"Interfaith"

A friend invited me to an interfaith forum held in Phoenix, AZ last night, and I attended via Zoom. The subject was school shootings. Participants included Baptists, Jews, Hindus, and various others. I expected some religious views. After an hour I left the meeting a bit disappointed. (It probably continued for another hour or more, so it is possible that I missed all the good parts, being in a later time zone and too tired.) 

The first thing I had noticed was that everyone was first and foremost regretful and apologetic, over "the fact that this conversation has to take place at all." Geez, I don't know... if you really regret the conversation you find yourself in, why not just leave? We probably have to let people "virtue signal empathy" -- but I found it quite overdone. No matter what anyone had to say that could have been interesting or worthwhile, they had to start out with, "I'm so sorry..."

People who have been shot with real bullets would know whether that physical pain is worse than the emotional trauma of hearing about a shooting. I've never been shot, so I don't know. But victimhood is in enormous favor these days, it's almost like everybody wants to brag all the time that they hurt so bad, and I've become really sick of that!

The second characteristic of the dialogue which bored me to death was the clearly universal presumption that any possible solution to school shootings must lie with medicine or some other mechanical science. There was lengthy discussion of how much money security measures like scanners or metal detectors might cost, how expensive it might be to train teachers with firearms and where they would keep their firearms in the classroom, and many details of locked or unlocked doors. 

I didn't hear anyone question one particular statement: "We don't have enough mental health workers!" As if surely, surely a sufficiency of mental health workers would help prevent school shootings. I spend most of my days hanging out with mental health workers. They are almost all dull bureaucrats, and even the best and brightest of them have no idea what distinguishes good mental health from pure, evil insanity in any individual. They all figure it's something with the brain.

Not to mention, the advent of the very term "mental health worker," and the hiring of more and more of them to mostly recommend drugs for kids and push us all into a psychiatric view of ourselves and our world, is eerily coincident with the celebrated increase in school shootings! It's almost like psychiatry causes school shootings.

Anyway, my own disappointment with the part of this interfaith discussion which I heard before it was my bedtime was that there was no mention of any faith, or any religious morality or solution, at all. The Christians were asking in places of the dead after the One who is alive. The Jews never mentioned that the Lord is One. The Hindus seemed quite unconscious of any concept of Karma or spirituality.

There was a cop who made the single encouraging (for me at least) comment: "Personal interaction with the students is the number one priority." What do you know! It might be cops who can save the world.