A Child of This Mass

“For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You—you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.” 

― Saul Bellow, "Herzog"

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Dear Kate,

Today is the day.

The day after another mass shooting.  The day, like every previous next day after a mass shooting, we say to ourselves for the last time we need to change and this time we truly would, no ifs ands or buts.  Finally serious we are.

About what?

Gun control.  Toxic masculinity.  Anti-hate advocacy.  Cherishing our loved ones.  Empowering the decent and the vulnerable.  Characterizing violence as a public-health crisis and funding the proper researches to come up with solutions.  Everything good and nothing bad.

Amen to all.  Write to me tomorrow morning and see how they go.

I know a young lady who on October 1, 2017 looked down from her hotel balcony at the Las Vegas Strip shooting and came back as if she's only been to a movie.  She didn't start to ask questions she hasn't asked before, couldn't see any special meaning to her particular vantage, wouldn't want to be implicated in the event's implication on her humanity.  The shooter's motive was unknown, so was it to her at that moment and confirmed by the reports ever since.  Something very bad happened because of a bad person with bad stuffs in his hands.  "Pure evil," that's how people described every mass shooter.  Nothing human, that is.

Bellow again, "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy - who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity - only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth?"

How is a man to feel, what is he to do, when one day he becomes thoroughly disillusioned about the promises of life, the worth of his being alive?  Waking up to greet the sun makes no more difference to him; the moon he shall never know again.  Honor and dignity merely convenient choices, just as easily become inconvenient and unchosen.  No freedom, only impulses.  Nothing in his heart means anything, one long flatlining sick joke life is.  Only disorderly emotions, no lasting good in him he knows.  When he thinks he thinks about ending things.  Life becomes insufferable: there's nothing, no one worth his suffering for.  The blood of Christ, shed for no one.  Everyone must shed his own to feel anything at all.

He a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest.

Yours, Alex