kills innocent people to “get” one or two men. Presents violence as the only solution to a crisis, rather than diplomacy. Offers violence against other nations as “campaign promises”. Cannot speak in the positive (“Good things we plan to do”) rather than the constant negative (“People we plan to kill”). Now then, what happens when you have a few generations that are raised with this type of leadership and then also teach it to their children on top of the government and entertainment media doing that?
We have generations now that have been raised with constant violence and there is not a moral compass to be had in this maelstrom of violence we call a “society”. I daresay there hasn’t been a bloodier civilization overall that has lasted this long since the Roman Empire of Caligula and Nero. I am talking about a Western nation that is allegedly “civilized” and supposedly knows better. Yet, it conducts gladiatorials daily on its television and its foreign policy. Dare anyone bring up the word “morality”, then people are offended and imagine it means being forced to attend church or something along those lines. But what people forget is that without morals and values, no laws can ever be effective. It is a moral person who follows laws because he knows those are precepts that are part of a society’s moral fabric. Sure, you can go ahead and ban every gun in America and the next mass murderer will move right along to a machete. Why? Because you have not addressed the true disease which is violence. Because violence has entered into society as a positive value and is no longer a negative one. In fact, restraint from violence is now looked upon as a negative thing because it is perceived as “weakness”. Rather like the Romans, which is why they held gladiatorials in the first place.
Our society also cannot look deeply into itself because it cannot admit itself to be wrong. Again, the moral fabric is coming undone. Society then seeks to find some other culprit to blame besides itself. Inanimate objects such as guns, or allegedly alien philosophies it doesn’t understand, or even other countries that had nothing to do with it. This is also called “projection”. Violence is epidemic and society can’t admit it to be the fact that our society as a whole is violent with no moral compass whatsoever. Indeed, even many churches now support state-sponsored violence overwhelmingly, transforming what was a faith of peace and compassion into a warlike religion more like that of the pre-Christian Vikings. Because society cannot admit this, it seeks something else to blame so the TV shows and bombing raids may continue: It blames the guns used in the murders. However, this is akin to blaming spoons because someone got fat.
Indeed, what would happen if the call to “stop the violence” began with the government itself? How about controlling those guns? Do we ever hear how many innocent Syrians have been killed by the United States and the terrorists it supports since that civil war began? That war began in large part due to U.S. government instigation and incitement to violence. I wager if we knew those statistics, they would dwarf the number of Americans killed in gun violence across the United States. See, when it’s other people dying, Americans can be okay with that. But when the violence we engage in, practice, and teach comes home to our own doorstep, suddenly we seem unable to understand the causes and conditions that led up to it. It isn’t guns. It’s us. It’s our government. It’s what we term “entertainment”. It’s the morals and values we blithely discarded in our headlong rush to be “free” and, in so doing, became the slaves of violence.
Guns have been here since the founding of European settlements on this continent and people have been responsible with them for the most part during that time. But the whole mass murder phenomena appears to really begin in earnest right around the time social morals, values, and precepts came under serious attack. And, the rise of the “anti-hero” and the glorification of senseless violence and criminal behavior. And, also, about the time the U.S. government began to legalize its ability to engage in mass murder against other countries that had not harmed it. I think the reasons these mass murders are happening is as clear to see as the sun in the sky. It’s just America does not wish to see it.
Look, these mass murder events will continue to happen because we have a society that is addicted to violence. Our government not only teaches it to us all as a solution, it teaches it to our children in school. Look at the wars we won! Hooray! We sure showed them a thing or two! Hey, we HAD to drop nuclear weapons on the Japanese. Not, “Yes, we did it and it was a horrific, barbaric thing”, but we HAD to do it and don’t question it. It saved lives. Oh? How many will it “save” moving into a future where they might get used again? By the same government that can see the use of one as justifiable. So how can we foresee anything happening but more violence within our society when our society itself is the root cause?
Right, let’s all fidget in our seats and see what placebos we can come up with. Except placebos can actually work if people believe in them. Things like gun control can’t work as placebos because you would first need to BELIEVE in violence as being WRONG for any solution to work. Who’s going to stand up and say what people don’t want to hear? Not anyone that wants to get elected, that’s for sure. I’ll tell you this much. This society keeps the candle-makers in business, that’s for certain. All those candle-light vigils and that’s probably the first time some of those folks ever prayed in their lives.
There, I said it. What else can I say? Shall I say someone will fix it? Shall I say we can fix it without serious hard work that calls upon us all to look at what we glorify? We glorify all this killing. How are you going to fix that? Shall I go to a candle-light vigil? To do what? Mourn? It’s our whole society we need to mourn for. That’s what’s dying out there, folks.
First of all, the social fabric is coming unraveled. Now, by social fabric, I mean a set of values and morals that guide the society into what is right and what is good. Further to that is a set of taboos that tell a society what is wrong and what is bad. No society on the face of this planet could survive for long without these precepts for behavior. Or, they did not survive for long once these precepts were discarded or annulled or compromised. This walks hand-in-hand with the fact that our society teaches violence as a solution. Why? Because instead of being a taboo, as it once was in the past, senseless violence has now become a positive social value. What? You haven’t noticed that?
Allow me to explain. In the past, violence in entertainment venues was always conducted along certain parameters such as “good guy” and “bad guy”. The “good guy” used only as much violence as was necessary to subdue the “bad guy” and then restrained himself. He did not fly over the city the “bad guy” lived in and carpet bomb the entire population to get that one guy. But now we have seen the rise in the so-called “anti-hero” where the lines between “good guys” and “bad guys” are not just blurred, but virtually indistinguishable. The heroes in today’s entertainment media can be drug dealers, hitmen, serial killers, dirty cops, and war criminals. Also, other formerly taboo things such as adultery, lying, stealing, and fraud are now entering into being social values that are applauded provided one gets away with them. It isn’t that our society is amoral, it is that our society is reversing morality.
