Proximity, Novelty, and Frequency

When something happens like the Las Vegas shooting, it is natural for people to talk about it for awhile.  But a glaring cultural and personal fallacy is revealed here.

At risk of sounding cold, this event is not unique.  Random violence and bloody death of regular people occurs all over the world all the time.  These are all tragic acts committed by tragically damaged people.  They are all available to us in near real time.  Most of us can't even say we don't KNOW it happens in a purely logical sense. (We may not THINK about it, but we KNOW it if we take a second.)  Yet most of us never acknowledge that it occurs.

So why is it such a big deal this time?

The answer is simply the perception of proximity.  Because it occurs in a place we might go, or relatively close to a place we currently are.  But this is a fallacy, because if you live in Florida, for example, you are physically closer or equally close to places where this occurs all the time.  Namely, the Caribbean and Central America.

You might say, "but this is our country."  Sure.  But there is no physical barrier between those places and this one.  I can be in Mexico from Tampa in a day's drive.  And truthfully, that statement reveals a flaw and a fallacy.  The flaw: cultural bigotry, and the fallacy: novelty.

Because this event is different from what we usually experience, we take note.  This is a fallacy because for the vast majority of Americans our lives have not been disrupted by the event.  If we hadn't heard about it yet, as would have been the case 200 years ago, we would still be going on as if nothing happened.  So why do we feel different because we know of it?  Again, I'm not saying this isn't tragic nor terribly affecting for those directly involved or with family and friends who were.  Hang with me, I'm going somewhere with this.  The reason is simply because of how we associate the event.  It FEELS closer, newer.

Lastly, we are affected because of the sheer frequency of reports.  What was in reality one event with a finite number of tragedies is reported and discussed endlessly, even when there is nothing new or only marginally new.  The truth is we can't do anything with all that info anyway, so it just serves to rile us up, which is exactly the goal of the commercially driven news.  Please do us all a favor and stop using those sources.  You do realize that Houston is still a wreck, but you never hear about it any more because it doesn't generate the traffic after a while. 

This feeling of inescapability is a fallacy.  Statistically, it is now only slightly more likely that it will happen to you.  In REALITY, it is NO more likely, not one bit, now than it was prior.  It's just in your head.

What troubles me most is the inconsistency.  We can be so unaffected by the same or worse suffering for such silly reasons as it isn't in a place or context we connect with and it isn't thrown up in our face constantly.  But then very affected by something that is in reality no different, simply because our mind associates it differently!  This should bother us.

Unspeakable

Sometimes I have nothing to say.  I go through cycles.  But for once I have tons of things to say and can't find words for them.

Suffice to say, the life God has for me is opening up and it is overwhelmingly more than what I would dream of.  I mean this in very literal ways.  This is why it is hard to put into words in a general context.  There is nothing general about it and I can't possibly explain the intimate and complex details that surround it.

Perhaps the Via Negativa would help.  So I will say what it is not.  It is not in my head.  It is not philosophical, affecting no real change in the material world.  It is not tied to the institutions we call church...

...Here is what I would say and the ones about whom it is written can understand it for themselves.  You are beautiful. You are so loved.  God has seen you.  He has not even once forgotten you.  I don't know the reasons for the circumstances in your life.  I am just a Sheep Dog who barely understands the Shepherd's language.  But I see what he has done for you.  I see how the universe has been ordered for your specific good.  I see you as he sees you.  You are stunning and powerful beyond compare.  My love for you is not rooted in pity nor charity, nor brotherly affection.  It is as beyond me as every good thing I have ever done.  To be near you, to guard, aid, serve, you is an honor and a pleasure.  I am elated that you would call me friend.  You have only to make a need known and I will be about meeting it with whatever is within my power.  I don't even know what that is.  But I have been charged with doing it and the resources and methods will be provided.  This is not an idle promise, as I hope you now see.  All that has been given to me is from God and for his purposes.  I hold it lightly and in common with you.

And I truly enjoy your company, your humor, your presence.  I want to be around you because I like you.  It is good for me too.  I am better for having known you.  In one sense, because doing what we are made for is fulfilling, but more so because you inspire me, comfort me, encourage me even if you don't know it.

In short, I love you.  And while nothing I can say will prove it or guarantee any moment into the future, it is true as true and every moment that I am there demonstrates it to be so.

This is the life we were called to live.  This tribal, close, familial life.  Thank you for having me into yours.  Together things will only get better.  I know it because God has shown me the ending.  Let's walk toward it together.

Emotion

Things have been busy lately. One thing after another. Spring usually is for me. So many ideas come and go through my head, but I haven't had time to sit down and record them. And once they're gone, they are hard to recall, being incorporated into my personality or discarded altogether.

But the overall tone of things lately has been about harmonizing and trying to exist fully. About trying to embrace what is real and what is important both positive and negative. I'm finding it ever so easier by degrees to embrace the possibilities and love both the good and the bad things in appropriate ways. It is a good growing process.

But I'm also finding that in the process, I am flooded with emotions. When I allow myself to feel, they come at me almost unmitigated, and in the embracing of the moment, I have to allow myself to feel them. I am finding it to be very similar to a time in the past when I had allowed myself to fully experience my own reactions in an effort to stop internalizing them where they would wreak havoc on my psyche. Though the experience is very similar, the circumstances are not and I am different too, but it does feel good to re-find this obviously elemental part of me.

The trick now is to learn how to balance them without losing the ability to function. anger must be tempered and appropriate, sadness has its time and place, and love can't be expressed too openly. Sometimes, the tempering may not even be good or natural. For example when a reaction is right, but society tells us we shouldn't have it. I have a friend that I am sometimes overwhelmed with love for. Not romantic, but a very deep familial love. I want to express it and know that it would be good for it to be expressed, but the friend doesn't believe this to be true, or is too knotted up still to accept it. The danger I can see is in this is losing the ability again in an attempt to conform too greatly.

So for now, I am loping along, learning to trust and to surrender and to feel. The sheepdog metaphor seems more and more appropriate. Dogs have much less trouble living rightly. They can distinguish good and bad in their own way and can even learn a lot of our own subtleties about good and bad which they can only be taught by humans. They are not afraid to express their feelings. They are happy and loving and sad and ill and excited and it all comes out every fiber of their existence. If we were allowed to be more this way, the world would be better. I will change it one at a time.