We Are NOT Borg (But Maybe We Should Be?)

Today is October 2, 2017. There’s a blank page in front of me but I’m at a loss for words. Today over 50 people were killed senselessly again. It probably explains the heavy feeling I had last night that I couldn’t shake. As an empath I am prone to picking up on collective emotions.

Today, after the fact, there is a nation of people who are again hurt, angry, upset and bewildered. Over 50 people woke up yesterday excited to go to a big country music festival. Today those same people are gone from this world. Today the rest of the nation woke up to the news that we have lost over 50 of our citizens to senseless violence.

Of course this is going to start a whole new political uprising between the pro-gun and anti-gun people. There will be speculation about who the shooter was affiliated with. There will be conspiracies about it being set up by the government. Who knows. Maybe even aliens from a different planet will even get part of the blame this time.

I don’t want to get in the middle of the politics of everything. There will always be people who use any situation to further their stand on an issue no matter who was hurt in the process. And I’m finding that almost anything can be turned around and bent to match whichever side of any line one is standing on.

I think maybe the question we need to ask is why people are becoming more violent and more prone to crazy outbursts. We had crazy people 100 years ago, but I don’t think there was the disrespect for life itself that we seem to have these days.

People are becoming dehumanized. We are no longer individuals. In our workplaces, the businesses we patronize, even our own communities, we are nothing more than a number, a statistic. In the databases of our jobs how many of us have an “employee number” typed on our paycheck stub? How many places ask for our social security number or our driver’s license number and our birthdate along with our name?  Even our grocery stores give us loyalty cards with individual numbers on them.

Our world is expanding thanks to faster transportation and the internet. 100 years ago it wasn’t so easy to make a trip of 150 miles or to shop at a store on the other side of the country on a whim. We are meeting more people. But we aren’t “connecting” with more people. We are connecting with many less people.

I believe that this disconnect is causing people to feel more alone, more depressed. This disconnect is keeping people from having a support system. That support system of family, friends and neighbors can be the deciding factor between a person deep in despair lashing out at anyone or calling a friend just to talk.

My father died in 1989. He was the sole breadwinner of the family. The head of a family of 8. His death was unexpected and just before Christmas. I was the oldest and 19 years old. The community got together in support of my family. I will never forget that. My mother had never learned how to run her household. She didn’t know how to write a check to pay a bill. I was overwhelmed. As the oldest child I took over. But I had a support system even in strangers.

I still see that here in my little town. If someone is in need of help, if tragedy strikes a family, if illness overtakes someone unexpectedly, the community comes together to support and help. To listen to the news this is unusual. I hope the news really IS fake news and that this still does happen around the nation. If not, maybe it’s time to start it again.

I realize that some people really are just born with crossed wires in their brains and all the support in the world isn’t going to repair that. There may be so many different ingredients that go into the final person who ends up in a shooting rampage. Ultimately though, I believe the core of it all is the fact that people aren’t seen as human anymore.

Some will say the violent video games and movies and TV shows are the cause. I won’t say they are or are not. The fact that they portray death so easily and graphically certainly doesn’t help. Respect for life, all life, seems to be gone.  We aren’t recognized as individuals or even as fragile human bodies.  We are disposables.

I don’t have an answer to preventing these senseless deaths. In the world we live in, where there’s a will, there’s a way for anything. If this shooter really wanted to do what he did, he would find a way. He might run into a few walls, but there are ways around them. We could ban all guns and make them illegal. Anyone can access the black market if they really want to. We all know someone who knows someone who is connected. Usually there are no questions asked as long as no information is shared. Only the almighty dollar bill who speaks the loudest these days needs to be shared.

If guns weren’t possible, there are ways to build homemade bombs with items found in the local big box store. Ingenuity will create even more creative ways to kill people. It’s not the weapons used we need to change. It’s the people who feel the need to do the damage.

How do we fix them? I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. I can’t begin to explain what makes them tick. But I do feel the loneliness of people of the world. I can feel the disconnect.

Maybe the Borg in Star Trek had it right all along?  At least they were connected and supportive of each other.