20
Jul
Last night some evil bastard opened fire in a Colorado theater and killed a dozen people while wounding around fifty. These are the numbers from the latest counts and are by no means meant to be authoritative. So this morning when I read about this I immediately checked in on my friends who live close to where this evil was perpetrated. Once I discovered they were alright I started thinking about this random act of evil and my mind immediately went in two different directions, as it is wont to do.
The first direction is that evil exists and it is random. This makes it terrifying and rightfully so but it only wins when we let that initial terror rule our world. This incident appears to the work of one twisted individual and nothing more. The odds of a copycat are non-zero. You put these two together and you might think you should avoid movie theaters altogether for a while but you would be entirely wrong. The chances of copycat acts are slim and the chances that you would be in a theater chosen by a copycat make your statistical chance of being caught up in something like this, zero. As of midnight in Aurora, Colorado your chances of being injured or killed in a theater shooting of this scale are 0.000000199 to 1. Statistically this means there is zero chance at all. Yet you can bet we will see attendance in theaters drop for the next few weeks.
Both sides are likely to make this worse than it already is. The left will be calling for more restrictions on firearms and the right will be incomprehensible about some theory that it’s the NWO. Yes I place Alex Jones firmly in the same camp as those who blame guns for crimes like these. The lovable, huggable Alex Jones has already gone off about this but I won’t disgrace my site by linking his nonsense. I haven’t seen the calls from the left but they tend to sleep later. I bet we’ll see the lunatic fringe calling for gun bans by the end of the day. Both of these reactions are out of fear and both sides will try to use this fear to their advantage instead of trying to show the public that this was the act of one truly evil individual and that we are all really very safe. And we, for the most part. will eat it up like milk from our mother’s breast.
To close out my first train of thought on the fear thread: even with this incident and any copycats we are still living in the safest, healthiest, wealthiest time in human history. This incident doesn’t make you, personally, any less safe at all. Before you react, before you cancel your weekend movie plans, before you let the fear of evil paralyze you stop and think. I implore you to take time and really consider the odds of something like this happening to you. Take the time to really analyze things and then make an informed decision. Don’t let the media narrative hold you in sway. If you really feel scared of something like this then stop and consider your mortality. Take a step back and hug someone you might not have hugged in a while then go on about your business.
As an aside if you post nonsense from either side of this issue in my comments I reserve the right to mock you mercilessly
The second path my brain took me down was relativism. I have a good friend who claims to be a relativist. I love him like a brother but think his worldview is total nonsense. And yes, it’s probably you if you are reading this. There are things in this world that aren’t relative. This was an evil act. Period. Full Stop. It is not a relatively evil act. It is not possibly non-evil in any manner. This is evil. It exists whether we believe in it or not. I think this is where relativism fails completely. You can pontificate on relativism over whiskey all you’d like but when you take a gun and tear gas in to a theater and open fire on innocent people you are objectively evil. Relativism is a nice mental exercise but in reality it just doesn’t hold water. Whilst minor in comparison to my other train of thought it is important. Most days this philosophy merely annoys me but today just thinking about it pissed me right off.
Now I am not blaming relativism for this incident. I do suspect that somewhere it played a role because of how the idea has permeated our society but I don’t think it was a conscious decision based on relativism. The “what is true for you is true” worldview necessarily begins by negating the social contract. Once you place yourself at the center of the universe then anything becomes permissible. As a relativist you may decide that you want to work for the betterment of humanity, and to be fair my friend who is a relativist is a great person, but it’s your decision and there is no social contract to guide your path. Again I am not saying that relativism is the cause of this man’s evil actions but rather that it came up in my thoughts and it pissed me off. It pisses me off because according to moral relativism this man’s actions could possibly be considered good and if not good then at least right for him. I am sorry to say but that a complete and utter truckload of bullshit. What happened last night, in the theater in Aurora, CO, was the work of an evil man. A man who acted objectively evil. I know my arguments are all that deep at the moment and frankly I don’t care. Any philosophical thought process that allows this man to be anything but wrong must be wrong. I fully intend to mock anyone that says differently.
After writing this I have come to realize that I were posting about this on FB it wouldn’t have been this long nor this thought out. Ok the relativism stuff isn’t all that will thought but I wouldn’t have posted those thoughts at all on FB so I am more open here even though I know this getting linked on FB. I also wouldn’t threaten to mock people. I don’t know whether or not this is a good thing but it is clear to me that I am more open here than I am on FB.
