I belong to a civilization, "Western", which itself is an amalgamation of two great historical currents, Greco-Roman rationalism and Judeo-Christian ethics, all processed by northern European tribes which had no hand in creating these impulses, but expanded it in a way unimaginable to either Jesus or Socrates.
Western ethics... if I may shorten 3,000 years of philosophy to a glib Substack paragraph... is effectively two ideas:
Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.
Jesus: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The above two rules are powerful tools for ethical development regardless of one's specific religion or ideology. Examine your life. Do as you would have done if doing for yourself. Socrates said "you must always do better" and Jesus clarified how we were to *be* doing better.
In effect, this means that we shouldn't be the same person at 20 that we were at 5. We shouldn't be the same person at 40 that we were at 20. 60... 40. 80... 60.
This is the standard our Civilization has set out for each of us: Measure your life. Always do better.
Then there's the 2nd thing. And maybe a 3rd thing. My religion taught me that my God came down to Earth in the form of a human, the aforementioned Jesus, who gave additional moral instruction. And it also teaches me that I very well may face a day of judgment, of reckoning for my life and how I lived it.
Therefore it behooves me to see what sort of person my God decided to become as this may give a clue as to the direction of our needed ethical development. So... Was he a warrior, ready to defend life, property, and ideology at the tip of a spear... ? No. An intellectual, a man who wrote great books, some of which are lost to time...? Not at all. A wealthy man, whose fame spread from Babylon to Gaul... ? Nope.
No. He came to Earth as a *healer*, in the guise of a man who literally spent the years of his Divinity *vaccinating* people against the diseases of the day, most notably leprosy. And if I want to pass his test, if there is one, perhaps I want to model myself after this ethos... at lease, minimally, to quote Hippocrates, "first, do no harm".
(Do not forget Jesus existed in a world steeped in Hellenistic ideas, far more than we are today. He would laugh at how I am simplifying the Greeks, but whatcha gonna do? He knew Greek writings which were subsequently lost to time.)
So we find ourselves in a world recently, and currently, beset by two moral crisis's as defined by my Healer God:
1. COVID
2. Guns
And it is up to us, as individuals living in Western Civilization, to ask ourselves: Are our belief systems coordinated with the two rules above as to fight these two problems? Are we acting in accordance with those rules, the way we would expect any person civilized in the Western tradition to do?
When adherence to the 2nd Amendment led to an eruption of gun violence... but, really, there has always been gun violence, there just wasn't true gun violence data-gathering until 1968... when the latest eruption started, in Columbine, two decades ago:
... Did you examine your 2A stance or not? Did you accept the need for more funding for mental health, and the corresponding tax hit such a stance would take, or did you consistently vote for politicians who promised to lower your taxes and "the burden of big government" via cutting VA and mental health programs all across the strata of society?
.... Did you stop funding the NRA who fought for the expansion of the 2nd-amendment 'right' beyond all reason, to the point where Uvalde can happen *as it exactly happened*? Or did you fight all measures to limit access to these weapons of death, allowing them to metastasize in the body politic, just as the issue of slavery did?
... Did you respond to news of mass deaths by posting pro-gun memes and arguments on Facebook, telling others to not politicize a tragedy? Or did you properly recognize that argument as logically baseless, given it is a tragedy directly caused by the politics of the Second Amendment?
Upon hearing of dead children, does your heart weep... or, like Pharoah's, harden?
So, given the above quick reminder about Western Ethics: Does it not seem delusional, even psychotic, to see a 20-year string of dead children and take the side of the weapon?
Jesus knows enough logic to easily dismiss claims made by the Right that America is more evil than every other country in the world, more prone to bad parenting, has too many doors in our schools, that America is less religious than the rest of the world, it's anything and everything but the guns. He knows the speciousness of the argument that one needs guns to protect against tyranny, made by people living in a country where the military claims a monopoly on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, where Top Gun is the #1 movie of the year.
I live in San Antonio, TX, a city literally occupied by five military bases. What tyranny is my gun going to prevent? Tis to laugh!
It's the guns. That's the unique condition between America's spot of Western Civilization and the rest of it which does not suffer this moral crisis of constant mass death: Europe. Australia. Canada.
... They are occupied by military bases too, they just don't have a 2nd Amendment.
.... They have evil people too, they just don't have a 2nd Amendment.
....They have multiple doors on their schools too, they just don't have a 2nd Amendment
... They have bad parents too, they just don't have a 2nd Amendment
... They have a culture of disrespect too, they just don't have a 2nd Amendment
… They have mentally ill people too, they just don’t have a 2nd Amendment
... They have a government which is "going socialist/communist" too, they just don't have a 2nd Amendment
Jesus won't be fooled. You stand before him and sputter "Chicago", he'll just say something Jesus-like and retort "the existence of the island doesn't prevent it from being swamped by the ocean"
Adherence to the 2nd amendment has failed America. It offers no benefits and causes great misery. The crisis is upon us. The solution, obvious. And adhering the lessons given us by the two founders of Western Civilization offers all of us an honorable way out, an out most of the current countries which comprise Western Civilization, in fact, took.
It's the guns.