Better Angels, Triumphant

What can anyone say after a tragedy like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that is remotely adequate?  For me, there was almost so much to say that I had nothing at all to say.  Simply no words were sufficient.  Horrific might be the single best word, but even that grossly pales.  Last Friday, the nation glimpsed the worst of humanity, and we wept.

Inevitably following such an event, social and mainstream media, and everyone around the water cooler has been a-buzz with discussions about gun control (for and against), mental illness, the degradation of society, the loss of god in our culture/schools, and countless other proposed reasons to what’s “wrong with our society” and how to fix it, how to prevent such a terrible act from ever happening again. 

Instead, I find myself thinking over and over again about something else entirely.  I keep thinking that I feel lucky to be alive, in this country, in this point in time of human existence.  I keep thinking about how good life actually is right now, right here.

Our justified condemnation and outrage over an atrocity like children and teachers being murdered in the classroom tells me how far we have come as a species, a culture, and as a nation.  Our reflexive response tells us how rare an event this truly is, and how much we value the lives of children and the adults who want to protect them.  I’m sure as a result of what happened, our political leaders will rush to create new laws and limits on our freedom, and generally the people will support that reaction.  How could we not?  It’s to protect children, right?  Anyone speaking out against it risks being labeled insensitive, or stupid.   I do not intend for this to be a political discussion.  I think there are plenty of valid points on all sides of many of these debates.  From my perspective, creating new laws – at least immediately – is completely unnecessary, and is another nail in the coffin of liberty, and the reason for America’s existence.  Each one risks pushing our society backwards towards eventual despotism.   Knee-jerk responses to create more laws are unnecessary because by any reasonable standard, the world is getting better, partly as a result of increased liberty.  Often our emotional rush to action creates many more unintended consequences that are problematic (Department of Homeland Security, anyone??).  What I wish is before any decision is made about what actions to take is for us to take a collective breath and reflect on how wonderful our lives and society actually are.  

Recently I started reading the brilliant Steven Pinker’s “[easyazon-link asin=”B0052REUW0″ locale=”us”]The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined[/easyazon-link]”  The title is a nod to Abraham Lincoln’s beautiful sentiments in his First Inaugural Address in 1861.  Pinker’s book is thus far so extraordinary, that I recommend you stop reading this blog right now, and go read his book for yourself.  Pinker more eloquently states, with gobs (that’s the scientific term) of data, what I (and countless others before Pinker) have observed and believed about humanity for years: 

By almost every measurable standard, life is better now than it was in our past (recent and distant) for almost every human society, even the poorest among us.  And violence is undoubtedly on the decline. 

It’s sometimes difficult to believe those truths.  Some people willfully deny them despite there being ample evidence to the contrary.  Human society is more peaceful than it has ever been.  

Compared to the age of the earth and even compared to the time modern humans have walked on earth, our life spans are short (though getting longer all the time).  A generous one hundred years next to 200,000 is miniscule.  The blink of an eye.  We have an extremely difficult time comprehending times longer than a few decades, much less those on the scales such as these.  So, we get wrapped up in the here and now and compare something like what happened in Connecticut on Friday against our typical daily existence (which is usually quite peaceful, and relatively easy, especially in the west).  We are barraged daily by the media about the threat of terrorism, America’s homicide rate, and this atrocity and that one.  The news is littered with stories about murders, rapes, kidnappings, wars, and we think, what have humans descended to?  When will the violence end?  Surely, it wasn’t like this in the good ole’ days!  The truth is that more than ever before, humans are showing an ascendance of virtue.  We just have a natural tendency to remember the irregularities over the far more prolific prosaic experiences.

And the good ole’ days weren’t really that good after all.

Humans most certainly have a dark side.  Violence has always been a part of our species’ existence.  The capacity to commit violence has been evolving in us for millions of years along with other traits like competitiveness, ambition, empathy, compassion, and love. But consider this:  Only 2000 years ago, the greatest civilization in the world – the Roman Empire – regularly entertained themselves in great arenas by watching animals and humans rip other animals and humans to shreds in regular bloodbaths. This was their sport of choice. Gladiators were the Champions and heroes, the rock stars of their day.  People would spend an entire day eating, laughing, drinking while unbelievable carnage happened in front of them.  Today, in America, our bloodlust is channeled into the “violence” of football on Sunday afternoons, and into violent, but fictional, video games and movies. 

The Romans would have thought we are a weak society with those notions of violence.  They are welcome to that opinion.  But it is notable to consider how far we’ve come.  The Romans – the epitome of advanced and civilized society for their day – would have thought nothing of a game of football that resulted in mass homicide for one or both sides.  Simply for entertainment.

We have progressed.  We continue to do so.

We are fooling ourselves if we believe violence will evolve out of us anytime soon, (millions of years from now, perhaps) if ever. I’m often frustrated when people talk about the decline of our “culture.”  What this usually means is the loss of morality defined by religion.  Or the loss of some sort of repressed “Leave it to Beaver” style existence of post World War II America.  The fact is the murder of children, adults, sacrificial animals, is repeated over and over again within the bible (particularly the old Testament), and other holy books.  Violence was a far more acceptable and expected in everyday life for our ancestors than it is for us today.  Thankfully, we are moral in spite of some of the lessons taken from our holy books.  We are able to rationalize away, modify, or outright ignore those terrible stories of our religions’ (while retaining our religious beliefs) because we know that human suffering – especially the suffering of children — is bad.  

Through our intellect, capacity for reason, and the power of civilization (which despite popular belief to the contrary is the driving force of our mundane, peaceful lives), most of us are able to suppress the violent tendencies of our nature, ignore the casual and prolific violence of most of our history and our myths, and even decry with outrage when those tendencies are expressed in a rare event like Sandy Hook.  The better angels of our nature are far more prevalent today than they ever have been in our history as a species.  The atrocity of Friday, December 14, 2012 should not propel us to take emotional, and unnecessary actions that could be a step backwards from the progress of freedom and liberty that have helped bring those angels out to play far more than ever before.  At least not right now.  Not in the immediate wake of destruction when emotions are running high, and our rational sides are suppressed.  

We should mourn the loss of life.  We should remember them and cry over the lives shortened by the unspeakable evil that struck down so many before their lives had even really begun.  We should honor the heroic efforts of the protectors who died trying to save them.  We should support the families and friends of those lost.  We should try to figure out if anything reasonable can prevent another terrible day like that one, and talk about it without demonizing each other.  We should continue to progress and strive to eradicate violence from our nature, despite it being a fool’s errand.

But most of all, we should remember that life is precious.  Life is short.  Life is beautiful.  And this kind of evil is not who most of us are.  Not anymore.

Peace,

PersephoneK