Violence never solves anything. Not really. All it does is create a culture of hate and fear that can keep things under wraps for a time, but human nature will find a way to get around whatever violence is there to “protect.” Men and women who resort to violence against others with guns, with knives, and with weapons of mass destruction generally have a warped opinion of the world, and of human nature.

What honestly saddens me the most is that these people who take up arms against others have a history themselves. They grew up in families, just like you and me, and a good percentage of the time those families did a lot to instill values like the value of human lives, but somewhere along the way that message was lost. Somewhere along the line there was a disconnect, a parting of the ways, when they decided the world was going to hell in a hand basket, so why not join an early apocalypse?

These school shootings, these serial killers, these senseless murders, are they truly ramping up in recent times or are we just now finally equipped to broadcast them almost as soon as they happen? Are these shooters, these killers, these murderers the new form of reality TV stars? Do they yearn for the spotlight, even if it’s the negative end of that light? Or are they just so focused on their mission that they see red instead of black and white? It is every one of these, and then some, in my opinion, because each and every one is an individual. Each and every one has some private vendetta that he/she feels needs to be made public.

I don’t even know where to begin anymore, where the rhetoric ends and the true solutions begin. In the aftermath of every single one of these horrific events we band together as a community, and we also fracture as individuals trying to come to grips with what we’ve just witnessed, or read about. We argue about gun control laws, about the senseless nature of these crimes, about racism, sexism, and any other -ism that just might possibly hold the key to whatever occurred. We are all numb, and yet incensed at the same time, confused that human kind can be so base, and so destructive to other human kind.

Is it time for prayers or action, time for the nature vs. nurture discussion once again, or time for us to throw in the towel and say the end is nigh? The Bible of course tells us that these events are precursors of the end times, that we should all be on our knees waiting for the rapture right about now. But is that practical? What does that serve? What do prayers serve for those who are dead, or dying, or maimed, because of these horrific events? At the same time, what does lashing out serve either?

I’ve read so many posts about how those responsible should be strung up, and the same amount of posts saying that we are simply breeding a cesspool of a generation that has no tolerance because they haven’t been taught to have tolerance. We #standwithorlando, and #fightfororlando, and give #prayersfororlando, just as we did for Columbine, just as we did for the 9/11 victims, and just as we’ve done countless times for these senseless acts of violence, these acts of violence that have never solved anything. How can they?

To solve anything we need discussion. We need conversation, real, honest to goodness conversation, a chance to hear from those who feel disenfranchised, to talk to them and figure things out. We need to give them an option before they feel it’s time to take action, because there’s no going back then. We have short memories, I know, because we’re on to the next thing so quickly, but remember that these people grew up too, that they had families who nurtured them, and who affected them from the outset.

But there are signs, little tics that tell us when things are not going well, that give us clues as to what might happen in the future if things go the way they’ve been going. We read about them all the time after the fact. We also read about those who felt it wasn’t their place to voice their suspicions. Because we live in a world where we don’t judge even though we do, when we notice nothing because our heads are stuck so far up our own asses, or stuck in the goings-on of celebrities.

Now is not the time for prayer. Now is the time to get our houses in order. Because a storm is coming, and it’s been coming for ages. We just haven’t noticed it until now. It’s being forced down our throats as time and again the victims become the oppressors, as our eyes are wrenched up from our own lives to see that the world is so much bigger than we are. But we need to see it before it gets to this point. We need to recognize the pain in their eyes, the anger like a crouching tiger waiting to spring.

We need to become the community we say we are, because as individuals with our individual agendas, we are losing touch. We are losing human beings. We are losing humanity.

Sam