You Need To Get Out More…No, Really.

I know it has been a while since this blog was updated. On one hand, I have been incredibly busy at work – we’re in the middle of our grant season, I’ve been going on site visits with nonprofits, there have been several events, and I was in Albuquerque for a conference a few weeks ago. On the other hand, I admit I only really enjoy writing about topics that people are willing to discuss.

Let me explain: last week I was watching two good friends fight via that great medium of conflict, Facebook. They eventually wound up unfriending one another over the argument. It honestly didn’t bother me incredibly: I was the sole catalyst for their connection and they had only known one another for a few months, though I’ve known both of them for several years. But watching the argument and seeing how each side was positioning, I realized that the argument would inevitably be without a winner. Both parties were accusing rather than discussing, and essentially repeating their position over and over to one another.

Missing The Forest For The Trees

This past July 4 weekend, the city of Chicago saw a staggering seventy-two shootings. However, very few people were talking about this violence. The nation continued to focus on George Zimmerman’s trial, Ariel Castro’s abductions, and Aaron Hernandez’s possible murder charges.

Now part of this is the troubling national attitude that “Well, that’s just Chicago,” which shows a dismissive, apathetic attitude that is a problem in and of itself. However, George Zimmerman, Ariel Castro, and Aaron Hernandez: these are all names, they all have faces, and people have all read their background. You can focus on a linear (if not transparent) story line and attribute a single cause-and-effect outcome to them. The concept of “seventy-two shootings” just becomes a statistic, not a collection of stories about people with lives just as complicated, just as real as the faces we see on the television. For many, the number just loses its meaning and becomes a less tangible problem than the straightforward, “ Single Person A harmed Single/Multiple Person(s) B, and we have to figure out how to react and respond.”