June 12, 2016, Orlando, Florida. Over three hundred people fill the famous Pulse Disco that is hosting a Latino night. Fun, laughs, and dancing, this is what they are expecting; blood, death, and tragedy – this is what will happen.
Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man born in America from Afghan parents, enters the disco at around 2:00 a.m., starting off what will become the second deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in the U.S. and the deadliest violence against the LGBTQ community in the U.S. 49 people were killed, 49 lives were taken away on that day. There are no words that can express the fear, the dread, the horror of those who have experienced this tragedy, no words that can express the emptiness and the desperation of those who have lost a friend, a daughter, a lover.
In these situations, as the Huffington Post wrote, politicians should “put politics aside and come together to show strength and unity.” Unfortunately, as Miguel Benasayag and Gérard Schimt stated in their book, The Season of the Sad Passions, our Western Society regards money, business, and economics as ultimate and fundamental goals. In this perspective, people are not conceived as human beings, but as mere mediums utilized to achieve certain aims. This is why, when tragedies such as the Orlando shooting happen, there are people who exploit them in order to achieve their personal and political objectives. A glaring example is Donald Trump utilizing the Orlando mass shooting to justify his proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S., to increase the Islamophobia, and to give even more support to the Second Amendment.
However, Mr. Trump, is it helpful to blame the entire Muslim community for the horrors one single person has created? Feeding an entire nation with fear and resentment is going to ameliorate the situation? Will insults, accusations, and hate make America great again?
As long as we will keep generalizing, as long as we will isolate communities because of their religion and ethnicity, as long as we will be driven by hate, fear, and individualism we will never find a solution –we will just bypass the real problem. We are starting to create a world where we are not to trust, love, or appreciate anyone, where we view others as opponents and violence as our alley. Yet, would you ever want to live in this dystopia? In a world where shootings are the norm, where we trust arms more than people, where we would rather kill than discuss?
I believe that divided we fall, together we rise. When terrible tragedies occur, we should pursue unity rather than separation. Aristotle referred to the man as ζόον πολιτικόν (zòon politikòn), a political animal, political meaning that he is driven by nature to establish relations with others. And the relations he talked about are not dominated by despise, hatred, or dread, but rather inspired by trust, intimacy, and vulnerability. Maybe if we stop perceiving ourselves and the people around us as separate entities, and we start realizing that we all are part of humanity something will change. Maybe I am just naïve and what I am talking about is impossible to achieve. Or maybe you are.
