Humans are both devil and angel

The first damnable thing is, it takes a tragedy to pull us together as a nation.

The second damnable thing is tragedy is the only thing that pulls us together anymore.

And the third most damning thing is we keep repeating these tragedies.

The Aurora, Colo., shooter, 24-year-old James Holmes, who went on a gun-toting rampage in the wee hours of a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” murdered 12 people and wounded 58 more at the theater on July 20.

It’s not that the numbers are so horrific — Norway’s mass killer, Anders Breivik, murdered 77 people on a small Norwegian island, in a country that has stricter gun controls than America does.  Ironically, this July marks the first anniversary of that massacre.  Internet tabloids such as TMZ claim Holmes was a follower of Breivik’s way of thinking.

Well, it doesn’t much matter what Holmes or, for that matter, Breivik thinks because I can guarantee you we’re going to see more of these massacres carried out.  Our society in particular, and the modern world itself are set up to create the circumstances that if someone wants to shoot and kill others, they will.  We just live in a violent era.

Strangely enough, it is not about gun control.  In other words, there is a certain futility involved in thinking that if guns were somehow controlled that would somehow create less availability of guns, and that the person or people using said guns would be less inclined to kill.

I know, I’ve totally lost my liberal credibility on this issue.  But the more I look at Holmes, the more I think about what Breivik did, the more you can buy guns anywhere and any way you want, legal or illegal — all you have to do is Google what you’re looking for, or go to your local Walmart — then how can you begin to control access to guns?

The far better approach is to counteract the society approach that wants guns in the first place.  And therein lies the core of why we keep having tragic shootings.

At that core is the human penchant for violence.  Now before you tell me that neither you nor me or nor your sainted mother are incapable of violence, let me warn you, we are all capable of violence.  I mean all of us.  It’s inborn, because if we didn’t have some violence we would have never evolved. Believe me, the hyena devouring the wildebeest on the African savannah is not making a moral issue out of it.  Only humans do.

I have two juxtaposed pictures in my mind on this: The first is the ape in the movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  The ape discovers a bone, the eerie and ever-present monolith block is somewhere in the background, and in a blast of wonder and murderous ecstasy, the ape takes up the bone cudgel and kills the animal just outside the picture frame in the movie.

The other scene in my mind is a sweeter, and yet no less potent picture.  It’s an illustration in a program on public television I saw a few months past that shows a hominid millions of years ago reaching out to support another hominid who happens to be disabled.  In other words, the picture portrays that along with our aggression, our violence is the same feeling that produces compassion.

Does this mean Holmes, sitting in court with his bright orange hair and vacant expression deserves our compassion for what he did?  Does this mean he should be our example of why the death penalty should be waived?  Or brought back with vigilante vengeance?

And is the media responsible for a troubled young man collecting an enormous arsenal of weaponry over a period of several months plus booby trapping his own apartment with trip wire and explosives that could have blasted an entire apartment building into the next state?

There is no mistaking we are saturated with violent images.  We see them in movies, television shows, news programs, even cartoons.  They’re present in magazines and what you can read on the Internet.  I’ve long since grown numb to these gory images, and I can’t imagine why anyone enjoys them.  But would censoring these types of sights defuse a future Holmes?  I don’t think so.

I believe it comes down to what kind of society we want to be, and would we be willing to create a less violent, less murderous nation — or world.

Here’s what is so confusing: Thailand, which largely follows pacifist Buddhist teachings throughout its society, enjoys the “sport” of boxing, carried out to a particularly vicious level.  American boxers, by contrast, seem tame.

But boxing is violence.  It’s beating your opponent into insensibility.  Holmes was no boxer, no boxing enthusiast.  Still, he went on a massacre, killed a dozen people, left scores wounded, and no one wants to believe it.  And right after the killing spree the sale of guns in Colorado shot up.

Can any society across the globe end its violent traits, stop tragic massacres from ever occurring?  I don’t think it’s possible.  That’s because I am firmly convinced we are both devil and angel.  But don’t expect me to tell you which is which.

We will always have reason to commit acts of violence — that’s the entire purpose of any war — and we will always have reason to reach out to others with care and concern.  We will always reel in horror over bloodshed, and we will always try to keep it from happening again.  But, we will each time, bear witness to more tragedies.

