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.