Bad things happen on planet Earth. Like last week… primarily according to USA Today:
Federal investigators believe Aaron Alexis cleared a security checkpoint with his contractor identification and carried a shotgun into building 197 at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. Alexis reportedly began firing at people indiscriminately from an atrium overlook. After firing several rounds, Alexis ran down a flight of stairs where he confronted and shot a security officer. It is believed that Alexis took the officer’s handgun and returned to the overlook where he continued to shoot. 13 people, including the shooter, died.
Like yesterday at a Kenyan shopping mall:
At least 59 people were killed and 175 injured during a Saturday afternoon shooting rampage at a shopping mall in an upscale district of Nairobi. The 5-10 gunmen carried AK-47s and other sophisticated weapons and wore vests with hand grenades on them. They also asked Muslims to leave before opening fire.
Bad things do happen.
In wake of the so-called “badness,” many respond with immediate, perceived necessary solutions. On Monday, the Navy Yard shooting was only hours old when Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) took to the microphones to call for increased gun control measures. “When will enough be enough?” she asked. While Feinstein repeated details that were inaccurate but fueled the passion behind her plea — as many and the media are often apt to do, even though pausing would be prudent — she was not alone in her plea.
When bad things happen, we have a desire to fix it. We have a desire to ensure the bad things will never happen again.
On that note, the Intramuralist has great respect for Feinstein, etal. in their stated desire to curb violence. Who among us desires to see the innocent die? The challenge, no less, is whether or not the proposed solution is actually effective — or is more proposed and applied because it makes us feel better; it makes us feel as if we are doing something.
In the wake of last week’s shooting, in multiple circles, I thus posed the following question: where does this “badness” come from? Is it evil? Where does the evil come from? What, in fact, is evil?
The answers were fascinating…
Most would acknowledge an existence of evil, but few seemed comfortable with evil dwelling within a person. Some called the behavior of Aaron Alexis evil; still others said the identification of evil would be dependent on whether or not the gunman had a mental illness. If he had any mental deficiency, the evil — if it existed — rested in the hands of someone or something else, perhaps in the institution or people who allowed him to have a gun in his hands.
My conclusion from this certainly unscientific polling is that we’re not comfortable with the idea of evil, and when we do utilize the label, we seem to do so inconsistently and subjectively. We don’t like it.
Bad things happened on planet Earth last week. I didn’t like it.
Respectfully,
AR