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.

Forerunner of feminism

She’s one of the most celebrated but most subversive heroines in literature. By today’s standards among conservatives, she would be considered a pariah, an outcast.

Certainly, in her own day, when this famous book about her was written, she so outraged society that the author could not at first reveal herself by her actual name.

The heroine of this great novel, a work of fiction that was so autobiographical,  gave rise — and hope — to women in any era who, as the book put it, were “small, plain and poor.”  She was not a born rebel, and she didn’t seek trouble; but trouble found her with a vengeance.  Yet she held her head high through all her travails and sorrows, never once compromising her principles, and those ideals were lofty and noble, too.

The book starts out with the heroine as a child, recently orphaned, at the mercy of a cruel and avaricious aunt, of despicable and nasty cousins.  She is regularly cuffed and beaten; she is constantly derided and abused by her cousins.  What was her fault? Mostly, she didn’t know her place — not in society, not among her relatives, most assuredly not with her sensitivity, intelligence and fiery soul.

Our heroine finds one escape from her family only to end up in another situation that comes very close to destroying her, emotionally and almost literally.  At the age of 10 this heroine is sent away to a charity school, where the operators of the school shame her and provide her and her fellow students with cold rooms, inedible meals and thin clothing to wear.  Remember, the setting for the book takes place in the Yorkshire area of England during Victorian times.

The heroine is able to make friends with one of the students, only to have this young girl die in her arms.  Eventually, she finds a worthy ally with one of the teachers, and in due time the operators of the school are dismissed for neglect and dishonesty.  Conditions finally and dramatically improve at the school.

In time, the heroine grows up and finds work as a governess to a wealthy man.  Governess positions, essentially teaching and companion work, considered one of the few acceptable careers for women of that era, led her to, briefly, a chance for happiness and love.  But the path of true love is never paved smoothly, and on the eve of their marriage she finds her great love has been deceiving her.  She balks at his suggestion she become his mistress so that he can still maintain his married state and have our heroine, too.

She leaves him and then for a period of time travels through England.  She has little money to her name and at one-point sleeps on the cold English moors.  She is near starvation.  It is only when she faints on the doorstep of a small clergyman’s family that they take her in.

She is treated with kindness and is able to find a teaching position at the clergyman’s school.  She may not be thriving but she does recover her health and develops friendships with the clergyman’s sisters.  Eventually the clergyman asks her to marry him and become a missionary wife.

Along the way it is revealed that our heroine is an heiress.  It turns out the kindly family that took her in during her exhaustion and despair also are related to her.  In the end, she rejects the clergyman /cousin’s marriage proposal but does welcome them into the family and helps support them.

Still, she longs for her one great love.  At long last they are reunited in one of the most passionate, romantic and dramatic reunions in literature.  As she says in the final chapter of the book, “Reader, I married him.”

What makes the heroine of this novel so radical, so revolutionary, so appealing in her directness, her honesty, her nobility, is that she is incapable of dismissing her principles.  She demands respect from others, not because she has title, money or beauty, but for the person she is.  How unusual then, when the book was written, and the same holds true today when conservative minds have declared “war on women.”

This heroine was based on many aspects of the author’s life, and although her life was often tragic, it was a highly principled life as well.  The book, which was first published under the name Currer Bell, so it would not reveal the author’s gender, quickly caught the public’s attention.  It stunned the literary world, and the author became the Victorian era’s toast of society. Not too shabby for a small, plain and poor clergyman’s daughter.

What’s the name of this magnificent book that became one of the most outstanding and inspirational novels that still influences women and girls around the world?  That was the forerunner of feminism and led the way to the fight for women’s rights? That every generation since its publication in 1847 has given women heart and hope?

The novel is “Jane Eyre,” written by Charlotte Bronte.

Jodeane Albright is the community editor of the Idaho State Journal.  She first read   “Jane Eyre” at the age of 11 and has remained a loyal fan of the book since.