It’s the plague that’s killing us. It’s draining our souls. It’s sucking us of our ability to get back up. It’s crippling us to the point where we are left with the only thing we know – to continue on living in its cold embrace. To continue reading headlines of slaughtered children, of horrid abuse, of the cowardice of cops, of failed systems – and to slump back into apathy.

I wish I could say it weighs on us. But it doesn’t. We live in a perfectly crafted bubble where we’ve bought into our own bullshit lies that sharing an Instagram story and bringing something to a status of trending is “doing our part”.

At face value – we make these posts out of hurt. We make them because it feels like the only voice we have. These posts are our helpless plea’s throw into the abyss – praying to a God we’re doubting – that they’ll land on important ears.

But the truth under all our self-serving ambition is that these posts are what help us sleep at night. They make us feel safe because the algorithm feeds us onslaughts of similarly angry people making similarly angry posts. They make us feel community in our horror. They make us feel less lonely.

In reality: these posts are what help us dull down the cutting edge that is one simple truth – we don’t feel like we can do jack shit.

I read the headline the same as all of you – and I got texts from people asking to talk through it the same as all of you. I ignored work emails and searched for the pieces of the story that don’t usually make the initial headlines the same as some of you.

I wondered about the friends of the shooter. I wondered if he had any.

I searched for discord servers looking for information that our current conversation might be leaving out – the Buffalo shooting reminded me that, unfortunately, there’s quite a bit to be found there.

I poured water. I drank it.

I poured whiskey. I sat down.

I started clicking my way towards the 4chan threads that keep popping up as a sort of ground zero for these shootings.

Between the New Zealand Church shooting in 2019, the Buffalo shooting and God knows how many others that have been live streamed from the shooters point of view – they all seem to have one constant. Horrid, hateful, and unashamedly unmoderated forms where all types of shit-stained ideology go to grow, fester, and spread.

I found surprisingly little.

And then I got the call. It’s one I should’ve expected but was none the less surprised by.

“I just…. Don’t have empathy for this one.” The voice on the other end said. They were being intentionally combative to make a point – but I can’t blame them.

“Every time this happens – I feel hurt, wounded, all of that….. and I focus on it, and I daydream about fixing it. I look at solutions and I read the fucking research papers and…”

“… and then two weeks go by.”

“… and we move on.”

“… Feeling the weight of these doesn’t do anything – and I’m done losing a piece of my sanity only to go back to the numbness. I just don’t have it in me to care anymore.”

And at first – I was just as offended as I hope you are reading that. But then I stopped. And I tried to really hear what was underneath the voice coming through the phone. And I had to admit that while that sentence is ugly – and horrible – it’s also the way the masses have begun to feel. It’s what I’ve begun to feel.

We wake up in a fit of rage over children pretending to be dead in puddles of their friends blood, hoping the shooter passes them by – and then we are soon lulled back into sedation.

If you are getting the impression that I’m angry – it’s because I am. But that anger is pointing in more than one direction. I’m mad at the shooter. I’m mad at the current discourse happening around guns. But so are you and that’s not why I’m sitting down to write this.

I am mad at you. And I am mad at me.

I am ashamed of us.

I want to be perfectly clear – I do not blame you. I do not blame me. But my anger is there none the less – and if you’ve made it this far, I ask you to read this next portion with grace.

I do not discredit the value of deeply feeling the pain and suffering of those who are around you. In times of crisis, the support and intention of loved ones near you is without a doubt the greatest foundation to hold us steady until we see the sun rise again.

But for those of us who know no one directly affected by these shootings – for those of us who are only engaged in this conversation as a side narrative to the ongoings of our lives – for those of us who will never counsel or speak comfort into the lives of the victims of these shootings – its time we admit a few things.

We live in the western world – where our voices carry more power individually than entire generations that came before us. We hold freedoms and privileges that came at the cost of millions of lives in hundreds of wars. We sit as the benefactor of a history that has gifted us more authority – more freedom – more power than our ancestors thought possible.

