We all know the facts about the killing at the school of Newtown, Connecticut, on December 15. We also know a lot about the perpetrator's background and conditions. There is little to add. Many responded advocating stricter gun control and I am among them. Strong limitations to purchase firearms would get my unconditional support. Furthermore, industries that constantly foster suspicion and hostility simply to sell more weapons should be brought to shame. Tom Diaz, senior analyst at the Violence Policy Center and author of the book Making a Killing: the Business of Guns in America gave an illuminating interview to NPR about how the NRA has been dangerously fomenting violence and xenofobia simply to support the gun industry. However, I am not convinced that so many killings are due only to gun ownership. Canada has more guns and far less killings, I am told. It is time to consider other factors.
A different topic can help understanding my point. I learnt about the existence of date rape in my early thirties, when I started teaching in this country. One of my students was the unfortunate victim of it. She was devastated. Horrible, I thought, horrible and senseless. However painful, I found it necessary to contain my sense of revulsion and appeal to clear critical thinking. On the one hand, I thought, why spoil a whole evening of good company and prevent any future relationship, of whichever kind, with an act of violence? On the other hand, if the ultimate purpose is to be obtained even by violence, why hours after hours of hypocrisy?
While looking for an answer, my mind went back to my high school and college days. We had our own flirts and passions, of course; but a night out would have never degenerated into rape. Our girlfriends were also our best friends, our schoolmates, the sisters of other friends, the daughters of families we had been knowing for years... They were a huge part of our personal lives, of our happy or awkward encounters, laughter, cries, conversations, silences. They had nothing to do with...
Then came the operational word: countable results. This American life is extremely goal-oriented. We live to work, to keep the machine moving even if nothing comes out of it (or at least nothing bringing any advantage to us). The first American students I met in Italy, in summer 1985, were attending a university summer program with no particular fondness for it. They did it simply not to have a blank in the CV, which would have looked bad when job hunting. Countable results were to be produced at all costs, health included. They are ends to their own means.
Results are important, but even the highest goal makes no sense, if it makes us forgo our love for life itself, its rites of passages, and, most important, its belonging to the present. Living in the present means recognizing those very people we see out of our windows for the dignity and immediacy we all share in living together as human beings; and for the joy such recognition brings. Is it so illogical? Is it so contrary to our lives' goals? Or should not those goals aim at the ultimate, collective purpose of living better?
The young man responsible for the school killing had already lost his life since long. He did not live, and could not bear that others did--children, especially. We cannot allow ourselves to be deprived of our love for life. But loving life means also (most of all?) feeling empowered to change it, and learning to live together, to share, to be part of a community. The pursuit of happiness entails that either we all partake of it collectively, knowing that our happiness must be part of everyone else's, or it is simply a fake, compulsive smile covering our deepest sense of alienation. President Obama's tears at the children's deaths were sincere, but they risk to be useless if we do not learn to love life by becoming empowered to change it deeply.
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