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April 17, 2007

It's All About Community

Yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech has a lot of people wondering how this happened and what we can do to prevent it in the future. Some blame "gun mania," the glorification of gore, and the pressure to succeed without asking for help. Some say it is part of a conspiracy by government operatives to convince Americans that now is the time for strict gun control – and the next step is a clamp down on the freedoms of unarmed Americans. And some say bad things just happen and sometimes you can't explain them. I have a very different opinion.

I think it is a symptom of the fact that too many of us feel we aren't, or don't have to be, part of a community. Whether we are loners or rugged individualists or ruthless entrepreneurs or, dare I say it, libertarians, for too many of us community is something we do not value or understand. It is there to serve us. We don't think about how the products or services we buy came to be or the people who brought them to us. We resent the taxes we pay that provide the infrastructure that we all use because we don't think about life without that infrastructure. We're too busy doing our own thing to take the time to volunteer to help the less fortunate and we don't appreciate those few dedicated souls who make personal sacrifices to care for the weak, the elderly, the sick, and the dying. Unless those problems affect us personally, they don't exist in our minds. The result of this massive disinvestment in community is that a few of us become so alone and so disconnected from others that the thought of taking others' lives is not the abhorrent, inconceivable thing it ought to be.

Think about it on a larger scale and you'll see what I mean. Spend a moment feeling your own pain and fear as an American whose security has been shaken a little bit by what happened yesterday. Now imagine the pain that is being experienced every day in Iraq. Yesterday, for example, 66 people died horrible, shocking deaths in Baghdad and Karbala. Did you know that? Twice as many people as died at Virginia Tech. And that sort of death is occurring in Iraq daily - in a country that never experienced suicide bombs before this war began.

We fear for our children and worry how the senseless school shootings affect them. But do we spend even five seconds thinking about the children in Iraq? Are they less human? Are they less important? According to yesterday's news report about the bombing in Baghdad, they are paying a terrible and inconceivable price:

State television aired footage from the scene, in which rescue workers could be seen evacuating casualties. The charred body of a child laid motionless on a stretcher. At least six children were among the dead, according to an official at Al-Hussein Hospital.

The deaths and physical injuries are just the beginning. We have school counselors to help our children deal with the stress of yesterday's attacks. But what do the Iraqi children have? USA Today reports that a study of primary school students in one Baghdad neighborhood found that 70% of them are suffering symptoms of trauma-related stress. These symptoms include bed-wetting and stuttering. Has the trauma of your child over the school shootings reached such a level? Do we suffer anything even remotely similar to what is occurring daily in Iraq?

Many Iraqi children have to pass dead bodies on the street as they walk to school in the morning, according to a separate report last week by the International Red Cross. Others have seen relatives killed or have been injured in mortar or bomb attacks.

"Some of these children are suffering one trauma after another, and it's severely damaging their development," said Said Al-Hashimi, a psychiatrist who teaches at Mustansiriya Medical School and runs a private clinic in west Baghdad. "We're not certain what will become of the next generation, even if there is peace one day," Al-Hashimi said.

Over the weekend, USA Today published another report on the traumatic effects of the war on Iraqi children. The paper told of a six-year-old boy who often will not eat and who refused to even leave his house for a year after permanently losing the use of one arm and suffering burns on both legs in a mortar shell attack. It told of a five-year-old boy who will no longer speak after having watched his father bleed to death in his home. One psychiatrist calls the traumatized Iraqi children "time bombs" and laments that few mental health care workers are available to help them.

We Americans are part of a much larger community – a world-wide human community that is increasingly interdependent. It astounds me that we can separate the violence in Iraq from the violence at Virginia Tech, that we can ignore or disregard the one and be outraged and terrified by the other. I believe that evil acts perpetrated on others are the direct result of an inability to empathize combined with self-absorption, disillusionment, and rage. What happened at Virginia Tech was likely the result of that lethal combination of personality problems in one person. What is happening in Iraq is the result of that lethal combination of personality problems in our entire country.

Taking people's guns away won't fix this problem. Blaming a secret government conspiracy won't fix it, either. The only real solution is to refocus ourselves and our children on building community through promoting volunteerism, respecting all people, paying attention to the needs of those around us and striving to meet them, and truly appreciating the contributions and gifts of every member of the community, both here and abroad.

Posted by Becky at April 17, 2007 11:42 AM