Like most of the country this week, my friends and colleagues have been talking about the Florida school shooting, and arguing over the, "guns vs mental health" issues. To me, it is like rearranging chairs on the titanic. It can be one, the other, both, or neither, but the fucking ship is going down.
Let's step back a moment and recognize when someone is depressed they ask if you feel like you are gonna hurt yourself or others for a valid reason. People in crisis shouldn't have guns. That doesn't mean you with your anxiety are being targeted, nor are people who are responsible guns owners.
I have a valid pistol permit and I own a gun. I don't really like guns or feel safer having one in the house. But I did the responsible thing and got educated. If I got really depressed, I hope my husband would take away my access to it. I would hope the people who love me would help me protect myself and others. That's not a bad thing.
We need to have civil discussions or there will be no answer. No gun control, no responsible heath care help. No anything but the same violence in crisis. No child is born angry enough to shoot 17 people and kill them. It's takes years to devolve to a point where you believe this is the answer. Many failures in society allow that to happen. Guns and mental health, social services, community, poverty, education, heath care, all failed this kid and he killed. He's accountable, but so are all of us for spending more time arguing and less time doing things to fix this. I don't have the answer as I sit and type this, but screaming about why you are right and someone else is wrong won't either. We all want less death. Lets talk to each other.
Thanks for checking in.
~Leticia @nytowl
Perhaps the Blockchain could solve that for us. Clearly people that deal with harder questions should be rewarded more. That would create a real incentive for people to start taking care of things instead of the corrupt system we have been using. Since it's based on math more and is depended on the community with trust and reputation it may actually work to solve most of the issues we see today.
One thing is for sure we will communicate a lot more in the future and share information. Eventually we will come up with better solutions since humans are deeply kind. One major issue is with large countries that communication becomes flawed if you don't create a solid tribe. Having a tribe of 300 million people is impossible to manage. It needs to be split up in smaller groups. But we are starting to see that now online with Blockchain which is really exciting.
Communication in the end is key to all. But then you truly need to amp up those trust levels and make people know each other. Or they will not talk to each other. There is sacrifice of time and attention involved in processes like this. And it creates a stronger network that can become super stable in the long run. Building solid relationships is what needs to be done again. If we are not increasing trust levels then we are wasting our time.
True, and to the point of guns, there's a huge difference between a having a gun for protection and having an assault weapon. An ex that kept a rifle in his house, but as soon as his mental illness presented itself, (clinical depression) he removed it from our home. As deep as his illness had gotten however, there's no way he could bring myself to seriously consider owning a gun. But the more that we focus the discussion mainly in mental health and add mire stigma to an illness society still doesn't fully understand or accept, the bigger evil here is the access to these massive weapons.
Now when everyone is getting extremely empowered by technology and tools our kindness and responsibility has to increase. Not like we have any other choice. As of right now the big problem is that it's impossible to have any discussions about anything. What I suspect will happen to the western world is they will fall behind the developing world since they are so invested in their current reality. Almost like we beta tested the world on them.
Since location doesn't matter anymore with technology that means that the western world will have to compete in a global economy with people that are willing to work way harder and more effective. Love needs to be shared more but again it's very complicated since this can very easy switch to a survival of the fittest game especially when world population goes up to 9 billion.