Photo: Irving Schild
I have long wondered about the entire “hate crime” paradigm. While I have never revealed this in public, I have asked myself many times, what’s the point of classifying a murder as a “hate crime”?
All murder is hateful. Is it worse when motivated by race, religion, gender or sexual orientation as opposed to the impulse to randomly kill? Mass shooters are motivated by all sorts of things. Was the Vegas mass shooter out for gamblers? I have no idea. Does it matter if a killer specifically targets women, Jews or Asians? Should it matter?
It seems that we are more and more hunkered down with our identity group, even when it comes to mass shootings. Needless to say, if there is a conceivable racial or victim group angle to accentuate in regards to the recent Colorado tragedy, the media will run with it. But again, does it matter how many Blacks, gay men, or Sikhs were among the victims, or whether the shooter was inspired by White Supremacy, the Koran, or “Helter Skelter”?
None of this is especially complicated. Mentally ill people have easy access to military grade weapons and shoot other people with frightening speed and precision. The last time I checked, we’re all people. That was Martin Luther King’s message. That was John Lennon’s message. Divisions are illusory. Accentuating them fosters further illusion. As a teenager in the 60s, I got this.
But we now live in an age of hyper-alienation. Even White heterosexual Christian men with full-time jobs, excellent medical insurance and generous vacation pay feel victimized. Everyone has a claim, real or imagined, of being royally screwed by the government, the media or the man. Meanwhile, the deadly beat goes on.
The Supreme Court has played a central role in exasperating this horrific problem with Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito ignobly leading the way. Remember, it was their disastrously short-sighted ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 that enshrined the individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a militia. Chilling thought: Just days before the Colorado massacre, the Court met behind closed doors to discuss considering a case that would expand the Second Amendment by eliminating a New York law that places restrictions on carrying a concealed hand gun in public.
While the Court is complicit, despite what some gun control advocates would have us believe, there is no quick or easy fix. There are 300+ million firearms out there and record-breaking sales every year. Gun control laws, which I fully support, will not change that. We have traveled down a dark road for a long time and, unsurprisingly, have arrived in hell.
The crisis at hand calls for nothing short of a radical shift in our consciousness which is clearly beyond us collectively. That being the case, it is up to us as individuals to make a decisive inward turn and get our own house in order. I am by no means advocating apathy or doubling down on tribalism. We already have plenty of that.
What I am suggesting is the imperative of coming to terms with the limits of social activism. Caring for the world starts with self-care. To find peace in the valley we have to find peace in ourselves. This is self-evident, but living as we do, in the midst of unending, digitally-turbo-charged chaos, we forget it. Finding our equanimity between news cycles is more important than maintaining our Twitter feeds. Shaking our fists at the moon does not qualify as a life strategy. And yet, there is so much suffering, shaking our fists at the moon sometimes feels like the beginning of wisdom, though we must remember: it is only the beginning.
Somehow, while continuing to work outwardly for a better world, we need to step outside of the cultural current. We need to understand that if we feel certain to have the answer to gun violence, racism, homelessness, or any of the deep-rooted problems that plague us, that is a sure sign that we don’t.
Our best starting point is to meticulously practice self-compassion. From there, we can make the sincere effort to extend it to our family, friends, associates, neighbors and beyond. There is nothing new age, esoteric, religious or spiritual about this. Simply put, it is the essential and foundational work that must be done.
There is no greater revolution or better solution than learning to love.