COLORADO
(….when pure fantasy play becomes deadly reality)

There’s something dreadfully wrong with our society when pure fantasy play becomes deadly reality.

Such is the horrific event in Aurora, Colorado, where a deranged youth turned a crowded theater’s premiere screening of another fantasy film into a slaughter arena, killing 12 and wounding scores of others (many still languishing in hospital with life threatening ones), as casually as if he were ordering popcorn from the theater lobby’s snack counter.

More troubling, however, is the immediate public focus on the weaponry he used rather than on the question: What would cause such a drastic derailment of that young man’s mental stability? Career politicos, media pundits of one kind or another, and pro-con advocates about gun control, joining in onto that perennial issue, with all of them largely ignoring that critical question.

The ease with which weapons having such great lethality potentials, such as AK47’s, M-16’s, Mac10’s, Glock’s, etc., not to mention the ammunition for these, are so readily acquired, despite an array of regulations and controls about access to such weapons, is also mind-boggling.

We can all argue about such things till the cows come home (assuming none of these get shot by some nut-case first, just for the thrill of popping off a few rounds at moving targets), vehemently rage about the sanctity of our constitutional rights, or rant about the evil machinations of the NRA, and so on, but none of all of that faces the real issue involved, which is:

–       What has changed in our society’s cultural matrix to create mindsets which instinctively turn to violence and slaughter, either for the sheer thrill of it; or, as the only means for settling the slightest real or perceived personal affront? –

It’s almost as if our society’s culture is regressing back to a perverted version of the old –Code Duello – or, perhaps, it’s just an aberrant evolution from our former frontier society. A society in which the ability and need to properly handle firearms for hunting and defense against both four and two-legged predators, was imbedded in our cultural DNA, keeping in mind that such needs remained with us well into the early days of the 20th Century.

Even so, there were well defined limits on how and in what way these could be used, so our mindsets about them were carefully taught. Even in our child play with cap pistols, cork pop-guns, and BB air rifles, there were constraints. And when there came that big rite of passage at which we were presented with (not given) our very first .22 rifle, we knew it was a measure of our crossing that threshold from child towards adulthood, and instinctively understood the responsibilities that came with that.

Not so today, apparently. Perhaps it’s a generational bias and perspective, but it seems much of that former conditioning and discipline of mind concerning firearms has disappeared. Now, too many of our youth seem to have been left to evolve with completely different mindsets and values. Mindsets and values driven by self-absorption, instant gratification, and hedonistic excesses of one kind or another, combined with blind acceptance that outrageous acts and behaviors leading to notoriety, are the quickest way to achieve celebrity and fame….all of it as the new “normal” in our culture, with this terrible event in Aurora, Colorado, showing us that process at work.

None of these reflections can give much consolation to the families of the victims of that event, or to the perpetrator’s family either. We still have yet to discover the real motivations for it, and what caused someone with obvious potentials to go off the rails like that with such tragic consequences.

For the moment it’s just time to mourn, and leave the search for such explanations for another day.

CENTURION