Nine wonderful citizens of Charleston, South Carolina were murdered in cold blood after taking a stranger, wearing a fanny pack holding a concealed weapon, into their midst to teach kindness, goodness and respect for their fellow man.
Why????
Even the perpetrator had second thoughts about carrying out his crime due to the goodness of these angelic people.
He was certain of his wrongness in interpreting the world around him and influenced by his own irrational conclusions to act in a manner that resembles terrorist illogic.
The greater cause outweighs the rights of those to be sacrificed.
Where does this illogic come from? Everywhere in our teachings of human history. The tragedies, massacres, genocides are all justified by the "greater cause".
Nonsense! There is no justification for murdering one's fellow person. We do it regularly in society. We execute bad people after due process..killing. We kill extremists and terrorists for killing others...more killing. We kill political leaders who threaten our way of life...justified killing. We kill those who are thinking about killing us...preemptive killing. We kill spouses and significant others if we can't handle the stress they give us....emotional killing. We kill for the high it gives us.....pathologic killing. We kill to control others...bullying killing. We kill for money....professional killing.
We kill to save others....acceptable killing. Accident victims....tragic killings. We give deranged persons lethal weapons...killing by proxy. We kill people who threaten police with violence...Killing or suicide by police. We deny treatment to the mentally ill who commit suicide...killing by neglect. We make needy people feel isolated in society who then commit suicide....killing by shunning.
We kill civilians...killing by collateral damage. We kill hostages...killing while saving. In other words...we kill for many reasons that we feel are justified so the illogical , disturbed mind has many examples of justified homicide to pick from in society.
That's where the problem lies. Killing is an inherent activity of humans and we have not progressed much farther then our ancient ancestors in that regard. We have only advanced our technology and ability to kill more, faster and by more gruesome means then before.
Yet, the world's population is still growing at a phenomenal rate. The reason is that most people never kill anyone. The killing is still done by the 1% most violent people amongst us and we allow them to do so under the guise of protecting the other 99% from the other guys bad men.
We spend enormous quantities of resources to allow for the killing or defense from killing of these 1 % of "warriors" in our societies.
Government was developed to organize and protect the 99% from the violent 1% with laws and due process. Instead governments have joined in the killing spree and made it more efficient. Profit by industry also drives the violence and fear is spread amongst the many to get their cooperation by allowing for better security at the expense of individual freedom.
The nine who were massacred in South Carolina were killed because they were black and the sacrifice was justified by the killer so a race war would start and reverse the trends in the USA that he was so wrongly interpreting.
The sin of certainty is the reason and our society and history unfortunately provides false fodder for the deranged amongst us.
May we learn from this episode and direct the cure appropriately.