The New Zealand Shooting - And How to Cope

in #politics5 years ago

So here we are again with another mass shooting, though refreshingly not within the USA.

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Sounds callous? Perhaps because it is. There was once a time watching the video would have shaken me deeply, around that time I watched the 'Dnepropetrovsk maniacs' slowly disembowel a still-living and random human with various tools in the forest, picking at his eyes and stomach - a taste of the 21 murders committed in this style after building up to it through various kidnapped pets. No remorse was seen in their eyes, and no suspicious family upbringing was evident.

These facts haunt me even to this day. I was under 20 at the time. My brain has built a series of protective strategies to cope with such things ever since, and thanks to globalization, we've witnessed an innumerable amount of equally, if not more heinous atrocities. The more recent we get, the more shootings we see, we have ISIS with glorified videos of grim beheadings and mass executions and of course the US's impressive display of serial killers.

We all deal with this in different ways.

Since the New Zealand shooting graphically slaughtered about 50 people, including one hero who unsuccessfully tried to wrestle him to the ground, we have been met with what I can only describe as 'the usual', in the following order:

The Initial Shock

First, we'll see the horror of individuals on social media, a spattering of celebrities and so on.

Authority figures

Any relevant political voice will read out pre-written scripts for such inevitable occasions, vapid and safe, something along the lines of 'we are outraged, shocked and appalled by this incident and are doing everything necessary to maximize safety in the area', just in case anybody needed reassuring - concerned that their country's representative didn't actually mind that much.

Blame Games

The left will start blaming the right and vice versa, while the extreme left will use every ounce of strength in their bodies to condemn the extreme right for shooting up Muslims, even though the Extreme left are equally capable of the atrocity, targeted at a slightly different demographic (far more than once have I heard 'by all means necessary' referring to violent revolution in the US, followed by brutal beatings and other attacks by black-clad individuals. Antifa anyone?).

Neither side is aware of their scaled-up potential in the form of Hitler-esque fascism Maoist Communism, or, Maduro-esque Socialism and Kim-ian Dictatorship for more real-time examples.

SJW's and anti-SJW's will soon start battling about whatever colour skin, what set of genitals and which belief system is to blame, be it white male or brown Muslim or something new.

Temporary action

In the US, should a shooting happen to kill just enough people to get global attention, gun advocates in the US will be riled up ready to keyboard-warrior their way into the limelight to protect their rights while left will, of course, demand regulation on guns.

But, while the NRA perpetually builds on their agenda day and night, year-round, their opponents will only cause a ruckus each time a mass shooting grabs sufficient attention. 3 or 4 days later they all feel good enough about themselves that they can move on with their lives having achieved nothing.

What else is on TV?

For the US, New Zealand and indeed the rest of the world, we will sit at our computers and phones and blog or comment, trying hard to have the most unique opinion and insight before heading to Starbucks at the end of the day and watching cute videos of dogs slipping on ice.

Coping

I sound so negative and apathetic, but is this way we behave such a bad thing? What are we doing? Why do we continue, year after year, to essentially accept these atrocities, with a few days immediately after each one where we get to act like our definition of 'human'?

This behaviour strikes me as a string of coping mechanisms. Be it outraging at your computer or coming up with outrageously inappropriate 'too soon' jokes or blogging to make sure you have an opinion heard, they are all soapy water to wash our hands clean of the atrocities we just witnessed.

Blaming others, watching the news, telling a joke, being apathetic (whether or not its an act or genuine), we all spend a while fighting with our brain to bring it back to status quo, without this niggling, haunting reality burdening us with emotions. It's basically the modern day version of talking about it with friends.

