With the recent event of the Pulse nightclub shooting, many of us are afraid for our friends, fellow Americans and honestly the simple good of the world. The proximity and closeness of events like this give a new perspective on what the world is coming to, or perhaps not as new as one would think.
Literature has given us a few examples of what happens when society falls apart. Cormac McCarthy and George Orwell both provide their insight into what happens when things go downhill. Orwell depicts a society where the population has lost control and the Government, or 'Big Brother', has completely taken the reigns in 1984. McCarthy depicts a similar post-apocalyptic society in which the opposite result has resulted in The Road: the population has lost control, the governmental system has disintegrated and the world is run by gangs of vile human beings who have lost all capacity for compassion and love.
Now we have to ask ourselves: are these really scenarios that could conceivably happen? … Of course not! Right? That would only come from a society that is filled with corrupt, power hungry rulers and people who have stopped caring about their own neighbors or the good of humanity in the task of taking care of themselves. That would only come from a society that has completely given up on the concept of love. That would only come from a society that has given in to hate. Right?
We see this hatred taking over love and caring again and again. Domestic abuse. Murder. It is time to wake up from fairy-dream-land and assess the situation as it stands now. The United States has seen numerous accounts of gun violence and deaths since September 11, 2001, since San-Bernardino, since the new year, and now even since the Orlando Massacre. Violence is clearly on the rise. People have started caring more about their guns than the people around them. Shootings like the Pulse have become almost commonplace--people hear about death in the news, but ultimately it doesn’t affect the majority of the population. All of this violence and inhumanity is rising unchallenged right under our noses. This seems to be where it begins -- separation of human life from emotion.
But where will it end? If you look at The Road, who knows, maybe it won’t end. If that is the case, keep as many guns as you can. Start stock-piling food now. Save some water because you will need it. But do it all without me because if our society comes to that, I don’t want to be the one to have to find food off of the bones of my ‘friends’.
Now it certainly doesn’t have to be that way. It isn’t too late to reverse the slow trudge that could lead to nothingness. I just ask you to take this into perspective, examine yourself, take a second look at how your actions affect a society. Remember that we can’t give in to the illusion of our own selfish desires or the rhetoric of leaders with ulterior motives. We can’t become the society that will believe anything if told enough times.So think for yourself and take a second look because we can’t become the society who believes that 2+2=5.
