Wishing for Simplicity

Sometimes I wish we lived in such a simplistic society that all I had to worry about was the color, consistency, and smell of my children’s poops.  But the harsh and obvious reality is that we do not.  I have been wanting to blog this past week but I have been in a rut. Perhaps some of the overall blahness I have been feeling can be blamed on the colds my three kids have had, or the teeth that are ever so slowly breaking through Prince Doodie Diapers’ gums, or the 2 + feet of snow we were slammed last Wednesday, or that on Saturday, January 8 there was yet  another mass shooting in our nation.  It took only eight days into a new year for another person to open fire onto a crowd of bystanders, killing innocent people,.  That’s all, eight days. 

The "Tragedy in Tucson", as it has been coined, has had quite an impact on me.  Many of the other mass shooting, or mass causality, situations (non-natural disasters) over the past decade have not had such an effect upon me.  I think, in retrospect, when learning about a mass shooting, I am  quick to become callous—maybe it’s a defense mechanism.  I know that I can become bothered so easily after innocent people lose their lives and others their livelihoods, which I would rather not think about it.  I cannot quite pinpoint why last Saturday’s shooting has consumed my thoughts for the past week and a half.  I did not have any ties to any of the individuals who lost their lives or who were injured by the alleged shooter’s bullets.  It was not that a nine year-old girl lost her life.  In our nation, children are injured and/or killed by guns on a daily basis.  It was not that I have a particular fondness for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.  Honestly, I had never even heard of her before last Saturday.  Drearily, I think I have been so affected by last Saturday’s shootings because what happened in Tucson was not a random event.  I believe it is a warning to us about the serious political danger involved in the rise of extremism. 

We, as a nation, need to begin dealing with the real source of the enormous social discontent that is increasing in the US because of the devastation in the lives of millions of ordinary people as a result of the crisis that is the very structure of our society.  On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “…we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”  

While President Obama and politicians of both political parties are publically calling for unity and make appeals against violence, they are still funding two horrid wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan—now the longest shooting war in American history.  We are called on to salute the “bravery” of all politicians while they slash education and child care for our children and oversee a system that offers little hope for a decent future for people or the environment. The culture of our nation is ones that is quite sick for it both creates and fosters isolation, fear, violence, and alienation.  Presumably, it was one or all of these societal ills that led Jared Loughner, the suspected gunman, down that shameful path on January 8.

I think idealists are truly pessimists by nature.  They see all the problems of the world and want to change them, for the better, of course.  I have always fallen into this dual category.  I want my children to grow up in a world that they do not have to fear their lives while going about our daily, humdrum routine.  I want to be respresented by politicians who don’t just talk a good talk, but who provide funding for jobs and education, not war and occupation.  I want my biggest daily concerns to be about my kids’ poopies.  Oh, how wonderful that would be.