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Gun Violence and the Illusion Of A Separate Self

     I was 15 years old when the Columbine High School massacre happened.  It was an incredibly sad and traumatic day for our nation, and I remember the utter confusion on everyone's faces as they discussed it.  The idea that someone could pick up a gun and start killing people at random was beyond comprehension.  And we honestly thought that a tragedy like that would never happen again in our lifetimes.  

     But we were wrong.  In fact, 155 mass shooting have occurred this year alone, and it's only June. Honestly, I'm not even surprised anymore when news of a massacre pops up on my social media.  I'm just sad.  Why do we have to be so cruel to one another?

     Personally, I think it's because we're trapped in the illusion of a separate self.  We've divided ourselves into increasingly smaller groups (Democrat vs. Republican, Rich vs. Poor, Boomer vs. Millennial, etc.), and all of that dividing has left us feeling isolated and afraid.  And our fear makes us think the world would be better if  "those" people didn't exist.

       That's where cruelty comes from... the idea that we can make ourselves happy by bringing misery to others. In contrast, some people think love will cure our addiction to violence, but I disagree.  If we want a peaceful world, we have to go further than that.

     We have to understand that there is no such thing as "those" people.  Yes, we are all separate and unique individuals.  But we make up a singular body called humanity.  And that body suffers each time one person harms another.  We don't have to love each other.  We don't even have to like each other.  We just need to understand that our survival depends one upon the other, and act accordingly.

     To put it a different way, our bodies are made up of billions of cells that come together to make individual organs.  On the surface, each organ is separate.  The heart pumps blood, the lungs deliver oxygen, and the brain keeps the whole thing running smoothly.  But all of these organs must work together in order for our bodies to survive.  It's not love that makes them cooperate.  It's commonsense.

     Sadly, common sense seems to be lacking in our national discourse.  We dehumanize people on the other side of an issue to the point where we actively wish them harm.  And then we act surprised when someone decides to shoot up a baseball game, or a church, or a mall.  I'm not saying that we should never disagree.  But we can argue about a host of topics without losing sight of of our shared humanity.

     To this end, we don't have to love each other for a peaceful world to exist.  We don't even have to like each other.  But we must free ourselves from the illusion of a separate self in order to stop killing each other.


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