There has been a disturbing trend in the normalcy and almost routine nature of events in the nature of mass shootings, car bombs, ongoing conflicts in the Middle East (at least, the ones the mainstream media covers) fueled by all manner of perverse motivations, that if you have been watching the news, you will undoubtedly be familiar with. An entire article, or ten, could be written about everything that has happened in the world in the past week since my last article was written. It troubled me that there was so much content fodder available, articles that could easily have been my magnum opuses. I realized a different approach was needed — an umbrella approach, one that towers above it all, summing it up as succinctly and calmly as I possibly could.
Being calm, however, is the tough part. All the chance of a candle in a snowstorm, coupled with the luck of a snowball's chance in hell. The futility of it all almost made me abandon writing this article (the caption echoes my sentiments) but then I realized it is a necessary endeavor, given everything that's been in the news recently.
So, to begin —
The legendary Jon Stewart (who, in a cruel twist of fate, called it quits from "The Daily Show" the year Donald Trump is running for President) encapsulates my thoughts and feelings in this one screenshot. From facial expression to the caption in the marquee, this serves as the perfect focal point for the rest of this piece.
The issue of violence, for causes which may seem right or wrong depending on whose perspective you see it through, is global, far-reaching, omnipresent and eternal. Since the days of the caveman, conflict has existed over food and territory. Although, what was then just evolution-justified survival tactics fought with arrowheads made from stone and the invention of fire, has now been painted over with flags, borders, political agendas and drone strikes.
(Pictured above is yet another sad attempt to inject some levity into the nerve-damaged forearm that this topic is. Not very effective.)
It's a series of sad realities with so much wrong that it is a Herculean task to even begin to describe a single sector of any one of those realities. The news coverage after any "tragedy" (a caustic generalization describing anything from mass shootings here at home to a car bomb in the Middle East) for me, on a personal level, leads to anger, apathy, cynicism, hope slowly being snuffed out until the next tragedy shows up, which somehow manages to be even more acidic and divisive as the one before it. It's like flipping through the radio only to find that the songs playing on there are in increasing order of "I don't want to listen to any of this, and now I'm sad and angry while waiting for the lights to turn green" — except the songs are just segments of coverage of tragedies occurring almost everywhere in our little blue planet. Protester clashes at the rallies of a poisonously divisive presidential candidate, mass shootings whose instigating factors include, but are not limited to, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, discrimination based on religion and mental illness, as well.
My previous article said that people with mental illness and illnesses, as a general rule of thumb, suffer in silence due to fear of stigmata in their social circles, but also society in general if these topics are brought up and this is one of those reasons. The rest of the reasons aren't exactly cheerful either. These are thorny questions and discussions about them are rightly impassioned but then dissolve into a quicksand of directionless fury and white noise. Yes, there is good in the world, stereotypes don't define everyone and there are things to live for. Religion, a stable job that lets people provide for their loved ones and lets them indulge in their hobbies, whatever those may be. But these are mere glimmers of light in the black cloud the world seems to be in right now. Life does go on for most of us, although these things affect all of us. In the age of social media and mass communication, we seem to be more disconnected than ever, although all our reaches have been exponentially increased — writing for Odyssey itself is proof of this. I could wax eloquent about the numerous problems of the world and how, collectively, they eclipse any problems we have on a personal level, but that's another article.
The eventual solution of even one of these issues, if not all of them, may outlast all our lifetimes, but the journey right now seems quite fatiguing. Maybe this article is just a benchmark, a "sit down on the bench and vent a little" moment in the walk of life we are all currently on. We'll have to get up and move, of course, after a bit of sitting and breathing through it all. But it just seems a bit too much to be walking with right now.
