PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Could patience, listening have prevented mass killings? :: 09/06/2015
Let us argue, just for a few minutes, that the lost art of listening has played a role in all of the mass shootings that have taken place in recent years.
You may disagree. You may say the problem is the easy availability of firearms. But a self-respecting newspaper can’t say that. An entity that relies so absolutely on the First Amendment would be hypocritical to want changes to the Second Amendment.
You can’t pick the freedoms you like and ignore the ones you don’t. (Although newspapers that advocate for firearms limitations apparently have no problem fighting against infringements on the freedom of the press, it seems.)
So it might come back to the importance of listening, a lost and elusive art, a pursuit that requires patience and empathy from a culture that holds neither in altogether high regard.
Listening is easy with people who are enjoyable to listen to. Listening to people who have troubles, however, is more important.
Most important is the need to listen to someone so troubled that he would plan the horrible on-television slayings of two innocent journalists.
Or listening a person so entangled in racial hysteria that he would attend a church service and kill people because of their race.
Or listening to a person so absolutely misguided that he would open fire in a movie theater, or a school, or a military base.
The act of putting words to emotions could help keep people from putting emotions into action. Having people express frustrations, fears and problems helps them understand and define their frustrations, fears and problems.
Sometimes merely listening and sympathizing, perhaps encouraging people to work for good rather than committing an evil act, could be the difference in having an upset person blow off steam or kill people.
But our society isn’t geared to listen to those words.
Institutions that naturally provide a haven — the family or the church, for example — play less of a role in the lives of people in 2015 than they did 50 years ago.
Workplaces are built for economy, not interaction. Schools, with their testing pressure, are built more for achievement than for personal growth and self-understanding. For example, schools tend to have more administrators or even custodial workers on staff than guidance counselors. With all due respect to leadership and cleanliness, that’s misguided.
Technology, as good as it is for efficiencies and cost-savings, cannot replace a co-worker who listens around the water cooler or calls you at home to ensure you are fine. Social media provides an avenue for vocalizing, but it can be sobering and demoralizing when one realizes nobody is listening.
Even in 2015, mental illness is seen more as a weakness or deficiency than a clinical condition. Breaking one’s ankle is tangible. Losing one’s hope, a far more serious deficiency, isn’t treated with the same urgency and care.
What makes people so angry that they would do this?
The man who police say killed the two Roanoke, Virginia, television reporters has been described as “disgruntled” and “disturbed.” The man who allegedly opened fire in June in the Charleston church, killing nine, was socially withdrawn, physically and verbally abused and attended a plethora of schools. Afterward, he learned to hate.
Others who have committed mass murders in the past few decades have similar backgrounds.
All of this comes at a time in which mental-health providers are in increasingly short supply. National Public Radio this week reported that 185 of the 254 counties in the state of Texas have no psychiatrist, for example. Appointments in other areas of the state can take months to schedule.
A trusted friend, a sounding board or a good listener can’t take the place of a certified professional.
But one wonders about the lasting effect of a populace that doesn’t have time to simply listen to those who need a friend. And one wonders whether the most recent senseless shootings could have been prevented if the alleged shooters weren’t so angry and isolated.
DO YOU AGREE?
Are the problems that lead to mass killings in the United States so fundamentally embedded in our achievement-oriented, profit-motivated, dog-eat-dog culture, we’ve forgotten how to listen with a sympathetic ear?
http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/opinion/2015/09/04/editorial/71728510/
