We don't say guns are "bad," because some people choose to kill other people with them. A gun is a tool. MySpace is also a tool, and one that can also be cruelly and fatally used. The problem is with the user and I'm not sure where we begin to in addressing that. One might say schools, yet their job of teaching ethics seems to be slipping down in place. The church might once have held an ethical hand, and yet, one must ask if it now returns enough benefit to society to explain its non-taxable base, and some do. Parents should be the teachers, the guides, but in the case of Megan, a parent of another child was involved. There was no leadership there.
There is also an article, a book review on a book on the Civil War. Marketing mourning clothes and objects became a business. The widow needed fashion even in her grief, or so she was told. People die in the most bizarre ways in any war and time, and yet, in the Civil War sometimes they just stood on opposite sides and shot at each other. It is impossible to imagine what leads to that. Peer pressure, I suppose. A desire to be part of the group, the tribe, the clan. We are willing to die for ideals, for family, friends, for way of life. That is part of our empathy, imagination, our programming to evolve the group, even at the expense of the individual.
How do we feel and honor this connectedness now that there is less need for such a physical fight, at least in this country, in this moment. The words of the Dalai Lama come to me. "My religion is kindness." Perhaps, stamping those words on the insides of our foreheads might lead to the change we want to see in the world. It is to consider each moment what it is to live a religion of kindness, to others and ourselves, to team up for support.
