I have heard several people say that they cannot understand the thought process that someone must go through to become the person who shoots a bunch of people in a theater. The act is so horrific that it is outside the understanding of many, but that doesn’t mean that how one gets to that point isn’t understandable.
Human beings are social creatures and no amount of social media can take place of the person to person interaction. Someone who is held out of or ostracized from a community for whatever reason, intentional or not, self-inflicted or community inflicted or both, will begin to lose his or her humanity. Interacting with other people reminds us that we all feel the same emotions. It helps us to see that even if we do not know the other person, we can know what the other person feels. When we forego that interaction, we forget that people are people. We begin to see them as the inflictors of pain, as inconveniences, as inhibitors to expansion. People stop being people and start being animals. They become vermin. That is the turning point. Once someone can learn to think of other people as vermin, there aren’t any societally based inhibitions in place against killing vermin. In fact, it becomes a badge of honor to eliminate the vermin. That is what they are for. The thought process can be seen on mass scales. Hitler turned the Jews into rats before he was able to instigate the Holocaust. Indians were routinely deprived of their humanness as the U.S. expanded westward, often referred to as dogs and savages. I cannot truly say that I know why the shooter at the Aurora theaters did what he did, but I can see a path that he may have taken. The story has been played out like a bad record again and again. How many times have you heard that the neighbors thought the serial killer was a quiet guy? It is up to each of us to expand the definition of humanity and to enable everyone to feel compassion. We need to reach out to those who are reclusive – no matter what their age. We need to talk to our neighbors. We need to forgive each other, and we need to love. The more we expand, the more our resources will expand with us. When we give something back, it will return to us at least threefold. It is because we believe that there is finite in this world that we hoard, that the super-rich continue to play the game and keep their resources. As soon as we truly believe that we can harness infinite resources together, we will be able to do so. Then we will know each other, and no one will be lost to us. |
Scrooge had the living, the dead and spirits reach out to him.
From the ParaNorman movie trailer
"I like to be alone," says Norman. "So do I! Let's do it together," says his friend. |
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