A WITNESS TO NIHILISM OR AN ACCOMPLICE TO THE UNREAL

May 24^th, iPhone vibrated a FOX NEWS alert. First thoughts, another Ukrainian city destroyed by the Bolsheviks, gas prices hitting a new high or Johnny Depp reconciling with Amber Heard. Such is the state of the media that every trite, banal, well-worn chyron splashes into the cesspit of attention grabbing network producers. My attention was focused elsewhere with a plan to check my phone news later. More than a few moments would pass before I picked up my Apple device and gave it the scrutiny it’s pulsating notification demanded. To my horror, but not surprise, another mass shooting was occurring, this time in an elementary school in Uvalde Texas. 

When the massacre was over, the carnage destroyed nineteen children, two adults and the veracity of a community. It also destroyed and laid waste to the myth that a solution to unhinged madness was hardening our school security, providing armed resource officers in the classroom and quarterly active shooter drills. All these and more were in place. What wasn’t in place was a deep dive into the dark demented human soul. 

The usual suspects immediately began their one issue “no more guns” battle cries. A few echoed a sincere protestation, but most were charlatans maneuvering for a political windfall. The talking heads were sickening in their myopic cantillations. The issue of cultural decay and societal ruination were seen as periphery issues to the AR-15 mantra.  

The causes of these atrocities are deep and prodigious. A fifty-year onslaught on values, morality and virtue has been in motion, with the end state, destruction of community. The architectural blueprint was to challenge the established ethos, destroy the family structure, redefine civilization into collective mores, void of church and individual accountability.  Celluloid fantasy, lyrical collection of angry destructive songs and promotion and enhancement of secularism, void of any moral compass, stifled youthful maturation.  Without this moral orientation, the dark side of humanity controlled the agenda without fear of any backlash for deviant behavior.

All major religions have a consequence for any “deals with the devil.” Christianity has an eternal fiery hell, Jews have Sheol (a place of eternal darkness), Islam has Jahannam and it’s 7 Gates of Hell, Hindu’s have Naraka where a sinner is tormented after death until their souls are reborn. Buddhism also defines its hell as Naraka, where sinners remain until their karma is satisfied. One underlying premise of religion is a punishment for unrepentant sin. 

Organize religion has been a creative, positive force throughout history. It has seen its share of corruption and destructive wars, but as a road map for societal infrastructure, it has provided boundaries, solutions and comfort to a troubled mankind. From the 10 tribes of Israel taken into captivity, to Medieval Dark Ages, to the founding of the American Experiment, the foundation of good and evil has been propagated by religion and a belief that evil will be tortured in the afterlife. Society has lost that fear of netherworld punishment. The last gatekeeper for a sick mind is removed from the caldron of emotional instability. Nowhere is the inner voice saying “this is wrong and I will spend eternality in darkness and torment.”

As we ponder solutions to this school killing, I am reminded of a similar massacre in 1999.  April

20^th of that year witness evil working through two monsters, Kalbold and Harris. They entered Columbine High School and slaughtered 13 of their classmates. After the mass shooting, the two killers turned the guns on themselves. 

The self-inflicted gunshots that finished Klebold and Harris’ assault on their high school troubled me as much as the macabre social implication of the deaths of their classmates. Their cowardly exit from this life could only be seen as no remorse, no afterlife, no hell for their depravity. The question continually vexed my conscious “are they not concerned with punishment in the afterlife, do they not fear eternal damnation.” Nowhere is the inner voice saying “this is wrong and I will spend eternality in darkness and torment.”

Are we a witness to the nihilism or an accomplice to the unreal?