Common Violence

(Warning: Random, Confused, Disjointed Ramblings Follow)

Last night I curled up on our nice, soft, warm bed. I played with my sweet, warm, happy cat who stretched out lazily and purred as I rubbed her tummy. She closed her eyes and sent soft kitty kisses towards me. She was without a single care in the world. She was so happy, it was a serene moment. The two people I love the most (husband and kitty) were near by, I was safe, our bellies were full of food.

And in the background my husband was reading me statistics of what was happening in New Orleans.

"The south is effectively a third world country" he finally announced.

I looked at our cat. She wasn't worried.

It was another surreal moment, compounded with the same raw, distant fear and stomach clenching anxiety that I felt when London was attacked, when New York and Washington D.C. was attacked, when the Tsunami hit, when Shock and Awe started. God? I keep thinking all those people are in so much pain. Why?

I said the same thing to C. He didn't look worried either. As I sat there feeling that too-familiar wave of panic and worry build up in my body he continued to spit out statistics about the levees. About the looting and the crime, the crazy panic growing in the south with people going crazy hoarding gas and food. He read me articles about the way gas works and how the shortages only happen when we begin to horde. It was all very complicated and took a lot of concentration. I think C. needed to concentrate on the numbers, it helped us not think of our friends and neighbors who live down there. He spouted casualty numbers and prices. How many feet of water, how much damage.

When I turned on the news this morning there was a speech with our President doing the same thing. Here are some numbers. Let's concentrate on the numbers and try to forget that the bodies that are floating under the water had names like Adam and Kristy. Let's just count.

Then the news talked to reporters who said that the same hallmarks you see in a war torn country can be found in Louisiana. People are shooting one another for ice. Stealing, reports of rape, beatings, waving assault rifles and yelling expletives towards the police.

At work we talk about the devastation at office birthday parties. One man mentions a picture of a sign saying "You loot, I shoot." Everyone laughs.

My husband read about a looter shooting a police man in the head and the major prison uprising calling soldiers away from trying to protect a hospital...he thinks the National Guard should shoot to kill.

Where in our hearts does this ugliness live? And why is it coming out now? Why, in the face of random tragedy, are we trying to hurt one another? Is this our baser survival instincts finally breaking through, or is this something we have bred and fed waiting for the opportunity? Waiting for a time when we can defy convention, decency and consequences. A time when we can be the monsters we're just waiting to be.

I worry that the latter is true, that as we cater to decadence and a "me-first" mentality, we are really creating monsters. I worry it's our society that has erased the idea that our actions effect others. I worry we are slowly destroying community...the one thing that keeps us living and working together.

But it's not just the south, it's not just America. Today I read about the stampede on a Baghdad Bridge. Shiite pilgrims trampled one another to death because of a false rumor there was a suicide bomber on the bridge. 950 pilgrims died. There was no bomber on the bridge.

Again accusations are flying. Shiite leaders are blaming Shiite AND Sunni leaders that they didn't protect the roads as well as they should. Pilgrims blame Americans for fighting at the temple (where there were terrorists). Everyone wants to hurt someone else to make themselves feel better.

And the worst part is so many people died because no one bothered to help them when they fell down. No one wanted to stop and help someone else, they all wanted to save themselves...even if it meant trampling their brother - literally.

I could pull more stories out of the recent news as examples of this mentality, but why? Of course we all know evil comes from ourselves. We commit the crimes, we speak the lies. The fact that I can pull the same kind of stories from around the world - London, New Orleans, Gaza, Baghdad, Beijing - just brings it home.

The world is breeding monsters, and we always have. We are still fighting the same wars, both externally and internally, that we have for thousands of years.

How is it a that a species that can create philosophy, art, music, science, and religion can't seem to change the fundamental things that keep us from progressing? Why can we teach ourselves to solve incredibly complex mathematical problems, but we can't stop beating one another up?

People often surprise me. They can perform amazing feats of kindness and they can perform astronomical amounts of violence. You never know what conditions will bring either about.

Last night, as my husband and I walked through the mall I passed a woman who had to have been in her 40's. She was looking into the face of a small teddy bear and had the softest, sweetest Mona Lisa type smile on her face. She was sitting around dozens of people, but she stood out because she was glowing.

I wish a teddy bear could help everyone feel what she was feeling. Or a soft warm purring cat. I wish there was something that could bring us all back to that calm, happy feeling where we can accept the hardships that come our way because we know we won't have to face them alone.

I wish.