Follow-up story

https://myquest.blog/2018/02/18/guns-and-american-exceptionalism/

I was shocked to just find a blog posting entitled “How to Survive a Mass Shooting”, a full-on technical combat guide for American citizens. It’s professionally put together to sell the idea to buyers who seemed to be flocking to the post.

After describing some basic combat training techniques, the guide ends with the following:

“Stay vigilant, maintain situational awareness at all times, plan for the worst, and stay survival fit – body and mind!!!”

It’s a soldiers guide

[I WILL NOT provide a link to this!]

Is this really where we are in American society? I’m not surprised that it looks more and more like the USA is entering another period of civil warfare, but I am shocked that its happening sooner than I predicted.

I suppose after 15 years of living abroad, I really have lost touch with American culture, and the extent to which violence has become acceptable. Have Americans really given up on trying to resolve problems nonviolently? Sorry if I sound naïve, but I grew up in a rural region of the American South at a time when people still had respect for each other.

Where I lived in North Carolina, neighbors helped neighbors and the color of someone’s skin was less important than the strength and gentleness of their spirits, at least that’s the parents and grandparents I knew who were my teachers.

Of course the world wasn’t perfect back then, but it seemed the only people I heard spoken of as enemies were the Russians, and I knew somewhere inside the Russians were human just like us.

Of course the government was still dealing with what they perceived to be the ‘Commie’ threat to democracy, while African Americans were worried about getting crosses burned in their front yards. Despite these negatives, there seemed to be far fewer barriers between local people then, despite our awareness of racial and economic inequality.

Humans may be violent by nature, but I fully believe we are capable of rising above that. We can still work out our differences nonviolently.

The mass acceptance of an inevitable and unavoidable clash of cultures is frightening and sad. Will evolution spur our consciousnesses to evolve just in time to transform into a higher form of species? Or will we become extinct like the dinosaurs?

How do you think the country’s economy will be affected by a civil war? This saber-rattling (and that is what’s being done) is only going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy—like attracts like and the battle begins.

When we totally lose the art of discourse, we are doomed. Because it is an art form, one of the magical aspects of life that’s healing and has held cultures together for thousands of years. Without performing the art of discourse, the human species will cease to exist.

Accepting and living as if the worst is always going to happen at any moment and that everyone is your potential enemy, will only hasten the demise of our species!

peace~henry

[Photo credit not attributable.]