Split mind

We live in a competitive, aggressive, violent society.  We glorify it on TV, in movies, sports, and video games.  We finance it with advertising, innovative or not, freely handing over our hard-earned dollars, and some of our privacy and liberty, for a piece of the action.

Yesterday I drove for the first time on the highway since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which is only 9 miles from my house.  As usual, drivers were exceeding the speed limit by 10 and 20 mph, cutting each other off, eager to get ahead.  You may think I'm crazy, but there is a very real connection between the terrible, horrible awful of last week and how we treat each other on the road, at home, in the marketplace, at work and school, even in Congress.

But then we can be so compassionate and justice-seeking, emerging from the numbing fog we call reality long enough to truly see each other, make a difference in a human life.  Sooner or later, though, we fall back under the caressing waves of capitalism, until the next time.  And the next.

We all suffer from a form of mental illness, and most of us self-medicate to one degree or another.  I call it 'split mind'.  We uphold life as the greatest virtue, yet allow individuals the right to own a weapon designed for the purpose of taking life quickly and efficiently.  We desire to live in a peaceful society, yet the largest portion of the national budget funds a military machine designed to make us 'strong' (and we bankroll its entertainment twin, the NFL).  We have a glut of possessions and retail items, yet upon what would we base our economy if not supply and demand?  We are restored by still waters, green pastures and blue sky yet we continue to suck the life out of this one-of-a-kind great blue marble we call home.

The apostle Paul knew of this split mind when he said that the very thing he knew he ought to do, he did not, while the awful thing he should avoid, he did it.  We're not stupid.  We know what we're doing.  To a certain degree, we actually care about the consequences not only to ourselves but to others.  The lie is that we think we have all the time in the world when we don't have any time at all, and no, I'm not talking about the Mayans or anyone else who thinks they've got the end of the world in their back pocket.

Anne Lamott, in her book Operating Instructions, tells this sweet small story about shopping for a dress with her best-friend-ever Pammy, who is dying of breast cancer.  Anne squeezes her body into a hip little number and asks Pam the quintessential feminine question about the big-ness of her butt.  Pammy's reply?  "Oh, honey, you haven't got that kind of time."

None of us do, it's all one day at a time for everybody, yet that doesn't seem to motivate us to do diddly-squat about anything, even losing a few pounds or kicking some habit that will eventually kill us.  Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, in their book Immunity to Change, write that we all shoot ourselves in the foot because we have hidden commitments and assumptions that encourage the very behaviors that thwart our efforts at real change.

What do you think are our society's hidden commitments and assumptions about gun violence and mental illness?  Are we so committed to individual freedom that we assume we'll lose too much by sharing power with others?  THIS is the discussion we need to have: a fearless moral inventory of our society.