this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Exactly what I'm saying, and people hate hearing it, because guns are fun and if you tell people to have less fun with something they fucking want to rip your head off, especially as we enter an age of desocialization.
Desocialization is gonna be our really big problem, because while unstable backwoods hicks and suburban commando-wannabes are thoroughly worrying when they go out in the open, but they're mostly harmless, they have social groups, they talk to others, they have range clubs, even "militia" groups that I've known are just chubby dads who want an excuse to camp in the desert and bring a cooler of beer.
Nah, where we really need to be concerned is the growing mass of people who cling to guns like pacifiers AND live in social isolation bubbles, spending all their time on social media and chat groups that only reinforce their beliefs, getting locked into weirder and weirder interpretations of reality, losing the line between reality and fantasy.
You saw this starting in earnest as far back as the Charlottesville "Unite The Right" white nationalist rally where one protester was murdered. There were, along the "hardened" white supremacists were no small number of kids. White, pasty, tubby kids who spend all their time on 4chan or in deeply unhinged areas of the internet. There are some famous clips of these kids, some crying on the curb after being pepper-sprayed, saying "This was supposed to be like a game!" as they sobbed.
If you notice, we've only had a dramatic uptick in mass-shootings since, and I firmly believe social isolation is breaking people. Most of the shooters we see now fit that bill, everyone is looking for patterns, but the only one I see is these are people with no friends, no social lives, infatuations with guns, and read fucked up nonsense on the internet until they believe it.
Yup. You get it. The solution is simple, with one exception. Simple doesn't mean easy.
We need socialized healthcare including mental healthcare. That would do a lot, there are almost always signs that a non-gang mass shooter is mentally unwell.
Gang and crime based mass shootings would fall through the floor if we removed the incentive for them, prohibition of drugs. Addiction should be treated as a health problem.
We need to identify these sources of hateful propaganda, the nests of poisonous ideology and root them out through education. We aren't teaching critical thinking, I think that also has a lot to do with it.
You also have many young men that lack good role models for positive masculinity. This is a big thing I'm not sure how to fix. Toxic masculinity has become so pervasive and has infected almost every straight man that can be considered macho. I'm a very masculine man, and proud of it. My zippo says Daddy. My straw hat also has a pride/equality pin next to a Ruger pin. The number of men that I meet like myself is quite low. Met a very macho trans man once that I found had a similar worldview. Have met similar men in the gay leather communities but they tend to cluster in large cities and form insular communities for their own safety.
You've met at least one here, I was raised by nutcases out in the boonies, raised deeply conservative and religious, did a sharp 180 when I got out on my own/escaped, and have now settled into an ideology that's really all about harm reduction, personal freedom and kindness to one another, something that is completely at odds with how most men see masculinity right now.
I have walked in both worlds, I get it, I get how so many people can feel so afraid and so ready to withdraw from the system and fight anyone who would take away their comforts. I get how so many young men are so lonely, traumatized and insecure. I get how so many women can't trust men and end up making the problems worse as a result. I get how so many people are tuned-out from politics and social discourse and what this is doing to the world.
The causes of all this are many, but they all highlight a massive failing in the human experience, we are a cursed creature who are stuck on the rails of biology and evolution, we think we have far more free-will than we really do, we think we're somehow logical and rational, but we can't even see the actual universe around us, if there even is one. We are trying to fit a ridiculously complicated world into our brains that were formed over ice ages and only really knows how to predict dangerous predators.
And I don't know which is worse anymore. Having awareness of all this, or being naive, blissful and ignorant. Neither gives peace, neither offers solutions, neither makes our lives better.
We'd probably get along just fine.
Knowing is better. Knowing is always better. All we can do is try and tell others what we've learned and keep trying to grow ourselves. My purpose is loving my people, my little family. Care for them and treat other folks with respect and kindness. To err is human, and we forgive others when we can.