And so now we have 20 students randomly stabbed in the chest, back, and abdomen in a blood bath at a high school outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the hands of a sophomore boy who is in police custody, being questioned, at this writing.
Where are we going in our society? What is happening to the Body Human? Did this kind of thing occur with this kind of frequency during my youth? No. Plain and simply…No.
The makers of increasingly violent video games played by millions of children around the world for the past two decades continue to deny, to this day, that those graphic depictions of fictional violence have anything to do with the sudden and shocking increase in actual violence in our youth.
The makers of increasingly violent motion pictures watched by millions of people around the world for the past two decades continue, to this day, to deny that those graphic depictions of fictional violence have anything to do with the sudden and shocking increase in actual violence in our society.
The makers of increasingly violent television programs watched by millions of people around the world for the past two decades continue, to this day, to deny that those graphic depictions of fictional violence have anything to do with the sudden and shocking increase in actual violence all over this planet.
Nobody has anything to do with anything.
The makers of laws guaranteeing free and easy access to assault weapons, and the manufacturers of those weapons, have nothing to do with the shocking number of killings by guns in the U.S.
Nothing.
The purveyors of porn and the providers of easy access to it now on the Internet, together with the creators of the increasingly raw and explicit sexual content in all forms of our entertainments — from television to music to films to videos to comic books, for heaven sake — have nothing to do with the sex-run-wild environment of our society today, in which the beauty and the wonder and the sacred intimacy of physical love has been reduced to a primitive act of self-gratification, and crimes of sexual violence are on the increase everywhere.
Nothing.
The producers of genetically modified crops and the manufacturers of chemical after chemical after chemical and the makers of cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco have nothing to do with the through-the-sky statistics of cancer and Alzheimer’s and birth defects and the slow but sure degradation of the collective Body Human.
Nothing.
The proponents of fracking and the extractors of more and more oil and the clearers of entire old growth forests and the releasers of pollutants into the air and into the waters and into the earth itself have nothing to do with the warming of our globe, the obvious and undeniable changes in our weather patterns and the once slow and the now rapid despoiling of our environment.
Nothing.
The lawmakers behind the unending machinations and stalemates and spying and erosion of personal rights coming out of Washington and many other seats of power around the world have nothing to do with humanity’s growing frustration with and lack of trust in its ability to even govern itself.
Nothing.
The powers behind a global economic model that allows 5% of the world’s people to hold or control 95% of the world’s wealth and resources have nothing to do with the widening hopelessness, despair, and suffering of the world’s teeming masses, nor their increasing restlessness, anger, and violence.
Nothing.
Nobody has anything to do with anything.
Oh, and one more thing. Lest we forget. Let us be clear that the preachers and speakers of the ever more strident claims of our species’ incredibly intolerant religions have nothing to do with the numbers of people killed or maimed in the name of God under the banner of protecting God’s “honor,” expanding God’s kingdom, or demonstrating God’s authority.
Nothing.
We have decided that we live in a world where nobody has anything to do with anything.
And most human beings are, apparently, content to leave it at that. After all, they can do nothing about any of this. So what can be expected of them…?
Right.
Nothing.
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