Philisophical

The Lost Boys with Guns

/ kevingdrendel / 13 Comments

Depositphotos Image ID: 184293546 Copyright: belchonock

In the wake of another tragic school shooting and re-ignition of the flames of impassioned debate over guns and gun control, some people have dared to suggest we have problems other than guns. They get shot down pretty quickly now, as it seems we just can’t ignore the gun problem we have. Yes, I have been reluctant to say it… we have a gun problem.

But, we have more problems than guns. Mental health may be an issue, but statistics suggest that the United States has no greater incidence of mental health problems than the rest of the world. Maybe the incidence of mental health problems isn’t the problem. Maybe the problem is the way we treat it (or don’t treat it as the case may be).

But that isn’t the only problem either. We assume that anyone who shoots up a school playground is crazy, but that is a dangerous assumption. We think that they are “not like us”, but history suggests we might be fooling ourselves. Given the right factors, circumstances and pressures, any one of us might do things we could never imagine.

The Holocaust wasn’t just the result of a despot few. It took a nation of “regular people” to allow it to happen. If the Holocaust happened in the US today (not suggesting it will), your neighbors would be going off to work this morning to the concentration camps, gas chambers and sterile government offices that allowed genocide to become a national industry. It could very well be us, given the right mix of circumstances and pressures.

The gun problem in the United States isn’t likely the result of a single problem. Reality is more complicated than that. Rather, a confluence of factors and circumstances have come together to create this perfect storm – this phenomenon that is unique in the civilized world.

Among the factors, I speculate, is the history of gun rights that is unparalleled in any other country. Gun ownership is an individual right in the United States. It’s even built into our Constitution. No other country has that history.

But, I don’t think the availability of guns or mental health or or our history, pick your pet theory, are the only issues. School shootings are a recent phenomenon. The first school shooting took place in 1966, and the incidents of indiscriminate school shootings have risen exponentially in the last 20-30 years. Something else is going on.

We tend to let ourselves fall into the trap of false dichotomies: it’s either guns or not guns. Yes it is! Not it’s not!

Like schoolyard banter, nothing gets accomplished because each side is too busy defending their own side of the argument, and too stubborn to concede anything to the “other side”, so we don’t get anywhere. Nothing gets done. We end up with no resolve and no solutions.

I am not anti-gun, but I am here to say I am willing to listen to reasonable measures to limit gun ownership. We have to do that. It’s a numbers game. The more guns that are available for more people to get a hold of, the more likely it is that guns will end up in the hands of people who are dangerous. I am willing to listen to the people who say we have a mental health problem. I am willing to consider other issues and solutions.

But there is problem that few people are talking about it: it’s a problem with our boys. When was the last time a girl was involved in a school shooting? How about a mass shooting of any kind? Girls and women have been involved in school shootings, but school shootings are overwhelmingly committed by boys and men.

It’s past time that we started talking in earnest about what has happened to our boys!

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Whether God Exists: Distinguishing Emotion from Reason

/ kevingdrendel / 1 Comment

Depositphotos Image ID: 52812133 Copyright: sdecoret

Stephen Fry was posed with the question: “Suppose it is all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates and are confronted by God, what would you, Stephen Fry, say to Him”? This is Stephen Fry’s answer:

Bone cancer in children? What’s that mean? How dare you! How dare you create a world with such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right! It’s utterly, utterly evil! Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who created a world that is so full of injustice and pain?

To the following question, “Do you think you’re going to get in?” he responded;

No! I wouldn’t want to get in on His terms. They’re wrong! Now, if we find out it is Pluto, Hades, and if it was the twelve Greek gods, I would have more trust because … they didn’t pretend not to be human in their appetites and in their capriciousness, and in their unreasonableness.  They didn’t present themselves as all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, and all-beneficent. Because the God who created this universe … is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish, totally! We have to spend our life on our knees thanking Him?! What kind of God would do that? [That God] made an insect whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children making them blind. They eat outward from the eye. Why?! Why did He do that? He could easily have made a creation in which that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable…. On the assumption there is [a God], what kind of a God is He? It’s perfectly apparent. He’s monstrous, utterly monstrous! He deserves no respect whatsoever.

The emotional tenor of Fry’s response hits like a ton of bricks. Confronting it may seem, at once, quite daunting for the Christian theist.

