Another week, another school shooting.
I don’t like social media at the best of times, but this week I’ve managed pretty well to stay clear of it. A few scrolls Monday morning and it became pretty clear that Facebook was going to mostly be people posting their stance on gun control like it makes any difference at all. For my four hundred words this month, I’m going to expand on the post that I made in response to the event: “I’m not saying that no one’s position on gun control has EVER changed because of Facebook posts, but I will say that I have never met that person and ‘debating’ it here is probably more work than it’s worth.”
People who are already in favor of gun control have heard your “good guy with a gun” argument and decided that they don’t care. People who are not in favor of gun control have heard your “people are dying” argument and decided they don’t care. The thing about having a school shooting every few weeks or so is that we’ve all encountered this situation before and we’ve all drawn our lines in the sand. Whether or not someone crosses over onto your side probably isn’t going to hinge on your eloquent social media posts.
I hope that my professors in the humanities aren’t reading this, crumpling it up and shouting “But it’s all about the DIALOGUE!” Dialogue can exist between individuals, but the more important dialogue exists between the individual and reality. I have family members who believe that Sandy Hook was staged. They examined the information that they had available and decided that it never happened. Most people have examined the information that was available and decided that it did happen. Both of these dialogues took place between the individuals and the information at hand and after a certain point, no dialogue between individuals can change what either decided to believe.
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (now I hope that my humanities professors are reading this) wrote, “in order for creatures to communicate they must have some level of shared reality.” There’s a time for dialogue and Facebook posts and there’s a time for admitting that sometimes we just don’t occupy the same realities as the people that we are addressing.
This isn’t a cynical rant about how we should all give up on our beliefs, this is a cynical rant about how if you believe something you should do something about it because the number of likes on your status won’t change the world. As a member of the Facebook community, for my sake, stop writing Facebook posts and write a letter to your senator.