This western world is not a finished product – but by God is it an incredible one. We’ve collectively slashed poverty, starvation, homelessness, crime, violence and abuse to astoundingly low rates when you consider the timeline of human existence.

We have inherited more than we deserve – more than any historical society thought possible. We live in a world where a hip replacement surgery can be done in under 25 minutes. We hold the capacity to track and protect our loved ones from thousands of miles away. We have more income and material blessings than we know what to do with.

And we have fucking wasted it.

We – the people – you and me – have wasted it.

I’m not talking about the congressmen on high or the powers that be – I am talking about the average person reading this – who makes 60 some thousand dollars a year and lives in constant stress that they won’t be able to maintain their lifestyle.

I’m talking about us – who have enough free time on a Memorial Day weekend to casually read blog posts written by a guy we knew years ago.

I’m talking about us – who live in such unbelievable comfort that we’ve started to mistake “stressful deadlines” for real turmoil.

I’m talking about us who are so concerned with our own image, our own understanding of self, that somehow in all this chaos, we still manage to make posts about shootings with the undertone of “DONT FORGET ABOUT ME TODAY!”.

If you feel inclined to call me a cynic after reading that – I’ll feel inclined to call you insecure.

Ask yourself – if what we are doing is enough – then why are we still here? Why are we still reading these headlines?

The time of blaming institutions and structures must come to an end – our influence on these is greater than any period of time that came before us.

In the 10 years since Sandy Hook – thousands of research papers have been written looking at the proposals for how we stop this. Papers written by Conservatives who are correctly resistant to a government that wants to disarm its populous. Papers written by Liberals who correctly want to see adjustments made to the definition of “gun”. Papers written by curious math nerds who just enjoy seeing cause and effect of different policies.

But what all these papers have in common is that they have died on the floors of our legislature.

In the 10 years since Sandy Hook, our policy for fixing this has been to continue talking about it. Our solution has been to think on it; to ask for more data.

In the 10 years since Sandy Hook, we have asked our representatives to find a middle ground that we all know exists. And expectedly – they have failed to.

And that – my beloved reader – is on our hands.

This is my point – as plainly as I can put it.

We know our systems have failed to do enough…

But if we can stay awake from our apathy for long enough – we must admit one much more difficult truth.

I have failed to do enough.

You have failed to do enough.

We have rolled over in defeat, accepting a bullshit lie that congress is unobtainable for us to sit within. That becoming the ones who write policy is a pipe dream best left for Harvard grads whose daddy can bankroll them in the door. Our pessimism has crippled us into apathy as we observe a country that we know we could govern better.

A profound change is needed in this country – and it is not a revolution of the powers that be – but a realization of the powers we hold.

If one tenth of us of us actually held the fire in our souls that our Instagram posts tell the world we have – then we ourselves might be able to read those research papers – propose policy – and speak up for those who we believe have had their voices muted.

It is on our hands to do more.

To be more.

Because what we are doing is not enough.

We are not the ones who lost our son’s and daughters in Texas. We are not the ones who lost siblings or loved ones. We are the spectators – sitting on the side. Our role is not to comfort them or to make posts about them. Our role is to use at least some fraction of the 24 hours we have each day to fucking do something about it.

While they repair a broken community – and pick up the shambles of shattered lives, homes and childhoods – our contribution is to get in the game. To take seriously the power we were given by generations fighting for a better world – to take seriously the voices and freedoms we were given to make change happen.

Our contribution is to actually do something with this anger.

Our Anger is righteous – and it is a right thing to feel it. But if we continue to let this apathy, this feeling of helplessness, win the day – then we do not deserve to sleep at night as well as we do.

“What is it about society that disappoints you so much?”

“Oh, i don’t know. Is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man, when when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit. the world itself’s just a big hoax. Spamming with our running commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I’m not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books make us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it’s painful not to pretend, because we’re cowards. Fuck Society.” – Mr Robot: Episode 1’ohellofriend.mov’