Freedom of the Press

This is a complicated topic to bring up.  After all, those who've lived in countries where there is no such thing as free press press us to keep our news/entertainment complex running at full speed.

Yet, freedom requires responsibility, does it not?  And if there are fewer and fewer official news outlets in comparison to the average citizen's ability to become an instant journalist, how do we teach responsible news reporting, knowing that completely uncensored news contains sensitive information?

I approach this topic because of the set of copycat murders that have taken and will take place during this lull in economic times, where people with no sense of humour get wound up in their thoughts that their only outlet is a violent ending.

By reporting and dwelling on details of murderers, we give a voice and/or thoughts toward murderous action for those who haven't yet formulated how they can get out of their current miserable conditions.

Now, I can look at this anthropologically-speaking and say that it's just our species weeding out the marginal personalities but even I, with my satirical/sarcastic sense of humour, am not that cold.  We're talking about real people here, both those who could have been helped and those they murdered when help was not available.

We are one species.  By that, I mean we are all the same, we are seven billion copies of the same person, we are one big family.  Therefore, we should not hesitate to get to know one another, talk to our neighbours, break down the invisible social barriers and quit thickening our falsely-protective cocoons.

I don't need a crystal ball to know we're going to see more and more people reach the end of their livelihoods and want to end others as they go out with a big bang.  My concern is the intensity of these follow-on copycats.  We are social creatures who tend to herd together, even in acts of unspeakable atrocities.  Inside that herd are those who are competitive, including how they want to outdo the last great criminal act of the herd members.

In an effort to help others in need, I recently reached out to my neighbours during the crisis of one set of neighbours.  If we all did the same, we could reconnect the old-style, smalltown family ties of previous times.  In this day and age of electronic social networking, we still need plain ol' hugs and frank in-the-face conversations with one another.

You do not need to kill someone to make your life complete!  It's okay to be humble and ask for help.  We can move in with one another, if need be.

If nothing else, take a walk.  Exercise is one of the best ways to burn off pent-up energy.  Do not resort to violence.  It's unnecessary.

In the education of our children, a healthy sense of humour should be one of the foundations of life-coping skills we teach.  When we're at our wit's end, we can still find a way to smile, which often leads to insights to a new path out of our predicament.

Eight and a half years after 9/11/01 and most Americans have become used to the safe sound of airplanes overhead.  Now, what will we say to our friends who get a sudden urge to fly their private planes?  What will we say to our friends who complain about their children's uncontrollable behaviour?  What will we think of our friends who display violent tendencies or won't talk about blank places in their CVs?

It is well with what you can call my soul.  I accept that whatever will happen to me is meant to happen to me because it happened and we can't turn back the clock.  However, that doesn't mean I'm willing to accept arbitrary acts of violence against my person that could have been prevented with some simple acts of kindness to strangers by strangers.

During WWII, this country enacted a set of censorship rules.  With the Internet's uncensored setup, we have created a wonderful gathering place for people of all sorts of dreams, desires, personalities, quirks, hobbies and backgrounds.  How do we make our society less prone to violence, including individual acts of violence or group-centered (gang) violence?  Is censorship possible?  Is it necessary?  How do we reach out to those in need if we shut them out?  Why is it always after the fact that hindsight showed us what we should have seen?  Where is the social progress that promised us future people with insight to see problem people around us and act on our instincts to pull those problem people aside for counseling or other means of making them less problematic?

I'm concerned we're going to take the direction of creating a stronger police state, devoting more and more of our tax collections to incarceration and clamp down on openness altogether, using censorship for promoting a one-size-fits-all social message.  In so doing, we would limit our futures.

I look to you for other solutions to our current crisis of random violence (i.e., domestic terrorism).  It's up to you and me to solve this problem.  There's no magic bureau or agency or department that has an infinite set of solutions already worked out.  We are one people, including those in the private and public sectors.  Together, we make this a better world or we fall apart.

We have faced these crises before and survived.  In fact, we've thrived since then.  But we survived and thrived because we took action, not because we stood by and let apathy rule the day.

I use the freedom of the press to communicate with many of you out there who are working to get our people up and permanently off this planet.  The Space Monkeys, we often joke.  There are those of you, including the space monkey subset, who communicate for an even greater cause (meaning we all do).  We must act with more compassion for those around us who we might normally ignore in our daily rush to accomplish our nearly impossible tasks.  It's okay to slow down a little and take the time to care for those we easily can give a helping hand - we already have the gift of insight so let's use it for more than large-scale social change.

To Pam, Patricia and Beth - our thoughts and prayers are with you right now in your time of mourning.  To Annette - there are better days ahead.  To Monica - I haven't talked to you in a while but I'm thinking about you during this big change in your life.  To Pat - you're a beautiful person who will find new dreams fulfilled.  To Raymon and Ann - we're still praying for full recovery.  To Scott - we're hoping you get your house sold and can move on with your life.

These notes of love are the types of messages we should use the press and Internet for, not spreading more details of how desperate, violent people decided to take out their frustrations, no matter how much people seem to be attracted to stories of violence and mayhem and thus willing to support adverts that pay for crime reports.