Priorities

It’s been another weekend in Chicago. Another slew of shootings and deaths. Is there anyone out there working to find the root causes of this problem? Day after day children commit violence against children, neighbor against neighbor, mothers against their children, teachers against their students and fathers against their families. It is not just in the crime ridden areas of Chicago, but it happens as well in quiet, affluent suburbs.

Popular opinion attributes this problem to the number and kinds of guns owned. This is a somewhat simplistic approach to a solution to this problem. The gun is the delivery vehicle for the violence and not a motivating force for the violence. Fewer guns would produce less violence sounds logical, but, such thinking gives us an enemy to which we can direct our anger while we fail to dig deeper into the root causes of the violence that afflicts us.

We can be certain that human carbon footprints will eventually bring our ecosystem to its knees. Millions of dollars, maybe billions, are spent to reduce levels of atmospheric pollution so that our environment may be slightly better - in a hundred years or so. Our municipalities spend much to protect trees and reduce soil erosion on construction sites all in the name of environmental protection.

Why are we so concerned about the deterioration of our environment in some distant future when here and now we are systematically hating and killing each other? And the only answer we can come up with is fewer guns.

I can offer some suggestions. But, who am I? I’m not a social scientist, nor a psychiatrist, so I can offer no empirical evidence to support my suggestions. I have, however, raised a family and functioned in society to a modestly successful degree. I think these to be enough qualifications to be able to recognize that there is a serious deficiency of love in our relationships with each other.

So please, all you scientists out there who apply such a high level of acumen to the preservation of our environment, turn that passionate desire for preserving our environment toward the preservation our lives.