Enabling Hatred

Since we seem to be unable to implement the idea of “love one and other” perhaps it is finally time to stop enabling hatred. It should come as no surprise that here in our totally technology dependent nation that we need to focus on controlling the technology that enables our inexcusable, world leading, rate of death by firearms - guns. According to the New York Times, the US counts 45,000 annual gun related deaths. I don’t think this is a statistic that should have anyone chanting “We’re number one! We’re number one!”

 Yes, I have heard the old NRA inspired excuse, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” That is in some strange way true, but it ignores a vital lesson from history. The evolution of technology enables everything we do, everything we know. It was not so long ago - in the rather short history of humans on earth - that we believed we were the center of the universe. Uniquely blessed creatures on a uniquely favored piece of real estate comfortably located close to the one and only sun. And then Hans Lippershey invented the telescope back in 1608, and all bets were off. The constant evolution of optical and electronic telescopes since that point in time have brought us to the James Webb space telescope of today, peering back over light emitted 30 or 40 billion years ago, past countless stars and galaxies to help us understand the nature of our universe. Flip the telescope over and you have the microscope that revealed tiny creatures swimming around in blood, dirt, etc. A discovery that allowed us to shed the mysticism of shamans for the insights of science as we confront disease in the human body. 

Make no mistake about it, technology enables the capabilities of humanity - and we never voluntarily revert to last year’s model unless we discover that “the new way” carried unseen faults and danger. Albert Einstein - a world renowned pacifist - signed a letter, in August of 1939, to President Roosevelt encouraging the development of nuclear weapons to blunt Nazi efforts along those lines. After witnessing the previously unimaginable devastation caused by the bombing of Hiroshima, Einstein deeply regretted what he saw as his intellectual complicity in that desolation. But the atomic genie was out of the bottle, constrained only by intricate international agreements to stave off mutual self- destruction. Agreements whose fragility is being revealed by Putin’s raging. 

So technology is essentially culturally neutral, constrained only by legislation that defines its place in society. Now we have plastic guns that can be printed on 3D printers in the privacy of your own basement. We have legal kits to convert “legal” semi-automatic weapons into illegal fully automatic weapons. And, of course, we have the legal weapons used in the most recent atrocities at Robb Elementary School - deep in the heart of Texas, a state with some of the most lax gun control laws in the country. 

Now, again from the President to the coach of my Golden State Warriors, we are hearing cries of “Enough is enough!” It is time to reign in this deadly technology that is obviously out of control. I hope this latest round of indignation finally translates into meaningful legislation. But it is a hope I have hoped before. 

 In the meantime parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, imams, big brothers and older sisters, teach the children well: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.