Losing Faith

Every so often, I lose faith in humanity. We hurt each other, we stubbornly and willfully resist change, we deny truth, and we seem to only recognize strength in anger and violence. Today’s news about the young victims of the shootings in a Colorado movie theater was hard enough to hear. People’s reactions to that news were even more disturbing.

(Excerpts from CNN website comments)

“Oh my word, these idiots commenting on it! I can't even take it! Do shotguns just walk around shooting people on their own? No, but psychos do! People need protection from the psychos...guns without psychos are pretty okay.”

“Get your check books out right wing scum this killer will need funding.”

“coffins of dead movie goers make great soap boxes to push their anti gun agenda from.”

“Nut bags like this is why we still need the death penalty. When the evidence is beyond a shadow of doubt they need to be put to death. In a case like this pleading insanity would be no excuse.”

“Whelp, another candidate for execution. Goodbye scum, thanks for making it so easy to pick you out.”

Are we only capable of responding to violence with more violence?

I don’t care what you think of Rush Limbaugh or the Obama Administration or whether there should be prayer in schools or if you believe that giant spuds will take over the world next Tuesday. Can we not all come together and discuss these problems without separating into factions and personally attacking each other for having different points of view? The truth is that events like this frighten us. When we are frightened, we tend to strike out aggressively to defend ourselves from the perceived threat. But if we don’t stop lashing out at each other and work together to find solutions, then the problem will only continue to grow.

You can’t fight hate crimes with more hate. You can’t battle ignorance and intolerance by being ignorant and intolerant. You can’t promote peace and harmony and love with a fist and angry words.

We need to change our own hearts before we can change the world.