Jodeane Albright is an award-winning columnist, blogger and the community editor at the Idaho State Journal.

What will America look like 100 years from today?

In 100 years from now the American landscape — at least the political landscape — could be very different than it is today. What we think is permanent and unchanging likely will be unrecognizable in the future. Not the least of it is the possibility we could fracture into several nations, or national blocks.
No one expected the Soviet Union to break up into individual countries, or that the Berlin Wall would literally be torn down, or that European countries controlled by Communism would reject their communistic overlords. Yet in little more than 70 years what was once a monolithic superpower dominating much of Europe and parts of Asia crumbled like the proverbial cookie.
It might happen in the West, in North America. God knows, the current crop of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. are at each other’s throats to such a degree that they’ll strangle the life out of each other. They won’t be around in another century, (heck, they might be gone in another minute), fading away into history’s glory like the Tories and Whigs.
I’ve been hypothesizing, theorizing, imagining what America could turn out to be.
Firstly, I suspect power will shift to more northern climes, and it’s possible that Canada may have the most political strength 100 years from now. Currently, they declare themselves to be a parliamentary democracy, with England’s royal family members visiting every now and then. They’ve patterned themselves as either Conservatives or Liberals, with a dash of socialism in what they call the New Democratic Party, and the perennial  environmental favorite, the Green Party. And the Bloc Quebecois from you guessed it, Quebec; why should they give up their French antecedents?
Having said that, Canada is going through upheavals these days just like everyone else. In the future there may be a breaking up (so hard to do) that could pit the middle provinces against the Maritime provinces on the East Coast, bringing up contentions and confrontations between conservatives and more progressive thinkers.
So New Brunswick and Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island might decide to align themselves with the New England states in the U.S., thus creating a powerhouse of liberals that would include some of our original 13 colonies — Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Vermont and New Hampshire. What would they call their new country — The Eastern Federation? Maritime Democracy? Can-Am?
Quebec, of course, would stand alone, as it always has. And considering Quebec was shortchanged in Canada’s last election — they were whittled down to four seats — they’ll be plenty disgruntled about their treatment from the middle provinces that have turned conservative.
The second scenario that might appear in a mere 100 years from now is what will happen with the middle of America, and because they’re so similar, the middle of Canada? This large land mass has already tectonically drifted into right-wing politics, and chances are pretty good it will stay stubbornly right-wing. They already feel pretty alienated from the rest of the world, so they will sit there like an indigestible lump in the middle of North America.
Of course they’ll be prosperous, way into mega-corporations, and their politics will be solidly entrenched toward the conservative end of the scale — as if that’s any different from today. Maybe Iowa will be the capital city (assuming that so many conservatives pour into the state that the state itself will become a monstrously huge metropolis).
They will despise the East Coast bloc, naturally.
Plus isolate themselves from the rest of the world. This would be the country, so to speak, that would carry out contract wars against everybody else — sort of a futuristic version of how Halliburton practiced warmongering in Iraq in our century.
Now we’ve got these remaining states and provinces that don’t want to be left out of the political loop, but unfortunately, they’ve been sidelined to the fringe by both the conservative minds and progressive thinkers.
What are currently the West and Southwest areas will continue their spiral of people and politics that want nothing better than to retire and soak up the sun, ski down the hillsides, and fight with their neighbors further south or next door to the north.
They’ll be a cussedly independent lot. This will be the region that won’t make up their minds about being liberal or liberated, conservative or conned. Definitely they’ll be involved in everything on the fringe.
Lastly but hardly least is what to do with the South? My suspicion is they have steadily declined in the 20th and 21st centuries, so the 22nd century will be more of the same. It can’t be helped. Their geography is giving up on them, the climate is getting stormier more often, southern seashores are sinking into the sea, agriculture is abandoning them, natural resources will be used up.
Yet they will stay, try to make the best of things, probably end up chronically poor and often forgotten.
All of this depends on whether there will even be a North America in another 100 years. Yellowstone National Park is poised to blow up and take most of the continent with it. Global warming could make living anywhere on Earth difficult at best. We may all decide to crowd into shelters on the moon.
Let me know what you think things will be like 100 years from now. I’d love to hear back from you — really! One of us is bound to be psychic.
Jodeane Albright is the community editor of the Idaho State Journal. And no, I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m just winging it here.