“Societies
can easily talk themselves into conflict and misery.
But
they can also talk, and act, their way out.”
- Geoff
Mulgan, author of Big
Mind
It’s
the day after the big school
walk-outs. Time to
reflect.
This week, I read Fred Guttenberg’s raw story,
I Am Dedicating the Rest of My Life to Fighting Gun
Violence—For Jaime, about his
daughter’s life and her death as a victim of the Parkland shootings, as told to
Rachel Epstein of Marie Claire. I also read several articles, including one by Dakin Andone and Tina Burnside of CNN,
relating to the shooting death on March 7 of 17-year old high school senior,
and would-be nursing school student, Courtlin Arrington, in Alabama.
In total, there have been 20 high school
student shooting deaths in the United States this year. In addition to these
deaths, we must remember there are many other children and adults with physical
and/or mental injuries as a result of these incidents, too.
We’re all asking why. There are piles of
responses. The walkouts, the student-led advocacies, and the many March For Our
Lives marches planned on the 24th are a few. Why all the shootings
and what can we do?
I’m
going to toss out a single word that might explain much of it: misery.
One Merriam-Webster definition of misery is “a
state of great unhappiness and emotional distress”. Another is “a state of
suffering and want that is the result of poverty or affliction”. I’m talking
about GREAT unhappiness. GREAT distress. GREAT affliction.
Can you imagine this many deaths in a world
where most people are happy and hopeful? Where most people feel like they have
a place and aren’t lost? Where most people feel valued? I can’t. Just as I
wrote about suicide in Regret: A Look Back, people don’t kill when
they are happy.
Misery
is a single word, but reducing it, let along removing it, will take many
approaches.
Misery is a tool for the people within organizations
like the NRA. Their messages rely on the cultivation of fear and hostility
between people. They paint pictures that guns are sexy and necessary. They
argue that the world is a place of “us” versus “them” and it’s critical to
“defend yourself”. That all breeds misery.
We can
address it.
We can read today what Fred Guttenberg, as the
dad of a shooting victim, plans to do in order to stop gun violence. The
students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are building extensive social
media presences and have been interviewed and featured on many news reports. We
only have bits and pieces of Courtlin Arrington’s story, and this is from the
efforts of a few reporters. There’s a big difference in how our society
responds to different shooting deaths. MSD students are noticing this in their
own tweets. Courtlin’s death is no less horrific or tragic than those at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. That fact and our responses, which must
be clearly declared as racist, are another cause for misery.
We can
address them.
There are a number of other things our
citizens experience on a daily basis that breed misery. How about the stress of
getting treatment for and paying for chronic diseases? Or the stigma about and
difficulties in obtaining treatment for mental illnesses? These conditions and
our responses to them as a nation are also causes of misery.
We can
address them.
There are more sources of misery. How about
the growing understanding that our rules don’t apply equally across genders,
ethnicities and economic levels and that those differences are getting bigger
as time goes by, and not smaller? The ways our laws are being manipulated and
interpreted are causing huge amounts of misery.
We can
address them.
 |
| My WoW Rogue. Great DPS but needed others. |
That’s quite a list, and there are probably
more. It seems overwhelming. For an individual, it is. However, we have a fact
in our favor: life’s a multiplayer game. A massively multiplayer game. If
you’ve ever played a game like World of Warcraft, you understand the power
(and difficulties) of group work. As Chief Executive of the UK’s National
Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Geoff
Mulgan points out in the above quote, we can get ourselves out of
tight spots by working together in new and creative ways.
Throughout history, people have come together
in times of need. Today, the multiple causes themselves need to come together.
No one person can fix any of it, but by linking and networking efforts, we can
move the proverbial mountains.
If you’re interested in a cause to help a
specific group, whether it’s gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, criminal
law, corporate law, healthcare, gun violence, etc, go for it. Look at it in
terms of misery- don’t just scream in outrage. How could things be changed to
lighten that misery currently experienced by those within that group? Focus and
campaign for that. My guess is, those changes, if they truly relieve misery,
would benefit others as well.
While you follow that passion, reach out to
other interests, too. If we stay in isolated bubbles, we lose opportunities and
strength. Show in concrete terms that you see others. Build alliances. Look for
common ground. Respect each other. Collaborate. Build trust.
If we
play this multiplayer game together, we can battle misery. Big or small, let’s
do something.
Together.