Here in China, shootings are rare due to gun regulation. Stabbings and axings, however, are disturbingly common - particularly in schools. One article I came across talks about how quickly these stories are wiped from memory as part of the authoritarian party's 'Chabudwellian' (a portmanteau of 'Orwellian' and 'Chabuduo' - meaning 'Good enough') policies points out some things that are particularly poignant, and relevant to the west:

Censorship doesn’t always prevent information about incidents from leaking completely, but it does dilute and distill it, marginalizing the outrage away from mainstream opinion...the general public is too stressed to care, too anaesthetized by the Party’s unstinting calls for “positive energy” to reckon with reality until it’s too late.

...psychological reasoning also lets the system off the hook. In response to the cries of protest, the state has tamped down still further on dissent, freedom of speech, and rule of law, tightening the bolts of repression until they screech. Picture the anger expressed by the average Trumpster or fuming Brexiteer—then take away their right to blog, tweet, report, demonstrate, or vote. Governments that make peaceful resolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, and for a certain unbalanced or deeply downtrodden individual, the appeal of terrorism probably carries a twisted sense of justice, giving meaning to a final act of retribution.

Putting the debate about the attack on Freedom of Speech in the west aside for now, this is an interesting reflection on how our society functions. Much like with climate change and plastic pollution, we are constantly reminded that we are the guilty ones and it's our individual responsibility to start using fewer straws and plastic bags, completely sidelining the government's place in all this; the 50% of all ocean plastic coming from unregulated fishing tossing out their nets, the mass production of plastic-wrapped products and billions of gallons of water, much of it wasted in inefficient farming practices, the deforestation of swathes of forest the size of a football pitch cut down every second of the day.

Similarly, the system puts the blame on the individual's health problems, or the 'shamefaced' families of the murderer. Or computer games, social media, drugs. Whatever it is, the government is absolutely not responsible under any circumstances.

Is this all a coping mechanism for the leaders of our countries? Is the shooting itself a form of twisted coping, unable to deal with the 'invaders' of our rights and freedom, or white supremity? Is everything we do simply a long string of coping mechanisms to distract us from the one thing that actually matters; the fact that we're going to die pretty soon? Probably.

So, how to cope with this, and all the other horrible shootings that are likely just over the horizon? Whatever you're doing today already is probably the right thing to do, whatever works for you.

And don't worry, Aside from the families affected and those forced to push some kind of meaningless legislation ('the Minister of Education (in China) promised to deploy one guard per school by 2013'), this will all be out of sight, out of mind in a couple of days and we can all enjoy our Frappucinos until the next time we're expected to care about something.

Meanwhile, Venezuela will continue to starve, women will continue to be trafficked, slaves will continue getting beaten in the brick factories, and a whole colourful array of diseases will continue to reign dominance over mankind.

But no time for that, eh? We're gonna die pretty soon!

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That blame games section was pretty much the first thing that happened. Within 2 hours of this shit happening a fair amount of people had already moved on from the victims to promoting outrage and hate to Pewdiepie/Candace Owens and I believe a few others that were name dropped by the disgusting fuck in the video/his manifesto. Everyone is doing exactly what the guy wanted (Which he talked about in his manifesto apparently), and I can't help but face palm over this shit. Social media can really be fucking retarded.

Yeah lol, its just too instantaneous. Daniel Kahneman (thinking fast and slow) recently pointed out that a possibly great addition to the internet would be a 1-minute delay on everything we do to communicate - the world would be a much better place. People just need to think once in a while...

Yeah he actually wished people would react how they are reacting, that's pretty sad.

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I heard New Zealand have a strong gun regulation in place. The terrorist somehow beat the system to get the gun he used in that fatal attack. He named dropped some popular social media people? I'm just hearing of that, I wish there's a way to starve him of the attention he wanted that made him into this psychopath that murdered innocent people whose only issue is just being in a mosque.

Yeah he supposedly said subscribe to PewDiePie. He wanted people to read his manifesto, which many did. I didn't. But it was something about creating a white ethno-state, segregating races etc. White supremacist bullshit, basically.

He really wanted ATTENTION, I think that attention should only be given to the victims and their families.

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