anger, morality, nihilism, right, wrong

So many topics, so little time...

I have been thinking a lot this week about Anger.  There seem to be many instances last few years (decades?) where humans aren't handling their anger very well.  One of my sisters has worked herself up into a self induced anger directed at me - she is so mad she's not speaking to me.  (well, its a long story on how it got this bad, but so far her not-speaking thing works for me)

Has anger changed much since the human species began walking upright on the planet?  Naah, probably not.  All human, all animals experience anger.  Animals go on instinct so they really don't get "angry"... But humans sure do - and they then act on it.  A moral person might act on their anger when believing they are morally justified.  Is the definition of moral justification for acting out in anger these days changing?  When is it justified?  If you are cuttoff in a car by another, no, sorry, you are not morally justified to rage in anger or shoot that person... it is just traffic for pete's sake.

After the school shooting this week in Connecticut, the left wails and gnashes their teeth demanding more gun control and more 'gun free zones' from their favorite nanny government.  "Do something!" they cry... but what "something"?  Take away American guns?   Why punish law abiding citizens by depriving their rights to protect themselves when a crazed person commits some crime? 

In Guns, Guns, Guns, Daniel Greenfield points out you cannot stop a mentally deranged person from killing another person - you have to kill them first.  Goes back to a bible story ya'll: Cain and Abel - one brother kills another - no guns used at all.

Good article in NRO has some Facts About Mass Shootings.  Author John Fund points out:

"In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work."

Anger fuels a crazy person - they do things society isn't happy with.  Go postal. Have road rage...

Mass killings?  That concept sure seems CELEBRATED by the Islam cultists.  Suicide bombings and killing innocents for Allah is their jihadi way, isn't it.  They prove THEY do not have "morals" the rest of the modern world supposedly has. 

However, millions of babies are killed legally in the USA by abortion - thousands every day.  The LEFT promotes this killing.  So WHY would they be SO upset a few 5 year old kids are killed?  They surely wouldn't be upset if their parents opted for abortion 5 years ago, would they?

Who can best explain the whole "justified anger" thing?  Jihadis think their anger is justified - they are angry at anyone who isn't muslim - anyone who isn't muslim offends them so they get angry.  Goes back to crazy person wants to kill you: you will have to kill them first.

About that morality thing and anger - I enjoyed the comments on this article - the very first one by Nate13 who says:

"I hate to become a one-trick pony on these message boards, but I'm going to bring up an old theme I've been harping on lately: nihilism.

We live in an age of moral relativism that, having no foundation on which to stand, is rapidly descending into nihilism - the absence of morality or any justification for it. I'm going to leave the shooter's intentions alone for the time, as I'm sure those will be discussed at length for weeks.
I'm talking about nihilism not just in the shooter, but in the broader culture that attempts to understand these horrific events without a moral reference point. In the aftermath, we attempt to get more and more legalistic, bureaucratic, and technocratic to solve problems that can't be legislated away.

These events are products of sick, evil people in an increasingly sick culture that has no stomach for "outdated" concepts like absolute right and wrong. We believe if we could just pass enough well-worded laws, we could eliminate this behavior from society. We treat these tragedies as outputs, thinking that we can just tinker with the inputs enough to get our desired results.

For God's sake, the bodies were still warm and we were already talking about piles upon piles of statistics, as if the problem of violent gun crime could be solved mathematically with some study or Congressional inquiry. I'm afraid that, absent the presence of morality in our discussions of these murders, we have no tools to solve the underlying problems except legalism and policy making. People will keep fixating on the problems with guns because we've become woefully inadequate at talking about problems inherent in humanity.

It always amuses me in pitying way when I hear people retreat even further into nihilism after an event like this by making that old appeal to the "Argument of Evil" which asks, "If there truly is a good god, why does he allow such evil deeds?" As if the very presence of evil invalidates the possibility or under-pinning for good!

Forgive my frustration, but what right do we have to even speak about evil in our society? We are so immersed in violence, greed, sex, instant gratification, and materialism that we've lost all sense of what evil even looks like. To know evil, you must first know good. And while we work ourselves into a righteous huff over "evil" for 2% of the year when these disgusting acts occur, for the other 98% we desperately try to rebel against all forms of conventional morality - that cramps our style, doesn't it?

A child one minute before passing through the birth canal can have a pair of surgical scissors put through his or her brain without society batting an eye. A fully formed, breathing, crying, desperate, helpless baby who is the result of a botched abortion has no entitlement to life in parts of this "enlightened" Western world. And we talk about "evil"?

Government officials pass guns to cartels to slaughter civilians, and we get to talk about "evil"?
Corrupt businessmen get to use their connections to the power brokers in Washington to access public funds to bail out their billion dollar corporations (who went broke in part due to unbridled greed), and we sit here and talk about evil?

We can start talking about "evil" when we as a society find our lost sense of "good". But we can't relegate morality to the fringes, then demand to know where God was."

I'll end this with an observation - I was defending the American gun culture in my office lunch room today to a British individual and New Zealander (kiwi).  They both think Americans are crazy to have so many guns.  I say teachers and principals in schools should have guns available to them - the CT shooting was over in 2 minutes. If an armed teacher was available right there when they saw an armed person enter the school with guns and start shooting: wouldn't that have made a difference?  Could a few children been saved?  Of course.

I think its crazy NZ police don't carry handguns on their hips.  I think its crazy British still have a monarchy sucking up millions of dollars in resources - which could probably be more beneficiary to the citizens.  What is the relevancy of inbred monarch system in a modern world?  I don't get it... but then again, I'm an American. 

America was started by fighting off tyranny... with guns.  I don't have a problem with guns or with all law abiding, responsible citizens owning guns. Crims already have guns ya'll...duh.

My American culture relies on individuals - not the government - to assist each other.  As they saying goes "When there are seconds to spare, the police are 2 minutes away". 

I believe in the right to defend myself and my property from a gun wielding bad guy.  That is the American way...  Individual responsibility... and it makes me angry the USA leftist government want to take away those rights.  I'm moral and right.