Being from Connecticut I’ve been contacted by people outside the state regarding the recent Sandy Hook tragedy. A young adult entered the elementary school where his parents worked and went on a shooting spree. Since many of those killed were young children this brings to us a wave of disbelief and sadness that perhaps exceeds the Columbine tragedy. There are things we should and should not do in response to this tragedy.
We should provide prayers for those in Sandy Hook. We should assess our own situations to determine what courses of action might prevent such a situation in our own localities. Most importantly, we should reach out to our own loved ones to make sure they know how much we treasure them.
Yet there are things we should not do, things that mass media lead us to do. No matter how much mass media overplays and analyzes the story we should bear in mind that you can’t really make sense of the senseless. The killer was the son of his main target. For 99.9999% of you there really are no lessons to apply to your own situation. Are you about to distrust your son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, father because of this incident? Of course not. That then leads us to the bigger picture.
While tragedies like Sandy Hook can happen anywhere at anytime; they are very, very unlikely to happen at any particular place at any particular time. This is where mass media particularly leads us astray. We might slip into the habit of thinking that times have changed, and in our own time we now might expect human-caused tragedies to occur with ever greater frequency.
The reality is that human-caused tragedies have plagued us since the dawn of human civilization, they just take different forms at different times. Yet in the grand scope of things these tragedies are, once again, unlikely to happen at any particular place at any particular time.
Why is this perspective important to keep in mind? For one reason, though not the most important, it’s the opposite perspective from the fear and chaos people like the Sandy Hook killer want to instill in us long after their horrific act. We may not make sense out of what led them to their butchery, but we do know what they want to come out of it; let’s not give it to them.
Second and most important, a life led in fear and apprehension is a diminished life; a life in which some of the light has been deprived and darkness resides; a life less prone to kindness. Mass media is all too obliging a partner with senseless killers for instilling this darkness into our souls. There comes a time when we must turn the television and computer screens of mass media dark instead …. and turn to hug someone we love.
