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The event at the University of Waterloo yesterday has to me the same horror as the event at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.
Then while we knew that people disagreed about sharing rights and opportunities, we hadn't realized that the rage about sharing was so great that someone was willing to use grisly freakish violence to magnify just exactly how much they didn't agree. Now we know, and have tools for immediate grappling, but we feel even further from healing.
My first thought for a title for this entry was something about "bookends", with the polytechnique opening the first season on Hate and Its Expressions messily with guns and group death, and flailing justifications and explanations, and the waterloo closing the chapter with a knife and injuries and tight-lipped "It's The Hate, Stupid" from the officials and media.
I feel that "bookends" is a bit harsh, but I think it deals with the externals that have changed: fewer deaths and injuries, lack of glorification of the perpetrator, methodical aftermath protocols.
What hasn't changed for the better is the society that keeps creating these hate-filled vesicles.
Our whole society/culture/social fabric is a pressure cooker of unreasonable demands and expectations; conflicting ideals, miserable obfuscation about goals and motivations; and fear fear fear. So much fear. Climate, jobs, disease, food, water, soil, fire, aquifers, jets streams, ocean currents - is there anything we're *not* afraid about?
These active shooters and active stabbers and active assholes are the pus-filled result of disease coursing through the body global. It's the old "deal with the symptoms or deal with the cause" issue. Relief from the symptoms is necessary but won't generate healing alone.
I feel that we, collectively, aren't interested in healing. For many of us - especially those with our hands on some of the monetary power and comfort, the system is working just fine. We don't like to think about it, but we benefit from other people's misery, whether it is restricting how indigenous people are allowed to use the court system, or simply getting cheap stuff at the dollar store. Russia has gone absolutely ballistic active shooter on its neighbour, and we're all just fine with other countries facing famine because the grain is "impeded".
I don't know what to do about any of this.
I don't want anyone to be stabbed. I don't want anyone to be driven so crazy that they feel their only solution is to stab someone who has ABSOLUTELY NO POWER TO CHANGE THE THINGS THAT UPSET THE STABBER.
Sorry for the shouting.
But I wonder how much of our own actions regarding the things we fear are directed against things that cannot change the outcome of the things we fear.
Then while we knew that people disagreed about sharing rights and opportunities, we hadn't realized that the rage about sharing was so great that someone was willing to use grisly freakish violence to magnify just exactly how much they didn't agree. Now we know, and have tools for immediate grappling, but we feel even further from healing.
My first thought for a title for this entry was something about "bookends", with the polytechnique opening the first season on Hate and Its Expressions messily with guns and group death, and flailing justifications and explanations, and the waterloo closing the chapter with a knife and injuries and tight-lipped "It's The Hate, Stupid" from the officials and media.
I feel that "bookends" is a bit harsh, but I think it deals with the externals that have changed: fewer deaths and injuries, lack of glorification of the perpetrator, methodical aftermath protocols.
What hasn't changed for the better is the society that keeps creating these hate-filled vesicles.
Our whole society/culture/social fabric is a pressure cooker of unreasonable demands and expectations; conflicting ideals, miserable obfuscation about goals and motivations; and fear fear fear. So much fear. Climate, jobs, disease, food, water, soil, fire, aquifers, jets streams, ocean currents - is there anything we're *not* afraid about?
These active shooters and active stabbers and active assholes are the pus-filled result of disease coursing through the body global. It's the old "deal with the symptoms or deal with the cause" issue. Relief from the symptoms is necessary but won't generate healing alone.
I feel that we, collectively, aren't interested in healing. For many of us - especially those with our hands on some of the monetary power and comfort, the system is working just fine. We don't like to think about it, but we benefit from other people's misery, whether it is restricting how indigenous people are allowed to use the court system, or simply getting cheap stuff at the dollar store. Russia has gone absolutely ballistic active shooter on its neighbour, and we're all just fine with other countries facing famine because the grain is "impeded".
I don't know what to do about any of this.
I don't want anyone to be stabbed. I don't want anyone to be driven so crazy that they feel their only solution is to stab someone who has ABSOLUTELY NO POWER TO CHANGE THE THINGS THAT UPSET THE STABBER.
Sorry for the shouting.
But I wonder how much of our own actions regarding the things we fear are directed against things that cannot change the outcome of the things we fear.