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A Discourse on Belief

/ kevingdrendel / 1 Comment

Depositphotos Image ID: 140440702 Copyright: Marcinmaslowski

I recently read an editorial by Jerry Davich, a Tribune writer, focusing on a new book by Kurt Anderson, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire A 500-Year History. The book chronicles the history of the American psyche on belief. It sounds fascinating. Davich says it resonated with what he believes about “Americans’ beliefs”, but what Davich says doesn’t resonate with me.

Davich quotes Anderson’s observation that “this post-factual, ‘fake news ‘ moment we’re all living through … is not something new,  but rather the ultimate expression of our national character”. We are free to believe absolutely anything in this country, and so we do, “proudly so, ” says Davich!

I can see how the “wishful dreamers, magical thinkers and true believers” Anderson describes in his book could “be embedded in our DNA”. The United States of America was founded by dreamers and believers. And such wild thoughts of fancy as carried pioneers to our shores were likely fertile soil for the “hucksters and their suckers” who became a part of the American experience.

While these things do strike a chord and make some sense, the conclusions that Davich reaches about belief, itself, strike a discordant  note with me. They throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. While mixing metaphors may be bad literary taste, I think the shoe fits.

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The Pitfall of Natural Talent

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Photo of the 2006 Greco National Finalists at 140 Pounds

My heart is heavy as I write this. Several days ago a young man, let’s call him Frank, with tons of pure talent died in a motorcycle accident running from the police making a routine traffic stop, and his girlfriend lies in a coma fighting for life. She has two small children at home wondering where she is.

It was the first really nice day of the spring, and his the last day of his life.

This young man had tremendous potential. He was a natural athlete. Even in a tough sport like wrestling, he made winning look easy. He loved the attention of his success, and he always had a ready smile for the parents and teammates who were happy to be his coach or friend.

He was a charmer, and he knew it, but that charm didn’t keep him out of detentions or trouble with the law as he got older and adventurous. The free flowing, unrestrained way he wrestled didn’t translate well into academic discipline, or disciple of any kind, for that matter.

I only knew him from afar. I wasn’t one of the better or more gregarious coaches. My boys were younger, and they didn’t have as much natural talent. My older son didn’t have a winning record until his third year in wrestling, but he dreamed big and worked hard at it.

I used to tell him that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. I wanted him to believe that. I wanted to believe that.

At the same time, I took consolation in the character that was being built into him, and I tried to instill the importance of character in him. I would like to say that character should always be the priority, but who doesn’t long to win, be successful and have the attention of the star athlete? Like Frank.

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Pluralism: Good or Bad?

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Pluralism is a modern buzzword that has turned into a rallying cry in some circles. It shapes education at our universities, and it even shapes our politics. Not everyone ascribes to the value of pluralism, but the notion that we live in a pluralistic society and, therefore, that we should highly value pluralism has become a popular dogma.

It might have been inevitable that we would find ourselves valuing pluralism so highly in this melting pot we call the United States of America. Much of the motivation that drives the current focus on pluralism is good motivation and flows from the freedoms we have long enjoyed. Like any doctrine, however, heresies lurk in the shadows.

Even in the midst of championing pluralism and the unity, opportunity, inclusiveness and tolerance that goes with it, dissension comes from various outlying corners. Not everyone is buying it. The visionaries of a pluralistic ideal can be heard to say something like: “if we can only all get along, the world would be a better place!” But would it?

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Science & Religion: Taking Hold and Letting Go

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People have likely fought ideological battles since people could communicate with each other. We have grown in intellect, our knowledge of the world and made significant technological advances (though men accomplished things millennia ago that we still can’t understand), but has our nature changed much?

Ideological battles seem to be the basic stuff of which culture and society are made. At the lowest level, it’s “us against them”, and “we” protect our turf like our lives depend on it. We pick our turf, and we defend it: new against old; right against left; science against faith; and on and on.

These ideological battles can be, but don’t necessarily have to be, the stuff of racism, bias and ignorance. We need reference points and bases from which to operate and categorize and contextualize the world, but dogmatic, rigid adherence to our reference points block progress, even if we are “progressive”. The inability or unwillingness to remain open-minded limits our opportunities for advancement.  Continue reading →