Enter into this equation the government. There is a reason that throughout history, “leaders” are called “leaders”. They often set the ethical tone for an entire nation. Hence, you had events such as Nazi Germany where an entire nation went along with the false morality presented by one man that was their leader. Therefore, what happens when the United States government does the following: Starts wars based on lies and fraud. Bombs and kills innocent people to “get” one or two men. Presents violence as the only solution to a crisis, rather than diplomacy. Offers violence against other nations as “campaign promises”. Cannot speak in the positive (“Good things we plan to do”) rather than the constant negative (“People we plan to kill”). Now then, what happens when you have a few generations that are raised with this type of leadership and then also teach it to their children on top of the government and entertainment media doing that?
We have generations now that have been raised with constant violence and there is not a moral compass to be had in this maelstrom of violence we call a “society”. I daresay there hasn’t been a bloodier civilization overall that has lasted this long since the Roman Empire of Caligula and Nero. I am talking about a Western nation that is allegedly “civilized” and supposedly knows better. Yet, it conducts gladiatorials daily on its television and its foreign policy. Dare anyone bring up the word “morality”, then people are offended and imagine it means being forced to attend church or something along those lines. But what people forget is that without morals and values, no laws can ever be effective. It is a moral person who follows laws because he knows those are precepts that are part of a society’s moral fabric. Sure, you can go ahead and ban every gun in America and the next mass murderer will move right along to a machete. Why? Because you have not addressed the true disease which is violence. Because violence has entered into society as a positive value and is no longer a negative one. In fact, restraint from violence is now looked upon as a negative thing because it is perceived as “weakness”. Rather like the Romans, which is why they held gladiatorials in the first place.
Our society also cannot look deeply into itself because it cannot admit itself to be wrong. Again, the moral fabric is coming undone. Society then seeks to find some other culprit to blame besides itself. Inanimate objects such as guns, or allegedly alien philosophies it doesn’t understand, or even other countries that had nothing to do with it. This is also called “projection”. Violence is epidemic and society can’t admit it to be the fact that our society as a whole is violent with no moral compass whatsoever. Indeed, even many churches now support state-sponsored violence overwhelmingly, transforming what was a faith of peace and compassion into a warlike religion more like that of the pre-Christian Vikings. Because society cannot admit this, it seeks something else to blame so the TV shows and bombing raids may continue: It blames the guns used in the murders. However, this is akin to blaming spoons because someone got fat.
Indeed, what would happen if the call to “stop the violence” began with the government itself? How about controlling those guns? Do we ever hear how many innocent Syrians have been killed by the United States and the terrorists it supports since that civil war began? That war began in large part due to U.S. government instigation and incitement to violence. I wager if we knew those statistics, they would dwarf the number of Americans killed in gun violence across the United States. See, when it’s other people dying, Americans can be okay with that. But when the violence we engage in, practice, and teach comes home to our own doorstep, suddenly we seem unable to understand the causes and conditions that led up to it. It isn’t guns. It’s us. It’s our government. It’s what we term “entertainment”. It’s the morals and values we blithely discarded in our headlong rush to be “free” and, in so doing, became the slaves of violence.
Guns have been here since the founding of European settlements on this continent and people have been responsible with them for the most part during that time. But the whole mass murder phenomena appears to really begin in earnest right around the time social morals, values, and precepts came under serious attack. And, the rise of the “anti-hero” and the glorification of senseless violence and criminal behavior. And, also, about the time the U.S. government began to legalize its ability to engage in mass murder against other countries that had not harmed it. I think the reasons these mass murders are happening is as clear to see as the sun in the sky. It’s just America does not wish to see it.
Look, these mass murder events will continue to happen because we have a society that is addicted to violence. Our government not only teaches it to us all as a solution, it teaches it to our children in school. Look at the wars we won! Hooray! We sure showed them a thing or two! Hey, we HAD to drop nuclear weapons on the Japanese. Not, “Yes, we did it and it was a horrific, barbaric thing”, but we HAD to do it and don’t question it. It saved lives. Oh? How many will it “save” moving into a future where they might get used again? By the same government that can see the use of one as justifiable. So how can we foresee anything happening but more violence within our society when our society itself is the root cause?
Right, let’s all fidget in our seats and see what placebos we can come up with. Except placebos can actually work if people believe in them. Things like gun control can’t work as placebos because you would first need to BELIEVE in violence as being WRONG for any solution to work. Who’s going to stand up and say what people don’t want to hear? Not anyone that wants to get elected, that’s for sure. I’ll tell you this much. This society keeps the candle-makers in business, that’s for certain. All those candle-light vigils and that’s probably the first time some of those folks ever prayed in their lives.
There, I said it. What else can I say? Shall I say someone will fix it? Shall I say we can fix it without serious hard work that calls upon us all to look at what we glorify? We glorify all this killing. How are you going to fix that? Shall I go to a candle-light vigil? To do what? Mourn? It’s our whole society we need to mourn for. That’s what’s dying out there, folks.
Jack Perry [send him mail]
is an arrowmaker and writer who lives in the Four Corners area of the
Southwestern United States. He has been a truck driver, a purchasing
agent at a now-defunct renewable energy company (don't even ask him
about the "Green energy" scam), and served in the 101st Airborne
Division. He spends his time practicing traditional archery, making
arrows in the wilds of the Arizona high desert, and finding himself only
mildly amused by the antics of the Great Father in Washington.
Previous article by Jack Perry: ISIS Oil
No comments:
Post a Comment