Guns don't kill people ....

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Ibby

if you don't believe America has a violence problem, you're fucking stupid. a violence problem is inherently cultural in nature because we're talking about our culture, in which it occurs.
...
there is room for a very healthy debate on why we have a violence problem ... but to argue that it isn't even a problem is disgusting.

I keep thinking, every time I see the media pundits and armchair quarterbacks rehashing the same, pointless factoids in relation to this latest, inevitable-seeming event, that isn't gun control and/or mental health services, aren't these things a "band-aid" solution to a sick, misguided society, driven by extrinsic happiness, short-term gratification, and completely disconnected from the rich cultural heritage of our evolutionary forefathers, now isolated in a confused, disconnected wasteland of cheap thrills, awash in misdirected neurochemical responses which have no mechanism of purposeful self-regulation, given the novelty of our daily circumstances, and the completely artificial and contrived system of arbitrary moral standards which we must perform constant logic cartwheels in order to even stand living under the thrall of?

Please, "god" or whatever, tell me I'm not the only one drawing a larger lesson from this. This isn't a "quick fix" --we can't shuffle a few resources around to make this go away. Our culture is sick, and dying. Our humanity, in a thousand small ways or a handful of big ones--take your pick--is on the ropes. This is it. We've got to decide what's important.

Why are we here? What's the meaning of it all? These are no longer questions which it is okay to simply say "we may never know" --we've got to DECIDE that there ARE some meaningful answers. It may not be a big black book, or a kind old white-bearded man in the clouds, but it's got to be SOMETHING.

If you don't even know why you're alive, aren't you part of the commoditization of human beings?

Do we intrinsically have value, or not? If so, what is it? To have a good credit score? To go to church on Sunday?