Allow me to provide a perspective for you from the perspective of someone who came dangerously close to the point of no return. This will most likely offend your sensibilities, so be warned.<\/p>\n
Yes, it’s about society. More importantly, it’s about your society, and your social mores, and whether or not you participated in this, you shouldn’t have to ask yourself “why?”, ever. It should be completely obvious to anyone.<\/p>\n
Here’s a scenario that should register with you. Take 10 people, and out of those ten, let’s make one of them very different from the rest. No fault of theirs, he\/she might have a different skin color, be of a different religion, not be as close to the ideal of beauty that the other nine hold…maybe they’re overweight. Maybe they have a different sexual preference than the norm. Now, lets say that those other 9 people taunt, tease, disrespect, and otherwise violate that one person’s humanity unmercifully. Let’s say this happens over the course of a year or two. Let’s say that these people are all stuck together for an unforeseeable amount of time. And let’s say, after years of this, after every attempt by that one person to find a way out of it…changing their appearance, their religion, losing weight…whatever…it doesn’t stop. The other 9 still hold that one person in that same category. Some of those 9 might actually enjoy taunting and hurting that person. They may feel pleasure afterward, because it makes them feel better about their own various situations.<\/p>\n
Then, “out of the blue”, that person finds a weapon and kills a couple of them. The rest express shock! Outrage! Confusion! Why would this happen? “We’re all good people!”<\/p>\n
Is it obvious yet why it happened? If it isn’t, you’re not very bright. Human beings require only a couple very basic, simple concepts from other human beings in order for society to function properly: basic, genuine dignity and respect. You don’t have to look up to every other person, but just accept their reality, their existence, and at least think about how they feel, if only a little. Feel for their position, try to understand them. That’s all it takes to prevent this. <\/p>\n
It’s all humanity has to do. If all of humanity achieved it, and began treating each other with that dignity and respect, humanity would reach enlightenment. Wars, violence, crime, all of these things would fade away. <\/p>\n
It’ll never happen. Why? Because from that original example, some of those 9 people actually felt pleasure in hurting that person. Do you think the classmates of the Columbine murderers ever learned that lesson? All of them? Did all of them go on to treat every other human being in their lives with that level of understanding and respect? I doubt it. <\/p>\n
There’s your answer about what happened at Fort Hood. I know what the answer is, because I know where the point of no return is. It’s when the human mind cannot find a way out of a horrifically painful situation. Much like the concept of torture will cause a person to say anything to make it stop, if a human being cannot find a way out of something, that human will resort to something as drastic as murder because while all humans know that crime is wrong, we have it beaten into our heads from an early age (well, unless you’re truly psychotic), when there’s nothing else a human can do, the innate animalistic survival instinct will disregard those mores and do what it perceives it has to do to survive. <\/p>\n
I learned where that point was when I was 13 years old. I had thick glasses, was perceived as a nerd (despite the fact that I liked sports). Moved around a lot, wasn’t from a wealthy family, didn’t have a lot of connections. Every day I woke up, there were onethings that went through my head: I didn’t want to go to school…not because of the work, but because of the ridicule. Behind that, was a quiet voice that kept growing louder over time…until I moved and it ended. I wanted to hurt anyone who would try to hurt me. Anything. I was just this 13 year old kid who didn’t know what the hell was going on with my body, and at the same time, I was being ridiculed in front of people I respected, people I wanted to be like. There are always a handful of kids like me at every school, in every social situation. The one that isn’t in the loop, and because they want to be, the loop shuns them. To be humiliated, hurt, abused, disrespected in front of people that you want to be like drives most of these people to adopt fear as the cornerstone of their beliefs. They are “afraid” of God. They are “afraid” of foreigners. Most times, they turn out to be conservatives because they are “afraid” of not being able to “get theirs”. <\/p>\n
The rest develop hatred and anger to be the cornerstone of their beliefs. Hatred, unlike fear, can burn away much faster…if that person feels they have a way out. But when that person runs out of options, that hatred is far more dangerous. I got out. I moved away and started over every few years. That kept me from going down that path, and that anger burned off and was replaced by caring about other people. That reforged me as a raging liberal. But in junior high, I was the one who fought back. I threatened to hurt other kids, burn their houses down. You name it. I read comic books to try and escape, to try and act out my rage alone and try to control it. I was always teetering on the point of no return…but then things happened, I got another chance far away with a new set of complete strangers, and I tried something different. I tried to be the class clown, to emulate those who didn’t get hurt. I played sports. I did the things I felt I needed to do to not be at the bottom of the pile. It worked, I became well-adjusted.<\/p>\n
But when Columbine happened back when I was in college, I knew exactly why it happened when they described the two kids responsible. I didn’t need video games to do what they did…in fact, I figured they used those video games to act out their rage, to try and manage it like I did. But if I had stayed at that same school, I might have turned out like those kids, too. And when I heard their classmates asking “Why?” afterward, it made my skin crawl. They knew damn well why it happened. <\/p>\n
Human beings crave only two things from other human beings, and that’s all they need to survive and exist within society. Genuine, simple dignity and basic respect. You need to let them know they always have a way out to the light to stand with everyone else on a level field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allow me to provide a perspective for you from the perspective of someone who came dangerously close to the point of no return. This will most likely offend your sensibilities, so be warned. Yes, it’s about society. More importantly, it’s about your society, and your social mores, and whether or not you participated in this, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-stuff"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zullnero.com\/blah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}