Why, Yet Again, the "Senseless" Violence?

Although it is no longer shouted out loud, “Long Live Death”  remains a living mantra in America, not expressly, to be sure, but as a persistently lurid undertone of all those many who feel devastated by life. We wonder, as we should, about the recurrent mass killings, and, as corollary, about the expanding locus of their contemptibly vulgar defilements. But, in all candor, we ought really not be all that surprised.  

In a country where everyone is eventually measured and defined by what he can buy, it is easy to acknowledge that tangible rewards will come only to those who have first learned to surrender.

In all of the recent cases of American mass murder, pertinent mental distress and disorientation were dangerously intertwined with a much larger national landscape of ubiquitous rancor and enviable cruelty. By intersecting with their own personal demons, this fractionated and fragmenting landscape of violent harms provided the operational environment within which otherwise unimaginable crimes could be concocted and then carried out.

Where, exactly, has America gone wrong?  It is a question that will not be answered in politics. It is surely a question that will not be tackled meaningfully in any coming elections.

For us, social networking has already become much more than a helpfully pleasing key to exciting relationship opportunities. More of a symptom than a cause, it has effectively become the new American religion, a genuinely common expression of obeisance and submission to mass expectations. To act in any manner against these expectations, therefore, is not just unacceptable. It is blasphemy.

Look around. We Americans do face certain serious geopolitical threats originating from abroad, especially terror attacks. Against these authentic perils, we must remain utterly vigilant. Nothing could be more obvious.

Still, we should not be encouraged to die in manifold other ways, needlessly, gratuitously, from the inside. In order to turn away from an increasingly ascendant spirit of death, murder, and internal decline, it is also essential that we should all first want to live, and to do so without suffering such excruciating fears of social banishment or community exile.

Somehow, collectively, and before it is too late, we Americans must finally learn to recover a meaningful incentive to feel, for ourselves, for others, and, simultaneously, to conspire more openly against the disjointed national exponents of separateness, alienation, and despair. Otherwise, some of those living among us who are most unhappy, and most malleable, will continue to seek their personal significance in carefully planned spasms of human extermination.

Always, true feeling and empathy require good people to behave as individuals, not as blindly obedient members.  Oddly, perhaps, such preferred behavior is always scandalous, a threatening intrusion into the compulsively profitable worlds of crude commerce, mindless jingles, mass marketing, adrenalized competition, and celebrity adulation. Yet, even in civilizations on the wane, at twilight, worn and almost defeated, dignified life is sometimes given a second chance.

To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish interesting and insightful articles such as this, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this article by Louis René Beres and want to read more of his work, please click here.

Louis René Beres contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all his contributions, on which comments are welcome.