What the Colorado "Dark Knight Rises" Shooting Teaches Us

The next few weeks are going to be interesting.

The old political saying "never let a good tragedy go to waste" is about to come in full force.  Over the course of the next couple weeks, we will see everyone from the media, to politicians, to even your cubicle-mates try to find someone (other than the shooter) to blame for the tragedy in Aurora.

The fact is though, all the efforts will be in vain.  People do have their agendas though.  The first group we will see come to the forefront is the politicians.  They will suggest that greater security efforts are needed in order to prevent this from happening in the future.

One of the hazards of living in a free society is the inherent danger of the unknown.  Sure, if you were able to control every aspect of life, it would be a lot safer, but it would also be undoubtedly worse.  A vocal minority will call for the implementation of TSA-style bag checks and pat downs at movie theaters (they already are occuring at concert and sporting venues).  Personally, I don't doubt for a second that they will get their way.  No one in 21st century America wants to be the person that calls for LESS security restrictions, lest they be proved wrong (and they will) by another tragedy; And therein lies the rub.

The fact is, tragedies are always going to happen and it doesn't matter if you give everyone an airport-style grope in public gathering places, or if you ban guns.  They will happen regardless.  The people that fight for less restrictions (see: more freedom) will always be shown to be wrong.

Whenever something like this happens, I always ask myself: "What can I learn from this?"  As is so often the case with tragedies, silver linings are hard to come by.  The only advantage to them at all is that they provide a learning experience.  Many people will (futilely) try to learn how to avoid it in the future.  I, however will observe the reaction of people and learn a little bit about the world around me.   We have already established that unless you take away ALL freedoms, you cannot account for the lone nutjob.  Even that thought in and of itself, is a bit simplistic, though.

The truth is, that we need to start taking a long hard look at ourselves, America.  We don't do that nearly enough.  We need to start looking at our priorities.  You can't save everyone, but the fact that someone like this shooter can be so far gone from society to manically do what he has done indicates that we have some people who are falling through the cracks.  I'm not saying we should feel sorry for the shooter, but I am saying that it is in our best interest to mitigate future shooters.  Many will call this man a monster, and without a doubt his actions were quite MONSTEROUS, but that sort of labeling and demonification only functions to mask the only good thing that can come of this situation... learning about what made him do and how we can avoid having OUR one-friends or estranged family from being the next person going on a killing spree.

They say that everyone thinks that it'll never happen to them.  Usually, they're talking about the victims.  I'm suggesting that we should be saying it a lot more about the perpetrators.  This person has family that should have been keyed into what they were doing.  Someone doesn't get this far gone without some warnings.  Our alienation not just of other strangers, but of our own families is leading to these disasters.  I'm not saying it's the breakdown of the familiy structure, but it is related.  It's our tendancy to give up.  Now, of course, all the details about this person haven't come out yet.  It's possible that they had a great life, great family, etc.  Obviously though, SOMEONE, if they had cared enough should have seen this coming.

We need to take this tragedy and not "let it go to waste" by allowing it to drive us further apart as a society, but to truly bring it together.  Not by symbolic supportive ribbons that will inevitably be put on bumpers or by moments of silence, but by truly reaching out to our friends, families, neighbors, and coworkers and establishing greater ties.  People that commit these atrocities lack empathy and the only way you can lack empathy is if you don't see others as human beings.

Let's make a greater effort to learn more about each other's humanity.  It may not be the sexy answer.  It may not get us vengeance for the dead.  It won't even stop this from happening again.  However, it WILL decrease its incidence and maybe even stop an action by someone you know that will result in you being quoted in the news: "He seemed like a nice guy".